Ten Thousand Years of Longevity, a Thousand Pivots

Ten Thousand Longevities, a Thousand Hubs

Ten Thousand Longevities, a Thousand Hubs is a long xianxia novel rooted in the culture of Jiangxi's Wanshou Palaces and the orthodox teachings of the Jingming Dao, bringing together the realms of mortals, immortals, and abyssal demons. The more than a thousand Wanshou Palaces scattered across the Gan and Poyang lands are no ordinary incense temples. They form a thousand-year-old array laid by Master Xu Xun of the Eastern Jin dynasty: iron pillars subdue the flood dragons, palace halls serve as its hubs, and the people stand as its seal. Together they contain the rift in the Heavenly Dao and the calamity of the flood-dragon progenitor beneath Poyang Lake, preserving a thousand years of peace in Jiangnan.

In modern Nanchang, the streets are bustling, but dust gathers on the palace lanterns, and the thousand-year-old array is quietly weakening. Xu Guishu, a Daoist priest charged with guarding the palace, bears the Xu family's spiritual lineage, and his fate is bound to the Wanshou Palace array. He has no immortal arts that reach the heavens, yet can glimpse the traces of time and discern the causes and consequences of the Heavenly Dao. As strange phenomena erupt at Wanshou Palaces across the land, rivers reverse their course, and seals crumble, the calamity that has lain dormant across the three realms for a thousand years returns.

The Heavenly Court abandons the people to preserve the Heavenly Dao according to old rules. The various Daoist sects cling to their own agendas and feud without end. Yet the flood-dragon progenitor, long regarded as the source of all calamity, is in truth a tragic vessel for the imbalance of the Heavenly Dao. Its thousand-year imprisonment is the price paid for the people's peace. Xu Guishu encounters Jiang Mei Jiao, the transformed incarnation of a flood-dragon spirit. Bound by opposing destinies and entangled in love and hate, the two are swept into the contest between immortals and demons and the schemes of the Heavenly Dao.

At its heart is the true meaning of Jingming Dao: "Cultivate the human way first, then prove the Heavenly Dao." The novel overturns the rigid notions that immortals are righteous and demons are evil. Caught between the people and his country, the rules of the immortals and the Heavenly Dao, and a thousand years of old enmity, the protagonist faces agonizing choices. With a mortal's body, he defies fate, restores balance to the three realms, and reveals the supreme Way: loyalty and filial piety as the Way, the everyday world as Heaven, and protecting the world as the path to immortality.