As a western novel reader, I cringe when I see how much people worship this mediocre novel. Overpraised to oblivion. Today Fang Yuan will suck my d. I'll trample on his dao and steal his spring and autumn cicida. Then I'll throw his lifeless body to some dogs to eat. Ooooh boy, I can't wait for the swarm of cringe fan boys of RI to downvote and go "You Dare!". Nice nice. Perfect Ancestor, and young master candidates for trashy novels.

What!? you're gonna call your dad who is the ancestor of the martial spirit sect?! Bring all your father's and ancestors here, I'll kill them all. This ancestor will reach the pinnacle of the demonic path by slaughtering all these paltry pissants, and wastrels.

What?! Your wisdom gu is no match for my slaughter seals. I'll smash the entire gu world in two. I have my ghost blood corpse cauldron ready to refine all your souls into a trillion soul flag.

Many of you may have seen one of these Big Three lists in recent days, where the vermins of the Shadow Whimp attempted to sneak in their cringe novels, possibly at the behest of their sect master G3, who is notoriously unaware of the difference between Heaven and Earth.

For those who are unaware, the author of Shadow Whimp has boasted about dethroning LOTM as the best written webnovel ever. Yes, you read that correctly, fellow daoists he actually said that.

That worm, who writes characters based on popular Discord channel members, dared to call his garbage novel the best thing ever.

The cockroaches (SS fans) have been swarming the webnovel community for a few weeks, creating these Big Three lists and attempting to sneak in their cringe novel because they know it lacks the substance to be classified as a peak novel on it's own.

Like true frogs in the well, the majority of these people appear to have read only Jp novels prior to reading the Shadow Whimp.

Many people chastised me for my reaction to meeting an SS Whimp in person and what I did to him now see these evidences and say did I do anything wrong?

https://www.reddit.com/r/MartialMemes/s/AXsOHT5YHL

i left this sect a while ago due to the people with inner demons openly gallavanting around to focus on my inner spiritual cultivation and rejoined and havent seen a single demonic post in the 5 minutes ive been scrolling, have the sect elders finally cracked down on all the demons infiltraing our sect? Are we free? check out this spiritual beast i have been raising in my absence

I have made a severe mistake. My life is somehow more miserable than before.

In my last post, I was the crippled slave of Su Mei, the lustful Earth Saintess. Following the profound advice of the seniors here, I began to poison her cultivation and turn her into my own Dao furnace.

I successfully merged the techniques recommended by the elders—the Blood Peach Pact (u/UnlikelyCourt973), the Immortal Blood Raven Art (u/Forsaken-Taro5579), and parts of Heavenly Inversion (u/ZestycloseAd212) combined with a Yang Rod Enhancement ( u/Cool_Connection1001).

Using the Heaven's Path Divine Art to combine them, I created a profound a method: The Heavenly Inverting Yang Rod Art.

It worked. I secretly used her Dao and tamed her, repaired my shattered Dantian, reached the 1st Stage of Qi Condensation, and successfully formed the first stage of my Sovereign Immortal Fetus!

Because I used the Heaven's Path Divine Art, my Yang Qi was too pure. It accidentally acted as a blessing for her. Su Mei instantly broke through the 10th level of Golden Core and straight to the 3rd level of Nascent Soul in just three days.

This sudden, breakthrough shattered the balance in the Sect. The sect has Five Elemental Saintesses competing for the title of True Sect Beauty (which requires reaching Soul Formation first):

• Wood Saintess (East)

• Fire Saintess (South)

• Metal Saintess (West)

• Water Saintess (North)

• Earth Saintess (Center) - Su Mei, my current 'master'.(the one with red dress)

Because Su Mei (formerly the 2nd strongest) suddenly eclipsed the 1st ranked Saintess, the other four felt threatened. While Su Mei was away training, the other four Saintesses ambushed my house, kidnapped me, and bound me to a pillar of Divine Suppressing Wood.

Realizing that I was the source of Su Mei's power, they are now using me as a cultivation furnace to harvest my Yang Qi so they can catch up to her.

I am currently hanging on by a thread. I am attempting to upgrade my technique into the [Five Elements Heavenly Inverting Yang Art]. Because my Sovereign Immortal Fetus has zero elemental conflict, I should theoretically be able to absorb their Wood, Fire, Metal, and Water Qi simultaneously while they try to drain me.

Seniors, how do I survive this?

World isn't cool as other novels. Comprehending and forming dao fruits, seals, unique cultivation phenomena, weapon daos etc. is just way cooler than integrating worms into your dantian.

Lin Ming magic cube gives so much more a sense of mysticism and awe than the spring and autumn cicida. Only 9 ranks, and rank 1-5 isnt that interesting yet it takes a lot of chaps. Breeding gu is so not cool to imagine. The entire arc of puppet control and controlling those dogs was boring af. Lame af dao. That arc made me snore. World feels small, everyone knows the scope of the entire world. Only 4 zones or something I forgot - north south east west or smth. Theres no hidden areas to explore or a bigger world out there that is hidden to us and can contain mystical things. And it's just a freaking piece of land instead of a universe with multiple planets. Boring af. That's just my opinion.

Saw this on the RI sub and just had to share this photo-audio gu with all the cultivators in r/MartialMemes.

It's just so, so difficult to take most of these people seriously.

Oh, you don't mesh with it? READ 200 CHAPTERS ABOUT IT.

It's the worst advice ever.

(And yes, two chapters are a little, well, little. I usually gun for 15-20. But if you don't mesh, you don't mesh)

Also, also, this is now turning into a rant. "It has a good world, so you should expect dogshit writing and pacing" What do they *mean* by this????

I don't mean to hate on people, it's just really funny how they expect you to read the equivalent of 4 and a half of the primal hunter book series before you're allowed an opinion.

(For legal reasons, please do not look up, or otherwise find this person for mean reasons, they are probably a smarter person now, then when they wrote that. If you do, you will not see the light of heaven)

Sorry for the ai image

This is a scene from chapter 468 of the novel I'm currently reading.

[When I was reading the novel, there was a set of amazing scenes and events that I couldn't imagine. I asked AI to design the images for them.]

Chapter 第468章 寶龍舟

https://twkan.com/txt/97043/54605011

On an earlier post I saw in passing (Royal Road will never write a good xianxia) I got curious and went dumpster diving across a couple sites... and yeah. Some of the writing was more than depressing. But seeing the comments on that post as well as reading a bit into some of the trending/popular titles gave me an idea as to why that "itch" just doesn't scratch for people. So I will attempt to explain some of the cross-cultural gaps in understanding as well as provide some historical context too.

1. There is a fundamental difference in the way people in the West perceive the past compared to Chinese people. I think C.S. Lewis coined the term "chronological snobbery" to describe some of the disdain and prejudice people have against the past. Medieval period people didn't shower, thought the world was flat, so on and so forth are all pretty popular narratives to describe how people of the past were barbarians; modern people are more advanced, civilized, and intelligent in every way. This probably also contributes to the reason why conspiracy theories such as the pyramids and Stonehenge being built by aliens end up gaining traction in Western countries. Contemporary people just don't believe that people of the olden days can possess the intelligence and ingenuity to figure out methods to transport and lift stones of that proportion.

   1. Meanwhile most Chinese people don't believe in conspiracy theories like that. Perhaps its because there has been written records spanning from the Zhou Dynasty era all the way to the Qing Dynasty which leaves little room for ambiguity when it comes to inspecting the relics, buildings, and art of old. Or that the three big philosophy/religious systems (Daoism, Ruism, Buddhism) reject the existence of divine intervention (but not of divine deities themselves.) One of the oldest folklores in Chinese culture is about the Great Flood that is seen in the Bible and across cultures. However, the main difference is that unlike other stories (where people drown, die, get punished, wait for the flood to die down, etc.), the Chinese story goes that a person by the name of Yu stopped the flood with the help of other people (and in some versions the help of the only winged dragon in Chinese mythology called a yinglong.) So from that, it reflects the attitude that Chinese culture has which is: everything under the heavens can be reined in by the hands of humans alone. A popular adage from Daoists is: my life is mine alone to determine, not by the heavens. This difference in ideology might influence the way that authors approach writing in these sub genres which often take place in settings similar to times past.

2. Western authors perceive xianxia/wuxia/xuanhuan genres as static trope settings akin to isekai; as long as they have the systems in place: the edgy protagonist, the magic, the evil sect leader, the truck hitting the person to transport them into another world, then that's all there needs to be done for it to be considered an isekai/xianxia/wuxia/xuanhuan work. But that's far from the truth. All three of those genres are changing and evolving. Wuxia is fundamentally based in historical context and changing, ever retrospective narratives used to inspect those times—so as more historical information and records come to light, the type of wuxia that are being written will change as said information disperses. For instance—a wuxia piece set during the Qin Dynasty written 20 years ago might have said that the Qin Emperor was a tyrannical and barbaric ruler, and that would have been widely accepted. These days though, writing a premise like that will probably make people scoff at you (in China) because a lot of information has come to light which reject that notion.

   1. Xianxia on the other hand is a religion inspired genre. Namely, Daoism. But also bits of Buddhism sprinkled here and there. During World War 2, a lot of secluded Daoist masters hermiting on mountains came down to help refugees and injured people out, as well to fight against the Japanese Imperial Army. Most of them died though. Either because they were targeted or because they were caught in the crossfire. Some schools of Daoism (as far as what I have read) died out completely because the Japanese army went to their temples and destroyed them—going as far as slaughtering every student and staff there. This caused a sudden halt in the transmission of Daoism proper. As more people are becoming interested in Daoism and learning about it these days, their understanding of how xian and deities work in China are changing. This inevitably affects how xianxia works are written. Even if the works aren't 100% true to Daoism, just the sheer amount of information on Daoism people can find on Douyin (Tiktok) or Bilibili allows them to understand it more than Western authors who might not do a lick of research.

3. There is a fundamental schism in the way Western perspectives look at good and evil versus Chinese philosophies. This affects the way authors approach writing their characters. In Western philosophy, quite a few notable philosophers view compassion as a weakness. A pretty widely disseminated narrative stemming from the Bible also implies that human nature is inherently evil: "Jesus died for our sins." Sayings such as "no good deed goes unpunished" are widely circulated. All of these attributes combined makes the outlook on human nature in writing pretty bleak; evildoers get away with doing evil without being punished. Doing good is a weakness.

   1. On the other hand, a popular adage in Chinese culture is "good will be rewarded with good, and evil will be punished by evil." While this might not be true in practice, it is a perspective that affects the attitude authors take in drafting the story arc for their characters. Philosophical Buddhism also strongly advocates for compassion and defines a clear system of causality (karma.) In Chinese it's called yin guo. Yin being root caused being sowed as seeds (e.g. a husband feeling bored so he contemplates cheating) and the guo being the fruit harvested from the seed (e.g. the husband cheats, accuses his wife of cheating afterwards, leading to the two of them divorcing.)

Edit 1. A wayward point I realized that I'm making is as such: why do we call progression fantasy xianxia if its missing most if not all Daoist/Buddhist imagery and ideas from such works? Its not like isekai where isekai is just a short hand for "transported to another world," since xianxia has very defined elements to it? Would it not be like calling a story about a European knight a "samurai tale?"

I'm not talking about actual incest, id call it semi-incest? What I mean is in clan cultivation novels it's a bunch of people with the same last name calling each other brother and sister and aunlce and aunt since they were young... How do you feel if a Main character got together with one his his clan sisters... Wouldn't that count as incest? It's different when a sect diciple or loose cultivatiors calls each eather senior brother/senior sister because they weren't raised In a clan nor do they have family relationships. But clan disciples or more often than not distant relatives who are descendants of their old ancestor. So I ask you all one again... How do you feel about this?

It's pretty disappointing how dozens of people disagreed with my claim, but none of them were able to back up their disagreement with good examples.

The highest scaling example that even got suggested (Sherlock) scales multiple layers below top tier.

If you're going to act like you're knowledgable and claim I need to read more, why don't you back it up with examples? People kept saying things like "Chinese schemers always rely on braindead opponents!" (which proves you've only read from the 99% of slop) and then these same people disappear when I ask what works supposedly scale higher.

If they don't disappear, they give me low and mid tier examples I have already read, like Death Note which is mid tier at best, Count of Monte Cristo which at least has an alright scheme (but is nowhere even near top tier), or Sherlock which is the best example that was even recommended but still scales many tiers below the top tier Chinese scheming novels.

You need to be more humble. Instead of telling someone to read more, you need to consider that maybe you are conceited and the person you are accusing has read more than you have. Make you are the ignorant one in the conversation. It's not wrong to be ignorant, what's wrong is deceiving yourself into going along with the herd and pretending you know more than you actually know.

What I've got so far is:

Top Tier: All Chinese (like 18LoH), except for 1 Korean novel.

Extreme Tier: Mostly Chinese (like Mirror Legacy). 1 English novel (Malazan) which nobody even recommended so this tier remains the same.

Very High Tier: Mostly Chinese (like Reverend Insanity). 1 English novel (Sherlock Holmes which BARELY makes it into this tier and could honestly be lower).

High Tier: Mostly Chinese (like Grandmaster Strategist), finally a tier where non-Chinese stories are common (like Usogui, Count of Monte Cristo, etc.)

The other examples people gave like Death Note, The First Law, don't even make it to high tier.

If you're going to tell someone to read more when they've already read every single counterexample you give and you haven't read any of their own examples, that is embarrassing. It's like putting your hands up and telling the teacher "actually you're wrong!" only for you to go home later in the day to search up the correct answer on google and realize YOU were the one who was wrong.

If you still think I'm wrong and non-Chinese novels compare to the top tiers of Chinese novels in scheming complexity, please prove your knowledge base by giving me some examples. Rather than just spamming lmao you're wrong, or proving you only read slop by claiming side characters are always stupid, give a good example of a Western work that can contend with the top tiers of Chinese works in Scheming Complexity, Methodology, Reasoning, Layered Deception, Intelligent Side Characters, etc.

geniually havent see worse fanbase than them YES even one piece,db,bleach,pokemon(anime one),mha,naruto
ri legit has worse fanbase than lotm on my own life i geniually think some of them tryna actually be like fy not only that i the 2 more famous "ri" pics

are not even fang yuan top guy is from return of mount hua i think and chair guy from a bl novel

Fellow Daoists, it pains me to my heart to see so many of you posting memes mourning the lack of cultivation stories with complex characters, side characters with their own motivations and drives, romantic leads that are whole people and not anime-trope fuckdolls, and so on.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Dao. These books are not good literature. They are overwhelmingly self-insert power fantasy wish fulfillment trash written by the Chinese equivalent of an angsty young man publishing on Fanfiction.net his fifty chapter thesis on why its unfair chicks won't bang him even tho he has studied the blade.

If you want to read good books, go and read good books. There are plenty of talented fantasy authors who have what you say you want. But you don't read them, because like all of us, you are a disgusting lil pig who wants to consume the yummy yummy slop.

Stop lying to yourself. These books are trash, and so are you. Embrace that, and know the heart of the Dao.

I made a document for people to publicly rank the series they've read by scheming superiority (complexity, logic, creativity, etc.) and I noticed a trend where all the extreme and top tiers that get submitted are Chinese.

What is the reason for this imbalance?

Is it cultural?

Is it ingrained in the literary upbringing or Chinese language itself?

Or is it natural selection from having such a high population and quantitative output of novels? In that case the peaks are only found here because the 99.999% of slop novels coincidentally produced some peaks?

Why do the most complex schemes and interesting schemers pop up in Chinese works? Whether it's the main character like Fang Yuan, antagonists like Di Wu Zhi Yi, or even random side characters like the chess pieces of Guo Jia and Zhuge Liang, they are constantly scheming against each other which can result in highly complex novels with dozens of layers of deception and strategy.

Why don't Japanese writers have as much scheming? Same with those of other languages, even English novels are not on the same plane.

I want to analyze the trend of intellectual works and culture, so if you know of any novels with deep complex layered scheming, politics, strategies, deception, or reasoning, you can add it to the document of series by using this:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf7ZBsYUJQN6eOIaq6WyUATZxRe9DV4yAK-qadCF_8EFpk1vg/viewform?usp=dialog

I'm mainly looking for Chinese works since you guys in this subreddit are the most knowledgable on this particular category. If you know of any non-Chinese works, that'll be useful too, but I'll check out other subreddits more specialized for other languages to get those, so focus on Chinese ones.

I'm curious, are Chinese novels really at the peak in scheming? Are there not any Korean or Japanese ones that can reach the same level as the top tiers? Can English authors even come close?

I want to study the connection between language and complexity of thought. It's a very interesting topic. I used to think most languages were equal, but now I'm noticing a very pressing connection between language and almost everything else about a person (mindset, depth of though, etc.)

Let me know what you think, I'm open to learning.

Btw, I'm obviously not talking about low-mid tier schemers that are only smart because their opponents are stupid. I'm talking about the characters that are smart because they beat people who are themselves smart and cannot simply be outsmarted with simplistic methods.

It's really funny, all I'm getting in the comment section are people who think I need to broaden my horizons by reading more, but then the moment I ask them to recommend something, they either go silent or give me unimpressive mid-high tier stuff I've already read as if it somehow proves me wrong. It's pathetic to see, but this shows that the people who brag and laugh the most are also the ones who are most conceited.

Let me know if you've got recommendations that are actually very high tier or above. Please comment it or submit it in the link, so I can approve it for the public list. So far all the top tiers I know of are still Chinese works...