- Location
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I remember noping out of the story when the master started looking like he had romantic feelings towards the protagonist.
Not sure if anything came out of it.
Xianxia Encompassing the World! (Xianxia Rec Discussion and Idea thread)
- Thread starter Hangwind
- Start date
Not sure if anything came out of it.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
It's also judicious. In AYM, every time he goes brutal it's because he has good reason to believe that he needs to in order to survive, and he doesn't take it any further than he has to. In MUD, he sends thousands of warriors to lay siege to a city just so his disciple can find her brother being properly mistreated when she gets back home. Large-scale gratuitous murder really just doesn't sit well with me.
I'm not a fan of AYM, but I'm even less of a fan of MUD.
I'd compare its emotional depth to that of a wafer, but most wafers wouldn't crumble at the slightest touch. On top of that, it shares the same problem as a lot of these works in that it assumes that its readers are already familiar with the conventions of the kind. Granted, it's not exactly difficult to pick up on those conventions, but it is nonetheless very lazy as well as very unimaginative storytelling.
Speaking of which, I'm beginning to develop a very strong dislike for when other characters assume that the protagonist is a genius because of pure coincidence. Once or twice is fine, but repeated incidences just make everyone else in the story seem very dim.
I'd compare its emotional depth to that of a wafer, but most wafers wouldn't crumble at the slightest touch. On top of that, it shares the same problem as a lot of these works in that it assumes that its readers are already familiar with the conventions of the kind. Granted, it's not exactly difficult to pick up on those conventions, but it is nonetheless very lazy as well as very unimaginative storytelling.
Speaking of which, I'm beginning to develop a very strong dislike for when other characters assume that the protagonist is a genius because of pure coincidence. Once or twice is fine, but repeated incidences just make everyone else in the story seem very dim.
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Leingod
Immaculate Blooming Lotus
Personally my biggest complaint about AYM right now is that there's a distinct lack of actual tension or struggle; the resources the protagonist can call upon are so absurd, his position is so secure despite all his internal claims to the contrary, and his putative enemies are so slow to respond, that I don't really have any reason to believe once a real conflict actually erupts it won't be snuffed out almost instantly barring the kind of absurd escalation that tends to rip my SOD to shreds.
Like, Han De has access to an army of top-tier mooks willing to do anything he tells them to without qualms or questions, including ones who are multiple levels above himself, he has access to so much money and valuable resources that he can buy literally anything that's on the market anywhere, and if he really got desperate he could just ask his mom to kill everything in a given direction and so far we've been led to believe that basically no one could stop her once she got started. This all not even counting his and his disciples' growing OP-ness thanks to his system.
I also tend to just have this "thing" against isekai/transmigration/whatever protagonists who always assume this world they're in runs exclusively on whatever genre's cliche fantasy-story logic or video-game logic, and are almost always totally correct to do so. It takes me right out of the world that I should be getting immersed in when the protagonist just keeps thinking, "Oh, next this is going to happen, because this isn't an actual world it's just a fiction story that works on very obvious cliches at all times" and then usually gets proven correct.
Agreed. I've brought it up a lot, because there's just something about the "being a teacher in a xianxia world, maybe found a sect or something" story idea that strikes me as something compelling that just hasn't been done the way I want to see it, even though I'm not even entirely sure what it is I want to see. Though I definitely think it isn't "savvy transmigrator exploits tropes and gets OP 'system' bullshit that lets him become the best at everything eventually and trains a bunch of students who also become the best at everything because that benefits him and allows him to become the best at everything," which is unfortunately so far the only ones I know of that are even passable.
I think a big part of the reason Lin Feng gets lost in the shuffle of his own story is because the thing that actually stands out about him is that he starts off as a scam artist, faking being a peerless master even though he's barely stronger than his own students, and actually pulls off some genuinely clever deceptions to save his skin and sell the lie. But then he becomes a peerless master who can easily defeat basically anyone he faces and never has to worry about being personally challenged by anyone who's currently actually viewing him as a threat to be faced with all their available resources.
And once he's stripped of his defining feature, there really isn't anything to the guy, because to be honest, just about all the characters in Number 1 Founder were always pretty flat and one-dimensional. Everyone's got their one or two things that color pretty much all their interactions (which is also why the second generation students blend in together; when everyone only gets 1 thing, it won't be long before you run out of things to give that can actually stand out on their own), and Lin Feng lost his.
Honestly, that's actually one of my favorite things. The idea of a series of coincidences giving people the totally wrong impression about someone's competence never stops being funny to me for some reason.
EDIT: With the caveat that how amusing I finds it tends to be inversely proportionate both to the character's actual awareness that this is happening and his actual competence. A bumbling idiot who has no idea what's happening and just stumbles his way through a frought situation like Bill Murray in The Man Who Knew Too Little is absolutely hysterical to me, but once someone's knowingly trading on his inflating reputation or living up to it with actual skill that peters out.
Like, Han De has access to an army of top-tier mooks willing to do anything he tells them to without qualms or questions, including ones who are multiple levels above himself, he has access to so much money and valuable resources that he can buy literally anything that's on the market anywhere, and if he really got desperate he could just ask his mom to kill everything in a given direction and so far we've been led to believe that basically no one could stop her once she got started. This all not even counting his and his disciples' growing OP-ness thanks to his system.
I also tend to just have this "thing" against isekai/transmigration/whatever protagonists who always assume this world they're in runs exclusively on whatever genre's cliche fantasy-story logic or video-game logic, and are almost always totally correct to do so. It takes me right out of the world that I should be getting immersed in when the protagonist just keeps thinking, "Oh, next this is going to happen, because this isn't an actual world it's just a fiction story that works on very obvious cliches at all times" and then usually gets proven correct.
Agreed. I've brought it up a lot, because there's just something about the "being a teacher in a xianxia world, maybe found a sect or something" story idea that strikes me as something compelling that just hasn't been done the way I want to see it, even though I'm not even entirely sure what it is I want to see. Though I definitely think it isn't "savvy transmigrator exploits tropes and gets OP 'system' bullshit that lets him become the best at everything eventually and trains a bunch of students who also become the best at everything because that benefits him and allows him to become the best at everything," which is unfortunately so far the only ones I know of that are even passable.
I think a big part of the reason Lin Feng gets lost in the shuffle of his own story is because the thing that actually stands out about him is that he starts off as a scam artist, faking being a peerless master even though he's barely stronger than his own students, and actually pulls off some genuinely clever deceptions to save his skin and sell the lie. But then he becomes a peerless master who can easily defeat basically anyone he faces and never has to worry about being personally challenged by anyone who's currently actually viewing him as a threat to be faced with all their available resources.
And once he's stripped of his defining feature, there really isn't anything to the guy, because to be honest, just about all the characters in Number 1 Founder were always pretty flat and one-dimensional. Everyone's got their one or two things that color pretty much all their interactions (which is also why the second generation students blend in together; when everyone only gets 1 thing, it won't be long before you run out of things to give that can actually stand out on their own), and Lin Feng lost his.
Honestly, that's actually one of my favorite things. The idea of a series of coincidences giving people the totally wrong impression about someone's competence never stops being funny to me for some reason.
EDIT: With the caveat that how amusing I finds it tends to be inversely proportionate both to the character's actual awareness that this is happening and his actual competence. A bumbling idiot who has no idea what's happening and just stumbles his way through a frought situation like Bill Murray in The Man Who Knew Too Little is absolutely hysterical to me, but once someone's knowingly trading on his inflating reputation or living up to it with actual skill that peters out.
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- Location
- Cyberspace
I mean, the stories I'm aware of use some kind of 'system' to more or less force the protagonist to become a teacher... but it's not actually necessary, really, and kind of is a cheap short-cut to railroad the character down that development path (usually with "do this or die" quests or the like).
Many settings have the idea of people pursuing part of the grand Dao, laws of reality or the like. And often enough, characters will pursue understanding of abstract things - not just fire, water, lightning and so forth. Things like dominance, tyranny, lust, slaughter and so on.
So why not have a character who finds themselves pursuing their own path... through teaching? Both for its own sake (ie, following your Dao) and trying to further understand the laws of reality by watching their students reach their own understanding.
There's a moment from Seeking the Flying Sword Path that sticks in my mind - not directly a 'teaching leads to enlightenment' moment perhaps, but when the protagonist is slumming it as a mortal teacher and finds himself reaching enlightenment in the Dao of Man by witnessing his students face disaster unbowed. So alternately, you can have a protagonist who has reached a bottleneck in their own cultivation, and decides to overcome it by teaching what he's learned so far to others - and then grow to find satisfaction in it the way the protagonists of the system-coerced variety do.
It's in some ways trickier - you can't rely on having a "cultivation beginner" as a protagonist to explain the setting and hook the readers in. Seeking the Flying Sword Path managed that - the story starts with the protagonist, now at a decent level of strength, returning home after being out adventuring - but I suspect it's a struggle to balance.
You also can't rely on the protagonist becoming ever-stronger to provide the reader excitement, and the constantly "novelty" of each rank that's revealed as the last one is surpassed can't really be done either (at least not as fast or as frequently as with a standard protagonist). And I feel the students would ultimately need to... well, leave, in order to make room for others - in other words, it'd have to be almost like a television serial, with the teacher protagonist dealing with the challenges involved in the new student(s), lecturing on the Dao in a way different than the last half-dozen times, and then graduation.
Still, even if it can't run on for thousands of chapters, I suspect it can be done - and even done well.
Leingod
Immaculate Blooming Lotus
Yeah, I've discussed some stuff about a story or quest using this idea earlier in the thread, actually.
- Location
- Cyberspace
Huh - I might've been involved in that discussion? I know a while back I was toying with the idea of a quest following a sect elder who'd been 'convinced' to go out talent-scouting; at least the early stage of the quest would involving finding prospective disciples, teaching them on the road, and then bringing them back to the sect for the regular entry exams. But I don't recall if I had mentioned in on this thread or not, since it was still undeveloped.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Hmmm... pondering...
- I think that one of the strengths of the xianxia genre (such as it is) is the thing where the protag's life (or something else critically important) is on the line, they're up against something they can't handle, they find some way to power up and overcome that, and they reap the rewards. It's a bit of a cheap thrill, but the entire genre is a bit of a cheap thrill, and it works. The real problem with it is the side effects of warping the world that it has. The answer there is that you make it about the trials and successes of the disciples, but you put the mentor's life on the line. I think AYM got that one dead on, actually. Regardless, in order for this to work, either the mentor has to not start out all that powerful themselves, or that power has to be something that can't be used to solve the real problems.
- You don't like the way the AYM protag has absurd resources and is never under real threat (other than the system), you don't like the system itself. Okay. Cool. Let's leave that stuff out.
- I think that there's also something to be said for the xianxia idea of a cheat. Doesn't have to be a System, or isekai advantages or whatever, but the idea that the protagonist has something in particular about them that makes them awesome in a way that the opposition simply doesn't have that they can just keep leveraging is another one of those cheap thrills.
So... I have a couple of ideas.
/****************/
First idea: Reincarnator, but *not* isekai. The protag was learned in the Dao, but didn't quite manage to make it to immortal. He died, and is taken to be judged by the appropriate divine authorities. He's generally avoided being an asshole, so he's not automatically slated for punishment in the demon realms. He's been a bit too much of a character to automatically transcend to the *good* afterlife, and he's advanced enough in cultivation that he gets the personal attention of someone high enough up in the hierarchy that they can pretty much make the call themselves... and they offer him a deal. You see, one of that god's jobs is to make sure that certain Destined Heroes achieve everything they're supposed to... and he *hates* that part of his job. So the MC gets assigned to play Divine Spirit advisor to a series of eventual heroes - essentially to be their first and most critical Fortunate Encounter, and teach and guide them until they can achieve what they're supposed to achieve. Then, on to the next one. If he succeeds enough times, he can either go to heaven or reincarnate properly. If he fails (ever), he's either sent to the hells or consumed for power or something. Any exposition you need, you can get from him telling his disciple-of-the-moment or thinking ahead about how to arrange things for them. You can give it a reasonable xianxia power curve, but then pull away before it gets to the absurd world-breaking, and jump to someone else.
He'd basically be running half on whatever lore he had personally (pretty deep, but not always broad enough to cover the current situation), and half on scamming and scheming. He's also aware that he's in this for the long haul, so he's constantly trying to pick up whatever cultivation techniques or bits of lore he can that will give him an advantage next time. He doesn't have any sort of real cheat, but he is really very good at Perception and Comprehension. It's just that his overall cultivation taent was always kind of mediocre, and his luck was poor. Well, now he's playing spirit mentor to a series of kids who have luck levels driven by a Great Destiny. Let's see what he can do with the kind of arts *those* kids pull down.
Of course, he can't really use them for himself. He's trapped in a ring, after all (or whatever)... but he can learn them, and remember them, and possibly customize them or hybridize them, and share them with the next Destined Hero to make his life that much easier as he goes. It also doesnt' exactly give you your "build a sect for myself" effect, or at least not until the sequel, when he earns his freedom form the ring, gets a new shot at life. At that point, he has a library of powerful cultivation techniques in his head, he's developed something of a joy in teaching... why *not* start up his own sect? This world could really use a sect devoted to well-meaning rogues and scalawags.
/**********/
Second idea: Scavengerpunk cultivation story. The primary protag, again, is really good at perception and comprehension, but there's something about him that limits his ability to actually fight effectively - like, he has some special bloodline or something. On the one side, it makes him really good at understanding cultivation techniques and their implications and whatnot, which helps him out a lot in refining his own cultivation. On the other side, it seriously hampers his ability to gather raw power, which means that he's constantly having to figure out cheats and exploits whenever he wants to rank up, and he has a real disadvantage against peer opponents in a fight.
Story starts when he gets his hands on some discarded, broken scraps of a cultivation technique and manages to stitch it together into something workable, and tries to cultivate as his way out of the hellhole. It's great for a little bit, but he soon realizes that, while the benefits are clearly there, he's not getting nearly the improvement that he ought to be getting. He investigates this in various ways (bribing some sort of washed-up drunkard of a sect outcast?) and figures out what's going on, and also hears enough to figure out that his abilities at Comprehension are absurdly high. He figures out, though, that there are a *bunch* of kids out there who'd love to be cultivators, and if he can pick the right ones and teach them....
Basically, he winds up running a "sect" from really early on, but the sect in question is composed of street rats with random mongrel bloodlines and strange mutations, and he's constantly greedy for more scraps of cultivation lore, because he's constantly having to adjust cultivation techniques to account for their sporadic resources and the fact that none of his sect-mates are exactly normal as far as these things go. He also has to keep figuring out the tricks of making his own breakthroughs because if he can't stay ahead of his sect-mates on climbing the stages, they'll stop being willing to have him as their teacher.
/********/
I'm not going to run either of them myself, but if anyone takes inspiration from either/both (or just wants to steal them wholesale) you do it with my blessing. Also, I want to know where to go to read it once you start posting it.
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- Location
- Cyberspace
What might be the best payoff emotionally (at least for those who get invested in the teaching aspect) would be when he finally is released, gets a new shot at life... and then gets to see some of his old students, having completed their Destined Task - or coming across their works, long after they've ascended or passed away. If done right, the emotional reward of seeing the impact of the protagonist's hard work could be pretty strong for the reader.
So that reminds me of Emperor's Domination. So deeply xianxia trope-ish that it wraps around back into entertaining (sometimes, at least), with perhaps the most complex and confusing cultivation 'system' I've yet seen. A protagonist so much an arrogant asshole that it becomes ridiculous (and kind of funny), and overall a hard read at times...
... and yet, one of the things that kept me pushing through (for a while, at least) were those occasional emotional moments - when the protagonist, Li Qiye* is reminiscing about past students, many of them long gone. And I admit the part where he meets his most cherished student once again, who has embarked on a cultivation path that involves sleeping for ever-longer periods of time? I genuinely felt that.
Of course, then he goes back to being a douchebag to end all arrogant douchebags. But there was a lot of the feel of the "teacher protagonist" in those parts of the story, and I think that was what kept me reading it for a lot longer than it otherwise deserved (the other part being trying to decipher and keep straight the cultivation system ^_^
.So maybe that might be worth a try. Be warned though - he is really an arrogant jerk, knows it and glories in it. And the story loves to toot his all-knowing horn rather more than it needs to**. And there's other flaws as well. But I found myself a little fond of it.
*who actually was kind of in the situation you describe, with the story taking place after he finally escapes the endless cycle of being the immortal teacher of... well, immortals.
**To be fair, the backstory justifies him being up for it a lot better than many others. He's been laying down plans and contingencies for when he finally escapes from the Demon Grotto for millions of years, and he's been the secret teacher and strategist of generation after generation of powerful cultivators. And the story sells it pretty well, on the whole.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Is true. Also, I'd been thinking that after he got done with his first, his old disciples would show up peripherally in the story every once in a while... like, you'd hear about some sect of demon cultivators that had just been wiped out by the up-and-coming champion (name), and so forth, with occasional widely inaccurate speculation as to what they "must be like".
Also, for what it's worth, Cultivating Earth totally has the MC starting up a sect as an enlightened master and being an overall decent sort. He's not an isekai, and has no System or other particular cheats (other than the ones he painstakingly assembled for himself). Unfortunately it's relatively short, and cut off five months ago, but for what there is of it, it's pretty good.
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Time for book reports.
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Second Coming of Gluttony. Incorrigible gambler, who used to be able to see the future but lost that ability, is given a second chance due to godlike aliens intervening somehow. They say he only gets his emotions back from the future but in-story it's all his memories anyway so whatever.
Anyway, its opening arc is super edgy and then it becomes basically an isekai novel, except there's free travel between the two worlds. There's an arc of him trying to make up being such a dick to his family on Earth side, while on the other side it's him basically doing Danmachi stuff: gathering haremettes, levelling up faster than anyone else, playing roles in important conflicts of the local kingdom.
I'm making it sound worse than it is, though. It's pretty decent for what it is.
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Lord of Mysteries. Also called "Lord of the Mysteries" but that sounds stupid so whatever. Transmigrant from China is dropped into Victorian-ish Britain-like country.
One of the top webnovels I've ever read (which isn't necessarily saying much, but still). It has an actual setting where being in a different location means things are actually different, not just different people and a different name. People of different countries act different and even drink different alcohol. For webnovels, that's extremely astounding.
The power system is interesting, in that there's actual mystery about it. Not everyone advances in the same way, and not everyone immediately knows how to advance: which potion ingredients you'll need, which ceremony you'll need to consume, how long it'll take before you can consume the potion with any degree of safety.
I'd honestly really recommend this. The trans panic is extremely cringey but mercifully rare, and then in later chapters there's a trans person who shows up for one chapter who hasn't shown up later so maybe that'll improve. Who knows.
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Upgrade Specialist in Another World. Gamer obtains broken item, thunder hits him, he's thrown into a new world... Oh, wait, he died during the trip and the eponymous upgrade technique was assimilated by some local random. Okay then.
But that small deviation aside it's basically the usual stuff. Arrogant young masters, stages of cultivation that are overstepped by the protagonist and no one else. The protagonist does hit people with a brick in the beginning but then he upgrades it enough to no one thinking it's a brick anymore. There's also references to other webnovel authors and stuff: there's a couple of chapters that deal with "the third son of Tang", which is apparently a reference to the author of Douluo Dalu. Also, there's "soulbeasts", one of which literally has an author's note describing it as "just think of Agumon lol".
If there's one bright spot is that there's a dude from the Evil School of Evil, here called Soul Refiners, and he keeps coming up with these Snidely Whiplash plans of how to steal the MC's cheat. At some point that just becomes funny. Also, the author clearly listens to feedback, since he had to rewrite an entire arc focused on the amnesiac protagonist after fans said they weren't into that. I've also got a weakness for element-focused stuff where the protagonist doesn't have some sort of Super Duper Special Element, so that's nice.
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Going to start reading Nightfall now. Heard good things. After that, maybe Black Iron's Glory or something, who knows. I might even start reading - horror of horrors - legitimately published fiction again.
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Second Coming of Gluttony. Incorrigible gambler, who used to be able to see the future but lost that ability, is given a second chance due to godlike aliens intervening somehow. They say he only gets his emotions back from the future but in-story it's all his memories anyway so whatever.
Anyway, its opening arc is super edgy and then it becomes basically an isekai novel, except there's free travel between the two worlds. There's an arc of him trying to make up being such a dick to his family on Earth side, while on the other side it's him basically doing Danmachi stuff: gathering haremettes, levelling up faster than anyone else, playing roles in important conflicts of the local kingdom.
I'm making it sound worse than it is, though. It's pretty decent for what it is.
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Lord of Mysteries. Also called "Lord of the Mysteries" but that sounds stupid so whatever. Transmigrant from China is dropped into Victorian-ish Britain-like country.
One of the top webnovels I've ever read (which isn't necessarily saying much, but still). It has an actual setting where being in a different location means things are actually different, not just different people and a different name. People of different countries act different and even drink different alcohol. For webnovels, that's extremely astounding.
The power system is interesting, in that there's actual mystery about it. Not everyone advances in the same way, and not everyone immediately knows how to advance: which potion ingredients you'll need, which ceremony you'll need to consume, how long it'll take before you can consume the potion with any degree of safety.
I'd honestly really recommend this. The trans panic is extremely cringey but mercifully rare, and then in later chapters there's a trans person who shows up for one chapter who hasn't shown up later so maybe that'll improve. Who knows.
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Upgrade Specialist in Another World. Gamer obtains broken item, thunder hits him, he's thrown into a new world... Oh, wait, he died during the trip and the eponymous upgrade technique was assimilated by some local random. Okay then.
But that small deviation aside it's basically the usual stuff. Arrogant young masters, stages of cultivation that are overstepped by the protagonist and no one else. The protagonist does hit people with a brick in the beginning but then he upgrades it enough to no one thinking it's a brick anymore. There's also references to other webnovel authors and stuff: there's a couple of chapters that deal with "the third son of Tang", which is apparently a reference to the author of Douluo Dalu. Also, there's "soulbeasts", one of which literally has an author's note describing it as "just think of Agumon lol".
If there's one bright spot is that there's a dude from the Evil School of Evil, here called Soul Refiners, and he keeps coming up with these Snidely Whiplash plans of how to steal the MC's cheat. At some point that just becomes funny. Also, the author clearly listens to feedback, since he had to rewrite an entire arc focused on the amnesiac protagonist after fans said they weren't into that. I've also got a weakness for element-focused stuff where the protagonist doesn't have some sort of Super Duper Special Element, so that's nice.
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Going to start reading Nightfall now. Heard good things. After that, maybe Black Iron's Glory or something, who knows. I might even start reading - horror of horrors - legitimately published fiction again.
One strange thing about Arrogant Young Master is that the writing shared some weird quirks with poorly translated Chinese web fiction, most notably getting he and she mixed up. But as far as I know, it isn't a translated work.
I'm not sure if this is intentional or not.
I'm not sure if this is intentional or not.
Leingod
Immaculate Blooming Lotus
I'm pretty sure that's just because the author's first language isn't English.
Part of the issue with that is that its not just the herb. Such herbs are usually voracious on their environment's resources, which is why they take thousands of years to mature, taking the energy in over massive amounts of time instead of requiring the kinds of energy of major celestial alignments or power sites.
Thats why they make powerful cultivation drugs, you essentially consumed the cultivation of the plant, and thus basically just ate something which had spent a hundred years cultivating and woah thats a lot of power.
Like, a Hundred Year Snow Lotus would need to grow in a pool of water above the snowline for a hundred years. If you had the ability to mass produce it, you don't need it anymore.
Chinese has the word for "That person" spoken as "Tar"(well, close enough for anyone who don't know pinyin but does speak english). This is used for He, She, It and They, which sounds identical but have three different written forms.
However, He, and They are the same word, and you'll default to using that word when there is ambiguity or uncertainty.
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- Location
- Canada
He doesn't have all his memories. His special eye powers are practically pre-cognitive but I don't recall him ever actually remembering something abotu the future and acting based upon that, just the suggestions his "Future Sight" or "Nine Eyes" or whatever gave him. He's shown the occasional hints of there being something a little more, like his initial familiarity with combat abilities, or when he brought forth all his potential power recently, but he definitely doesn't have all his memories.
First arc was definitely weird. The entire tutorial area is basically nothing like the rest of the story.
Also definitely super special in how fast he progresses in the other world, but I like how Korean novels handle that sort of thing, people actually recognize achievements and change their treatment and judgement of him based off of both what the main character has done and their future potential. Japanese and Chinese novels tend to go to weird extremes a lot of the time.
Interesting. Reminds me of Pursuing Immortality which I recommended before. Pity that story stopped getting translated. In that story, it's modern Earth, where cultivation used to exist, but petered out as all the magical energies went away, and is now coming back. Different cultures around the world have all sorts of different cultivation/magical systems, even within China they had multiple different methods.
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
Hmm?
*Looks it up*
A duo of characters team up in the modern world to explore all its hidden mysteries style story about Wuxian, Xianxia and magic.
OH MY FUCKING GOD THAT SOUNDS SO INTERESTING
And this stopped translating? God I hate this fucking industry. Translates every fucking brainless fucking Xianxia slob, but leave actually good shit like this floundering, I hate it.
- Location
- Canada
I know right? It only recently got added to lnmtl, and hasn't had enough glossary additions to do further retranslations past the base google translate, so even knowing it is there, I don't quite want to read it badly enough to be willing to lose that many brain cells.
Couple of points about the story I can remember, been a while since I've read it. A little spoilery at parts. More spoilery the further down the list you go, all under the following spoiler:
- MC has a couple lucky encounters early on, which quickly makes him one of the strongest in the world, and then de facto strongest.
- Not because he is actually all that strong initially, but more because everybody else is weak. Due to the world having lost all the "World Essence" as I think he calls it, over a long period of time, practitioners around the world grew weaker and weaker and constantly had to readapt their techniques to the changing situation, leaving most legacies still surviving today as crippled degraded forms full of missing parts compared to what they once were. His lucky encounter got him a head start and a more ancient legacy better adapted to the returning higher levels of world essence.
- Around when it stopped translating, a hidden temple or whatever containing a sealed low level immortal was discovered. So stronger long-living people that left the regular world behind might be poised to show up later on to continue providing challenge.
- The general populace and worldwide governments notice. This is not a hidden phenomena.
- One of the earlier projects was developing spiritually enriched food that was consumable by regular people without making them explode. It's good enough to have beneficial effects on health and lifespan. Of course nepotism determined who got more while supplies are limited.
- App/wiki/database got built of the unusually mutated lifeforms and phenomena affected areas.
- Entire locations forcibly displace local populations as they become too dangerous for regular people.
- Most things aren't terribly black or white with interactions between practitioner groups and governments. No groups seems blatantly inferior at least in these early stages, and groups and governments are not monolithic.
- Early on while still within just China the MC interacted with other cultivator individuals and groups just within the country and it's not like they all saw eye to eye.
- MC and Chinese government feel each other out and mostly swap favours while trying to maintain a stronger position through whatever means.
- MC recognizes that he doesn't particularly want to rule a lot of people nor is altruistic enough to personally run around helping all the time, but also realizes he doesn't want all his countrymen to die to the changing world either and figures the government responsible for them is the best entity at least in the medium term to deal with it.
- Government is somewhat threatened by his power but recognizes they need him and don't immediately try to kill him off or something and are willing to deal with him. There were a couple power plays before they settled properly.
- MC isn't even the official affiliated government cultivator group. He's basically a contractor while the government is building their own inferior group.
- They did bring him as their representative to the UN meeting though because he was stronger, and had no problem riding on his resulting victory to present themselves as the good guys when people caused trouble. This was probably the biggest "Chinese nationalism" moment so far.
- One of the earlier sets of villains coming from outside the country were from some SEA country. A small group of witch doctory guys whose specifics I forget. They were pretty evil, but it was kind of just them. The citizens and I think even the army/government of their country weren't terribly fond of them, but it just happened that they were the strongest practitioners there and enforced their rule through might.
- Britain afterwards was the cacklingly evil one for a bit though. It was kind of odd. Dark mages were their local power, and the government seemed willing enough to work with them.
- Strongest champion they had though was a druid that was only reluctantly working with them due to a debt.
- Britain changed their tune after a quick smack down from the MC.
- Aside from those instances, the MC had friendly interactions with some competent European practitioners, and there was some standard but not overboard espionage type action from Japan.
- Buddhists seemed to get the short stick compared to Daoism at least in China. Dunno how they're doing in India.
- Personal musings, while the rest of the world mostly seems competent enough, barring a few countries whose legacies seem to have encountered problems, I wonder how many can actually keep up given that cultivation mythology just keeps spiraling up and up to encompassing all the universe/heavens while even somebody like Merlin feels like they fall far short of that.
- Though a point is that the world essence slowly drained off over the years, and most European stories and mythology are relatively more recent than the ancient Chinese stuff, and would therefore be correspondingly weaker. Maybe European magic users had higher tiers further back in time whose stories were simply lost to history.
- Vatican seems to be having some problems, and was closed off. Christianity may be having trouble getting their powers off the ground, but I feel like it would be a missed opportunity to not use them. If they could reach all the way to powers in heaven just under god that would be quite the sight. I guess it would depend on how the story ended up developing later on.
- The story was halfway translated in the 400s and only made it to the 800s before completing, so I'm not sure how much time it had to fully explore all the possibilities without liberal use of time skips.
- Common complaint about info dumps. Not a huge deal for going through existing chapters I feel since you can skim over a bit. Would be annoying week to week, but it's not being translated right now anyway so whatever.
- Characters can be kind of weak.
- Lots of people seem to feel the MC is bland. I feel that he acts human enough, not everyone is a super special MC with a convoluted backstory and exaggerated traits. I will admit those are often things you may want given that it is in fact a written story and you want it to be interesting, but I feel having a grounded character in a modern world exploring all these fantastic things is kind of fitting.
- Some people complain about the female lead's attitude.
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On a semi-related note, I had some random thoughts about xianxia involving non-Chinese cultures:
1. I don't consider xianxia to be xianxia unless it's pseudo-Chinese. For instance, whenever I see something like, say, "druid xianxia," my brain skips a beat before I realize what's being communicated. There might come a time when xianxia becomes generic enough that this will no longer be the case, but for me, said time isn't now.
2. I'm not actually against xianxia-ish stories with non-Chinese cultures being front and center. Fundamentally, xianxia is based on Chinese practices in the pursuit of immortality. However, the pursuit of immortality was (and still is) very widespread, meaning that other cultures have had other practices that can serve as rich sources of inspiration.
3. As such, whenever people write xianxia-ish stories with non-Chinese cultures, I hope that they take more inspiration from the relevant cultures. For example, if I'm going to do an pseudo-Egyptian xianxia-ish story, I'd write about pseudo-Egyptian cultivators raising monuments to themselves that have been inscribed with their names while placing curses to make sure that others can't steal their monuments for themselves because the Egyptians believed that the part of a person's soul that was the name would live on so long as people continued to speak it. Likewise, I'd base the tribulation equivalent on the Forty-Two Negative Confessions rather than thunder and flame, with pseudo-Egyptian cultivators using charms as well as other tricks to prevent their hearts from betraying them in the critical moment.
1. I don't consider xianxia to be xianxia unless it's pseudo-Chinese. For instance, whenever I see something like, say, "druid xianxia," my brain skips a beat before I realize what's being communicated. There might come a time when xianxia becomes generic enough that this will no longer be the case, but for me, said time isn't now.
2. I'm not actually against xianxia-ish stories with non-Chinese cultures being front and center. Fundamentally, xianxia is based on Chinese practices in the pursuit of immortality. However, the pursuit of immortality was (and still is) very widespread, meaning that other cultures have had other practices that can serve as rich sources of inspiration.
3. As such, whenever people write xianxia-ish stories with non-Chinese cultures, I hope that they take more inspiration from the relevant cultures. For example, if I'm going to do an pseudo-Egyptian xianxia-ish story, I'd write about pseudo-Egyptian cultivators raising monuments to themselves that have been inscribed with their names while placing curses to make sure that others can't steal their monuments for themselves because the Egyptians believed that the part of a person's soul that was the name would live on so long as people continued to speak it. Likewise, I'd base the tribulation equivalent on the Forty-Two Negative Confessions rather than thunder and flame, with pseudo-Egyptian cultivators using charms as well as other tricks to prevent their hearts from betraying them in the critical moment.
Mors
Searching for immanence
... Well, of course. If you want to write about Mongols, don't call it a cowboy story. Xianxia is intrinsically Chinese.
Couple years back I tried to write a novel for nanowrimo about Ashwatthama - a Cain-like cursed immortal who survived the Mahabharata war - about the adventures I imagined he would have over the centuries. It was literally about an immortal hero but it sure as shit couldn't be called a xianxia.
- Location
- Canada
I liked those bits with Pursuing Immortality, the brief glimpses at other cultures. An Alchemist was attempting to create a homunculus, one born with all knowledge so that he could learn the secrets of immortality/power/whatever from it.
A Jewish practitioner was speaking about the Kaballah and their interpretation of God and the elements of the world. Posted some excerpts from the Kabbalah talk before: Xianxia Encompassing the World! (Xianxia Rec Discussion and Idea thread)
Not entirely sure how accurate that is since I'm not remotely Jewish myself, but it was interesting, and at least a quick google search shows that it's at least superficially similar. I would expect a lot of the nuance is muddled due to the author also not being from that culture, the setting of the story, and also plot reasons as even the MC expects the speaker is holding back on some of the secrets and particulars.
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- Location
- Canada
For new translated, I got nothin.
For an older story, I'll rerecommend Forty Millenniums of Cultivation which has popped up in this thread in the past. Sci-fi twist to Xianxia, where their society is a lot more modern and actually has to pay some attention towards rule of law instead of just might makes right. They have power armour and spaceships up in this galaxy of cultivators.
Main complaint I have towards it is that after the MC achieves a level of success in any area he immediately fucks off somewhere else for a few hundred chapters where he disguises himself as a nobody instead of enjoying his success. I get that he finds resting on his laurels boring, but I like seeing the MC get the proper praise and respect they deserve when they accomplish great things.
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For non-translated, anyone ever read Defiance of the Fall? Fairly popular story on Royal Road, it's actually an apocalyptic LitRPG/fantasy/xianxia fusion. Started as a xianxia universe, some powerful cultivator in the past tried to make a system to help guide people's cultivation and fucked up, with the system drawing in so much energy it killed him and everything around him, before assimilating the universe into its new system-based paradigm of cultivation. Seems Earth had some contact with other civilizations prior to integration, since China had some of the concepts in their stories, and it turns out that demons out of Abrahamic myth are just an alien race somewhere else in the universe.
So while there are levels and classes, people have Daos, and there are steps with bottlenecks such as forming cores. Being a cultivator normally requires a special physique to be able to draw in cosmic energy on your own, so if you have that you can cultivate the old fashioned way. Some items and arrays can help bypass that, and you can absorb energy directly from nexus crystals (i.e. spirit stones). Or in good old LitRPG fashion with the system you can gain cosmic energy aka EXP by just murdering your way through opponents, performing non-combat class specific actions. or the occasional quest the system tosses your way.
MC gets stuck in a really hard situation immediately, but gets lucky enough to at least get a leg up so he isn't completely screwed, and is able to keep the lead over everyone else on Earth. MC is definitely special, and some plot threads indicate he may be even more special beyond just what he's done so far, but he is still definitely very much playing in the kiddie pool compared to the rest of the universe. Like a top dog among Qi Gathering cultivators that might be able to take a Foundation Establishment early stage that is still stuck in a tiny backwards little nation for want of a comparison.
Main complaint towards this story is that since Earth is still in the early integration period with the system, the system is intentionally setting lots of challenges towards its inhabitants and forcing them to go along with it or else. This takes away a lot of sense of agency, like the MC is just being jerked around with little say in things. I hope this will subside as the people of Earth start getting a better grip on things and the system no longer feels like it needs to give them more tough love to get them situated with the universe.
For an older story, I'll rerecommend Forty Millenniums of Cultivation which has popped up in this thread in the past. Sci-fi twist to Xianxia, where their society is a lot more modern and actually has to pay some attention towards rule of law instead of just might makes right. They have power armour and spaceships up in this galaxy of cultivators.
Main complaint I have towards it is that after the MC achieves a level of success in any area he immediately fucks off somewhere else for a few hundred chapters where he disguises himself as a nobody instead of enjoying his success. I get that he finds resting on his laurels boring, but I like seeing the MC get the proper praise and respect they deserve when they accomplish great things.
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For non-translated, anyone ever read Defiance of the Fall? Fairly popular story on Royal Road, it's actually an apocalyptic LitRPG/fantasy/xianxia fusion. Started as a xianxia universe, some powerful cultivator in the past tried to make a system to help guide people's cultivation and fucked up, with the system drawing in so much energy it killed him and everything around him, before assimilating the universe into its new system-based paradigm of cultivation. Seems Earth had some contact with other civilizations prior to integration, since China had some of the concepts in their stories, and it turns out that demons out of Abrahamic myth are just an alien race somewhere else in the universe.
So while there are levels and classes, people have Daos, and there are steps with bottlenecks such as forming cores. Being a cultivator normally requires a special physique to be able to draw in cosmic energy on your own, so if you have that you can cultivate the old fashioned way. Some items and arrays can help bypass that, and you can absorb energy directly from nexus crystals (i.e. spirit stones). Or in good old LitRPG fashion with the system you can gain cosmic energy aka EXP by just murdering your way through opponents, performing non-combat class specific actions. or the occasional quest the system tosses your way.
MC gets stuck in a really hard situation immediately, but gets lucky enough to at least get a leg up so he isn't completely screwed, and is able to keep the lead over everyone else on Earth. MC is definitely special, and some plot threads indicate he may be even more special beyond just what he's done so far, but he is still definitely very much playing in the kiddie pool compared to the rest of the universe. Like a top dog among Qi Gathering cultivators that might be able to take a Foundation Establishment early stage that is still stuck in a tiny backwards little nation for want of a comparison.
Main complaint towards this story is that since Earth is still in the early integration period with the system, the system is intentionally setting lots of challenges towards its inhabitants and forcing them to go along with it or else. This takes away a lot of sense of agency, like the MC is just being jerked around with little say in things. I hope this will subside as the people of Earth start getting a better grip on things and the system no longer feels like it needs to give them more tough love to get them situated with the universe.
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- Location
- Canada
Yeah, seen that before. It's not wrong, stereotypes exist for a reason. Obviously not everything conforms to them, and some stories are good in spite of them, but goddamn does the hundredth "beta Japanese MC" or "(psychotically) alpha Chinese MC" get old.
I'm not following it very closely but I try to see if it's worth catching up on every other weekend. I feel like you've put in a couple of things In your review that I would have left out. Knowing how the system was formed and works is kind of a plot point but it's not that important of a spoiler. I would say that if your waiting for the system to stop putting in challenges your going to be waiting a long time. Everyone in universe tends to get those including people that have had the system for thousands of years. If your waiting for it to slow down however that's also unlikely because well the main character does have to take part in some of the tests he's also been jumping on all the optional ones he can get to try and get stronger faster. He would need to reach a point where he's not worried about getting stronger before he would slow down and that's unlikely to happen before the end.