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Beware of Chicken: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel?
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Beware of Chicken. https://www.amazon.com/Beware-Chicken-Xianxia-Cultivation-Novel-ebook/dp/B09Y6RQSHM
It's Xianxia but the protagonist wants nothing to do with that life. I enjoyed it.
My condolences for the rough time you and your family are going through.
You'd probably like "Beware of Chicken", it's an isekai-style cultivation story where the protagonist rejects the traditional "main character" syndrome for a more peaceful life of farming. It becomes almost shamanistic, with the farm animals slowly gaining sentience and becoming characters in their own right.
I would like to introduce you to Beware of Chicken. It's a much gentler story, and the characters are wonderful.
Here's the summary:
"A laugh-out-loud, slice-of-life martial-arts fantasy about . . . farming????
Jin Rou wanted to be a cultivator. A man powerful enough to defy the heavens. A master of martial arts. A lord of spiritual power. Unfortunately for him, he died, and now I’m stuck in his body.
Arrogant Masters? Heavenly Tribulations? All that violence and bloodshed? Yeah, no thanks. I’m getting out of here.
Farm life sounds pretty great. Tilling a field by hand is fun when you’ve got the strength of ten men—though maybe I shouldn’t have fed those Spirit Herbs to my pet rooster. I’m not used to seeing a chicken move with such grace . . . but Qi makes everything kind of wonky, so it’s probably fine.
Instead of a lifetime of battle, my biggest concerns are building a house, the size of my harvest, and the way the girl from the nearby village glares at me when I tease her.
A slow, simple, fulfilling life in a place where nothing exciting or out of the ordinary ever happens . . . right?"
The story recently got released on Kindle Unlimited. Amazon's rules says you can't have the story out for free elsewhere: https://www.amazon.com/Beware-Chicken-Xianxia-Cultivation-Novel-ebook/dp/B09Y6RQSHM/ref=tmm\_kin\_swatch\_0?\_encoding=UTF8&qid=1657163540&sr=8-1
Ehh, no właśnie czemu bohaterowie chyba wszystkichc isekai są tak ciężko bezużyteczno-bezcharakterni? To już Zachodnie fanfici self-inserty są lepsze w tym temacie...
Na przykład w Beware of Chicken główny bohater jest Kanadyjczykiem i złotą rączką więc imponuje lokalsom na przykład ucząc ich jak się robi syrop klonowy, a w Sleeping with the girls byłym żołnierzem więc na przykład rozkurwia łeb złoczyńcy z Czarodziejki z Księżyca z shotguna po tym jak ogłuszył go granatem.
Beware of Chicken harvested many tears with the most recent chapter!
The first volume was published on Amazon a bit ago, while the other chapters are still up on Royal Road.
The premise is majority slice-of-life in a cultivation world, where the protagonist finds himself added to a body whose previous operator just suffered a massive beatdown from fellow sect members. Protagonist "nopes" out of continuing at the sect, goes off to a region infamous for being weak, and he starts up a farm.
Cultivation shenanigans do still manage to take place, in large part due to the use of qi to farm, and the titular chicken, which is the first of the farm's animals to awaken as a Spirit Beast.
Two suggestions that helped me get through the pandemic and my mother's passing. Neither of these are urban fantasy, but I've found them so well-written I was completely absorbed:
- A Practical Guide to Evil: https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/summary/
- A Practical Guide to Evil is a fantasy series about a young girl named Catherine Foundling making her way through the world – though, in a departure from the norm, not on the side of the heroes. Is there such a thing as doing bad things for good reasons, or is she just rationalizing her desire for control? Good and Evil are tricky concepts, and the more power you get the blurrier the lines between them become.
- This is NOT a YA series, though the first book might feel that way a little bit. The main character of a YA series wouldn't have a body count by the second chapter!
- This series completed in February of 2022. It is online and completely FREE; even the bonus chapters are now free. However, the author is working on getting this published, so tackle this now!
- A Practical Guide to Evil is a fantasy series about a young girl named Catherine Foundling making her way through the world – though, in a departure from the norm, not on the side of the heroes. Is there such a thing as doing bad things for good reasons, or is she just rationalizing her desire for control? Good and Evil are tricky concepts, and the more power you get the blurrier the lines between them become.
- Beware Of Chicken:
- This was my introduction to the xianxia (magic kung fu) genre. However, it's actually a parody, as the MC nopes out of the situation and runs to the other side of the continent to become a farmer. Surprisingly engaging, especially as adventure finds him anyway.
- Book 1: https://www.amazon.com/Beware-Chicken-Xianxia-Cultivation-Novel-ebook/dp/B09Y6RQSHM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1N6EMABF1RYOV&keywords=beware+of+chicken&qid=1666158025&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjg2IiwicXNhIjoiMS42NSIsInFzcCI6IjEuMTQifQ%3D%3D&s=digital-text&sprefix=beware+of+chicken%2Cdigital-text%2C153&sr=1-1
- Books 2 & 3 are currently available online for free on Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/39408/beware-of-chicken
- This was my introduction to the xianxia (magic kung fu) genre. However, it's actually a parody, as the MC nopes out of the situation and runs to the other side of the continent to become a farmer. Surprisingly engaging, especially as adventure finds him anyway.
Beware of Chicken (review, amazon): Slice of life cultivation novel, very wholesome, about a reincarnated person trying to get away from Xianxia tropes. This is an amazing read.
Forge of Destiny (review, amazon): Slice-of-life cultivation. Academia/sect focus. Chill read with slower pacing and lower stakes.
Mage Errant (review, amazon): Progression fantasy, some academic focused books. A struggling protagonist gets dragged into adventure. There's no world-ending stakes at the start, just Hugh struggling to get through the school year.
How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps (review, amazon): Hilarious LitRPG. Short, tongue-in-cheek parody of the genre, it's great fun. There's a "big bad" out there, but its a parody so the stakes aren't exactly high!
Threadbare (review, amazon): LitRPG fantasy. A delightful and aggressively adorable take on the genre. The plot focuses on a sentient teddy-bears search for his owner.
The drath thing is actually a giant xianxia reference. Anyone who ever read chinese web novels will understand what Cultivators, Pills, and the 'refining' of body and soul means and why not only it makes sense that the old monks managed to push a god into the abyss , it would be strange if they werent capable of at least this much. I guess Pirate just assumed that most people who are willing to read 9 million words of a webnovel probably read some eastern ones.
I fully trust that pirateaba will eventually explain their take on the xianxia and 'cultivation' genre , but until then i can only tell you that you are missing the context. Pirate is a fan of the xianxia genre , they even congratulated a fellow author , Casualfarmer, on their novel Beware of Chicken (a parody of cultivation novels) reaching 1# place on patreon
It depends on what you're craving from Cradle. Is it progression fantasy? Is it chinese fantasy?
My suggestions would be Beware of Chicken or A Thousand Li. Both have their strong points and their weak points, neither are exactly like Cradle.
Beware of Chicken is like Xanxia Harry Potter. What I mean by that is that it takes Xanxia concepts and uses them, but kind of dumbs them down for mass appeal. You're not going to be reading about someone sitting around meditating endlessly and striving for power. Instead, it's about a young man becoming a farmer and trying to make his own slice of life on earth while trying to avoid the insanity normally seen in cultivation novels. It's less serious, more slice of life, and without a doubt one of my favorite novels(there's actually another volume on Royal Road, but the first volume isn't free because it just came out 2 days ago on Kindle).
A Thousand Li is a much more contemplative, standard cultivation novel. You have the inverse of Beware of Chicken in that a farmer becomes a cultivator. In this series, you can expect to read about the nature of cultivation, about a young man trying to grow in power through diligent hard work, and about a well realized world. It's nowhere near as fantastical as either Cradle or BoC, but I found it to be a very enjoyable read. It feels much more down to earth. I don't think it'll scratch the progression fantasy itch as well as Cradle, but you can expect some of the same themes to be in the story.
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