Title: Sect

Author: Ryuugi

Rating: M

Genre: Worm/Xianxia

Status: Ongoing

Library Category: Worm

Word Count: 270k

Summary: The path to Heaven is long beyond measure, barred to all but the greatest of men. Countless Cultivators struggle through the eons, hoping to close just one inch of that gap, and countless more die in the struggles of the Immortals. Yet it's said that once, to save someone, Shakyamuni let down a spider's thread that fell all the way to Hell, a path up from the darkness.


Link: spacebattles


So this story is kind of amazing. The summary basically says nothing about the premise which is that post-GM Taylor Hebert has been attached to a girl in an original Xianxia setting of the author’s creation. For those unaware, think of Xianxia as magical China; more background knowledge is unnecessary. The girl, Xifeng, is the daughter of the leader of the Zhen sect who poisons her as a sort of sacrifice to further their abilities in the magic system called cultivation. Given the horrific nature of Xifeng’s situation, Taylor acts as a mother figure and the only positive part of Xifeng’s life.


The draw of this story is that it’s the best Xianxia I’ve ever read. The setting is rich, the characters have depth, the writing is technically sound, and the plot moves along at a good pace. From a worm perspective, it’s hard to classify it as my favorite worm fanfic given that it doesn’t include anything that is of worm except post-GM Taylor. However, this is one of my favorite exploration of post-GM Taylor, because she’s able to atone for her sins while also growing as a person while she essentially becomes a mother.


That’s not to say it’s perfect though. The nature of the setting requires a lot of exposition and sometimes my eyes glazed over larger paragraphs of it. It’s not a huge problem, though, and didn’t become something that I recognized as a problem until later in the story. The second issue came later in the story as characters of divine proportions were introduced; beings that lived for thousands of years still curse like a teenager or college student. It’s an not overt problem but in certain respects it seems like all the character voices blend, because they all curse the same and all make the same irreverent jokes. It reduced the wonder I had about meeting these beings that were so feared and revered by cultivators within the universe. The final issue I had, again, came in the later portions of the story that introduced the upper level divine parts of the magic system. Gods explain their roles as a job given to them like the supernatural was structured in a mundane way. What bugged me wasn’t just that these beings of transcendent power acted like someone at an office job but also that the author structured heaven in a mundane way by transporting capitalism and modern society into what’s supposed to be magical. However, these issues occurred late enough story that they didn’t hamper my enjoyment significantly.


Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not in the library/not already up for review. If it has been then I apologize but I couldn’t find it.


Definitely 5/5 for the first like 65% of it but 4.5/5 rounded down to 4/5 because of how it’s damaged my perception of the magic system recently.

 

Always down for Ryuugi, and Xinxia can be quite fun. Is there a non spacebattles, preferably aooo link, though? I much prefer reading on my kindle to my phone.

 

Unfortunately I couldn’t find one @Quiddity

 

I dropped this around the point where they escaped the beginning sect. It suffers from the usual problems that I tend to have with stories featuring post-GM Taylor and Ryuugi's work.

Taylor is a emotionless, hyper-competent block of wood and I don't care about her. (In fairness that became more and more the case as actual Worm went on and I doubt I'll ever bother finishing it.) I don't care about the other girl either, she just felt like a vehicle to watch Taylor munchkin the cultivation system. Which leads me into my second point: Ryuugi's writing always leaves me feeling that he's more interested in showing off how clever his ideas and headcanons are, rather than writing a good story, and I find it impossible to get immersed.

The story's fine in a technical sense but it's not landing for me at all.

 

She get much more character as time progress and she leave her abusive situation behind, slowly becoming more outgoing and active, she mostly take front sit after their first real immortal battle (which Taylor basically fought), even if her character is growing from the beginning.

That's definitely one of the problems of Ryuugi, although I don't see it that way, I think it is less being clever and more exploring a setting, trying to change it in some significant way to create a lot of possibilities, after which he explores them until he lose interest and move on.

Sect is relatively unusual in that the xianxia verse and greater cosmology of the higher realms is completely original, so I am not sure how it will track in the long term, I could definitely say that a big part of the experience is world building and other such stuff he talks about in WoGs and informationals between chapters, this might not be conducive for a bing reading, as tiny world building details seem less interesting than seeing what happens next and getting to the next chapter, but as a web novel, with periods of waiting between chapters, it was definitely very fun and interesting to see some of those WoGs that explore the world and the details that don't come up in story because they weren't relevant yet.

It is my favorite story for now, but I would not know if it would have been so if I bing read it now.

I recommend it it to anyone who is interested in both xianxia and worm, an excellent way to join them.

 

Well, that's Ryuugi for you. I remember having the same problem when I was reading The Games We Play. Ancient demigods interacting with each other like they're some retarded frat boys. It would almost break the immersion for me.

As for this story, gotta say I agree with Hansar. The characters are just unlikable.

 

One things worth remembering is the difference in scale, we know their language is more similar to that of the entities than humans, the way they look at the world also is, take Scion for example, why did he say the words he did to Eidolon? Because he saw himself doing it and knew the effect they would have, he didn't look at what led to that point, years of suspicion and fear ending with those words breaking Eidolon, he did it because he saw himself doing it and knew what it would do.

Likewise all the social thinker powers in worm, that can be used to elicit basically any reaction.

Even their minds, someone pointed out how the entities are inhuman in a way those beings aren't, but Ryuugi did point out that Eden would have also looked like human, but she would have actually been monitoring the emotions of everyone around her, using powers and future sight to make herself act like a human, even as she was very much not.


The same goes here but to even greater extent, if the entities would ascend, they would be at the bottom of the second world, if they climbed up again, so much that they will further from themselves as they are from humans they will ascend to the first world, and than they will need to do the same kind of jump to reach to it's top and become equals to the monkeys and other beings we see.

There is a difference in perspective that can't really be explained, like describing how someone live in the point dimension, a world where time, and most other dimensions don't exist, but to even greater extent, combined with limited ability to see the future (in comparison to PtV) because everything is so small that stop them from just solving everything, and this is all kind of new grounds for most of them, this is the reason first worlders take interest in the third world, the difference in perspective and the very ways you look at the world and solve problems is so different that they can get a lot of insight from it.

And this goes in other direction too, the language and everything about how they act is how they choose to show themselves, because their true selves and how they interact with each other is very very different than anything they show to the cast, even their forms are all to the benefit of the cast and how they chose to look, all the ways they act human in, are all to the benefit of people they interact with, even if their emotions and goals are similar to humans, everything else is so different it can't really be explained to lower beings.

The complaint could maybe be done to immortals in the setting, as their personalities aren't completely fabricated constructs to interact with fractions of quarks, but I didn't really see any problem with how they acted, than again, we only met two.

 

I liked the start of the story and the way the crossover was implemented was an interesting take and avoided a lot of the pitfalls typical of the cliche. That said to me it looks like the story lacks direction as it adds ideas and characters endlessly while largely ignoring what is already there. Like take the gu (sentient insect familiars) for example, their introduction seemed to be an almost afterthought but then they were given names and hints of character just for them to largely disappear from the narrative again because some cool new idea came along.


And I am really no fan of the whole "higher realms" plotline, especially as I would have to agree that the portrayal of those characters as"fratboys" seems quite fitting and I found the scenes featuring them quite cringe-worthy. In fact I think I would have enjoyed the story quite a bit more if it stayed on the level of "travelling to a city and setting up a shop" instead of "world ending conspiracy with mythical figures giving out pieces of their souls like candy to the MC's...."

 

I love me some Ryuugi. Especially his Danmachi/Percy Jackson story. I just know it probably won't get finished so It's tough to start this when everyone seems kind of lukewarm on it. Ill be back after reading the first 10 or 15 posts.

 

I think Sect is very good, so I gave it a 5/5. I like that Taylor is not the protagonist and that Xifeng isn't just a viewport with no personality for us to watch Taylor munchkin cultivation. Xifeng starts the story with no goals and no desires other than to not be in pain and to be with Taylor; even the loose plan of going to the capital and selling clothes and eating sweets was Taylor's idea. Over the course of Book 2 Xifeng learns about the world and its dangers, but also meets Qing and RBHM. At the end of Book 2 Taylor asks if her if they should run and abandon Qing or stay and fight Peizhi, and Xifeng decides to fight. This is a fairly standard Shounen thing, right? You wouldn't expect the protagonist to just abandon them. There isn't any narrative surprise about the choice, but it's important because it shows that for the first time Xifeng chose to put herself in danger and pain because she was saved and she wants to be someone who would have helped herself. This is the start of Xifeng's primary character arc, of becoming more independent and finding what she wants to do as a person and learning that maybe her mother isn't flawless with all the answers.

Book 3 is about Xifeng being forced to be without Taylor. We see who she would have been without her and who she'd be now if she suddenly forgot her. At the end of the book Xifeng has her first fight without Taylor. Until this point we'd seen what makes Xifeng scared and what makes her worried, but the end of book 3 is where we see what makes Xifeng furious. In the cooldown Xifeng gets an internship offer from Heaven, which is where I'll segue from plot to addressing the divine figures complaint.

Firstly, we've spoken with exactly four characters from the heavens and none of them sound remotely similar to each other. But that's whatever I suppose. The heavens being basically just people is one of the coolest parts of Sect imo, and if heaven is bureaucratic... well, that's Chinese mythology for you. Someone said that the heavens felt capitalistic though? Which was weird because nothing like that was ever said. The closest I can think of was RBHM was making a gold mine and investment metaphor, but that was just a metaphor. Xifeng even points out in that exchange that the metaphor doesn't make any sense because RBHM is so far beyond wanting even a metaphorical gold mine that a return on investment can't possibly be his actual motivation. Similarly, the Mirror of Retribution giving Xifeng a job offer at the end of Book 3. That wasn't a metaphor in text, but is really cool as a metaphor for Xifeng leaving her mother's aegis and growing up into her own person.

Anyways, tldr: I think it's really good, has a cohesive theme permeating the whole story but explored most through the protagonist transitioning from teen to adult, and it has fight scenes that I don't just glaze my eyes over and emotional scenes that make go "shit, awwwww. damn that's gonna make me cry." It's wordy as hell so I would give it a 4.5/5, but I have to bump it back up to 5/5 for

TRANS Qilin!