The Chronicle of a Grand Journey

The Chronicle of a Grand Journey is a long cultivation online novel written by the online author Chou Dao Yu, with more than three million characters in total, built around the core setting of the five-element origin. At the opening of the story, the fifteen-year-old orphan Qu Yi of Linshan Village lost his parents in childhood and barely survives by doing farm work for the villagers and processing game for the beast-hunting team, and trains hard with the team in stamina, strength, and movement until he finally becomes a solo hunter able to enter the deep forest alone. On one hunt in the Beast Mountain, he sees a giant eagle fighting two giant snakes, then is pushed off Wangshan Cliff by Qu Meng, the village chief's son, but unexpectedly lands at the bottom of the cliff and discovers a white jade cave on the precipice. In the cave grows a purple-stemmed five-colored lotus, and the five colored lotus seeds in its seedpod fly into his mouth, opening his meridians, refining his bones and muscles, and burying the five spiritual roots of metal, green, blue, red, and yellow in his body. Thereafter he uses this as his opportunity to enter the cultivation world, joining the Xianyun Sect under its head, and in circumstances of scarce cultivation resources and sudden sect upheaval, gradually advances by the path of cultivating all five elements together. According to the author's introduction, the main line is Qu Yi unifying the cultivation world, roaming the immortal, demon, and monster realms, and finally reaching the divine realm at the core of the universe, directly investigating the nature of five-element origin energy and evolving his own primordial universe from the five elements. The work is a typical long cultivation leveling story, with a vast background, a cultivation system built around the five elements, and a plot centered on fortuitous encounters, adventures, and rising strength.