- Location
- Washington
In such a world they probably wouldn't even see the need for excuses, it's just going to be seen as the way of things. Babyeating mortals who couldn't live WITHOUT babyeating become babyeating cultivators.
Xianxia Encompassing the World! (Xianxia Rec Discussion and Idea thread)
- Thread starter Hangwind
- Start date
- Location
- Elsewhere
But that's the trick, are they pre-mature?
When you call something a child, you are looking down on them, dismissing their ability to make decisions for themselves.
The Giant Snake trying to eat you might have less planning ability than a 5 year-old human, but that doesn't mean it hasn't made an informed decision.
It is hungry, you look delicious, decision made.
Do you respect it's decision or say "Oh it's just a child. In 500 years it may choose differently..."
A cultivator that ascends to a higher state of being changes.
In many ways they become a different person, considering different things.
"Oh, this is how Karma works. This is what Divinity is. I have Returned to Nature. I have Spiritual Senses now and my fingers look awesome!"
But you don't go back and say they are not responsible for their actions before that revelation.
They were an adult.
They were responsible for their own decisions.
They gained new insight into the world.
They now make different decisions.
If that change is from animal>human is no different from human>immortal.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
...and when some of those babies will happily eat you given half a chance....
- Location
- Canada
Agree on this. Cultivators don't give a shit about murdering and consuming intelligent beings or even others of their own species usually, let alone something that has yet to grow intelligence.
Calling things "children" has nothing to do with humans or their intelligence relative to humans. They simply mean how everything is in their pre-sapient states compared to their fully grown states later in. Particularly with regards to things that aren't even normally regarded as thinking. So rather than your chicken example, more like a dumb baby/child rock vs a sapient rock spirit or something. If a given rock is capable of becoming "alive" and thinking later, regardless of its intelligence level, does that make that rock prior to that point like a baby/child in its lifecycle?
Sirrocco
Pedantic
So there's toxic xianxia culture with toxic xianxia lack-of-morals. I'm going to put all that to one side and ignore it for a moment.
Real morals come out of the background of a real culture. The cultures that exist are the ones that survived. Any moral code that makes it much less likely that its base culture will survive is highly unlikely to endure. By extension, any kind of spirit-thing that's an implacable enemy to humanity is going to get hunted and killed and probably eaten, whether or not it's intelligent. The cultures that survive will have developed moral codes that encourage that behavior. Spirit-things that can be taught to become contributing members of society are a lot more likely to develop rights.
Real morals come out of the background of a real culture. The cultures that exist are the ones that survived. Any moral code that makes it much less likely that its base culture will survive is highly unlikely to endure. By extension, any kind of spirit-thing that's an implacable enemy to humanity is going to get hunted and killed and probably eaten, whether or not it's intelligent. The cultures that survive will have developed moral codes that encourage that behavior. Spirit-things that can be taught to become contributing members of society are a lot more likely to develop rights.
First - Keep the Chinese-derived mythological basis of the setting in mind.
Everything has a spirit and some degree of awareness.
Not everything has a spirit worth noticing.
Everything reincarnates to be everything else, even if most never realize it.
Thus, deal in everything with respect. To live and exist is to harm and be harmed in the process, you should seek to minimize unnecessary harm, but harm is inevitable.
Now, keep in mind social concepts.
Humans are universally intelligent and social. If you harm humans in a way that human society percieves as a threat, the majority of humans would turn against you.
This means that if a human trespassed on your turf and died, nobody gives a damn beyond their immediate social circle. If you go on human turf and kill humans, you are now a threat to all humans.
Most spirit beasts have requirements to awakening which involve essentially being the apex predator of their region for a mortal lifetime. They usually have no society, not even their own kind, because it takes vastly more resources for a creature that is unintelligent but social to awaken than for a solitary 'greedy' being that ate everything in its zone.
An awakened snake is still a snake. It still mainly thinks of things as Food, Threat, and Scenery until it learns better and...an isolated megasnek is not going to have the chances needed to learn better. It doesn't usually consider people killing other snakes to be a problem, since its quite happy to kill other snakes encroaching on its territory, though it may take offense if its own children are preyed upon.
It gives basically negative shits if you killed the superpig the next hill over, other than considering if its a good time to expand territory.
And then you have plants and minerals, which are naturally sessile and unlikely to change that over becoming more intelligent.
The big change comes with domestic beasts and crafted objects. Their spirits have some awareness of society, if a limited slice of it, and they can learn from what they have been immersed in. Of course, such things rarely ever acquire the resources or isolated safety to gain significant spiritual power.
Everything has a spirit and some degree of awareness.
Not everything has a spirit worth noticing.
Everything reincarnates to be everything else, even if most never realize it.
Thus, deal in everything with respect. To live and exist is to harm and be harmed in the process, you should seek to minimize unnecessary harm, but harm is inevitable.
Now, keep in mind social concepts.
Humans are universally intelligent and social. If you harm humans in a way that human society percieves as a threat, the majority of humans would turn against you.
This means that if a human trespassed on your turf and died, nobody gives a damn beyond their immediate social circle. If you go on human turf and kill humans, you are now a threat to all humans.
Most spirit beasts have requirements to awakening which involve essentially being the apex predator of their region for a mortal lifetime. They usually have no society, not even their own kind, because it takes vastly more resources for a creature that is unintelligent but social to awaken than for a solitary 'greedy' being that ate everything in its zone.
An awakened snake is still a snake. It still mainly thinks of things as Food, Threat, and Scenery until it learns better and...an isolated megasnek is not going to have the chances needed to learn better. It doesn't usually consider people killing other snakes to be a problem, since its quite happy to kill other snakes encroaching on its territory, though it may take offense if its own children are preyed upon.
It gives basically negative shits if you killed the superpig the next hill over, other than considering if its a good time to expand territory.
And then you have plants and minerals, which are naturally sessile and unlikely to change that over becoming more intelligent.
The big change comes with domestic beasts and crafted objects. Their spirits have some awareness of society, if a limited slice of it, and they can learn from what they have been immersed in. Of course, such things rarely ever acquire the resources or isolated safety to gain significant spiritual power.
- Location
- Canada
Ah man. Sometimes web novels just gotta hit you with that nationalism. Usually not a huge problem in xianxia since they take place on not-Earth where there's only Chinese analogues everywhere or made up nations for that fictional fantastic racism instead of the regular kind. I've been keeping up with Top Tier Providence and it turns out that despite transmigration, he was eventually able to come across Earth again:
After billions of years on Earth, the race had already changed many times. Because the Chinese were Connate Humans brought by Zhen Yuanzi. Even if the Earth encountered any danger, they wouldn't be wiped out.
Han Jue had deduced that the Chinese were not born on Earth. Zhen Yuanzi had specially introduced them. When he chose Earth, it was still dominated by dinosaurs. Zhen Yuanzi had no choice but to destroy the dinosaurs. The arrival of the Connate Human Race brought providence and promoted the evolution of the Earth's original humans, which created white and black people.
The evolution of any species was long, spanning tens of millions of years, or even hundreds of millions of years. With the help of the Connate Humans' spells, Earth's Human Race developed quickly and was evolved from the apes.
Han Jue had deduced that the Chinese were not born on Earth. Zhen Yuanzi had specially introduced them. When he chose Earth, it was still dominated by dinosaurs. Zhen Yuanzi had no choice but to destroy the dinosaurs. The arrival of the Connate Human Race brought providence and promoted the evolution of the Earth's original humans, which created white and black people.
The evolution of any species was long, spanning tens of millions of years, or even hundreds of millions of years. With the help of the Connate Humans' spells, Earth's Human Race developed quickly and was evolved from the apes.
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The Grey Mage
Certified Team Flare Hater
- Location
- Parallel Universe 43-j
Nine Evolutions of True Spirit and Aspiring The Immortal Path on Hosted Novel are pretty good so far.
NETS MC is at the Core Realm and AIP MC is only at the first realm though, so they're both pretty early stages.
Otherwise, Archaen Eon Art is pretty good if you don't mind Qidian or hunting down an alternative, though I think it's been a couple years since that finished.
I, the Fated Villain is pretty good (you should be able to find it via novelupdates).
The protagonist is transmigrated into an arrogant young master who is secretly a demonic cultivator. He is guided by a system that awards him points every time he manages to 'play' one of the Favored Children of Heaven (i.e., generally expys of fairly popular Xianxia protagonists), but because they are favored and he is not, he can't win a direct confrontation with them unless he first exhausts their fortune.
The initial opponent has the ghost of a powerful cultivator teaching him, then there's the one who is possessed by the soul of a dead powerful cultivator, the one who has been reborn after she was betrayed and killed (by his future self), the one who had her dao bone ripped out of her (by his past self), the one with the ancient and legendary inheritance of power...
So basically, a fustercluck of xianxia protagonists, all with axes to grind against a single antagonist... who sets out to steal their 'destined opportunities' and 'fairy maidens'.
The protagonist is transmigrated into an arrogant young master who is secretly a demonic cultivator. He is guided by a system that awards him points every time he manages to 'play' one of the Favored Children of Heaven (i.e., generally expys of fairly popular Xianxia protagonists), but because they are favored and he is not, he can't win a direct confrontation with them unless he first exhausts their fortune.
The initial opponent has the ghost of a powerful cultivator teaching him, then there's the one who is possessed by the soul of a dead powerful cultivator, the one who has been reborn after she was betrayed and killed (by his future self), the one who had her dao bone ripped out of her (by his past self), the one with the ancient and legendary inheritance of power...
So basically, a fustercluck of xianxia protagonists, all with axes to grind against a single antagonist... who sets out to steal their 'destined opportunities' and 'fairy maidens'.
Kind of depends. If it's played straight, yeah. Especially the 'fairy maidens', that shit is always a red flag. If it's played more for comedy, than it could be fun.
kinglugia
Hora hora~
You'll need to be at 1k+ chapters in to see whether it'll actually set up red flags, considering how authors tend to ramble on and on and on...
From what I remember, does that one do the thing where the villain MC does nothing wrong and the expies are all the actual assholes who deserve to get screwed over?
Well, I can't argue with that. Of course, it's not a problem for me, because 'Not getting to the point' is one of my biggest No's, so I'd never find out either way. That and shitty translations are the two big reasons why I haven't read any of the big chines novels.
- Location
- Singapore
Beware of Chicken, Virtous Sons, When Immortal Ascension Fails Time Travel to Try Again, The Path of Ascension, This young master is not cannon fodder and Ave Xia Rem Y are fairly good royalroad Xianxia / Xianxia inspired fics.
On the chinese webnovel side, I have been following star gate, a semi sequal to world's best martial artists and Earth people are insane by the author of 40 milleniums of cultivation. Both are fairly good and have decent translations avaliable.
On the chinese webnovel side, I have been following star gate, a semi sequal to world's best martial artists and Earth people are insane by the author of 40 milleniums of cultivation. Both are fairly good and have decent translations avaliable.
Mors
Searching for immanence
Not the first time I've read this concept and it won't be the last. It's not very edgelord-y which was a point in its favour, but frankly it's repetitive as shit. The routine of (1) kill the child of fate if he' a male, (2) of course she's gonna get seduced if she's a female, even if she's your sister; gets old fast.
Thanks I will check them out.
I am sorry but I don't really have an interest in Game system type of stories nor the whole "demonic" cultivator genre...
I lost my interest in Beware of the Chicken after the first book, largely love Virtous Sons, don't really enjoy revenge type of stories (nor really enjoyed the Fred the Accountant books beyond maybe the first one so saying you drew inspiration from them is not exactly promising) , hate LITRPGs, will check if I have time and just finished re-reading.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Okay. I've been reading Earth People Are Insane (webnovel). I gotta say, it's legitimately funny. It's also nice in the ways that 40K years of cultivation is - a generally likeable protagonist who is legitimately loyal to the society and people that raised him, a lack of the various standard xianxia toxicities and so forth.
I expect, given my previous experiences, that I'll lose interest eventually, but I also expect that I'll enjoy the ride getting there.
It is LitRPG, though, for those who hate that stuff. Personally, I like it.
I expect, given my previous experiences, that I'll lose interest eventually, but I also expect that I'll enjoy the ride getting there.
It is LitRPG, though, for those who hate that stuff. Personally, I like it.
kinglugia
Hora hora~
Mmm, tell me more bout the WN in question.
Leingod
Immaculate Blooming Lotus
An entire fictional Chinese city got isekai'd to a xianxia deathworld in the middle of a massive monster-filled forest 50 years ago and has been in a constant struggle for survival ever since, applying science to slowly figure out the local power system and develop techniques, equipment, etc.
The protagonist was a down-on-his luck high school student who got mentally sent back in time from a bad future where the city turned into a shitty dystopia (where he ended up essentially a broken, emotionally-stunted guerilla soldier desperately fighting a losing war) before the war with the monsters was over and then got crushed by the rest of the xianxia world. His system gives him points based on how much he contributes to the survival and well-being of the city and its populace, and so there's a lot of focus on addressing societal issues plaguing the city that would eventually become serious problems holding it back from success in the future, only some of which are the result of sabotage from much smarter monsters that are able to act covertly to undermine the city and the war effort.
Personally, whenever a WN starts going on about how people underestimate the MC because they don't know about the cheat or time travel or whatever that the readers already learned about from previous chapters or the summary, I quickly lose interest. Particularly since if it happens in the first three chapters, it'll probably happen again. And again. And again.
It'd be nice if people learned at least, and adapted. Enemies still go for them but they all have their own anti-cheat-X plan rather than being blindsided so often.