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

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@The Grey Mage Definitely needs more Mao Ni novels - Ze Tian Ji/Way of Choices, Nightfall, Joy of Life are all different enough to deserve a spot on the list.

My Disciple Died Yet Again and Cultivation Chat Group are on the top ranks as comedies go. World of Cultivation tries hard, too.

Come, Sword! (some call it Sword of Coming, in what I can only assume a sniggering tone) is great and deserves a spot in any top twenty xianxia list, but hasn't got any good translations so maybe leave that out.

Sansheng, Death Exists Not at the River of Oblivion is the best romance xianxia I've read, if a bit too romance heavy. But it's short enough to make up for that.

Heaven's Shadow is unique amongst historical xianxias in how it builds its world. (By not being set in the ancient desolate era of CN mythology.)

Zhu Xian (Jade Dynasty/The Legend of Chusen) is up there with Renegade Immortal in the ranks of tragedy-centric xianxia.

Daoist Gu, because... it is what it is.

Those are what come immediately to mind when we talk about a top list. I'll leave it out to others to second/third them, since they're all pretty well-known.
 
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@The Grey Mage
Well if we're discussing novels that should be on the list, if HSSB is on there, might as well put HN1F from that author as well. HN1F is fully translated unlike HSSB, and I rather like the sect building/disciple raising aspect of it that you unfortunately don't get to see too often with xianxia protags constantly hopping about being chased from one place to another.

Probably add Douluo Dalu as well. Either just one of them or one entry for the whole series.
 
Mors said:
Sansheng, Death Exists Not at the River of Oblivion is the best romance xianxia I've read, if a bit too romance heavy. But it's short enough to make up for that.
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I wholeheartedly second this. It's quite short, but it's an absolute delight.

I think it's been recommended a few months ago anyway, but I can personally attest that Ze Tian Ji/Way of Choices is also great, and while I haven't yet read them I'm sure the author's other work is good as well.
 
Lessee... well, let's start with six.

"Seeking the Flying Sword Path", by I Eat Tomatoes. In some sense this one feels like a bit of an iteration on some of the themes seen in his earlier "Desolate Era". Decent color on the cast of characters, protagonist feels more heroic than many xianxia "heroes". I'll call out how the story starts with the protagonist coming home from a colorful young adult life and on a mission to get rid of a demon he has a grudge from childhood with - it doesn't start with him at 'zero' or gives him an oppressed or crippled backstory. The author has also perfected his in-setting mechanic to explain why most of the big guys don't go around massacring the little guys; he had a karma/sin system in "Desolate Era", but it's more polished here.
No harem bullshit - the main romance develops fast but in a reasonable fashion given that, and the couple lasts through the whole story. The protagonist has students and even children, so there's a bit of a teacher and "family man" aspect here and there. I recall a minimum of "slap face, escalate to win" going on in the story - the escalation of threats feels more 'rational'* and, paired with the karma/sin system, I don't recall ever feeling like the author was shoehorning a conflict in to justify the classic xianxia virtuous cycle.
I'd also put "Desolate Era" on this list, although it feels a bit rougher than Flying Sword Path.

"Cosmic Professional Gladiator", the latest by I Eat Tomatoes. Has a more sci-fi feel to it and starting in a more or less modern world with slightly supernatural martial arts. In progress, and clearly early in the story. Like the author's previous stories, the protagonist gets married early on and is likely to be faithful for the whole story - he'll probably (given a timeskip enough) have kids.

"Cultivation Chat Room", already recommended. Has a good amount of tongue in cheek, with the protagonist suffering in a comedic fashion about as often as the other characters. The details of the cosmology, as they're slowly revealed, feel like a well-crafted puzzle being put together, and that's one reason to keep reading. The secondary characters are fun to follow, from the name-fetishist dog demon to the notoriously lucky cultivation fanatic to the reckless death-seeking cultivator to the shady transforming fortune teller. While the protagonist does the skyrocking advancement common to xianxia stories, it's done in a fashion that hints at Shenanigans Going On behind the scene, as part of the aformentioned cosmology.

"Fey Evolution Merchant". This is an entry of the 'pet' subgenre of xianxia, and is probably the one I've enjoyed the most so far. The pet mechanics feel good to read about, and they're integrated into the story fairly well. The protagonist is a reasonably decent person, although things come a little too easily to him (common in xianxia, admittedly).

"My Girlfriend from Turquoise Pond Requests My Help after My Millenium Seclusion" is an entry from the "daily check-in" subgenre and is the one I've liked the most from it so far. The check-ins (on places where there's a "path to the Great Dao") do fade away in importance, with them only showing up on occasion when he checks a particularly significant place. The protagonist takes an extremely low-key and hidden approach to life and cultivation, being practically a hermit on the 9th summit where he's the only disciple and refusing to go out if at all possible.
The title relationship develops gradually and feels quite... real, to be honest, being between two people who are both introverted but generally willing to try and make the (arranged) relationship work. I found myself quite happy to see it advance, to the point where they're both quietly in love with each other... but still rather awkward and cold.

"My Senior Brother is Too Steady" is another story where the protagonist goes to the extremes to keep himself hidden. Unlike the previous, he's fairly proactive and aggressive in doing this - comically, he has a routine to settle the angry remnant spirits of adversaries so they can't get revenge or reveal his identity. He's also an extreme-scale plotter with some advance understanding of what the future holds due to a double-reincarnation involving a life in the 'future' as well as from the "real world". This story is complete, and has some interesting twists in the cosmology as its revealed throughout the story. There's a lot of colorful characters here, drawn from a mishmash of Chinese mythology.
There's two love interests, and I did find the courting between the protagonist and the one introduced second to be charming in a way similar to Turquoise Pond.

* That is, either the protagonist (or someone else) actually "wronged" the antagonist in question (killing a disciple, foiling a plot, etc), or there's a significant material gain from beating the protagonist
 
Still reading Oh My God! Earthlings are Insane! Currently reading on wuxiaworld, which seems to have a nice translation and also no paywall. Lots of ads in kind of obnoxious ways, but those go away if you turn off javascript. Currently on Chapter 268. Honestly, there's a lot to like here.

- There continues to be real humor and banter and whatnot, and not just from the MC. There are seriously funny moments in scenes where the MC isn't there at all.
- People other than the MC are allowed to be cool, even in ways that the MC himself is cool. Like, it's clear that shamelessness is one of the ways people get to be cool in this story... and we've now met a reasonably sympathetic character who's even more shameless than the MC.
- Same on philosophical debates. There are people with very different ideas about fundamental philosophy, with distinct disagreements. The MC holds forth on his position, the others hold forth on theirs, and there isn't really a canonical right answer. It's more of a "Okay. We have fundamentally incompatible worldviews. Can we still work together in spite of them?" Often the answer is "yes".
- MC is very much a guile hero, and isn't always successful at it. Much of the time, he manages to pull off his tricks. Sometimes, though, other characters catch him dead to rights and call him out on it, and there's not really anything he can say. This shows up in the philosophical debates sometimes too. Occasionally, the MC talks himself into a corner and has to backpedal.
- Even the really awesome stuff that the MC pulls off, it's clear that his contribution was necessary to making it happen (because you have a convenient "what if I wasn't here" timeline full of suck to compare to) but at the same time his successes are only possible because other characters were also out there being awesome in their own ways, and he's quite aware of this.
- I honestly can't detect any misogyny. There are definitely female characters out there being awesome just like there are male characters out there being awesome. It's refreshing.
- Most of the time, the characters that the MC opposes... mostly seem to be acting more or less sane? I mean, there are certainly some "designated villain" cards being handed around, especially in the earlier chapters, and said designated villains do get their comeuppance, but there wasn't any point where I looked at one of them and felt like they were completely crazy for doing what they were doing, or that it was entirely unreasonable that someone might act like that.
- MC is, again, legitimately loyal to the society that raised him. That's... nice. It's really nice.

There were a couple of times where the MC was a bit too crazy-prepared, or where his plans went off a bit too smoothly for my taste. There's at least one point where just changing it to "well, I figured that you might have some way of thwarting that plan, so I put in a backup plan" would have been a huge improvement over "well of course you were going to thwart that plan in this specific way, so I in a backup plan". Of course, the MC is happy to lie about things like that, so...? Regardless, it's a relatively minor issue.

I would say that it's at least as good as the author's previous 40K Years of Cultivation, and that one was pretty darned good as far as translated xianxia goes.
 
I'm also reading Oh My God! Earthlings are Insane!

There's also one point where he goes through with his "cunning plan" which involves using all his resources in a crazy, up-front murderfest so he can relax later.
His reasoning is that if you can complete a mission in one day, then you don't need to carry the extra supplies required to pace yourself out over multiple days, and you won't end up in a desperate situation later.

Now I'm not a military expert, but I'm pretty sure that's in direct contradiction of all successful mission planning.
First of all there's no way you'd have perfect enough information to cut your margins of error like that.
Second, Murphy will fuck you over the instant you give it a chance.

He goes into a controlled exam to kill monsters.
He completely ignores the guns and ammo, buys all explosives, and the cheapest saber he can get.
He uses all of the explosives in one big boom to wipe out a bunch of rat-monsters (which honestly makes me think he's bad at using explosives.)
Sacrifices his armor to kill the cat-monsters faster.
Then opportunistically snipes the snake-monsters.

Then a space-warp drags all the exam-takers into the depths of the forest surrounded by wolf-monsters.
Oops.
Not only would it be nice to have intact armor, but his cheapo saber snaps before he can kill the wolf-king.
Then he gets out via Old-Monster-Ex-Machina.

It's kinda frustrating because it instantly demonstrates how moronic his "strategy" was, but he seems totally oblivious to the fact that his decisions directly made the later battle much worse.
 
Also reading Earthlings are Insane.
Sirrocco said:
- Same on philosophical debates. There are people with very different ideas about fundamental philosophy, with distinct disagreements. The MC holds forth on his position, the others hold forth on theirs, and there isn't really a canonical right answer. It's more of a "Okay. We have fundamentally incompatible worldviews. Can we still work together in spite of them?" Often the answer is "yes".
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I do enjoy that this is a story that makes you think at times, but man do I see a lot of comments that complain about "too much talky, get back to the punchy." Like Jesus, go read another dime a dozen power fantasy xianxia that goes from slapping one face to another if that's what you want.
Blaflaix said:
Then a space-warp drags all the exam-takers into the depths of the forest surrounded by wolf-monsters.
Oops.
Not only would it be nice to have intact armor, but his cheapo saber snaps before he can kill the wolf-king.
Then he gets out via Old-Monster-Ex-Machina.

It's kinda frustrating because it instantly demonstrates how moronic his "strategy" was, but he seems totally oblivious to the fact that his decisions directly made the later battle much worse.
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I don't think you're being fair at all to him here. He was participating in an exam that was being watched over by military troops and multiple Heaven rank superhumans. He had every assurance that this would just be an exam and everything would be under control. His plan was made to maximize his exam results as much as possible so that he could get into a good university and continue developing, and in that regard his exam plans were fantastic.

Planning for what should have been a sure thing under controlled conditions to go that horribly wrong and choosing a suboptimal exam strategy because of it would have been extreme paranoia to the point of potentially crippling future advancement from failing to get good results and thus jeopardizing all of the future.

Frankly, if he had successfully predicted that things would go that wrong with no indications, and without having explicitly remembered it from future memories, that would have been an even huger ass pull. His plan was perfectly optimized for the conditions and his goals. But sometimes things just go wrong.
 
Sirrocco said:
Still reading Oh My God! Earthlings are Insane! Currently reading on wuxiaworld, which seems to have a nice translation and also no paywall. Lots of ads in kind of obnoxious ways, but those go away if you turn off javascript. Currently on Chapter 268. Honestly, there's a lot to like here.

- There continues to be real humor and banter and whatnot, and not just from the MC. There are seriously funny moments in scenes where the MC isn't there at all.
- People other than the MC are allowed to be cool, even in ways that the MC himself is cool. Like, it's clear that shamelessness is one of the ways people get to be cool in this story... and we've now met a reasonably sympathetic character who's even more shameless than the MC.
- Same on philosophical debates. There are people with very different ideas about fundamental philosophy, with distinct disagreements. The MC holds forth on his position, the others hold forth on theirs, and there isn't really a canonical right answer. It's more of a "Okay. We have fundamentally incompatible worldviews. Can we still work together in spite of them?" Often the answer is "yes".
- MC is very much a guile hero, and isn't always successful at it. Much of the time, he manages to pull off his tricks. Sometimes, though, other characters catch him dead to rights and call him out on it, and there's not really anything he can say. This shows up in the philosophical debates sometimes too. Occasionally, the MC talks himself into a corner and has to backpedal.
- Even the really awesome stuff that the MC pulls off, it's clear that his contribution was necessary to making it happen (because you have a convenient "what if I wasn't here" timeline full of suck to compare to) but at the same time his successes are only possible because other characters were also out there being awesome in their own ways, and he's quite aware of this.
- I honestly can't detect any misogyny. There are definitely female characters out there being awesome just like there are male characters out there being awesome. It's refreshing.
- Most of the time, the characters that the MC opposes... mostly seem to be acting more or less sane? I mean, there are certainly some "designated villain" cards being handed around, especially in the earlier chapters, and said designated villains do get their comeuppance, but there wasn't any point where I looked at one of them and felt like they were completely crazy for doing what they were doing, or that it was entirely unreasonable that someone might act like that.
- MC is, again, legitimately loyal to the society that raised him. That's... nice. It's really nice.

There were a couple of times where the MC was a bit too crazy-prepared, or where his plans went off a bit too smoothly for my taste. There's at least one point where just changing it to "well, I figured that you might have some way of thwarting that plan, so I put in a backup plan" would have been a huge improvement over "well of course you were going to thwart that plan in this specific way, so I in a backup plan". Of course, the MC is happy to lie about things like that, so...? Regardless, it's a relatively minor issue.

I would say that it's at least as good as the author's previous 40K Years of Cultivation, and that one was pretty darned good as far as translated xianxia goes.
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I agree with all of the above, but I'd like to add two things:
- It shares a theme with 40k Milleniums, that being exploring the question of how to build a society that both superhumans and regular humans can be members of. Put another way, it's probing at what relationships there can be or should be between those that are human and those that are more than human. I think an important difference is that 40k, in several of its arcs, investigated the attitude superhumans had towards normal humans. Earthlings are Insane, in the 350 chapters I've read, looks at similar questions from the perspective of the noncultivators. If the superhumans just decide to pull up the few ladders there are to becoming superhuman, to enslave the noncultivators or to just leave the regulars to their fate, is there anything that can be done? How does a society make sure that it doesn't come to that point?

- Unfortunately, while the author's greatest strength is the fact that they're willing to think about, portray and discuss such immensely difficult societal questions, it also results in an immense slowdown of the narrative. After a while, the story gets bogged down in the endless dialogue necessary to portray or set up the questions mentioned above, and the characters' answers to those questions. I do think that occasional breaks for more lighthearted stuff or action wouldn't be amiss, which is something that IMO 40k had a better handle on.
 
SCDarkSoul said:
I don't think you're being fair at all to him here. He was participating in an exam that was being watched over by military troops and multiple Heaven rank superhumans. He had every assurance that this would just be an exam and everything would be under control. His plan was made to maximize his exam results as much as possible so that he could get into a good university and continue developing, and in that regard his exam plans were fantastic.

Planning for what should have been a sure thing under controlled conditions to go that horribly wrong and choosing a suboptimal exam strategy because of it would have been extreme paranoia to the point of potentially crippling future advancement from failing to get good results and thus jeopardizing all of the future.

Frankly, if he had successfully predicted that things would go that wrong with no indications, and without having explicitly remembered it from future memories, that would have been an even huger ass pull. His plan was perfectly optimized for the conditions and his goals. But sometimes things just go wrong.
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Very true, and if it had just been for the exam, that'd be it.
But he was specifically relating his plan as "here is how you should be thinking for the future in military missions."

The armor is notable because it wasn't part of the exam planning, it was given out to keep them safe from hazards, and he declared it a disposable resource on the second stage.

He acquired an unknown amount of napalm and explosives and used it all at once, apparently calculating that it would get an exact amount of points.
Then he got the cheapest saber, specifically noting that it was fragile and likely to break, depending on his skills to keep it intact.
Would it really have been that bad to drop one or two explosives to get a more robust saber?

Also, he didn't know the third monster.
He made a good guess, but if the army hadn't been able to get the Blade Pythons, then he might've been surprised... and found himself without armor and a weak saber for the third fight which could've easily gone against him.

Basically he made reckless decisions even within what he knew, the following accident just underlined it.

Then strutted around in front of other students saying "only an idiot would hold something in reserve."
 
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Blaflaix said:
Very true, and if it had just been for the exam, that'd be it.
But he was specifically relating his plan as "here is how you should be thinking for the future in military missions."

The armor is notable because it wasn't part of the exam planning, it was given out to keep them safe from hazards, and he declared it a disposable resource on the second stage.

He acquired an unknown amount of napalm and explosives and used it all at once, apparently calculating that it would get an exact amount of points.
Then he got the cheapest saber, specifically noting that it was fragile and likely to break, depending on his skills to keep it intact.
Would it really have been that bad to drop one or two explosives to get a more robust saber?

Also, he didn't know the third monster.
He made a good guess, but if the army hadn't been able to get the Blade Pythons, then he might've been surprised... and found himself without armor and a weak saber for the third fight which could've easily gone against him.

Basically he made reckless decisions even within what he knew, the following accident just underlined it.

Then strutted around in front of other students saying "only an idiot would hold something in reserve."
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He knew the first two monsters.

I don't think he was banking on an exact amount of points off the rats with the explosives, simply "a lot". He knew how to gather them up and concluded that explosives would kill enough of them to be worth the points while expending very little effort from himself.

He was fully prepared to expend next to everything on the second monster because he didn't actually plan on going that hard for the third monster. Up to this point, his cheap saber was deemed sufficient because he knew his skills and what he would be up against, he's min-maxing, not spending a point more than what he needed for a given task.

For the third monster, yes, he did not know for sure what it was, and only had a reasonable deduction. But basically, he concluded that it would likely be more effort than it was worth, i.e. preparing for this stage was not worth spending the points for, and he was better off spending all points to maximize gains in the first two stages. He would have been perfectly fine just hiding and waiting out this stage and getting nothing more, but set things up so that he could basically kill steal for minimum effort as icing on top of his cake if he got lucky. Again, he deemed his chosen saber sufficient here, as either he's getting easy pick up kills where he doesn't even need to actually clash head on, or the monster is simply a big enough pain in the ass that he's just not going to bother.

The lessons he was teaching were basically:
  • Everything is a resource (or "weapon" as he says).
  • All expendable resources at your disposal should be expended if they aid in reaching your goal.
  • Realize what the parameters of the mission are, and optimize to your advantage according to them.
Within the confines of a controlled exam everything he did made perfect sense. You shouldn't apply the exact tactics he used for the exam out in the field, but the more general lessons are worth remembering. Within the exam you wouldn't have to worry about extraction or finding a safe place to recover afterwards, using absolutely everything provided and pushing yourself just short of serious injury for more kills/points makes perfect sense within context. In the field you wouldn't do such a thing unless you're right next to a base for resupply afterwards, and know you aren't needed back on the field in short order, like part of your objectives should be "be capable of withdrawing afterwards" and "don't put yourself out of commission for upcoming missions" unless it's an actual suicide mission. But those didn't apply here.
 
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I dropped that one after the peanut gallery rambled about how the MC was hopeless because of his ruined cultivation and that there was no way he could do some sort of stance that it turned out he actually could do due to time travel.
 
aattss said:
I dropped that one after the peanut gallery rambled about how the MC was hopeless because of his ruined cultivation and that there was no way he could do some sort of stance that it turned out he actually could do due to time travel.
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.... have they never read any other cultivation stories? ruined cultivation becoming OP somehow is like basic bitch tropes for xianxia stories lol
 
Been reading that one, too, but I almost dropped it in a recent conversation between him and a "neighbor" about humans working together and whatnot. Wasn't quite sure what to think when he started talking about CEOs back on earth not making more than 5 times what janitors do or the pets of rich dogs not eating better than poor folks and whatnot, heh.

I chalked it up to the protag being born like half a century after his city got ISOT'd and conditions having been mythologized (or something like that) and not just being horribly ignorant or somethin', but holy shit did that argument have holes you could drive one of those flying air fortresses through for anyone that actually had any idea about the conditions on earth :V
 
Frumple said:
Been reading that one, too, but I almost dropped it in a recent conversation between him and a "neighbor" about humans working together and whatnot. Wasn't quite sure what to think when he started talking about CEOs back on earth not making more than 5 times what janitors do or the pets of rich dogs not eating better than poor folks and whatnot, heh.

I chalked it up to the protag being born like half a century after his city got ISOT'd and conditions having been mythologized (or something like that) and not just being horribly ignorant or somethin', but holy shit did that argument have holes you could drive one of those flying air fortresses through for anyone that actually had any idea about the conditions on earth :V
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Yeah, I had to raise an eyebrow at that part too. While rich people here aren't ridiculously strong superhumans, the wealth inequality is absolutely every bit as bad or even worse given that they have access to global markets and less existential threats.

But anyways, it wasn't meant for the MC to be "100% right" and prove the other party totally wrong. Even if the other party was doing some whacked out shit, his arguments and grievances had legitimate points that the MC is still chewing over for hundreds of chapters and that other people also bring up.

Whenever it comes to the debates between philosophy, societal issues, and politics, there often seems to be no single right answer and most parties on either side have at least some worthwhile points.
 
SCDarkSoul said:
But anyways, it wasn't meant for the MC to be "100% right" and prove the other party totally wrong. Even if the other party was doing some whacked out shit, his arguments and grievances had legitimate points that the MC is still chewing over for hundreds of chapters and that other people also bring up.
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Oh sure, that can be a thing without much trouble. There's just a difference between "not 100% right" and "110% wrong" :V

Honestly, as I was reading it, based on the memory related stuff I was expecting a sort of "We all burn the same" response, or something along those lines, instead of... what we got. The dissonance involved was nearly as offputting as the wild naivety, I think. Either way it made a lot of the MC's character foundation feel a lot weaker, which was kinda' unfortunate. Basically felt OOC to what we'd seen so far, which was weird, y'know?

aattss said:
That's probably part of why I've dropped so many cultivation stories.
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For what it's worth, in universe it's usually (as in "go generations on generations without encountering it" usual) a fairly safe assumption? Like, this earthling thing has deviations and cripplings and whatnot happen quite a lot and the number of people that turn that around are near 0 -- for someone that's raised in an environment like that, hedging your bets on a near impossibility is, like... not reasonable?

It's foolish from our perspective (and would 100% be insanely stupid for a modern earth based xianxia isekai critter to be indulging in, because they should realize they're in trope land and going to be running into them), but for a xianxia mook thinking rando mcgee happens to have a golden thumb jammed so far up their butt glittery fingernails are waving out the other side would be a wild sort of paranoia. It's a pretty tired trope (which, fairness where it's due, is plenty of reason to drop a story, heh), but not particularly unreasonable behavior for jerks in a martial arts fantasy, I don't think.
 
Frumple said:
For what it's worth, in universe it's usually (as in "go generations on generations without encountering it" usual) a fairly safe assumption? Like, this earthling thing has deviations and cripplings and whatnot happen quite a lot and the number of people that turn that around are near 0 -- for someone that's raised in an environment like that, hedging your bets on a near impossibility is, like... not reasonable?

It's foolish from our perspective (and would 100% be insanely stupid for a modern earth based xianxia isekai critter to be indulging in, because they should realize they're in trope land and going to be running into them), but for a xianxia mook thinking rando mcgee happens to have a golden thumb jammed so far up their butt glittery fingernails are waving out the other side would be a wild sort of paranoia. It's a pretty tired trope (which, fairness where it's due, is plenty of reason to drop a story, heh), but not particularly unreasonable behavior for jerks in a martial arts fantasy, I don't think.
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Whether or not the author contrives an excuse to make other character's thought processes logically consistent is not a significant factor in my opinion of the underestimated MC trope.

IMO the protagonist starting out as a cripple or such is particularly blatant in regards to the reason the author chose to use that trope.
 
aattss said:
IMO the protagonist starting out as a cripple or such is particularly blatant in regards to the reason the author chose to use that trope.
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I'm not sure if it quite applies in this story.
He's routinely depicted as weaker than his peers, his victories come from being more ruthless/experienced.
So he'll be threatening/negotiating with people and saying "Yes you could kill me, but..."

To give an example, after that exam where his entire testing group was teleported to the wilderness and surrounded by wolves and he killed the wolf king, he was given bonus points for the exam to compensate.
I think he came in 9th.

Which honestly made me wonder "What the hell did the other 8 people do!?"


So while he is underestimated, it isn't really in terms of power.
They're correctly assessing his cultivation, and even when he does win it's in such a underhanded way that people have trouble respecting him.

It doesn't really have the normal dynamic of an arrogant, domineering antagonists provoking him, followed by a beat-down and cowering.
 
Blaflaix said:
He's routinely depicted as weaker than his peers, his victories come from being more ruthless/experienced.
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Honestly while he starts out weaker, he does catch up and then overtake them eventually. That's one thing I like with both this story and 40k, the MC is in fact actually able to eventually stand out without either his peers somehow magically managing to catch up, or there somehow always being another layer of more talented and richer people where he has only just barely reached their standard after surpassing his old peers. And given that humanity in this story is confined to one city with a population of like ~10mil, of which of course only a fraction are cultivators, and a fraction of a fraction are high level cultivators, society at large does acknowledge him as a once in a generation genius once he gets there.
 
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@The Grey Mage I have to disagree with the writeup for A Will Eternal. The main character is a con man, thief, kidnapper, and has used both date rape drugs and coercion to extort sex.

Furthermore the entry completely failed to address the fact that the story is a comedy, where half the jokes are about the MC being a terrible person
 
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For what it's worth, that doesn't necessarily invalidate the statement it's one of the more moral xianxia protags :V

Person making the writeup may just have an impressively low opinion of punch magic MCs, heh.
 
So some Xianxia Theorycrafting:

Cultivator accumulates qi.
Cultivator opens meridians to use qi.
The more/wider meridians they open, the more/better spells they can use.

Then at a later stage, the qi they use become much more powerful for whatever reason.
If they have a few meridians a little bit open, they can now launch spells with good control.
If they have more meridians open further, they can blast out lots of spells, but it's uncontrolled and painful.
If they have all of them wide open, they explode.

This introduces a bunch of interesting ideas.

First is they can get a lot of power early, but at significant cost later.
They more privileged people can have guards early on and pick their goals, while someone more desperate has to push things.

A group could end up with some people carrying the weaker ones, then later the situation reverses.

The ignorant, underdog protagonist could launch ahead, then later discover this sword of Damocles hanging over him.
"What, what do you mean there's consequences for the reckless acquisition of power!?"

A medicine/artifact/technique that can restrict meridians would be immensely valuable.
 
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