Li Shikun Series One: The Mystery of the Five Cauldrons

After cultivating in the mountains of Kunyu for many years, the protagonist, Li Shikun, possesses the cultivation of a perfected Foundation Establishment realm and ancient artifacts such as a Qiankun storage ring. In 1933, he descends the mountain and enters the mortal world for the first time. On the road, he encounters a descendant of shamans being hunted by Japanese secret agents. Li Shikun steps in to help, and from then on is unwillingly swept into the heart of a secret surrounding the Five Cauldrons and the nation's fate. Li Shikun, Yin Jizu, a shaman descendant with technical skills and no ambitions, and Chen Gongshu, head of the Fuxing Society's secret agents, set aside their differences and form a temporary alliance of good, united against all villainous forces trying to steal the nation's fate. The trio venture into the Eastern Tombs, overcome the mechanisms of an underground palace, decipher coded maps, and survey the earth's veins in the five directions. Along the way, they fight and maneuver through deadly conflicts with Qing loyalist remnants, Japanese agents, and warlord factions, gradually finding the Five Elemental Cauldrons one by one. Li Shikun pierces through layers of historical fog and exposes the deception: the so-called shaman ritual of casting cauldrons to determine the nation's fate and end the wars was nothing more than a mystical political ceremony staged by the shamans' ancestors for Kangxi. Kangxi used it to reassure the people. After suppressing the Revolt of the Three Feudatories and securing the Qing Empire, he turned around and executed the shamans who had taken part, claiming all the credit for himself. The rebellions were never quelled by the cauldrons. It was Kangxi's own imperial resolve, along with the people's desire for peace after years of war and their refusal to join the rebels, that brought victory. The people's will is the nation's fate; the way of heaven is the people's will. Neither has anything to do with magical artifacts or secret arts.