This academic contribution aims to illuminate the complex dynamics of religious significance that permeate the narrative within a particular subgenre of online Chinese fantasy known as Xiuzhen fantasy, or immortality cultivation. It begins by exploring its origins within the realm of literary scholarship and seeks to investigate its manifestations across diverse forms of expression and media. The primary objective of this study is to reconstruct the developmental trajectory and consolidation of the Xiuzhen fantasy genre, with a focused analysis on a text recognized as exemplary within this context. Furthermore, it will consider the influence exerted by innovations such as hypertext on more traditional textuality, prompting a reflection on significant cultural transformations that have transpired alongside the narrative experiments classified under this genre designation. I contend that this thorough examination addresses the necessity to conceptualize discussions surrounding immortality as indicative of an emerging anti-materialist sensibility (Leone 2014, p.9), while simultaneously broadening our understanding of the reified relationship among signs (Caputo 2006, p.:135). This research endeavors to engage with fantasy narratives through an intermedial and intersemiotic lens, emphasizing that the semiosphere surrounding religious texts invariably includes a mediasphere. This duality can be elucidated through contemporary discourses on progress, while remaining anchored in (auto)models of significant diachronic depth (Lotman, 1975).