Website : qidian china
Views : 49.14million
Rating : 9.2(3569)
Chapters : 2446
Status : completed
Word count : ????
Author : Wang Yu
author level : Platinum
No of works : 5
Disscussion : 208272
Year started : 2008
Translated works : Demon's Diary, The Portal of Wonderland
Genres : Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Martial Arts, Mature, Xianxia
Tags : Adapted to Anime, Alchemy, Average-looking Protagonist, Cultivation, Cunning Protagonist, Doctors, Eidetic Memory, Hard-Working Protagonist, Insects, Late Romance, Legendary Artifacts, Loner Protagonist, Lucky Protagonist, Male Protagonist, Pill Concocting, Puppeteers, Romantic Subplot, Ruthless Protagonist, Slow Growth at Start, Underestimated Protagonist, Weak to Strong
Popularity : Highly popular in china
Last edited : 24/nov/2018
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Website : qidian international
Views : 1million
Rating : 4.5(92)
Chapters : 689(here) 828(ww)
Rank :
Status : ongoing
Schedule :
Translator : Doubledd
Editor : Doubledd
Popularity : It's a novel from ww so it's popular there
Last edited : 24/nov/2018
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Synopsis : A poor and ordinary boy from a village joins a minor sect in Jiang Hu and becomes an Unofficial Disciple by chance. How will Han Li, a commoner by birth, establish a foothold for himself in his sect? With his mediocre aptitude, how will he successfully traverse the path of cultivation and become an immortal?
This is a story of an ordinary mortal who, against all odds, clashes with devilish demons and the ancient celestials in order to find his own path to immortality.
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POSITIVE REVIEW :
Review as of c212: 4.5/5.
My first point: If you want action packed fast paced and/or a genius with (a) heaven defying treasure (s) and luck then don't bother with this one because it's as far as can be from what you want.
Minor
Spoiler
The story is about a kid who can't be anymore mediocre whether in looks or talents, got dragged into the cultivation world and step by step climbing up in power while bitterly trying to preserve his own life by making use of a treasure that does not increase his cultivation talent at all. The first hundred chapters as a form of prologue is slow, but the "slow" is just right. You can't expect too much from an all-round average kid, even being able to improve at his current stage is already a feast for someone like him.
What makes this novel worth reading:
1. There is this saying about the more hollow the drum, the louder it sounds. People with low intelligence and low talent are the best blabbers. I always think that the cultivation world where only power speaks volume, nonsensical verbal arguments from every opponent is too much too unrealistic. This novel precisely avoids that. In a world where danger lurks everywhere, where there is always someone stronger or has better treasures than you, it's easy to lose one's life. Even no matter how much backing one has, if they die then that's it. If everyone is a hollow drum, then Jianghu is nothing but a joke.
That's why it's delightful to see that the majority of characters (enemies included) are NOT brainless idiots with foul mouths that spout 5+ line paragraphs. When there is a need to fight they fight. Everyone (even demonic beasts) priorities their life and has certain degree of guard against any opponent even if they are stronger in power. Heck yeah that's more like it.
2. As mentioned MC is average in everything, even his personality (he is no villain nor hero). His treasure is prolly the only thing that makes him worth writing a story about. However, the spotlight shifts to him thanks to his incisiveness (one example would be his low resistance to beauty but refusing to suffer for it). He absolutely knows how to THINK. From the clever use of the treasure to making the right choices in tough situations, by constantly activating his brains he is able to stay alive and still withholding the bottom line of his principles.
This incisiveness doesn't come out of nowhere, but painstakingly learned from the first 100 chaps that meticulously built up his foundation knowledge of the cruel cultivation world. It's fun to see him grow and facing challenges with his own wit rather than resorting to glaringly blatant plot armor or deus ex.
3. No useless fillers so far *throws confetti*
Why you might find it boring: pill pill pill tool tool tool. That's the most of it for powering up so far. However it's only sensible. His treasure aids in pills, with his talent he won't get anywhere far without pills, and wouldn't survive long without good tools. Think of this as contribution to his intellect though, knowing how to use tools is a talent for survival. Not seeing much of fighting techniques is a little sad for me, but no OP shiny fancy name actions that kill in less than a millisecond is also good. I do hope to see good techniques later on though. Anyhow, I would like to conclude this by referring back to my first point.
-By Sae(NU)
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NEGATIVE REVIEW :
Well, I finally gave up. I'd say this novel is a 3/5 overall (with rare 4/5 moments), but as some parts are a 1/5 and I actually got frustrated and bored to the point of dropping it (which usually doesn't happen even with average 3/5 novels), it's just getting 2/5 from me.
So, what do we have here? Yeah, I came into this story after looking through all of the reviews and all of the tags. What did I come here for? As you can expect, I actually didn't think many of the "bad points" mentioned in the reviews were truly bad points for me. I wanted a loner protagonist, I felt it would be interesting with a fairly "average person" who had to work for his sh*t and didn't just get everything for free, I wanted zero romance (or at least close to it), I wanted a rational, cold-hearted MC that didn't get attached to anyone and didn't get too affected with other people, especially not girls, I wanted battles that were somewhat decent and not the regular crap... Did I get what I wished for? Well, in some ways. Let me explain some things in greater detail about this novel.
1. The MC is a loner. That's true. He's pretty much only cultivating by himself, his personality is also fairly insipid at times.
2. The MC isn't OP, that's true. However, he's not even average. He's quite frankly underpowered, this will probably change later on, but I guess he'll be the underdog trash again after going to the next realm. It would be okay if he wasn't so damn underpowered that it feels pretty much hopeless at times. I mean, his cheat clearly is heaven-defying luck to let him survive everything and somehow cultivate to become a true immortal or something later on at the end! How the f*ck did he manage that with the one of the trashiest spirit roots in a cultivation place with almost no resources when people with the most heaven defying sh*t ever can't even do the same? Yeah, by overpowered luck (plot armor), which the author conveniently pretends he doesn't have by making him underpowered. It gets a bit annoying when he gets pushed around by everyone around him though, even if he will probably get revenge later on. He's always under people's mercy.
3. The battles are... Well. The first two were good, it has that going for it! I guess. Those two were honestly great, a lot of skill involved and he made use of pure skill to win/almost win. This, however, quickly changed as we came into the cultivation world properly. As we all know, the MC is greatly underpowered and how will he kill people then? Yeah, with treasures. Lots of shiny treasures. The battles become very, very boring and dull as every battle afterwards is just about who has the shiniest treasure and who has the most magic power to power said treasures. It just becomes a battle of attrition with fancy weapons and explosions.
4. He's... Well, he can be smart at times. He frequently shifts between retarded and a smartarse. Not much more to say there, maybe just that it often has to do with girls, but not only.
5. The author finds it funny to skip over stuff without any warning whatsoever. He likes building up our expectations for something and then pretend it never happened. Skipping over tournaments, skipping over parts where he's supposed to do a certain big task, skipping over so damn much...
6. The descriptions regarding cultivation levels and techniques, including pills and anything else are pitiful to say the least. We at most know what some things are supposed to do, but not at all how it truly works. We know from very early on about a sh*tload of realms, including realms that is supposed to be above this plane. However, the author explains NOTHING about how they work, NOTHING. We don't even know anything at all about the realm he's in, he's just cultivating and advancing, it took until the MC pretty much reached that layer before we even knew how many layers the qi condensation stage had in total! Even then the author didn't explain anything. He also practices a lot of medicine, but we don't know anything about how it works, how he crafts his pills etc. We seriously don't know anything at all about how anything works... Also, we can't keep track of what the MC knows either, because he'll just learn stuff in time skips and the author never mentions it until it's necessary. Poor writing to say the least.
7. Too much redundant info dumping going on, but not the good kinds. Not the kind you'd be interested in. No, we get info dumps about useless trivia that will never, ever matter, about other people, about their stuff, about their plans, what they think about, we get fillers with their perspective which absolutely doesn't matter at all. So, in other words, the author info dumps as much as he can for worthless crap that is easy to make up and just write for word count, because you don't even have to think to write garbage about people who will disappear in one chapter or scenaries that doesn't matter.
8. Okay, let's make this the last point as I don't want to complain too much, it's also the part I hated the most. The WOMEN! I used caps to make sure you noticed how important this part is... Or something. Anyway, getting to the point, he's supposed to be cold-hearted, rational, calculating, cunning etc and not interested in other people, a loner, he's supposed to be logical, right? Yeah, none of that here when it comes to girls. Instead, we get the generic chinese drivel (we all know it should be illegal for chinese people to write romance of any kind as they're too stiff and caught in their cultural ideals which are horrible, like changing personalities completely etc). So, after the first book where no girls showed up, the author had clearly bottled up a lot of s*xual frustration and started to release it in great amounts. Jade beauty after heavenly beauty after normal beauty after supreme goddesses. The descriptions are quite honestly quite creepy and disgusting, he has to describe how they smell, look and feel, every part about anything like that, I'm surprised he's not writing about how they taste. This happens chapter after chapter, again and again for seemingly every or every other chapter. The girls are all obnoxious bitches and the MC is a huge hypocrite that becomes soft the moment he sees a beautiful woman, never wanting to harm them and the author even sometimes finds excuses for not killing a beautiful woman in a way that makes it sounds as if the MC is the ideal chivalrous chinese gentleman to women. It doesn't help that he drools at them, gets stunned by their beauty, smells them and keeps on being horny every time he meets girls like these, having essentially no self-control whatsoever (although the author would disagree and say he has a iron will because he doesn't just jump them and rape every woman on the spot, instead just being generally horny). Where did the calculating, logical and cold MC go? Nowhere to be seen. I can see where this is going and I'm not liking it.
Have you read er gen's works? Yeah, heavily ripped off from this author. This means they're fairly similar, the romance is quite similar, the MC is fairly similar, the events are very similar in many ways... I don't even like er gen's works that much. They're just average. Especially some parts like the romance which is so god damn awful it's ridiculous. Even then it's probably a bit better than this novel.
So, I mentioned a lot of things here, sure, there are more stuff to say, but I feel like I covered the most important things to note before picking this up. It's not THAT bad, but it's not really that good either. It feels like a lot of it was meant for hormone-driven teenagers who doesn't care as long as it's females and feel comfortable with a MC with all the issues I mentioned. It might be a good novel for people who haven't read over a hundred other chinese novels of similar genre. As for other people, I really don't recommend this novel unless you can ignore all the flaws or even like them, unless you don't have anything to read anymore and just wants something to waste your time with despite it being kinda average or at times subpar. Now then, I'm off to read a book with an OP MC who doesn't give a f*ck about women, I feel like I need it after this trainwreck. So much disappointment...
-By Seregosa(NU)
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My thoughts : I don't think I'll ever read this book. Not because it's bad or anything, it's just I'm past cultivation novels and also if I ever want to read cultivation novel I'll look for new novel. this is a very old novel.
In my library : No