A special issue of Butterfly Shadow, the most authoritative publication in the Butterfly Fantasy industry of the Xianzhou Alliance. It lists the ten most outstanding works in the developmental history of Butterfly Fantasy within a thousand years.

With the increase in contact between the Xianzhou Alliance and other worlds, the unique art form of Butterfly Immersia was popularized to the masses. In this issue, Butterfly Shadow invited thirty veterans of the craft to vote for the top ten best Butterfly Immersia works within the last millennium to pamper our readers.

It matters not if you are from the Xianzhou Alliance or if you hail from a world beyond, we hope you would enjoy the following works. They are the zeitgeist of contemporary Xianzhou art and a great reflection of the Xianzhou's spiritual history.

Editor of Butterfly Shadow

No. 10: Robe Brethren
Director: Wan Yi
Script: Ji Rong

Everyone knows your business is doing well. Your younger brothers are all successful, and you don't need an older brother like me anymore. Only now, after your little sister got beaten up by street thugs, that you thought about me. You don't know what else you can do. How would I know what I did to offend you? You don't even think to call me “Robe Brethren.”

This piece is set on the Xianzhou Yaoqing at the end of the Three Sufferings Era. Taking the perspective of a Zhuming foxian man, the piece recounts the story of how he joined the largest Brotherhood in the Yaoqing and became its legendary ringleader as a Yaoqing non-native. The eminent Mr Wan Yi is one of the first creators who managed to put the art of Butterfly Immersia on the map of artistic appreciation. He pioneered the technology of the Empathy Matrix in this piece, significantly slowing the subjective perceptions of time for experiencers, thus launching Butterfly Immersias into an age of long stories.

During the Three Sufferings Era, the social order of the Xianzhou was close to collapsing in the absence of a social order, organized crime rapidly filled the void and quickly rose up to build their own underground kingdoms. These criminal syndicates are collectively called the Brotherhood, with their ringleader being the Robe Brethren.

Four millennia have passed since. Under the protection of the Reignbow Arbiter, the Xianzhou realms had long returned to lawfulness and peace. Terms like the Brotherhood and Robe Brethren had faded into the sands of time, becoming one of the many historical terminologies.

However, as they have disappeared in society, the Robe Brethrens have embedded themselves in the depth of Xianzhou's soul as a cultural symbol. Members of the Brotherhood often speak a frightening but decorous Yaoqing dialect. Even in the modern era, one can still see teens trolling the streets and crudely imitating the Yaoqing dialect and fragments of the Brotherhood's tacit creed.

In my opinion, what they were reminiscing is not the cruel, chaotic, and lawless era, but the resilience, valor, and honor of these Robe Brethrens. However, these portrayals are merely the playwright's romantic interpretations.

No. 9: Verdantia
Director: Yuan Bo
Script: Bashir Bassett

— Master, we will soon depart Verdantia to return nevermore…
— We have never left. Verdantia is not elsewhither, but her. Verdantia is wherever we stand.

This piece is based on the foxian creation myth and tells an epic story of monumental proportion. Before Verdantia, works of Butterfly Immersia tend to narrate using only one main perspective. Verdantia pioneered a multi-perspective narrative that allows the experiencer to live through the wars, peace, stability, and exile at the beginning of foxian history, as told from the perspective of the three sages Qingzheng, Manzhi, and Li Si.

There was a period of in-depth cultural exchange between the Xianzhou Alliance and the Interastral Peace Corporation, and Verdantia is a work born in that era. At that time, Ms Bashir Bassett was probably the most popular dramatist in Interastral Peace Entertainment, and Verdantia indeed showed her profound dramaturgy.

On the other hand, Mr Yuan Bo's handling of war scenes and perspective switching in this work has also become the basic teaching material for countless Butterfly Immersia students in later generations.

However, we can still say that this Butterfly Immersia piece is a special product that could only be made in that era. With the financial resources of the Xianzhou, it would've been difficult to film the magnificent scene in which millions of people fought to the death. The Free-Will Illusion technology provided by Interastral Peace Entertainment also allowed the magical effect of total immersion to be brought to life.

Sometimes we can't help but feel that the whole cosmos is one isolated island after another, with self-absorbed and xenophobic islanders. Whenever this happens, I immerse myself once again in Verdantia not to re-experience its plot, but to reassure myself of the kind of miracles we can create when two civilizations work together.

No. 8: Kaib Mongb Kib
Director: Zi Cheng
Script: Zi Cheng

Kaib mongb kib, kaib mongb kib, when a draft of cold air swirls around your shoulder, do not turn turn around.

When Zhong Si, a foxian lady from the Fanghu, returned to her village after studying on the Luofu for over a century, she noticed everything had become eerily different from the home in her memories. As she dug deeper, she discovered the village elder had passed away years ago, and people were worshiping an indescribable entity as the new village elder.

“Kaib mongb kib” is a medicinal concept the foxians of the Fanghu, meaning “being physically taken over by evil entities.” Zi Cheng, who grew up in a Fanghu foxian medical family, naturally utilized this concept and created this piece called Kaib Mongb Kib.

Kaib Mongb Kib is the first horror immersia in the Xianzhou's history. Previous authors would utilize horror elements in their works to help the plot along and not as the central theme, due to the mindset that extreme negative emotions such as horror would not make for a good entertainment experience. However, Kaib Mongb Kib's viral success utterly shattered the antiquated notion of the entertainment industry and set off a boom for horror-thriller Butterfly Immersias.

It is worth mentioning that Zi Cheng used Xianzhou people's fear of heliobi to masterfully create an eerie atmosphere in this piece. However, heliobi have now become a standard in horror Butterfly Immersias, and gradually lost its original magic.

No. 7: Lolling Grass
Director: Wen Guang, Wen E
Script: Shu Kuan

“With three hundred chess pieces, one can become comparable to a general who leads a thousand armies; With a chessboard, one can deduce and interpret the political changes of a country.” This is the principle of The Study of Chess.

Based on the true story of the founding of the Whistling Flames trading guild, this piece of work tells an inspiring story that has touched a generation of the Xianzhou people. A young foxian girl, Yingzhen, was a rare mathematical genius, but her future in the academy was cut short due to a moment of confusion. Foxians of the time were still traveling merchants on the Xianzhou, while Yingzhen, who had to become a traveling merchant, gradually learned how to apply her mathematical knowledge to business. Eventually, Yingzhen founded the Whistling Flames that soon became a business magnate on the Xianzhou, and her book, Lolling Grass, became a compulsory textbook for every merchant on the Xianzhou.

Before Lolling Grass, biographical immersias usually focused on heroes, soldiers, pilots, and even bandits or evildoers as protagonists, and their plot is usually about their action-packed lives charged with emotions. A characteristic of these biographical immersias is that they tend t allowo the experiencers to experience the magnificent historic moments, rather than allowing one to feel the life journey of the protagonists.

Lolling Grass changed the industry in that it is a biographical immersia with a core theme on commerce, but moved away from the rivalry and intrigue of business development, instead focusing on the dry disciplines of mathematics and business as the main axis of the plot, allowing the experiencers to step into Yingzhen's perspective and experience her journey firsthand to achieve conceptual breakthroughs in these disciplines.

I remember three hundred years ago, when my fellow students and I went to experience Lolling Grass, we were all students of immersias, so our grasp on the esoteric arts of mathematics was not too good. But when Yingzhen intuited The Study of Chess, we were all overcome by the ecstasy (and shock) of grasping the truth, to the point that we were quaking in our boots. This unique charm might be why the art of Butterfly Immersia cannot be replaced.

More trivia: The popularity of Lolling Grass caused the Wen Sisters to soar in celebrity. This was why many sibling duo directors mushroomed in the Xianzhou within that century. It's a shame that few can reach the height that the Wen Sisters did.