Xianxia Encompassing the World! (Xianxia Rec Discussion and Idea thread)

[veekie]

You know, its always a bit odd how ascending to a higher plane tended to work out in stories.
Sun Wukong still went home to play with his monkey buddies after making the big time, if not often. Nezha still visited his mother(though he couldn't care less about his father for half his legend).

Whats with these dudes ditching their friends and family upon ascension?

 

[Leingod]

I'm still a xianxia newbie but the one that even got me into the genre was Song of the Skywalkers by the masterful Xia Da. Its strength is beautiful art, just an absolutely gorgeous manhua. Idk about how it compares to others though, since I've only ever read Peerless Dad, which also seems like a fine entry story into the genre. Again though, to more experienced readers they might be riddled with cliches, but at the very least Skywalkers will pull you in with character designs

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Well, Peerless Dad is a wuxia with some xianxia elements (and so far a lot of Song of the Skywalkers is basically a xianxia power system mixed with a very wuxia story), but yeah, those two are both really good so far.

Incidentally, I recently learned the title of Song of the Skywalkers actually comes from an ancient Korean star catalogue: Song of the Sky Pacers - Wikipedia

 

[CircleTheSkies]

You know, its always a bit odd how ascending to a higher plane tended to work out in stories.
Sun Wukong still went home to play with his monkey buddies after making the big time, if not often. Nezha still visited his mother(though he couldn't care less about his father for half his legend).

Whats with these dudes ditching their friends and family upon ascension?

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I think they usually do go back. At least, it feels like I remember protagonists checking up on family (usually just when they're about to be bullied - or attacked by some form of villain) reasonably often.

 

[Nervaqus987]

You know, its always a bit odd how ascending to a higher plane tended to work out in stories.
Sun Wukong still went home to play with his monkey buddies after making the big time, if not often. Nezha still visited his mother(though he couldn't care less about his father for half his legend).

Whats with these dudes ditching their friends and family upon ascension?

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Generally, when it comes to ascension it involves moving to a whole new dimension and it tends to be really difficult for someone to go back down.

Off the top of my head, in Stellar Transformation moving from the Immortal, Demon, Devil Realm to the Mortal Realm was incredibly difficult even for Immortal Emperors to arrange for lvl1 Golden Immortals. It's pretty much just the higher ups of the Divine Realm that can relatively easily arrange travel.

I think they usually do go back. At least, it feels like I remember protagonists checking up on family (usually just when they're about to be bullied - or attacked by some form of villain) reasonably often.

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Yeah no kidding. I remember in The Great Ruler whenever Mu Chen came back to his Mu Abode after leaving on a cultivation trip, it was getting pressured by an ever escalating series of randos that would get crushed shortly after he returned. And then he went back to visit his father and home town and they were getting stepped on by someone.

 

[magicdownunder]

Can someone recommend me something like Savage Divinity?

 

[aattss]

You know, its always a bit odd how ascending to a higher plane tended to work out in stories.
Sun Wukong still went home to play with his monkey buddies after making the big time, if not often. Nezha still visited his mother(though he couldn't care less about his father for half his legend).

Whats with these dudes ditching their friends and family upon ascension?

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It's a power escalation/limiter thing. It lets the author put the MC in an all new part of the setting where everyone's stronger than the people who were previously weak and there's a lot of new high-leveled stuff. But if the high-leveled people could descend down to lower-leveled areas too easily, then it could become a plot hole as to why those high-leveled people weren't around when the author was writing a lower-leveled story with a lower level cap.

 

[CircleTheSkies]

It's a power escalation/limiter thing. It lets the author put the MC in an all new part of the setting where everyone's stronger than the people who were previously weak and there's a lot of new high-leveled stuff. But if the high-leveled people could descend down to lower-leveled areas too easily, then it could become a plot hole as to why those high-leveled people weren't around when the author was writing a lower-leveled story with a lower level cap.

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One of the things I liked about Seeking the Flying Sword Path is that there were actual hard cosmological limits involved - to one above a dividing point of "mortal" and "immortal", interfering with those below is liable to cause you serious karmic issues; in the extreme, you could trigger a tribulation next time you tried to advance and die. So it was in your own interest to not go "too far", and really to minimize your contact with the lower orders. If one of them pissed you off enough, sure you could swat them - but you'd prefer to find a way to minimize the hazard if you could - such as literally swatting them away instead of killing them. Or threats. Or bribes. And I think the constraints somewhat loosen if the weaker cultivator was the aggressor.

And in turn those below are aware that while they're generally safe from the higher orders, that's only going to go so far; better to show a bit of respect and stay out of their way. It's unlikely that you'd be able to actually stop them anyway.


Another is that worlds actually block those beyond a certain (higher) power level from descending. This is several times weaponized in some fashion by various sides in-setting, and explains why the big shots (demonic or otherwise) can't actually rescue favorite disciples or root out opposing sects easily. There's even a couple of pivotal points plot-wise that revolve around this barrier. I believe there's a few ways to get partially around the restrictions, but they're not often used.

 

[Sirrocco]

Can someone recommend me something like Savage Divinity?

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What did you like about Savage Divinity?

 

[magicdownunder]

What did you like about Savage Divinity?

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Polictics, cultural misunderstanding, waff and minimal curb stomping MC (the MC type which would get 1/5 rating on novel update since he is a beta male for not killing everyone).

 

[Eliar]

You know, its always a bit odd how ascending to a higher plane tended to work out in stories.
Sun Wukong still went home to play with his monkey buddies after making the big time, if not often. Nezha still visited his mother(though he couldn't care less about his father for half his legend).

Whats with these dudes ditching their friends and family upon ascension?

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Well in those stories there is an element of disassociation involved coupled with sometimes the impossibility of actually avoiding ascention and near impossibility of returning to the original world for vast amounts of time.

So a dose of cultivation is everything and feelings a distruction! a dose of the original world is repeling me, hurry up and follow! and a dose of I can only descend thousands of years later as a soul fragment!

 

[Sirrocco]

Polictics, cultural misunderstanding, waff and minimal curb stomping MC (the MC type which would get 1/5 rating on novel update since he is a beta male for not killing everyone).

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Well, I don't pretend that it's "like Savage Divinity", but https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15193/ave-xia-rem-y absolutely has politics, cultural misunderstanding, waff, and minimal curb stomping MC. It's also quite well-written, and is clearly a xianxia story... sort of. The world it's set in is a xianxia world. It has all the same beats as you'd expect from a xianxia story (at a somewhat slower pace). It's just that the story payoffs derive from a very different place than most xianxia.

 

[Nervaqus987]

, interfering with those below is liable to cause you serious karmic issues; in the extreme, you could trigger a tribulation next time you tried to advance and die.

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IIRC, it wasn't just during advancement. If an immortal cultivator killed either enough mortals or someone with a large amount of karmic virtue, it could trigger an immediate tribulation.

One of the setting details I remembered is that immortal cultivators tended to build their cave abodes near(in xianxia terms) to mortals and set up the formations so that breaking them would kill a ton of mortals from the side effects/aftershocks. That way if an enemy wanted to break in, they'd have to very seriously consider the risks of heavenly tribulation.

 

[CircleTheSkies]

IIRC, it wasn't just during advancement. If an immortal cultivator killed either enough mortals or someone with a large amount of karmic virtue, it could trigger an immediate tribulation.

One of the setting details I remembered is that immortal cultivators tended to build their cave abodes near(in xianxia terms) to mortals and set up the formations so that breaking them would kill a ton of mortals from the side effects/aftershocks. That way if an enemy wanted to break in, they'd have to very seriously consider the risks of heavenly tribulation.

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Yeah - as I said, the restrictions were very much weaponized by assorted parties. It was honestly one of the more interesting variations on those tropes I've read.


There's another story that I vaguely recall, where you had a kind of "Imperial power" (not that uncommon in itself)... but that being a public official serving the Emperor imbues one with some measure of that power. And as a cultivator, harming such an official more or less would kill you. And it could be used more actively against cultivators (who could not, of course, be public officials) through decrees. It made for a rather interesting dynamic in the story, as officials otherwise were mortals.

I recall sects generally stayed to their own (hidden) territories, supplied by a few nearby villages, and generally were more concerned with cultivating and intrigue amongst themselves.

 

[Guessmyname]

Does anyone have some good 'entry level' or 'must read' works of Xianxia to recommend? I know very little of the genre and am looking to get my feet wet.

 

[CircleTheSkies]

Does anyone have some good 'entry level' or 'must read' works of Xianxia to recommend? I know very little of the genre and am looking to get my feet wet.

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Hmmm... maybe "Desolate Era" or "Seeking the Flying Sword Path"? Those are fairly mainline in their plot, but lack some of the more objectionable bits of trope. "I Shall Seal the Heavens" I found enjoyable. All three are complete.

"Cultivation Chat Room" and "It's Not Easy to be a Man in the Future" are good, but the former somewhat relies on knowing the tropes well (as it often makes fun of them) and the latter is "scifi xianxia", which is more of a variation; it's better read, like CCR, after you're familiar with the genre.

 

[Alectai]

Oh my god, "Not easy" is hilariously, comedically racist like oh my goodness it's some of the worst I've ever seen.

I mean, the genre as a whole has a huge undercurrent of "Our culture would crush every other culture into nothingness and so we make these superuniverses but everyone acts exactly the same and has exactly the same cultural underpinnings", but Not Easy is flagrant about it by portraying everyone else as being a bunch of psychotic caricatures.

At least it isn't sparing about their own culture being a toxic mess either.

 

[Sirrocco]

Does anyone have some good 'entry level' or 'must read' works of Xianxia to recommend? I know very little of the genre and am looking to get my feet wet.

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One of the things to be aware of is that there's basically two kinds of xianxia out there these days.

First, there's the translated stuff that comes over from China. It generally has chapter counts in the thousands, leans heavily on male power fantasy, and it's a matter of picking and choosing based on what kinds of toxicity you are or are not willing to tolerate (how much blatant sexism/racism/homophobia are you willing to tolerate? Are you okay with a protagonist who's presented as a shining exemplar of morality while he brutally murders entire families for having disrespected him? How about one that regularly abandons his friends/lovers after about a thousand chapters once he moves beyond them and never thinks about them again?) That was the origin of the xianxia genre in the us, and there's a lot of it.

Then, there's the derivative xianxia, generally initially written in English by people who are not Chinese. It's... basically standard web fiction levels of writing skill, tolerability, and length. It's not enormous in the same way, but the quality (while still variable) is overall much higher. These are also set in xianxia universes, and includes the various tropes that have grown up around the first set to varying degrees.

The answer to your question is going to depend a lot on which one of those two you're actually interested in.

 

[The Grey Mage]

Does anyone have some good 'entry level' or 'must read' works of Xianxia to recommend? I know very little of the genre and am looking to get my feet wet.

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When people talk about 'Standard Xianxia' they're usually referring to things like I Shall Seal The Heavens, Martial World, and Battle Through The Heavens. Power fantasy, Hypocrital 'Good Guy' MC, weak to strong, lucky encounter at the beginning that becomes a cheat, etc.

The better 'Standard Xianxia' (imo) have all of that, except the MC is actually fairly decent as a person. Desolate Era and A Will Eternal fall under this category.

Next you have the ones that (try to) put a spin on the standard xianxia tropes. They vary in quality pretty wild though, and the good ones are better appreciated if you've read at least a few standard xianxia first. Daoist Gu, Ascending Do Not Disturb, and World of Cultivation are the better ones here.

 

[Tiresias]

Does anyone have some good 'entry level' or 'must read' works of Xianxia to recommend? I know very little of the genre and am looking to get my feet wet.

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Mo Dao Zu Shi. I don't know if the novel is translated, but there's a live action adaption on Netflix and YouTube called The Untamed and the cartoon adaptation is on YouTube. The live action is finished, but the cartoon isn't.

It avoids a lot of the excessive xianxia tropes - cultivation levels aren't specifically quantified, the scale of the setting is normal, the power level isn't very high - but it hits the standard beats like concern for face, flying swords, demons, competition for resources, and very intricate political conflicts, both within and between clans.

Also, it's gay. Super gay.

 

[Nervaqus987]

I wouldn't really call Talisman Emperor a "Must Read" xianxia.

I would also hesitate to call it "good", but it's also IMO the most quintessential xianxia I've read in that it hits pretty much all the tropes and plays them straight.

Other than that, Battle Through the Heavens, Wu Dong Qian Kun, and The Great Ruler are all by the same author, have a shared universe and can be read in basically that order. Desolate Era and Seeking the Flying Sword Path are both good xianxia.

Don't read Martial God Asura or Against the Gods. They're terrible.

 

[Guessmyname]

Yeah I should clarify the mean reason I'm trying to get into Xianxia is seeing Xianxia quests showing up here but struggling to follow what's going on a lot of the time. There's also Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (and especially it's english-language fanfiction such as An Easy Lie / I Wish You Were My Husband) which I believe count? But I'm kind of poking around blindly here.

 

[Sirrocco]

Yeah I should clarify the mean reason I'm trying to get into Xianxia is seeing Xianxia quests showing up here but struggling to follow what's going on a lot of the time. There's also Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (and especially it's english-language fanfiction such as An Easy Lie / I Wish You Were My Husband) which I believe count? But I'm kind of poking around blindly here.

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In that case, I'd suggest that you read Forge of Destiny. It's pretty long, very well-written, and the fiction rewrite of an existing quest on this site. It's like what xianxia would be if you removed all of the toxic suck from it, and made it good.

Arguably, it will also ruin you for many of the xianxia that people have recommended above, but I honestly don't count that as much of a cost.

 

[CircleTheSkies]

In that case, I'd suggest that you read Forge of Destiny. It's pretty long, very well-written, and the fiction rewrite of an existing quest on this site. It's like what xianxia would be if you removed all of the toxic suck from it, and made it good.

Arguably, it will also ruin you for many of the xianxia that people have recommended above, but I honestly don't count that as much of a cost.

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It's definitely a good story (I was part of the playerbase for "Forge of Destiny", and it was incredibly fun... even if I wanted the protagonist to take a different career path than won), but I almost think you appreciate it more with more exposure to the genre. I'd suggest going with something like "Desolate Era" first.

 

[Piday]

Does anyone have some good 'entry level' or 'must read' works of Xianxia to recommend? I know very little of the genre and am looking to get my feet wet.

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Start with the classic 蜀山剑侠传 by 还珠楼主. It is not a web novel, serialized and published back in the 30's and 40's. It is to Xianxia genre as Lord of the Rings to Fantasy genre; many of the terms* and tropes in Xianxia originated from this series. Of course, it is written much better than basically all web novels as the author was a renowned author and spent decades working on this.

* well, the author obviously borrowed from taoist/buddhist scriptures and traditional Chinese mythologies, but the way these are being used in Xianxia is popularized by this.

 

[Mr8]

It's important to note that a lot of the Xianxia/Cultivation quests here (and elsewhere) have one enormous difference from the vast majority of xianxia stories:

They're sect quests.

What I mean by this is that the entirety of the quest is anchored to one spot/location and the political structure of the sect. It is true that most xianxia stories will have periods where they join a sect (or 'the court', or live in a city, or whatever), but events will conspire to have the sect invaded/destroyed by enemies, or the MC will get chased out because they offend the Grand Elder's nephew or whatever.

The point is that traditional xianxia stories are about travelling adventurers; the MCs travel throughout the realm(s) finding cool materials, loot and techniques to power them up, and then moving onto the next location. Rinse and repeat. The sect quests (e.g. Forge/Threads of Destiny, The Path Unending, etc) do not follow this story format at all, for better & worse.

In terms of xianxia recommendations; my two 'go-to' recs are World of Cultivation and Seeking the Flying Sword Path. Both of these have completed translations, so it is possible for a full read-through and I think are suitable for the first-time xianxia readers.

These two stories will introduce you to the general themes, mythologies and aesthetics of xianxia quite well. I would also rate them generally low on the sexism/racism/homophobia/genocide/psychopath MC metrics that causes the majority of xianxia to be utter dreck.

Another outside introductory xianxia would be something like True Martial World which is passable. An 'advanced' xianxia is Way of Choices (also known as Ze Tian Jin) which is excellent, but vastly unlike any other xianxia out there.