Li's long historical novels were deeply influenced by French literature in the19th century, which fundamentally broke through the traditional form of China's historical novels. He enriched the narrative art of China's modern novels with brand-new structure and unique narrative style.

First of all, he changed the traditional mode of China's historical novels, that is, he focused on depicting major historical events and outstanding historical figures, but sketched a broad picture of social customs and history with political, military and economic changes. "trilogy" (that is, stagnant water, before storms and waves) is independent and coherent, with a huge scale and a magnificent structure. Compared with Ba Jin and Mao Dun, he adopted the French "river novel" style more consciously and faithfully, described social life and cultural customs more completely, and created a new mode of modern historical novel creation, which included social and political history into the history of cultural customs in addition to left-wing social analysis novels.

Secondly, Li's novel creation is obviously different from the mainstream realism in the history of China's modern novels (that is, realism that does not avoid subjective lyricism and open expression). He consciously draws lessons from the concepts and methods of European classical realism represented by French in the19th century, pays attention to the authenticity and integrity of detail description and environmental description, and pursues the objective and calm reproduction of reality.

Thirdly, Li is also deeply influenced by French writers Flaubert and Zola in portraying characters. His ladies, such as Mrs. Cai, Mrs. Liu Sanjin and Mrs. Huang, all have the characteristics of female images in French novels. In particular, the image and cultural quality of Mrs. Cai are different. She and Emma, the hostess in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, are natural sisters. In the history of modern literature in China, Li's novels represent a realistic novel form with grand historical narration and objective and calm realistic portrayal.

Generally speaking, in his creation, he not only grasped and used the classic techniques of western realistic literature, but also accurately understood and described the internal differences between Chinese and western social politics and culture, without any far-fetched imitation traces. It goes without saying that this is inseparable from the writer's profound life and knowledge accumulation, as well as a thorough understanding of Chinese and Western literature and culture.