Living Gold

Living Gold is an Eastern fantasy novel by Zhumei, a contracted author on the 17K website. Serialization began on 17K in 2007; the book spans 334 chapters, roughly 1.12 million Chinese characters, and is now complete. The story opens amid the great Ming–Qing migration known as “Huguang filling Sichuan”: more than a hundred members of the Li clan leave their homeland for western Shu. After a month on the road, they finally settle on fertile flatland ringed by mountains—and are drawn into the hidden world of the mountains’ spirit veins. The novel’s core premise is that spirit veins are the veins of life. To protect them from harm, a lineage of Vein Guardians has passed down its calling from generation to generation. The protagonist, Lin Baoju, is descended from a prodigy among the Vein Guardians, a man with the heaven-defying power to shape terrain and circumstance. He once subdued the Golden Horse by force and made it lord of the spirit vein of White Horse Mountain—the White Horse drinks water and feeds a whole region. An ancient saying, “If the spirit vein scatters, begging is certain,” has circulated for a thousand years. Carrying on his ancestor’s resolve, Lin Baoju sets out to subdue the Golden Horse and guard the spirit vein. On his journey he faces esoteric arts woven from control techniques, concealment arts, and spellcraft; encounters uncanny formations and ferocious spirit beasts; and, in searching for grotto-heavens and blessed lands, comes step by step to understand the meaning of “living gold.” The book blends folk feng shui lore with the imagined worlds of cultivation and extraordinary adepts. It takes as its guidepost Sichuan place names that match the shapes of their mountains—Flying Goose Mountain, Ox Horn Ridge, Moon Slope, Golden Rooster Ridge—and asks whether treasures such as the golden goose and golden ox might truly be alive, able to run and leap. The narrative spans past and present, pivoting on the crisis of the spirit veins to weave a fantastical world in which humanity and the powers of heaven and earth are entangled.