Forging the Sword in Prosperity is an urban-life web novel by Qi Cheng, serialized on Qidian and completed in October 2016. At roughly 750,000 Chinese characters, it marks a shift in subject matter for the author after The Materials Empire. The story begins in the late Ming dynasty, in the Cangmu Mountains of the southeast. Li Yu, a disciple of the Cangmu branch of the Guihong Sect, was taken in as a godson by branch leader Han Zhi from childhood and had already made a name for himself in the martial world by eighteen. During a battle against Japanese pirates, Han Zhi is struck down by the traitorous "Shadowless Poison," a secret medicine of the Pharmacist Sect, and his life hangs by a thread. To obtain the antidote, Li Yu ventures alone into Pharmacist Valley, which is laced with poison formations. In the Pharmacist Cave he is unexpectedly overcome by a knockout drug and sleeps for four hundred years. Centuries later, an archaeological team rescues him from the cave. He arrives in Yuhai, a southeastern coastal city around 2012, and faces a prosperous age without killing or hunger and cold. From initial bewilderment, he learns—with the help of history professor Gao Shixin and others—the wholly unfamiliar rules of ID cards, household registration, and business. Relying on his martial arts skills and ancestral herbal formulas, he opens a medicinal cuisine restaurant, joins Jicui Pharmaceutical, co-founds a company, and gradually earns his first fortune. He also befriends Xu Yingying, Luo Zhaoxue, Zhou Zijun, and others, and does his utmost to help them realize their dreams. Yet beneath the calm of city life, undercurrents surge. Yuhai is a domestic nuclear submarine research and development base, where spy organizations of hostile forces operate and collude with underworld criminal gangs. Li Yu is drawn in at first against his will; then, guided by senior security bureau officer Lin Songhan, young officer Du Shuangyue, and others, and relying on his keen assassin's instincts and a heartfelt patriotism, he gradually grows into an outstanding fighter on the counterintelligence front. Combining time travel with urban counterintelligence, the work places the ancient spirit of chivalry within a modern narrative of national security.
在齐橙的作品序列里，《砺剑繁华》是一个特别的存在。他此前以《工业霸主》《材料帝国》奠定“硬核工业文”的名声，动辄二三百万字地写工厂、写装备、写技术攻关；而这一本只有七十五万字，主角不是工程师，是一个从明末睡到当代的年轻刺客。 这种转向让本书的评价呈现两极：喜欢的人读到的是市井烟火与家国情怀的奇妙拼接——药膳馆、老字号药企、动漫打工妹、退役特种兵，一个古代侠客笨拙地学习现代社会的规则，又用江湖人的方式守护它；不习惯的人则觉得套路偏旧，节奏轻快但深度不及作者后来的《大国重工》。 客观地说，本书更接近一部轻松耐读的都市爽文：单元式的案件推进、清晰的正邪阵营、干净利落的打斗场面，加上作者一贯扎实的细节功底，对城市生活与基层生态的描摹并不敷衍。它曾入选多项网络文学推介名单，被国家图书馆永久典藏，作为理解现实题材网络文学如何吸纳类型元素的一个样本，仍有其价值。适合想找一本不太烧脑、又能读到点正气的都市小说的读者。
Qi Cheng is an author who has remained active in the field of Chinese online literature. Public information about the author is limited: nationality and dates of birth and death are not confirmed, and 15 works are currently on record. In terms of subject matter, Qi Cheng mainly writes male-oriented fiction, moving between alternate history, urban fiction, and period fiction. Representative works include Great Country Heavy Industry, Sharpening the Sword in Prosperity, Material Empire, When Will the Long Tassel Be Requested, and The Grand Ming Geomancer. These works are often grouped under premium fiction and quality web fiction, suggesting that the author balances readability with narrative completeness in genre storytelling. Titles such as Great Country Heavy Industry, together with the common categories, point toward industry, changing times, and historical imagination, while The Grand Ming Geomancer shows an engagement with historical settings. Overall, Qi Cheng is characterized by working across multiple genres and by steady output, and has built a readership on online reading platforms.
