Wind Rider

Wind Rider is a fantasy cultivation novel by the web author Lazy Bird, serialized on Qidian from 2011 to 2013. It runs about 3.33 million characters across more than 1,160 chapters. The protagonist, Feng Ruo, is an ordinary soldier on the battlefield; after a brutal battle he is saved by the cultivator Fengchenzi and enters the Qingyun Sect as a menial laborer—he is not even an outer disciple, and his daily duties amount to tending ten mu of fragrant-spirit rice paddies and nine snow-spirit silkworms. Among the immortal sect, mortals are like dust, but Feng Ruo is unwilling to be trapped forever between the spirit fields and the silkworm sheds, and unwilling to leave his life in others' hands. Starting from a low-grade five-element stone and a long saber full of notches, he learns to refine weapons, gather spirit herbs, and hunt low-level spirit beasts, prying open the gates of the cultivation world one threshold at a time, finally advancing from menial laborer to Qi Refining. He passes through sect after sect and secret realm after secret realm, until he rides the wind and mounts a dragon, his sword howling across the world; after ascension he faces the choice between the inheritance of the Divine Venerable and family and freedom. The work follows the traditional cultivation progression route, with no female lead and a focus on daily cultivation and sect worldbuilding; its pacing is steady, and it is regarded as one of Lazy Bird's early representative works.