Ghost Dance

Ghost Dance is a long fantasy novel by Li Xueye, serialized from 2000 on the original fiction site Huanjian Shumeng and later published by Northern Literature and Art Publishing House in volumes including Ghost Dance: Peril in Dragon City, Ghost Dance: The Divine Gun, and Ghost Dance: Saint Shitian. Along with In Search of the Gods and Zhu Xian, it is regarded as one of the representative xuanhuan works of the Huanjian Shumeng era. The world is set "when the primordial chaos first divided and the seven realms first separated," with the realms of gods, immortals, buddhas, demons, monsters, ghosts, and humans coexisting; the divine realm towers over all with transcendent power, while the human realm becomes the hub connecting the seven realms, where monsters and ghosts gather and conflict arises. The protagonist, Jun Ziao, is the reincarnation of the Lord of Ghosts, "Heavenly Ghost Sovereign," foremost among the divine realm's ghosts. Born under the lonely star of heavenly calamity, he endures hardship from childhood and wanders the jianghu, eventually joining the Yan family troupe and winning everyone over with his peerless qin playing. At the True Dragon martial tournament he makes sworn brothers and attracts enemies, until the troupe is destroyed and its people killed; the Long family, descendants of the dragon god and guardians of the human world, falls into internal strife that plunges the entire human realm into chaos. The novel takes "a lonely star defying fate" as its main thread, weaving jianghu grudges, family power struggles, and seven-realm conflict into a grand fantasy tapestry. Jun Ziao, Long Ziwen, Tianya, Li Lang, and others each have their own obsessions, and readers follow them in choosing between power and freedom, fate and defiance.