- #1
I'm about to finish it, but not yet because it breaks my heart to end it. 10/10, highly recommended.This is one of my favorite novels, and while it doesn't follow the principle of Chekhov's gun, it manages to catch me with every arc.This will always be my favorite lead - Jing Yue is not a naturally patient, hard-working or talented person, but his many years of experience lead him to adopt a calm attitude when he is facing a problem. He is not just a protagonist, he is a leader and behaves as such. He keeps calm, listens, rewards those who deserve it, and punishes very severely those who don't. As in one chapter he said: "if you want to win, you just have to follow me, but if you follow me, then know that I don't tolerate disobedience; those who disobey will be punished". Jing Yue, in turn, is a kind person who knows compassion and camaraderie. He is neither ignorant nor naive, he can be fooled once, but never twice.Some things the novel focuses on is the Dao such as following the principles of your path, not being trapped by the demons in your heart, to follow the causal relationships with which the heavens work, not to be presumptuous because if you want to achieve something, you have to put all your effort into it, not just cut corners: high-level techniques are useless for those without a solid foundation, perfect the foundations, build slowly but surely, take your time to get things done...This is the sense of calm that the novel conveys to me, I think that even if not all the threads were completely connected and some points were for fun more than the plot, all of them added together give you the feeling of enjoying life, taking things easy, that you don't need to rush to get immediate results, that you don't need to be talented to reach the top and understand the constant change by which the universe is constituted.The protagonist died in his first life while cultivating because his technique was too advanced for him. That "too advanced" was in the spiritual sense. He was not mentally prepared, and it is that exchange of ideas and acceptance, his evolution throughout the novel and understanding in each of his techniques that is what touches the heart. While there was a "final enemy", I don't think that was the point of the novel at all, but rather closure for some missing points. I think the real closure was understanding his techniques.
