The Official Immortal

Chen FengxiaoQidian2008

Rating 3.5
Word count
14.3M words

Tags

Male-Oriented Fiction Urban Fiction Civil ServantsGrassroots PowerUrban FantasyOfficialdomEmotional IntelligencePostwar ReflectionCivil Service ExamWeb NovelBlack HumorAdolescence

Summary

Chen Taizhong, a celestial being of the Luotian order, was too blunt and socially inept for his own good—obsessed only with cultivation. While attempting to break through to the Golden Immortal stage of the Purple Mansion, he was sabotaged and hurled back to his teenage years. After painful reflection, he resolves to enter officialdom to hone his emotional intelligence. Armed with partially restored immortal powers and immortal artifacts like the Xumi Ring, he barrels his way through, starting with cheating on the college entrance exam. He skips university and seizes Phoenix City’s first civil service exam to slip into the system. A wildly uninhibited and outrageously irreverent misfit crashes into a rigid bureaucracy, defusing crises in political-business entanglements through unconventional means, and mocking the grassroots power ecosystem from an immortal’s perspective.

Editor's review

One of the representative works blending officialdom fiction with cultivation fiction. Its appeal lies in the dimensional-strike fantasy of a immortal's identity and its biting black humor, with a vividly flavored portrayal of grassroots bureaucratic manners and human relations—suited to readers who enjoy officialdom power games but find them too serious. The flaws are just as clear: excessive length, dragging pacing, a protagonist who gradually turns saintly in the later stages, sloppy handling of the romance thread, several female characters fading out late in the story, and an ending many readers regard as a botched finish.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read it as cultivation-skinned officialdom fiction, and don't demand strict real-world logic
  2. Pay attention to the hidden thread of the protagonist's emotional-intelligence growth—it's the core motivation behind the whole book's setup
  3. Skim the later political-business dispute arcs and focus on key personnel changes

About the publisher

Qidian

Qidian is a platform whose catalogue brings together online literature, with about 45,000 titles in the library spanning categories such as male-oriented fiction, Eastern fantasy, xianxia and wuxia, science fiction, selected fiction and quality web novels. Representative titles include Reincarnation Paradise, War Soldier Leon, The Fairy Is Fierce (also known as Tai Mang), The Expert Is Right Beside Me, Dragon Herder, You Should Cross the Mountains Like a Hero, The Adventures of a Clever Girl and Summoning Heroes of All Ages in Another World, with themes extending from fantasy and xianxia to science fiction and adventure. Representative authors available in the library include Na Yi Zhi Wen Zi, Chi Gua Zi Qun Zhong, Guan Guan Gong Zi, Chenxing LL, Luan, Chen Mo De Ai, Piao Yi Dao Zhang and Dong Tian Bu Leng. Their works mostly appear as serialized web fiction aimed at readers who prefer long genre fiction. Public information on its founding background and scale is limited, so no inferences are made here; the description is based solely on the library's titles and categories.

FAQ

Is this a cultivation novel or an officialdom novel? It's essentially officialdom fiction; the cultivation setup mainly serves as a cheat and a vehicle for satire.
Why doesn't the protagonist finish university? He decides the officialdom is the best place to hone emotional intelligence, so he gives up enrollment and directly sits the civil service exam.
How long is the whole book? About fourteen million characters—extremely long, so be prepared for a long-term read.

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About the author

Chen Fengxiao Author

Chen Fengxiao is an author in the field of Chinese online literature. Publicly available information about him is limited, but he has produced a considerable body of work, with 11 titles currently included in the database. His representative works include Kuang Xian (The Mad Immortal), Big Data Cultivation, Guan Xian (The Official Immortal), and Xun Qing Xian Shi. Judging from these titles and the common categories, he is mainly active in male-oriented fiction, urban fiction, and xianxia/wuxia, and his works often carry a flavor of supernatural abilities, with attempts to blend cultivation and urban themes. Overall, his writing tends toward long-form serialized storytelling, spanning a fairly wide range of subjects, from immortal cultivation to stories set against officialdom and urban life, showing continued exploration of different popular genres. For readers, his works have been categorized as premium fiction and quality online writing, indicating a certain level of readability and reader base.