Dragon Domain

Dragon Domain is an early xuanhuan work on Qidian, written by Zhong Sheng, about 1.38 million Chinese characters, and complete. The story begins with the wealthy Chu family: a newborn of the Chu family is chosen by the Dragon Domain and endowed with the true dragon qi of Zixu, and ought to be a child of destiny. But fortune and misfortune lean on each other: after birth he spends ten years as an "idiot," neglected by his family and regarded by the world as a fool. Then he spends eight years in deep-mountain cultivation with his three masters—Xianyun, Buchan, and the Mad Scholar—awakening to the states of Chan and Buddhist Dao, and achieving great cultivation. He ought to soar at a single leap, but he would rather be one of the multitude, and so quietly enters university, seeking an ordinary, easy life. Yet things go against his wishes: the family business, powerful magnates, and great houses of chivalry and reclusion take turns appearing; the "genius wife" Qin Nianran, betrothed by the elders before birth, is highly intelligent and utterly uninterested in him, while Ouyang Ziyi, one of Peking University's "peerless pair," grows curious about him; add Li Rou, met through books, and the pure-voiced jade songstress Xue Feifei, and romantic entanglements unfold layer by layer. To escape a black flood dragon that unexpectedly possesses him, the protagonist takes a leave from school and travels, his martial arts advancing further, and is drawn into feuds with the Tianyin Sect and a lingering affair. With urban reality as its base and xianxia fantasy as its bone, the book is an early web power-fantasy telling "I wish to be ordinary, the dragon does not; the dragon soars, I ride the wind"—and a representative sample of that generation of Qidian urban xuanhuan.