4.25 stars. A decent cultivation story of a God who reincarnates.
So this is another Royal Road story. I think I have read the entire first book (80 chapters) and probably will stop there.
This is a pretty good cozy story on a young girl who is growing to be one of the strongest cultivators in the kingdom. She is born as the daughter of a general in the Emperor’s army, and immediately the Emperor decides she will marry his son when they both become of age. So she grows up knowing that she will marry this boy and pretty much has no choice in that.
Despite this, she clearly looks forward to marrying the young prince. And he to her. So there’s a cute romance element to it. This is just an undercurrent of the story.
The girl is clearly talented, and she starts developing her own cultivation techniques which helps her to advance quicker. She ropes the poor prince into her scheme, and they cultivate together to grow stronger. Over time, she gathers other followers who all train together.
As a team, they travel across the lands, fighting demons as they improve themselves. Instead of fighting, she gets the idea to make peace with these creatures and form alliances. And as a young teen, does that.
She’s not the most powerful in the kingdom, but she’s powerful for her age. And the group she formed also grows strong.
Anyways, it’s a decent xianxia / cultivation story. It has a reincarnated God, a touch of romance, some action but not too much, some politics but not a lot, and a bit of city-building even as the group forms a couple of settlements along the way.
It’s not a 10/10 story. But it has a lot of well developed characters, some bad guys, complex motivations, and I am glad to have read it.
Things I liked:
- Goes from childhood to powerful
- Written well
- Characters I like and care about
- A touch of romance
- Doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining magic systems
Things that can be improved:
- Too many threats of rape against the female characters
So this last point might be difficult to articulate. And maybe it’s just me. But there were a couple of points in the story where rape was threatened against some of the female main characters. Now I suppose when you are dealing with a few female characters out in the world fighting bandits and bad guys, the threat of rape if they lose is going to come up.
“I am going to enjoy playing with you, and then I’ll share you with the other bandits before we dispose of your body.” I guess that’s a threat a female fighter will experience.
But this threat is uttered many times by almost all of the different bad guys. Even the female “bad guy” threatens her male opponent with rape.
I guess after the fourth or fifth time this happened, it just felt like an unnecessary addition to the drama. They’re fighting to the death. That’s high stakes as it is. “But before I kill you, I will do bad things” adds some queasiness to it.
But still, overall interesting.
