Seeking the Dao in the Mortal World: From a Golden Core in the City to Supreme Ruler of Another Realm
Volume One: Children’s Tales of Green Mountain, the Dao Bone Takes Shape (Chapters 1–100)
Core storyline: Childhood training and hidden foreshadowing
1. Opening (Chapters 1–5): On the night Lin Chen is born, the old Daoist Xuanjizi bursts in through the door amid a torrential downpour. Claiming that “this child has a spiritual root, and remaining in the mortal world will bring him disaster,” he forcibly takes the swaddled baby away. Lin Chen’s mother collapses in tears, and Xuanjizi promises to bring him home eighteen years later. The first chapter ends with Xuanjizi carrying Lin Chen into the depths of the mountains, planting the question of Lin Chen’s origins and the old Daoist’s motives.
2. Life in the mountains (Chapters 6–60): Xuanjizi takes Lin Chen to Hidden Mist Village, a place with only three households. By day, he teaches him breathing techniques, qi cultivation, how to identify medicinal herbs, and basic martial arts. Lin Chen is a mischievous handful: he secretly replaces the lid of Xuanjizi’s alchemy furnace with a rock and uses the light-footed skill he has just learned to pick wild fruit from a cliff, only to be punished with a hundred copies of the cultivation manual every time. Meanwhile, Su Qingyao, the widow next door, often brings food with her daughter, Xiaoya. Lin Chen keeps stumbling upon Su Qingyao bathing by the stream. In his innocent way, he thinks she is “prettier than the wildflowers in the mountains,” never noticing the complicated look in her eyes. (Foreshadowing: Su Qingyao fled an arranged marriage to a cultivation family and wears a “spirit-locking bracelet” that reacts whenever she is near Lin Chen.)
3. Emerging talent and danger (Chapters 61–90): When Lin Chen is ten, he accidentally absorbs a “spirit crystal” in a mountain stream and breaks straight through to the fifth level of Qi Refining. Astonished and delighted, Xuanjizi begins teaching him advanced medicine, including acupuncture and alchemy, as well as the combat cultivation art, Azure Essence Art.
