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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   2414 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 12, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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What are the best completed cultivation novels in your mind? I started reverend insanity off the rec of @self_made_human but wasn’t feeling the evil MC vibe.

I’ve read coiling dragon, I shall seal the heavens, cradle, and mother of learning and liked em all. Tried out Warlock of magus world but it’s a little too silly for me so far.

Any thoughts?

Lord of the Mysteries may or may not qualify as cultivation depending on what you're looking for, but it would be my favorite cultivation-adjacent thing I've read. It has a cultivation-inspired sort of progression framework but not the typical cultivation setting or powers or advancement methods, instead it's more occultism in a Victorian-inspired setting. This site seems to have a decent epub version if you don't want to put up with the official site.

It being my favorite isn't a terribly strong statement, since a lot of them (like Coiling Dragon) I've quit after trying and getting bored, but I guess I'd say it's of similar quality to the average published western fantasy novel? Which is high praise by webnovel standards. Note that it has a slow start. (Conversely the currently-airing donghua adaption went too far in the other direction in rushing through and skipping things for the first few episodes, to the point that some non-novel-readers were complaining of it being difficult to understand. Nice animation though.)

Nice animation though.

I bounced off it because i thought it was poorly directed, even though parts of it were well animated.

Would you recommend powering through or just reading the novel?

The show skips and compresses enough stuff (setting, time with less important characters, less vital plot elements, explanations of what's going on) that I would regard the novel as the "full" version, plus according to the timeline it'll take until 2035 to adapt it all. The main question is whether you also bounce off the novel's translation/writing-style/slow pacing. So I would say give it a try and see how you like it.

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