This one slows your pulse instead of raising it, which is the last thing you expect from a cultivation show. Jiu Jing walks off Qingshan Mountain after Grandmaster Jing Yang ascends, and instead of the usual grim-jawed prodigy grinding toward heaven, you get a good-looking slacker openly hunting for shortcuts and somehow making that feel like a philosophy rather than a gag. The 3D work is the argument donghua skeptics hate to lose: character designs that hold up in close-up, landscapes on the road to Gushan that the show is confident enough to just sit inside for a while. It thinks out loud about what a long life is even for, and the cast has enough chemistry that the quiet stretches land harder than the sword work. Fair warning: sixteen episodes covers the novel's prologue and nothing more, and season two is a rumor. Watch it for the walk, not the destination.

After Grandmaster Jing Yang ascends, the young Jing Jiu leaves his mountain village on Chaotian Continent. He is known for his good looks and his laziness, and he pursues cultivation his own way, always hunting for shortcuts. He takes on Liu Shisui, a prodigy born with an affinity for the Tao, as his servant, and when the pair arrive at the Qingshan Sect, others criticize the seemingly ordinary Jing Jiu for keeping such a gifted youth in service. At the sword inheritance conference he meets Zhao Layue, a girl from Shenmo Peak. Jing Jiu wants only to train in peace, but fate draws all three into a great conflict within the martial world, while questions linger around Jing Yang's ascension. The result is a sixteen-episode action fantasy adventure.