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self_made_human  amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi  9mo ago (ussri.substack.com)   5841 thread views

Pokémon for Unrepentant Sociopaths: A Review of Reverend Insanity

ussri.substack.com

Well, this is just about exactly what it says on the tin. I've finally mustered up the energy to write a full-length review of what's a plausible contender for my Favourite Novel Ever, Reverend Insanity. I'd reproduce it here too, but it's a better reading experience on Substack (let's ignore the shameless self-promotion, and the fact that I can't be arsed to re-do the markdown tags)

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I have to appreciate just how well-handcrafted the brutal math of the setting is. Particularly the shift from Gu Masters to Gu Immortals. I'll spoiler it because the mechanics are not revealed immediately in the story.

Why do so seemingly many stay at the peak of rank 5? It's not just that upgrading to rank 6, the first Gu Immortal rank, is unusually precarious, requiring a great feat of concentration just to survive the process. The "running as fast as you can just to stay in place" aspect comes in full force for Gu Immortals, who are assaulted by unpredictable, personal natural disasters scaled to their power, and constantly scaling further, as often as every year. Growth is now required not just to compete with others, but to survive the next calamity. This neatly explains why rank sixes and above are nearly unheard of in the 'mortal' world, even as they manipulate their clans from behind the scenes. One Gu Immortal could crush countless rank fives, but the irony is that it's not worth it anymore. Instead, they have to start from the bottom in the new hierarchy, without contrived mechanisms (that I've heard of) in other xianxia where advancing to the next rank group ascends you to another dimension entirely.

Amazing Cultivation Simulator but for Reverend Insanity setting cannot come fast enough.

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