Title: Reverend Insanity (also known as Daoist Gu)
Author: Gu Zhen Ren
Rating: M
Status: Ongoing
Length: 800+ chapters translated
Library Category: Original
Link: Here be the chapters. Here are some reviews.
Summary: Humans are clever in tens of thousands of ways, Gu are the true refined essences of Heaven and Earth. The Three Temples are unrighteous, the demon is reborn. Former days are but an old dream, an identical name is made anew. A story of a time traveler who keeps on being reborn. A unique world that grows, cultivates, and uses Gu.

This is xianxia, a Chinese fantasy webnovel genre. If you're unfamiliar with the genre, it'll likely feel very strange. Chinese literature, especially modern fantasy webnovels, feel completely different from western literature. These xianxia novels are basically halfway between fanfiction and published works, though entirely original creations. Extremely rich in Chinese mythology, martial arts, magic, worldview, culture, it's definitely different from what most westerners are used to. Like BTT mentioned in his recent thread, something like Coiling Dragon is often recommended as your first xianxia, since it's fairly simple, popular, and contains much more western elements than most xianxia.

But for those who are familiar with xianxia: this is an extremely good one. I've read about 20 and tried out more, and this definitely became one of my favorites. It has 800+ translated chapters, the raw is at 2200+ and ongoing, and on its last volume.

Reverend Insanity has been called a bit of a hidden gem, and I agree. It does many things much better than any other xianxia I've read. It's a very deep and complex story, with deep and rich worldbuilding, cultivation and characters. To be honest, it made almost every other xianxia I've read feel superficial, simple, almost stupid. The characters are real, complex people. And they're smart. There is no infinite loop of arrogant young masters getting beaten in a tournament, their senior/teacher/father getting upset at the protagonist, yelling "how dare you. junior", getting his ass beaten, calling his sect senior to take revenge, etc, until the sect ends up in ruins. There are no ancient ruin exploration where the protagonist is guaranteed to find some super item or inheritance to let him power up like crazy. There are no heavenly beautiful women who cause trouble for the protagonist in every single town they visit. There's no harem that every villain lusts after. The standard xianxia loop you've come to expect has been almost entirely subverted. Everything about the worldbuilding feels much more mature than what you've come to expect from xianxia.

The protagonist is evil. That's the most common complaint you hear in the reviews. He's utterly heartless and ruthless. He's a five hundred years old demonic cultivator who managed to travel back in time to his teenage years. He started off as a good person, but... he learned some harsh, harsh lessons during his life, and he ended up a pretty asexual, old monster determined to reach his goal, no matter the cost. He's not needlessly bloodthisrty or cruel, it's all about benefits to him. If you've read Warlock of the Magus World, he's fairly similar to that. He uses his experience, wits and patience to succeed a lot instead of charging headfirst. He's also a shameless scammer and blackmailer, which a lot of the rare humor comes from.

Don't think that he's got is easy, however. In fact, the protagonist of this story has some of the weakest plot armor I've ever seen in xianxia. He suffers setbacks and failures constantly. He has epic, intense victories, but also suffers many, many losses, and a victory is rarely, if ever, clean. It's one of my personal complaints about the story, actually - it almost never feels like he genuinely wins, there's always something negative that comes with it. Sometimes it feels like the entire world is against him.

The cultivation system is pretty unique. You'll read about the myriad ways to use Gu insects as you read the story, but it's not just your generic energy/body power. Basically, you raise, use and refine insects with supernatural abilities. There's millions, all with a different special ability. And you have to feed them, or they die. In fact, managing resources and food is a big part of cultivation.

There's no romance. Like I mentioned, the protagonist is an asexual old monster, who considers physical beauty skin deep. He just doesn't give a fuck. The author seems to have a nild genderbend fetish, though. Poor side character or two.

Reverend Insanity is the first xianxia to push me into reading the machine translation. I went and read the raws, and I'm caught up to the most recent release. Machine translations kinda melt your brain, but this story was worth it. Now, it's 2000+ chapters. It's huge. The story does have its flaws, weak moments and borings periods. But those appreared mostly later. The first two volumes are frequently considered the best ones. At least, I had little complaints about the first 400 chapters or so.

It's a deep and mature xianxia with realistic people, evil protagonist and a unique cultivation system. Give it a try if you like that.

 

The writing is dogshit compared to any traditional English fantasy novel. There's very little time spent on description or atmosphere or even character interaction, just this rambling stream-of-consciousness-esque internal monologue.

That's par the course for wuxia stories, though. The language is at least coherent, and as said above it's a lot more mature than others in the genre. There's less bullshit padding of "honhonhon left thirteenth sideways uncle" or whatever those titles are, and the character is driven by a desire to get shit done over aimlessly flailing an ego around.

The Gu worms are pretty neat. Chinese kung-fu pokemon kinda vibe. I'm into it. The thought occurs that xianxia/wuxia mechanics would make for an excellent RPG

I'll give this a 4/5. Although there's a lot to criticise, those are criticisms of the medium more than this story in particular.

 

I was hoping for something a bit more like A forge of Destiny, but I agree the criticisms of dialogue and characterisation and philosophy are more just the web-novel medium, I think.

It doesn't feel like a lot is happening plot-wise though yet. He hasn't had anything that makes him need to form a goal with his five-hundred years of foresight yet.

I'm also a bit confused - because it may just be the translation - but before the Spring Autumn Cicada, was he also from Earth?

Either way, he's yet to hit any problems yet that he couldn't outmanoeuvre so I don't think I've made it to the meat yet. I'm continuing to read, and it's mostly the gu. He's just got to the middle 1st rank. It's just been hinted that you combine some different Gu to rank them up to Rank 2, and with the 4-5 limitation I'm liking the implication and how this might play out. I'm a sucker for anything that elicits memories of what it felt like to encounter new pokemon.

 

Pretty sure that wuxiaworld.co is a notorious pirate site known for simply stealing translations (and I am pretty sure the name to, since wuxiaworld.com is a far more legitimate site that was part of the first wave of the whole xianxia thing). As I understand it the actual translation comes from webnovel.com (formerly quidian) which while also having a somewhat spotty reputation is at least not a complete parasite like the .co site is.

 

Yeah. I forgot to mention this. The writing in pretty much every single Chinese webnove is shit compared to western published books, and they've been through a translation. Most translators are amateur students working to get some extra cash. Don't expect any quality.

Spoiler

Yes. The whole 'demon from beyond the heavens' thing will be expanded on in the future.

You can definitely criticize the first book for being slow, being mostly stuck in the home village and taking its sweet time to explain the basics of the universe. But the scale gets bigger by a huge amount pretty much every book. The book endings also tend to be very exciting.

Yeah, it's a pirate site. If the story was published on a regular site, I'd definitely link it there. However, it's qidian (webnovel.com). Qidian is extremely scummy, predatory and expensive. If you want to read all of the translated chapters, you're looking at what, something like 50 dollars? Maybe less? And you're looking at a hundred for the future chapters.

Pirating webnovels is a lot like pirating anime, if there one overlord site that muscled on the scene a few years late, tries to steal and license every series they can get their hands on, and every episode after the first costs a few dollars to watch. There are a lot of different sites where you can find the full story for free. Use your own morals for this one, but a lot of the community hates qidian and refuses to pay.

 

Huh, I actually read like 100 chapters of this. I'll give a 2/5. The villains all have the intelligence of a especially smart goldfish and the protagonist is the definition of an edgelord. The story works to try and create situations for him to edgy. There is in an instance early on, where the protagonist cut someone into tiny pieces and then puts his body parts in a box. The box, which he then delivers to the person's clan. There are a whole host of other situations, but I don't want to spoil anything. The author seems to not know how to create characters with interesting/relatable motivations, although Bai Ning might be one, but i'm have to wait and see. The only thing that gives this story any credence is that the world building is kind of interesting, I might give it a better rating later if the story improves.