Record of the Alchemical Flame: Three Hundred Years of Cultivation by a Water Clock

In the year the Northern Song was founded, a boy born unable to retain qi is taken in as a disciple by a reclusive cultivator of the Zhong-Lü lineage. Over the next three hundred years, he sleeps beneath the snow on Mount Hua and drinks from the springs of Longhu Mountain. He witnesses Zhang Boduan preach, Lin Lingsu meddle in court affairs, Wang Chongyang found the Quanzhen school, and Qiu Chuji travel west to meet Genghis Khan. He also lives through the Jingkang Incident and the burning of the Daoist canon. Amid the blades of ten demons and nine tribulations, he must refine himself from a mortal body that constantly leaks away into a clear breeze that cannot be claimed. And along the way, every true cultivator he meets shows him a different way to follow the same path.