Excerpted from the Immortal Road forum: xlyc.ttsite.
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The portrayal and exploration of questions about life, survival, morality, and human relationships in Dust Along the Immortal Road wove subtle mysteries into an unassuming story, and constituted one of the novel's most compelling aspects. These questions could never be fully explained or conclusively resolved, yet they lay so close to human life. Still, it should be possible to offer a brief description of the various living beings in the Immortal Road world.
The races of the Immortal Road world took shape through differences in ancestry, abilities, and moral outlook.
The Devil Race:
The Devil Race was a community devoted to pursuing the Heavenly Way, regardless of race or bloodline, united by shared aspirations. Its members believed that extraordinary strength was a manifestation of having attained the Heavenly Way, and thus sometimes looked down on humans. They attached great importance to debts of gratitude and vengeance, but were not bound by notions of good and evil, so their actions often ran contrary to ordinary human principles. Moreover, some among them forsook the root to chase the branches, seeking nothing but destructive power, while others brought calamity far and wide under the Devil Race's name. Consequently, humans misunderstood the Devil Race, feared it, and kept their distance.
The Dragon Clan:
The Dragon Clan was a race uniquely favored by heaven, blessed with long lives and innate divine power, roaming freely between heaven and earth. They lived in lakes and seas, and differences in their habitats gave rise to differences in outlook, eventually producing distinct branches. The inland Four Rivers Dragon Clan influenced changes in the human world's feng shui and weather, and was revered and worshipped by humans who had depended on farmland for their survival for generations. Its members, in