Wang Mingxian

1. The Influence of Contemporary Taoist Cultivation Fantasy Literature

After more than twenty years of development, fantasy literature about cultivating the Tao and cultivating immortality has greatly changed the old situation of traditional immortal-and-Tao fantasy fiction, with its simple structures, one-dimensional characters, uncomplicated plots, and thin stories. Some xuanhuan novels easily run to several million or even more than ten million characters, displaying a capacity for “grand” narrative. Concretely, this shows mainly in four respects: first, the worldbuilding is magnificent and vast; second, the conception of time and space is broad and far-reaching; third, main events and secondary events are interlinked and crisscross; fourth, the portrayal of characters and their relationships is complex and varied. The setting of time and space in particular is completely open in online xuanhuan fiction: time spans ancient and modern, geography spans China and abroad, and different worlds are linked together. In Maoni's novel The Great Way Leads to Heaven (Dadao Chaotian), for example, the first seven volumes focus mainly on the fantasy civilization of cultivating perfection on the Chaotian continent, while from the eighth volume onward the author imagines cultivators ascending into a cosmos dominated by technological civilization. From this point of view, online xuanhuan writing has surpassed earlier traditional works in the genres of gods and monsters, xianxia, and science fiction in the boundlessness of its imagined time and space. Within a single work it can even achieve a seamless “grafting” of fantasy cultivation and science-fiction imagination without any sense of incongruity, forming a grand narrative of hyper-space-time—something almost impossible in traditional works on similar themes. The “grandeur” and “weight” of contemporary Taoist cultivation fantasy literature have opened up new ground for literary creation, and have deeply moved millions of young readers, keeping them company through countless days and nights of reading by lamplight and becoming the youthful memories of a generation.

2. “Divine Arts and Superpowers” Are the Essential Element of Contemporary Taoist Cultivation Fantasy Literature

The more “grand” a narrative is meant to be, the more rigorous and meticulous the pursuit and crafting of detail must be. Different types of fantasy fiction build their details in different ways: science fiction emphasizes technological imagination, fantasy is colorful, heroes go on adventures, characters are varied, plots are winding, xuanhuan is ever-changing, and small people become strong through cultivating and leveling up, transforming step by step... Yet although there are many types of xuanhuan fiction, each with its own emphasis in crafting details, almost all works of the xuanhuan type depend on the imagination and plot devices of “divine arts and superpowers.” They are indispensable creative content—one might even say the essential element of xuanhuan narrative.

The core characteristic of online xuanhuan writing as a genre is the narrative of “cultivating and leveling up,” with the protagonist's growth as its main thread. In online xuanhuan literature, the life paths by which protagonists cultivate and level up can generally be summed up as xuan cultivation, immortal cultivation, Buddhist cultivation, Confucian cultivation, and evil cultivation. Buddhist and Confucian cultivation are easy to understand. Buddhist cultivation uses the essential teachings of Buddhism as the gate of cultivation and advancement, as in Mengru Shenji's Buddha Was Originally the Tao (Fo Ben Shi Dao)—though in that work the author advocates the concept that “the myriad methods share one source, and Buddhism and Taoism are one.” Confucian cultivation takes Confucian culture as the guiding doctrine for the protagonist's cultivation and advancement; on this basis web fiction has even opened up a “Confucian-way genre,” with representative works including Yongheng zhi Huo's The Supreme Sage of the Confucian Way (Rudao Zhisheng), Fenghuo Xi Zhuhou's Sword of Coming (Jian Lai), Qiyue Weishi's A Scholar of Great Wei (Da Wei Dushuren), and Guiyu's The Confucian Immortal of Taoist Affinity (Daoyuan Ruxian). Evil cultivation refers to characters who take dark methods such as gu sorcery and folk secret arts as their main path of cultivation. Generally, in online xuanhuan writing, evil cultivators play villains, though a very few works make an evil cultivator's leveling-up their main narrative strategy, such as Bai Lou's Ascending by the Evil Path: Starting with Gu Refining. The so-called xuan cultivation and immortal cultivation are both closely bound up with the Chinese Taoist tradition and Taoist culture.

Looking across online xuanhuan writing, whether Buddhist cultivation, Confucian cultivation, or even evil cultivation, the cultural resources they contain serve as the inner spiritual core of cultivating and leveling up, while their outward arts, methods, and techniques all follow the path of the Taoist imagination of “divine arts and superpowers.”

In contemporary Taoist cultivation fantasy literature, the protagonist's “divine arts and superpowers” are the main content holding up the entire work. After all, a protagonist without outstanding “divine arts and superpowers” is just a mediocre, ordinary incompetent. In traditional understanding, apart from the quality of “not dying,” what most clearly distinguishes the Perfected and the immortals from mortals is that they possess “divine arts and superpowers” beyond those of others. [1]

The imagination of “divine arts and superpowers” in traditional Chinese Taoist immortal-biography literature is closely connected with ancient Chinese science and with esoteric arts (fangshu) tinged with superstition. “In the broad sense, the esoteric arts include the techniques (fangji), that is, skills belonging to primitive science, such as breathing, breathing exercises (tuna), daoyin, grain avoidance (bigu), dietary regimens, embryonic breathing, elixirs, the bedchamber arts, kanyu, feng shui, and numerological arts—content belonging to the fields of primitive science such as medicine, pharmacology, health cultivation, and astronomy and calendrics. There are also magical arts such as summoning spirits, calling back souls, expelling ghosts, subduing evil, talismans and registers, spells, divination, riding on qiao, transformation, invisibility, changing one's appearance, and release from the corpse; and there are arts of nurturing and refining such as preserving the spirits, nourishing the mind, guarding the One, and inner observation. The latter two categories belong to religious magic.” [2]

From this explanation of the esoteric arts, we can see that ancient esoteric arts developed along two paths. One was practical operation by the fangshi masters of esoteric arts, applied in real production and life according to certain “theoretical principles”; the most typical example is the historical fact of ancient emperors' enthusiasm for refining elixirs in pursuit of longevity. The other was reflected in literary creation. The Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital (Xijing Zaji), for example, records: “The fangshi all presented themselves by their arts: some drew on the ground and made rivers, pinched up earth and made mountains and cliffs, breathed out and in to make cold and heat, and spat and coughed to make rain and fog.” [3] Classical literature represented by Taoist immortal literature expanded the imagination of the “esoteric arts” into narratives of “divine arts and superpowers” on a larger scale. Divine arts and superpowers that frequently appear in Taoist immortal-biography literature and are familiar to the public include: “flying and sitting in the air, indicting ghosts, spirits, and goblins, taming tigers, leopards, and macaques, and the art of feigning death (Biographies of Divine Immortals); foretelling good and ill fortune, riding things to ascend, and vanishing and becoming invisible (Biographies of Immortals); raising the dead, limitless longevity, returning from old age to youth, flying through the air, and walking on water (Biographies of Cavern Immortals), and so on.” [4]

3. “Divine Arts and Superpowers” Offer Ordinary People in Contemporary Society a Shared Spiritual Refuge

Imagination, as a subjective spiritual activity of humankind, is closely linked to the development of social productive forces. Its underlying logic is that people hope to realize, through “imagination,” wishes they want but have been unable to fulfill. In traditional Taoist immortal-biography literature, the imagination of “divine arts and superpowers” corresponded to the most basic problems the ancients faced: birth, aging, sickness, and death. Under the productive realities of a largely natural economy, both science and medicine were extremely underdeveloped. Life questions such as “illness,” “life,” and “death,” which modern people can readily understand and handle, were for the ancient populace problems without solutions that nonetheless had to be faced head-on. Hence arose imaginings of divine arts and superpowers such as seeking immortals and consulting diviners, and exorcising evil and averting misfortune. Thus although the imagination of “divine arts and superpowers” in traditional Taoist immortal literature consists of fictional plots, it carried the ancients' hope of solving real problems through the cultivation of divine arts and superpowers. In contrast to traditional Taoist immortal literature, the backdrop of online xuanhuan writing is plainly a modern civilized society dominated by science and technology; online xuanhuan literature itself is a new-media literary type that exploded with the help of information technology. So when a group of online xuanhuan writers imagine “divine arts and superpowers” and keep extending, expanding, and magnifying them, they are naturally no longer, like the laboring people of ancient times, using them to answer the basic practical problems of human production, life, and survival. Their focus, to some extent, is to use a surreal mechanism of imagination to construct, through the cultivation of “divine arts and superpowers,” an unattainable utopia of cultivating perfection. Readers are captivated by lives turned around through the practice of “divine arts and superpowers” precisely because of the “unattainability” of such lives at the core of the stories. Precisely because they cannot be realized, writers can let their brushes run free, releasing the greatest degree of imagination without worrying about the internal consistency of their stories' logic. As for web-fiction readers, they often occupy ordinary positions in real life, and the most prominent common trait of ordinary individuals in the face of reality is a “sense of powerlessness”—when facing reality they often find themselves helpless and unable to act. A prominent feature of the imagination of “divine arts and superpowers” in xuanhuan literature is that those who possess them surpass others in power, and so gain absolute autonomy over reality and destiny.

From traditional Taoist immortal literature, which hoped to answer the “unknowns” of reality through the internally consistent logic of its imagination of “divine arts and superpowers,” to modern online xuanhuan literature, which uses the “transcendence of mortal ability” in that imagination to resist the “inabilities” of reality, xuanhuan stories that imagine “divine arts and superpowers” displaying “power,” with no need for any realistic considerations, have become a spiritual medicine by which ordinary modern individuals relieve the oppression of reality. When readers identify with a protagonist of humble origins, what they want from xuanhuan literature is perhaps the grand spectacles and highlight moments that unfold in the course of cultivating and leveling up through “divine arts and superpowers,” dissolving the mediocrity and helplessness of ordinary people's real lives. This identification and spiritual resonance, with its universal emotional impact, is enough to attract a large number of readers, especially younger ones.

4. How “Divine Arts and Superpowers” Appear in Taoist Cultivation Fantasy Literature

Following the fantastic tradition of classical literature and drawing inspiration from myths and legends, immortal biographies, zhiguai tales of the strange, novels of gods and demons, and other writings, online xuanhuan literature has creatively transformed, expanded, and used the narrative imagination of “divine arts and superpowers.” For example, “in Perfect World (Wanmei Shijie), the protagonist Shi Hao masters the Great Method of Sovereignty over Others' Transformations, the Universe in the Sleeve, the Heavenly Art of the Six Paths of Reincarnation, and the treasure arts gained after subduing various exotic beasts; in Shrouding the Heavens (Zhe Tian), the protagonist Ye Fan learns the Heaven-Devouring Demonic Art, the Indestructible Heavenly Art, the Great Void Handprint, and One Qi Transforming into the Three Pure Ones; in The Sacred Ruins (Sheng Xu), the protagonist Chu Feng masters the Seven-Treasure Wondrous Art, the Lesser Six Paths Time Art, the Great Sun Tathagata Fist, and so on.” [5] Although these works are enormous in length, grand in worldview, crowded with characters, and may even span past, present, and future, viewed from the angle of the imagination of “divine arts and superpowers,” the great majority of online xuanhuan works basically tell how a protagonist of ordinary origins becomes, through cultivating all kinds of “divine arts and superpowers,” a powerhouse who looks down on all living beings. Thus the cultivation of “divine arts and superpowers” of different grades has become the core plot around which online xuanhuan writers build their stories.

In online xuanhuan writing, some of the more common and widely used “divine arts and superpowers” include puppet arts (clay figures, wooden puppets, human dolls, and so on [6]). In Tales of Herding Gods (Mushen Ji), for example, Granny Si, who raises the male protagonist Qin Mu, has as her core skill the ability to use needle and thread to turn other people into her puppets, and can even stitch people together with other species to make beasts of burden for her to drive. Then there is the paper-figure art. In Yangui Zhengzhuan's My Senior Brother Is Too Steady (Wo Shixiong Shizai Tai Wenjian Le), the male protagonist Li Changshou transmigrates to the era of the Investiture of the Gods. To survive by “lying low” in the perilous, ever-changing primordial world, he adopts “steadiness” as his rule of conduct: he takes part in nothing and forms no karmic ties with anyone. To this end he uses the paper-figure art to make countless doubles of himself to stand in for his true body. And drawing on the principles of modern nuclear reactions, he uses paper figures to invent a nuclear-explosion art, winning repeatedly in great battles with other immortals.

Talismanic arts and incantation arts: “Talismans are mysterious diagrams and scripts used by Taoists and shamans, also called talismanic script, talismanic writing, arts, talismanic seals, talismans and registers, talismanic charts, or jiama; though the names differ, they all refer to the same thing.” [7] In traditional Taoist culture, talismanic and incantation arts are generally used together—using a talisman while chanting an incantation, a two-pronged approach. Elements of talismans and incantations are frequently used in the writing of online xuanhuan, xianxia, and fantasy fiction. In Maoni's Nightfall (Jiang Ye), for example, the author creates the figure of Master Yan Se, who enters the Tao specifically through talisman cultivation. And when the protagonist Ning Que does battle with Chen Mou, the abbot of Zhishou Temple, he cuts him down by means of a talisman in the shape of the character ren, meaning “person.” Besides these, other common “divine arts and superpowers” in online xuanhuan literature include refining elixirs, refining magic treasures, barriers, forming hand seals, flying on a sword, controlling fire, controlling water, earth escape, and so on. Online xuanhuan literature has absorbed the essence of the narratives of divine arts and superpowers in traditional Taoist immortal-biography literature and fused it with the martial-arts narratives of traditional wuxia literature, establishing a vast and profound, mysterious and wondrous system of imagined “divine arts and superpowers”—a model of modern mythological fantasy.

5. “Divine Arts and Superpowers” in the “Cultivation Sequence” of Taoist Cultivation Fantasy Literature

Many of the ingenious ideas of “leveling-up imagination” in online xuanhuan literature can be traced to traditional Taoist novels and immortal-biography literature. For example, the narrative path of cultivating and leveling up in online xuanhuan literature and the narrative path of cultivating for ascension and longevity in traditional Chinese Taoist immortal literature share one prominent feature: the “background” of the cultivating protagonist. “In the Biographies of Immortals (Liexian Zhuan), the fountainhead of immortal-biography literature, most immortals were of humble origins.” [8] In online xuanhuan literature, protagonists of humble origins are everywhere: Shi Hao, born in Stone Village, in Perfect World; Tang San, who lives in Holy Soul Village, a frontier village of just over three hundred households, in Soul Land (Douluo Dalu); Ning Que, whose whole family was killed and who grew up with the maid Sangsang in the bitter-cold borderlands, in Nightfall; Qin Mu, with neither father nor mother, living in the dark Great Ruins of the land forsaken by the gods, in Tales of Herding Gods; Lin Dong, whose family has fallen on hard times, living in Qingyang Town, in Martial Universe (Wu Dong Qiankun); and Han Li, the protagonist born in a small village by the mountains, in A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality, and so on. Almost all of these protagonists come from ordinary, lowly, even humble backgrounds.

The “leveling-up” plot has become almost the most widely used and most mature creative pattern in online xuanhuan writing. The protagonist—whether cultivating the Tao, cultivating perfection, or cultivating immortality—starts as a good-for-nothing lacking talent for cultivation, or as an ordinary person no one respects; he may have been abandoned by his clan, driven out of his sect, or struck by a terrible family tragedy; and after endless torment and long years of tempering and honing, he finally becomes the pride of his generation. So if we work backward from the “leveling-up” narrative pattern, we can understand the backstory settings in online xuanhuan novels of protagonists who are “of humble origins,” “of lowly status,” and “humiliated.” By letting readers identify with the protagonist's straitened circumstances, such settings let them experience the staged breakthroughs of the protagonist's cultivation of supernatural powers and the highlight moment that finally comes, producing in the end a powerful “gratification effect” and “spiritual pleasure.”

In terms of overall structure, online xuanhuan literature has formed a fairly mature general scheme of cultivation. Through the so-called process of leveling up and fighting monsters, it forms a spiraling, progressive, stepped structure: from the initial “Qi Refining,” one advances to “Foundation Establishment” (laying the foundation), followed by “Core Formation,” then one level higher to “Nascent Soul,” and after that one can continue to advance to realms such as “Deity Transformation,” “Void Refining,” “Body Integration,” and “Great Ascension.” Of course, each xuanhuan text has its own version of the cultivation levels. In Ethereal Journey (Piaomiao zhi Lü), a pioneering work of online xuanhuan, how to “establish the foundation” forms a system of its own: “The Xuanzhao stage is the most fundamental means by which a cultivator of perfection establishes the foundation, and it is very important for later cultivation. In practice, one uses cultivation stones of five attributes—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—with the body as the array, forming a ‘small universe,’ and absorbs slowly from outside to inside; only thus can one gradually change one's constitution, adapt to the use of refined energy, and make it circulate skillfully.” [9] In Tales of Herding Gods, by contrast, cultivating immortality begins with the Spirit Embryo realm, and cultivating the so-called Spirit Embryo realm begins with opening up a spirit embryo within oneself. This imagined cultivation closely resembles the path of body-and-mind cultivation in traditional immortal-biography literature. For example, the chapter on Ping Zhongjie in the Biographies of Divine Immortals tells of Ping Zhongjie's cultivation of immortality: “He took Lord Song as his teacher and practiced the way of visualizing the mind-mirror, assembling the hundred spirits and practicing the matters of the Grotto Chamber. After forty-five years of this, he had refined concentration within; his bodily form grew younger, and his body held true qi.” [10] As to the so-called “Grotto Chamber,” according to the note [11], the “divine storehouses” that must be broken through in cultivating the Spirit Embryo realm in Tales of Herding Gods work to the same effect as the traditional cultivation of the “Grotto Chamber” (the “gate of the spirit”) to attain quiet contemplation. Although the cultivation and leveling system of each xuanhuan text differs, all roads lead to the same end, and they can basically be understood as four stages of cultivation: first, being able to sense the spiritual qi of heaven and earth, which marks entry into cultivation and generally corresponds to its elementary stage; second, achieving something in cultivation and being able to separate body and soul—what is often called the primordial spirit leaving the body—generally the intermediate stage; third, the great completion of one's techniques, being able to create a small world of one's own or seal off time and space, generally the advanced stage, with one foot already in the realm of the gods and immortals; fourth, becoming a top-tier cultivator—powerhouses at this realm need only think about crossing the tribulation and ascending to become true immortals.

Classic xuanhuan texts—such as the conception of the “soul arts” leveling system in Tang Jia San Shao's Soul Land, the setting of the “dou qi” (battle qi) leveling system in Tiancan Tudou's Battle Through the Heavens (Doupo Cangqiong), and the cultural adaptation of the “literary talent” leveling system in Yongheng zhi Huo's The Supreme Sage of the Confucian Way—each have their own features, but in the end ten thousand streams become one river and all return to the same sea. Their core logic follows the Taoist levels of practice, though the speed and power of advancement often exceed ordinary rhythms of time and ordinary capacities of attack and defense. Their fundamental orientation is the elevation of realms centered on the cultivation of “divine arts and superpowers.”

6. The “Creative Upgrade” of “Divine Arts and Superpowers” in Taoist Cultivation Fantasy Literature

Finally, some of the conventional settings and techniques commonly used in online xuanhuan—such as time travel, body seizing, rebirth, and returning to mortality—can likewise be traced to classical sources in traditional Chinese Taoist immortal-biography literature and zhiguai literature. In other words, some of the classical imaginings of “divine arts and superpowers” have been elevated into “creative upgrades” in modern web-fiction writing.

(1) Time travel: when “time travel” is mentioned, readers naturally assume it is a product of modern imagination. The online xuanhuan text Soul Land, for example, opens with the male protagonist Tang San, under the combined attack of the elders of the Tang Sect, traveling to the Douluo continent. The creative device of “time travel” in web fiction also has sources in classical Chinese literature. The difference from modern “time travel” is that in traditional Taoist novels and immortal-biography literature, “travel” usually takes the form of “journeys beyond the world,” stressing travel across space—from the world of the living to the underworld, or drifting from the human world to the immortal mountains. The travel that appears in modern online fantasy genres shows variety at the levels of both “time” and “space.” When one travels through time, space necessarily changes as well; for example, when a protagonist travels from modern times to ancient times, his living space usually recedes from a high-tech city to the primordial wilds of remote antiquity. In addition, in online xuanhuan writing, protagonists can also travel by means of “formations,” moving from one space to another; this usually happens when the protagonist travels to different worlds to survive or to seek cultivation resources.

(2) “Rebirth”: in web fiction, the purpose of the protagonist's “rebirth” often carries the flavor of a “revenge” narrative. Having returned through rebirth, he is endowed with the ability of “foreknowledge,” knowing things others do not and able to foresee fortune and misfortune in advance, finally achieving the dramatic effect of “playing the pig to eat the tiger.” Ancient Chinese zhiguai fiction also has settings similar to “rebirth,” but unlike web fiction's rebirth-and-revenge formula, rebirth in classical fiction usually implies the idea of karmic retribution, that “good is repaid with good and evil with evil.” In the story “Zhu'er” in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai Zhiyi), for example, the ghost of a child surnamed Zhan had been captured and enslaved by a blind monk. Later the blind monk was subdued by Li Hua, and so the child ghost was freed; just then Li Hua's son and daughter died one after another. The ghost of the Zhan child chose to return to life in the body of Li Hua's son Zhu'er in order to serve him at his side and repay Li Hua's kindness in rescuing him. Comparing the settings of “rebirth” in web fiction and in the classical Chinese literary tradition, we find that classical literature seeks a certain plausibility in its setting of “rebirth,” building a fairly complete system of rebirth through the cycle of yin and yang between “the human world and the underworld.” The setting of “rebirth” in web fiction, by contrast, is mostly used at the beginning of a story: the protagonist has a car accident, falls off a cliff, sinks into a dream, and so on, and on waking he is reborn on some otherworldly continent and sets out on an adventure—comparatively careless.

(3) “Body seizing”: “body seizing,” a technique—or rather a setting—often used in web fiction, is frequently combined with time travel and rebirth. It is mostly used at the beginning of a story: the protagonist travels to another world, and his soul attaches itself to another person in that world—“the person and the spirit separated”—using his own mind to drive another's body in order to survive in the other world, thereby seizing the body. In A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality, for example, Han Li was very nearly body-seized by his master, and the body-seizing episode is thrilling. In Soul Land, Tang San travels from the Tang Sect of Mount Shu to the Douluo continent and seizes the body of a five- or six-year-old child (also named Tang San), his soul lodging in the child's body to gain rebirth and so begin his journey of cultivation and leveling up on the Douluo continent. But the term “body seizing,” or rather the setting itself, has existed since ancient times.

The Qing-dynasty writer Yuan Mei's What Confucius Did Not Speak Of (Zi Bu Yu) gives a detailed account of the “method of seizing a dwelling.” “This uses the method of seizing a dwelling, but the method differs in seizing the living and seizing the dead. Seizing the living replaces the hun soul while still carrying the po soul; seizing the dead has no po soul to take over, so after seizing the dwelling one must still cultivate to nourish the po soul. Today the red-robed lamas of Tibet all know this art; in the Shurangama Sutra it is ‘casting ashes,’ a heterodox path.” [12] From this exposition and understanding of the key term body seizing, we see that classical literature was not only pioneering but also richer in meaning. Besides the basic seizing of bodies, xuanhuan novels also have settings for seizing techniques; Nightfall, for example, records a divine art and superpower called the “Grey Eye” that seizes other people's cultivation techniques. The use of “body seizing” in online xuanhuan writing reflects the fact that, to cultivate and level up, cultivators too must face the law of the jungle in which the strong prey on the weak. Although online xuanhuan literature is undoubtedly pure fiction, its content likewise has real-world significance.

(4) “Returning to mortality”: so-called “returning to mortality” means that after cultivating to a certain realm, the protagonist must still return to simplicity and go through trials in the mortal world, tempering his mind and nature so as to break through to a new realm. This setting is widely used in immortal-cultivation fantasy; examples include the episode of “Wang Lin returning to mortality” in Er Gen's Renegade Immortal (Xian Ni)—when Wang Lin enters the mortal world to temper his state of mind, it raises the curtain on his entry into the realm of immortals—as well as Han Li in A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality, Xiao Ding in Zhu Xian, and others. “Returning to mortality” also existed long ago in classical Chinese Taoist novels and immortal-biography literature. The difference from the “returning to mortality” setting in online xuanhuan literature is that in Taoist novels and immortal-biography literature it takes the form mainly of “passing through trials.”

“Passing through trials” generally means an immortal going to the human world or to a place of trial to cultivate. The story “The Qilin Rider” [13] in the Sequel to Records of Mysterious Anomalies (Xu Xuanguai Lu), for example, tells mainly of Wang Xiong, who, to dispel the ill fortune on his path to immortality, came down from the immortal mountain into the human world to work as a hired servant. Once the ill fortune had dispersed, Wang Xiong invited his master in the human world, Maoshi, to follow him on a visit to his grotto-dwelling on the immortal mountain. When they arrived, Wang Xiong revealed to Maoshi the inner journey of his cultivation and told him that after returning to the human world he should strive to cultivate his mind; after passing through his trials, they could meet again—implying that Maoshi, too, might succeed in becoming an immortal. In online xuanhuan and online xianxia writing, the episodes in which a protagonist who has reached a certain realm re-enters the mortal world to return to mortality and level up have a strong flavor of “experiencing life” or “going down to the grassroots,” and to some extent still carry the arrogance and prejudice of those who look down from on high.

In both the quantity and the quality of works, online xuanhuan literature leads other genres and is more mature. At root, this is because the genre boarded the express train of new-media development early and achieved a wave-like surge of creation. It also rests on a huge readership, which, together with accumulated experience of web-fiction writing, has formed the so-called narrative formulas of online literature and the “creative upgrade” of “gratification.”

Online xuanhuan literature draws on the resources of the fine traditional culture of China, especially by borrowing from and reshaping the classical genres represented by Taoist immortal literature, to generate a creative writing mechanism for modern mythological imagination; this deserves recognition and praise. Some web-fiction authors hope to weave grand and mysterious questions of life into the leveling-up narrative of a lowborn protagonist cultivating “powerful divine arts” and “superior superpowers,” so as to escape web fiction's much-criticized “low-grade gratification narrative.” Many of these works have been positively received, and many have been adapted into numerous films and television works—good evidence of this. Of course, because contemporary Taoist cultivation fantasy literature has considerable market space, and the internet provides good tools for promotion, a crop of works of uneven quality is inevitable, and formulaic commercial writing is increasingly serious. Such writing cannot be mentioned in the same breath as the fine traditional classics of China. Writers therefore need to find ways to transform and break through from technique-driven, formulaic writing toward canonical creation that is philosophical, thoughtful, realistic, anti-formulaic, and innovative.

(Author's affiliation: School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Notes

[1] Zhang Yulian, Medieval Taoist Immortal-Biography Literature (Zhonggu Daojiao Xianzhuan Wenxue), Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2023, p. 162.

[2] Sun Changwu, Ten Lectures on Taoist Literature (Daojiao Wenxue Shi Jiang), Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2022, p. 3.

[3] Ge Hong (Jin dynasty), comp., Liu Hongmei, trans. and annot., Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, p. 161.

[4] See Zhang Yulian, Medieval Taoist Immortal-Biography Literature, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2023, pp. 157–58.