Reverend Insanity

Because of this Novel...

My eyes are opened!!!!

ALL HAIL FANG YUAN!!!!

OUR BENEVOLENT, MERCIFUL, GENEROUS, KIND, TRUTHFUL AND OUR SAVIOUR...
Fang Yuan..

Hahahah hahahaha. :P

Perhaps the best Chinese Light Novel that has ever been written. Many characters are interesting, and most importantly smart. There are rarely any idiots among the MC's enemies. To be honest reading this Light Novel has ruined all others. I always compare them to Reverend Insanity, and they just can't match it at all. A must read.

I want to preface this by saying this series is not actually complete. China put a ban on Reverend Insanity along with many other novels a few years ago for "cultural reasons". RI has absolutely no chill, the themes within have strong anti-authority and law of the jungle lessons. This is blatantly an evil protagonist series, and beyond that, it spits in the face of many traditional Chinese values. Sounds awesome to a western audience, but the Chinese government isn't a fan it seems. The author is now writing a series called Infinite Bloodcore, and has said that once that series wraps up (earliest of 2023), if the ban is lifted, he will continue publishing chapters for RI.

Most people would be pretty deflated by that news, but this series is good enough that I would still completely recommend it. Chinese literature has stagnated extremely hard, this is the shining hero among the thousands of cardboard cutout chinese serializations.

The story follows Fang Yuan, a merciless avatar of self-preservation. With near complete understanding of human morality and values, he sets out to obtain immortality in a world where nearly everything stands against him. He is ruthless, but not cruel. Tricky, but not unbelievably so. Nothing is out of bounds, nothing is sacred, nobody is safe. Can you imagine writing a character following those concepts and making them somehow NOT come off as the edgiest trash alive? Actually good writing. I know, shocking.

From Chapter 1-152~
To describe this novel, I would use an analogy. Reverend Insanity is a novel that is like the Death Metal Genre within music where you either hate it till your guts or love it till your lives is at stakes. Haters would deem death metal music to be nonsense and noisy while Lovers would treat death metal music like they worshiped it. I stand at the positive side for Reverend Insanity while many falls into that hater mindset.

Reverend Insanity is a novel that goes beyond any novel I have ever read. If you liked Warlock of the Magus World's Main Character, both MC is similar in their method. Although, I can say for certain that Reverend Insanity is even more evil and "insane" than what we seen of the WMW MC. Basically if you can stomach/withstand the evilness of Linley's action, you may take a step upward to the next level which is Reverend Insanity. Reverend Insanity is undoubtedly what the novel title say, he is not the good moral MC that treats family/clans/animals/women as if they are everything in his life, rather he would insanely extract the most benefit out of every person even if it requires their death to occur. The scene can get gory with very questionable scenes. My warning to fellow peaceful readers, the expectation sets for the darkest novel you may find on Qidian and stay away from it unless you want to turn into a psycho.

Story Development: 4.4 stars Reverend Insanity starts off with a reincarnated MC that seemingly falls into the same loop as other traditional cultivation MC where he speedily power-up, receiving "fortunate" encounters that he knows of and beating up enemies. The twist here is, the MC himself is the villain. Have you ever wondered how a villain in other novels would be like with actual intelligence and what's the action performed by him are? Reverend Insanity's story have a fresh take on the Wuxia genre where he is not a "martial hero" but a "martial anti-hero". Story Progression is moderately pace with some repetitions of details. The details addressing plot-holes is seen and the life teachings given by MC somehow adds flavor to the story even when it does not truly applies to the modern earth thinking.

Character Design: 4.7 stars. I have mention MC here and MC there which shows how impactful he was to the whole novel. The author have the intention to design the MC to be a final villain boss type character and just from his starting point, I can envision how he would appear as one. His personality are twisted by our standards where if he does exist in reality, he would be a professional murderer/criminal. Despite that, by contemplating deeply, he would not be in the wrong and our standards should not be applied at all because he live in a world where the strong literally preyed on the weak. It is an all out survival. His disposition is cold, general attitude to people around him is disregard and alignment leans toward chaotic evil. With the 500 years of experience and journey, the world shaped him to be a loner. A quote of his are " I would rather let the world down, than be let down by the world!!!" The personality is written accurately and I hope the author maintain the progress of his character in the later chapters. Reverend Insanity is a clear look into 'a cunning and intelligent villain' and 'a reincarnated main character that can back that claims'.
Side Characters have well defined & believable personality, making them substantial and remembered. An example would be the author having designed a single family member of MC to be the embodiment of Wuxia novel where he is justice, love and compassionate which highly contrast with MC. Every character in Reverend Insanity plays a significant role and just so you know, there is no romance(from what I know of).

World Background: 4.1 It could be that because the MC hoard much of the spotlight. The world background is less appreciated since the world design are generally similar to other Wuxia novel. The starting premise displays the same direction as a reincarnated novel would, 'born with the memories but weak talent restricting the body, so need to power-up and survive'. The high rating is attributed to the unique cultivation system. At first, I have a tough time imagining and understanding the whole system due to the lack of good explanation. Then, after 100+ chapter did I develop some understanding of the system. Basically, the person have a spiritual region that contain add-on  "GU" required for the user to perform skills such as invisibility and etc. The "GU" is the unique and fascinating aspects.

Translation Quality: 4.5 stars I have heard that the previous translator was terrible and the standard is almost worse than machine translated version. The current translator have placed much more effort than the previous translator and I salute to you. Although there are some parts that I have a tougher time in understanding, the consistency in grammar and translation is high. Thank you Translator and Editors!!

Stability of Updates: I am not exactly sure of how stable the current translation at the time of making this review. From the translator notes and the readers comments, the updates is not the most stable out there. I will still support the translator and appreciate his work.

Overall, 4.43 stars Excellent novel to pick up on after crossing over the barriers. Read it with a pinch of salt.  Recommended for those that read many novels out there and searching for an interesting novel. Remember kids, avoid Fang Yuan and bring all your family,friends,love,wealth,gu,clans away from him because your close ones may end up in the stomach of a bear. *evil smirk*

I have no words that can describe how incredible this story is. It uses the very rare villain protagonist, and to a much better extreme than I’ve ever seen. What stands out even more that that though about the protagonist is his willpower. And yes, I know that’s a relatively common advantage protagonists have, but Fang Yuan takes it to a whole new level. He literally hasn’t rested for a single moment in the entire story. Not once. Every moment is spent increasing his strength or furthering his schemes. He literally only sleeps the amount necessary to prevent his soul collapsing from from over exertion. So don’t expect any romance in the story, as that would simply be a waste of time.

I’ve talked a lot about why the protagonist is great but the other characters are incredible as well. Every opponent that Fang Yuan comes across is genuinely intelligent, instead of a mindless old man screaming “Junior! You dare” or “You’re courting death!” The protagonist and antagonists have to really scheme against each other, and Fang Yuan even loses sometimes! I wouldn’t say it happens particularly often, but enough to feel incredibly realistic while still proving to us that he’s a scheming genius.

Onto the world itself. Like everything else in this story, it’s incredible. The entire world is pretty much displayed to us at the beginning, with  Fang Yuan getting easier access to other locations and the upper echelons of society as the story progresses, and there isn’t the cliche of constantly going to a new world or continent every time the protagonist gets a power up to keep them weak. He always feels like he’s getting noticeably stronger all the time.
There’s even a unique and complex creation myth in this world that ties greatly into the main story.

Next, the cultivation system. It’s the most unique one I’ve ever seen and, admittedly may not be for everyone, but I think it’s better than most others for many reasons. Basically, everyone fights with ‘Gu’ instead of magic power or qi, so to use other stories’ terms as a comparison, everyone fights with magic equipment and medicine instead of their own strength, but there is a clear importance placed on the user’s abilities as well. The phrase “There is no strongest gu, only the strongest gu master,” is repeated often. Time scaling is also greatly shortened in this story compared to others because a person’s lifespan simply doesn’t increase as their strength grows. Everyone gets 100 years to live unless they are lucky enough to find a rare gu or special method that can extend their lifespan. In addition to the threat of their own dwindling lifespan, each cultivator basically has a looming threat over their heads at all times from their own source of strength. Every gu has to be fed every so often or it will  die, so everyone has to be constantly fighting for large quantities of unique food for their weapons or they’ll lose them. Later on this becomes less of an issue, but tribulations that are usually very dangerous happen quite often to make up for it. This means that no one can lock themselves in a cave for 10 000 years and magically come out super strong. Everyone has to constantly compete for benefits.

Lastly the story’s morals. I touched on this earlier when I mentioned that the protagonist was evil, but he really isn’t alone. There have been less than ten genuinely good people throughout the entire story so far, and the terms ‘righteous’ and ‘demonic’ are far less black and white than they seem. Though Fang Yuan is evil, and unquestionably a demon by nature, the ‘good people’ only appear kind themselves. This is a world where strength rules everything and kindness is nothing more than a weakness that gets beaten out of those lucky enough to survive. It’s dark but very realistic in a world where one man can flatten an army with little effort. This unique outlook again makes this story truly incredible.

Final words: It’s great, it’s unique, and you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

The title and the sypnosis sucks. And the LNMTL is so much better than this. 2 stars is the only thing I can do...........blah blah blah blah blah blah

My original review can be replaced with this one I guess since the tl'er has been changed, for the previous one who is doing a great job.

As I caught up to human translation of skyfarrow, I thought might as well check out some
Lnmtl as I waited and waited and am around c100 but i do have to say that it just gets better and better as you read along and is absolutely worth checking out.

The mc is cool, and the story progression is great and we even see bits and pieces of clan politics and the like, I plan to stick with HTl for, no matter how easy lnmtl is confirmation of what I read with htl is great.

The only downside that I still have is that qidian still will not suck and admit that they made a mistake and alter the title to Daoist Gu or Reverend Insanity but whatever at least we got a good mtl'er instead of that wuxiadream trash.

Wait when did we got back at no 2 ?

Bro I thought FY was one of the most evil fictional character but recently I have picked up Blood Merdian and the villain from it, Judge Hordon make characters like Griffith,Joker and even FY look like a saint and I am not exaggerating. This is one of the most vile but great novels I have read.

Judge hordan is pure evil character while fang yuan is evil
Because of the goals ( which I don't think is evil).
Fang yuan himself said that if kindness can help him achieve
Immortality he will become greatest and kindest saint.
On the other hand though judge hordans kill count is no
Where even close to fang yuan but he is just evil and that's it.
It's different from griffith, griffith is also not evil for fun but
Hordans is just villain. Kinda same analogy with joker.

No FY is not an evil character .He doesn't kill people unnecessarily .He is only a goal focused MC who doesn't care about anything else.
He can became the most virtuous character ever if he can fulfill his goal by doing so. Similarly , he can become the most evil as well. That's what i like about him.
Gu world required him to become a evil person and that's why he did evil things .But as you know , he never displayed pleasure by killing people because he didn't care.
As Fang Yuan says "only eternal life is goal".

Summary: So fy has no morals and will do anything for his goals