Excellent and fun deconstructed xianxia novel (like Tai Sui ). I enjoyed reading this so much more as a physical book (and a buddy read with Laura!) than a web novel. The cover, dust jacket, interior art, chapter art, and edges were all very nice but the exposed spine felt vulnerable and delicate. I know there were complaints about the art chosen for vol. 1 cover (Yin Hanjiang as a child) but personally I’m unbothered by that 😂 I didn’t even realize they changed the title from Devil to Demon.
-Demonic sect POV -Comedic undertones -Xianxia definitions/explanations that would be helpful for new-to-danmei readers -Really fun female characters -Slow burn but so sweet and satisfying -Enjoyable character development
Like others have said in their reviews, it just feels like a refreshing take. Deconstructing the purpose of cultivation and the ultimate goal of cultivators vs what they really are doing and who they really are vultures of the spiritual energy who claim to be helping the common people but just trying to gain power and immortality for themselves. The righteous sects are just as greedy as the demonic cultivators but more devious with motives hidden behind their good deeds. The fact that the world enjoyed 10 years of peace and growth during the cultivation war….
If you liked this novel, give Tai Sui a try. It’s not danmei, but it’s one of the best xianxia novels I have ever read.
On a reread: -Loved Yin Hanjiang’s character so much more -Immediately more engaged in the story and the characters (it was a slow start for me the first time) -Laughed so much more at Wenren E, Shu Yanyan, Qiu Congxue, etc -Appreciated the little moments when Wenren E started paying close attention to Yin Hangjiang
preordered in january and it came yesterday so starting my reread hehe........ my favorite danmei of all time, top three favorite webnovel of all time second only to orv for me. i cant believe i forgot how good this is fawkkkkk this is my 4th reread. somexcited for the rest of the volumes i already have vol 2 preordered
wenre e <3 yin hanjiang <3 shu yanyan <3 qiu congxue <3 baili qingmiao <3 youre all so dear to me
Please be a good translation, please be a good translation, please be a good translation 🙏🙏🙏
I really liked this book when I read the fan translation and I really want to get this, but I've been hearing some iffy things about this publishing group's first book release so I'm nervous.
This book is a beautiful mess and I love the awareness of so many of the characters that the situations they're finding themselves in is absurd.
When I first heard about this, I want told any plot details and therefore, I wasn't sure what to think. This was a blind buy, and I started reading completely blind as well. I think that was for the best, as this is similar in meta-comedy narrative and time to SVSSS, which I adore. Even if the plot is wild, the characters are endearing and I adore them. I really hope Haitang Books releases the next volume in English soon, I want more of this delightful absurdity.
Demon Venerable Also Wants to Know is one of the most unique cultivation novels I’ve read so far. Instead of following the traditional hero, we’re following Wenren E, the Demon Venerable, who discovers a book detailing his own fate and the story surrounding him. Watching him question the story, the people around him, and why everybody keeps doing the most ridiculous things possible is both hilarious and surprisingly engaging.
The cast is honestly a collection of absolute lunatics. We have Baili Qingmiao, who is a dummy and somehow manages to make the worst decisions imaginable, He Wenzhao, who spends most of the novel proving why he is the worst, Yin Hanjiang, the most loyal simp in cultivation history, and Shu Yanyan, who may or may not be plotting everyone’s downfall at any given moment. Somehow, all of these personalities come together to create a story that is funny, chaotic, and incredibly entertaining.
What I wasn’t expecting was how invested I would become in the characters. Beneath all the comedy and absurdity, there is genuine character growth and a fascinating exploration of fate, free will, and whether people can break away from the roles that have been assigned to them.
The twist involving He Wenzhao completely caught me off guard and changed how I viewed parts of the story. I won’t spoil it, but it left me with even more questions and made me even more excited to continue the series.
By the end, I was completely hooked. The humor landed, the characters were memorable, and the story managed to surprise me multiple times. I finished this volume immediately wanting the next one and am already anxious to see what happens in Volume 2.
If the rest of the series is this good, I’ll gladly be collecting every volume.
Demon Venerable Also Wants to Know is a satirical, hilarious cultivation novel.
The great thing about reading Danmei and about reading web novels in general is the uniqueness. I would never get a story like this in Western published fiction. Even among Danmei novels it’s fairly unique.
-Love the female characters Demon Venerable Also Wants to Know proves that Danmei as a genre and well written NOT MISOGYNISTIC female characters are not mutually exclusive. I’m tired of readers excusing shittily written women by saying “they don’t care” or “well written female characters are not what they’re looking for”. I will never understand how people can enjoy novels where one part of it sucks ass. I have to like every part of a book to like it, or at least I have to not absolutely loathe one part of it.
The female characters in this novel are great because 1) they’re not written misogynistically aka written solely to be centered around men, 2) are actual characters with their own beliefs and goals and 3) THEY’RE PRESENT!
In fact, what makes this novel the most unique among Danmei is that one of the most important characters is a woman, and the entire story’s plot actually hinges on her. In fact, I’d go as far to say she’s one of the main/focused characters, considering how much page time she gets and how her story and growth is integral to the plot.
The female characters’ personalities don’t revolve solely around men. Shu Yuyan and Qiu Congxue in particular, like their male demonic sect counterparts, hunger for power not male attention, which I find oh so refreshing.
Even outside of the typical female character archetypes (naive sweetheart & sexy femme fatale), we get a very unique female character, Qiu Congxue, who’s main trait outside of her demonic cultivator ambitions is her lack of brains (making her a hilarious contrast and rival to the intelligent Shu Yuyan). I’ve never seen the “genuinely stupid and empty-brained” trait given to a female character. I love how much of a simpleton she is.
-Why this novel is a great satire + Fantastic supporting cast The main focus is definitely on satirizing those reverse harem novels where the OP good-hearted Mary Sue somehow has 5+ hot dudes gunning for her and instead of choosing any of them she settles on her asshole childhood friend.
I love how the author subverted all of these tropes. The subversions are most evident in these characters: Baili Qingmao - naive heroine He Wenzhao - the asshole womanizer first male lead Wenren E - the 2nd male lead who’s clearly the better choice/fan favorite + leader of the dark faction Shu Yuyan - the temptress
The author turns all of these archetypes on their head in a hilarious way that actually makes way more sense than the original novel’s plot.
Like actually the FL only forgives the ML so much and is so devoted to him because in a past life they were entangled and now their souls are literally intertwined. Or, all of those guys aren’t actually in love with the FL. Or, none of those women were in love with the ML either. Instead, everything is cleverly explained through a much more practical lens: power. After all, they’re demonic cultivators!
It’s a really clever execution on the author’s part. By entwining the cultivation system with the characters’ motivations, it makes the explanation much more believable. Plus, it ties in with the setting quite nicely.
Another reason why this book is a great satire is because it isn’t written in a way that’s too mean-spirited or biased. Often when writers criticize tropes by satirizing them they flatten them by only focusing on the bad and not the good, making their story more one-dimensional. The author avoids this by characterizing the characters as nothing more than they are (aka what is shown).
For example, the FL, Baili Qingmao isn’t mainly potrayed as stupid or a boy-crazy pick-me. If anything, she’s portrayed as naive and insanely caring, and most of the blame is heaped on the ML for their dysfunctional relationship. Besides, I like how her “caring trait” isn’t surface level. She isn’t solely shown caring for men but also women, even when they’ve wronged her. Her core problem isn’t stupidity but naïveté. Her genuine caring attitude is why she’s one of my favorite characters in the novel. It’s a funny contrast to all the self-serving evil demonic cultivators.
-Cultivation This novel doesn’t shy away from its cultivation aspects. The cultivation levels and power rankings are like a combination of hard magic systems in epic fantasy and Shonen anime power scaling lol. The power system is crucial to the story, and the author doesn’t shy away from explaining it in detail. Cultivation is mostly “soft magic” with flexible logic and although it’s convenient to the plot I like it because there’s nothing cooler than ultimate power.
-Unique Romance A lot of romances emphasize sexual enjoyment or romantic gestures, but this story is unique in that it emphasizes devotion without falling too far into the territory of idolization.
I love seeing how Wenren E, through that ridiculous book, slowly comes to truly understand Yin Hanjiang. I like the idea that without the book, he never would’ve know Yin Hanjiang’s real feelings. A lot of romances rely on the idea that’s eventually the two characters will recognize each other’s devotion even though neither of them will say anything outright. This is a nice small subversion. Just because devotion is given doesn’t mean it will be recognized.
I also love how patiently Wenren E brings Yin Hanjiang out of his shell. It was sweet seeing Yin Hanjiang’s mask as the “unfeeling, silent soldier” slowly start to break as Wenren E uncharacteristically acknowledges him.
-Conclusion The supporting cast of this novel is extremely strong. Each character is bursting with personality, and I love the author’s take on harem novel character archetypes. This novel is funny, sweet, and fun, all at once!
I really thought I was going to like this more than I did. I'm hoping that things pick up more in the second book, because there is so much promise. I'm not even sure what's wrong, and I wonder if it's that Cyan Wings and I just don't click in terms of writing style. I like the characters, the setting is fun, the plot is fun. This pretty much only leaves the writing.
I found myself just not getting absorbed into this story like I normally do. I found it easy to be pulled away and had to remind myself to come back and finish this book over the course of about a week. My normal reading rate for a book like this is about 48 hours maximum. I felt like I wasn't experiencing any of the action, but rather being told about it later, like reading an academic historical account. It's not so much the much-argued Western ideal of "show don't tell" but that the story feels very passive, as though Wenren E isn't truly involved in anything that's going on because he knows everything that's going to happen. Perhaps that's a complication of the plot that's difficult to write in an exciting way for me, I'm not sure.
Anyways - the characters are fantastic. They are objectively very funny, which is why it's such a shame to me that I never find myself laughing or smiling while reading, as I do with Peerless or the fish danmei. It has the potential to be one of the funniest danmei, but again, there's something off for me. I really enjoy the side characters, which are often a mark of a good story for me. Wenren E is something of an unreliable narrator, as you only get hints of his attraction to the love interest via his actions, not his inner thoughts, which makes it fun to look for the hints along the way and wonder what else our MC is leaving out.
The plot and world are quite interesting, martial arts sects, etc. I wish there was a little more description of the outside because I can't picture the world very well. Instead it's like we hop from interior place to interior place and the connection between feels grey and featureless. Overall I haven't read anything with quite this exact plot, it's something of a reverse transmitigation story? Rather than someone from the future entering another world, the outer world communicates to someone living in the alternate world. I feel like this is likely another trope, but I haven't encountered it yet so it winds up being quite fresh.
As this is Haitang, it bears mentioning that the editing in this volume is significantly better than their previous publications, and I hope things are looking up. However, it is also almost identical to fan tl edition so it's not like anyone had to change much. The quality of the edition is very good, I personally love all the extra details.
I absolutely adore this danmei, so I'm giving it the 5* it rightfully deserves, however I do have a few comments on Haitang's edition, mainly the text itself (as the art is beautiful and the artists for this edition well-chosen, no complaints there).
Since this is a published translanstion and not a fan-made one, it should feel a lot more polished than the latter. Unfortunately, reading Haitang's tl, there were parts that made me think one more round of editing was needed: there were some typos, additional words that didn't belong, the same words used too close to one another (this one's stylistic, but you'd expect a bit more from, again, a published book).
Some sentences were also a bit clumsy and didn't flow very well. As a Chinese major I know how hard translating from Chinese is, especially if you want to preserve as much of the original meaning as possible, but some more editing could have lessened the clunkiness.
You can count these as nitpicks, since the overall translation quality is actually quite solid and these are just small issues. What I think it does quite well are the honorifics (an improvement compared to fantl).
I do hope that Haitang will polish the 2nd and 3rd volumes a tad more than this one, but I'm happy to finally own a physical copy of my all time favorite.
I definitely was interested during the first few pages of the book but I’ve come to find out it wasn’t for me.
There’s a lot of information that felt pretty daunting and overwhelming, there wasn’t really a time for me to catch my breath. It’s just constantly this! and that! and felt more like I had to take notes to get through it so I could understand the story as a whole. This didn’t feel like a story to me, but more like a history book with interactions between people.
What I did enjoy was how gorgeous and beautiful the art cover was, along with the small goodies inside the Kinokuniya exclusive. The two pages of art between Yin and Wenren E were a balm to me, actively pushing me to finish this book.
Then again, this was my first ever danmei, expanding my horizons little by little. I will continue exploring other options and might give this one a second chance. who knows!
This one was great. I’m glad I took a chance on it. The description sounded so funny and interesting. Wenren E was great. Not your typical Demonic cultivatior. Looking forward to more from Protector Yin. He’s gotta open up and let his feelings out. The ladies were fantastic as well - Shu YanYan (love her), Qiu Congxue (so deadpan funny) and Baili Qingmiao (girl! Get it together). Definitely looking forward to volumes two and three.
It was my first time shopping at Hai Tang. I got my copy from their website. I had excellent customer service. My copy has the Senior typo. There was one other typo and two words that should’ve been omitted but overall I was happy with my copy and the story.
for this price point the editing mistakes and inconsistency in whether to keep names in pinyin or translate them (like 紫灵阁 appeared as both ziling pavilion and amethyst spirit pavilion and that's sadly not the only example and it literally doesn't make sense, the editor should've caught all instances like this...) proved very annoying and resulted in an unsatisfying read
A super easy read, and I really find it fascinating the way Wenren E sees the work of the demonic sect and how the cultivators impact the mortal world negatively. He has a surprising amount of humanity, and definitely is one of my favorite characters.