Master, This Poor Disciple Died Again Today

This story is hilarious enough that at first I thought it was a xianxia parody. Instead it's a comedic treatment of a serious xianxia story with interesting characters, absurd situations, and an example of someone powerful who is constantly comparing himself to someone so much more powerful that it skews all sense of perspective in an amusing way. I'm eagerly looking forward to more after 300+ chapters.

So to start with by the description you're probably not getting the full picture. you might expect it to be a story about a master and disciple getting into wacky hijinks, with the disciple trying to surivive an airheaded masters choices. that isn't exactly what this is.

this is really good comedy about a protagonist constantly trying to fake his death to get out sticky situations. that said the master is not really the main cast. he is there and does do things but, the focus is on the disciple with the master in the background more often than not.

the reality is it's probably closer to "this poor disciple! why did master not prepare me for this!?" as a title. as the MC follows an unusual path that he never get's the full picture for before following it down, resulting in endless fun. so yes the story is fantastic even if not quite what you expected.

the style of writing is well done. it keeps things interesting and unlike many other novels I have never resorted to skimming because things get too wordy or lack proper detail. the sense of timing and what each line conveys are really good helping the humour to land nearly every time.

grammarwise I'm happy to report there are very few issues. occasionally you might encounter an issue that was missed in editing but, the context clues mean you'll never be confused as to what you're looking at is getting at.

the characters are... all very good. everyone has layers to them. even the villains have more to them than you're average Xianxia. note this does not mean everyone get's a long winded emotional backstory. more like they have enough depth not to be just angry 5 year olds with superpowers. pretty much everyone feels like a person even if they're aren't good people.

tl;dr: Read it. might not quite be what you thought it was but, it's really good and will keep you waiting for each new chapter.

Master, This Poor Disciple Died Again Today is a refreshing take on the Xianxia genre. Our protagonist, Hui, has realized that those who do not seak death do not die. So he comes up with new and creative ways to fake his death and escape.

The story can feel underwhelming at times, mostly due to Hui's lack of presence. He's skittish and shy, reactive instead of proactive. Now you might think that would make the story meh, because Hui is being pushed around by the plot, until you realize that:

Bai Xue is the chad xianxia MC

and Xiao Hui is the bashful jade beauty shying away from their harem. And it makes things so much better. Because while watching Hui evade obstacles is fun, when the two of them team up they feel unstoppable, which hits all the right power-fantasy and overcoming adversity notes. Delicious.

(And watching Bai Xue tease Hui, is fantastic too.) 10/10 would recommend.

I'll be honest, I readily expected this to land in the mediocre valley that seems to call to the cultivation genre. Instead, this shot right up to float in the heady territory of Arrogant Young Master or Mediocre Supreme Cultivator. It's not as aggressively comedic as those, but definitely earns the tag with a streetwise protagonist that's just trying to get by.

Style: Smooth and solid. The pacing is fairly quick, with occasional moments to breathe and consider what's going. No confusing sentence structure that I saw.

Grammar: Great. I wasn't poring over every word, but no errors stood out to me.

Story: Classic xianxia setting, with a few unique twists. The world is fairly focused within the sect so far, but it's been an enjoyable view. Weird alchemists, violently competitive cultivators, and our streetwise survivor tucked right onto the middle of everything. The plot is fairly low stakes, for all it risks the death of the protagonist, but it makes for a solid drive to keep him moving forward. Additionally, it has yet to make the mistake of prioritizing comedy over realism. The humor comes out of the protagonist's interactions with the world, not by bending the reality of the story to produce funny moments.

Characters: Pretty solid. The side characters trend towards exaggerated personalities, the sweet chef, the (un)rightous rival, the slightly off alchemist. That said, it never approaches caricature and it's early enough that there hasn't been much opportunity to see more depth from the assorted individuals. Scenes have indicated that the thoughtless master is at least more than his initial shallow portrayal, so I don't have much concern that the side characters will ever feel empty. The MC himself tips back and forth between tragic and humerous, with fun little survival tips that allude to a thoroughly depressing origin. Despite that, there's no wallowing and the tone of his character is pretty upbeat, if generally approaching his problems with a "can hustle" attitude. Regardless, the author nails the opportunistic but not antagonistic attitude that makes or breaks streetwise characters. It's solid.

Overall, this makes for an entertaining xianxia that still has the bones of a solid cultivation story underneath. Enough so that even if the author decided to play things entirely straight, I'd probably still read it. It does take a few chapters to get rolling, but I'd recommend giving it until chapter 10 to see if it appeals.

 Let me preface myself by saying that the slow build up of the novel can lead to many mixed opinions, as it is common on royal road.

  The novel has some satiric aspects to it and tend to mix comedy and silliness within the important plot points, which is both a weakness and a strength. It takes quite a while before it really starts going strong, making the most of its many aspects, but by the end of book 1 we have things falling into place; the story progressing smoothly and the comedy being less disrupting of the narrative and much more on point (in my opinion at least).

 Most people that go beyond chapter 50 are going to be hooked and have a lot less to complain about. I made this review on the basis of the novel as it is now.  

That said,  It is also important to point out this is not for those that want a more fight the world and kill them all approach to cultivation novels. We will have great fights later on the novel, but our MC is not going to go on a rampage any time soon. He is a gentle soul, that might at worst torture you. 

Story: The author of this novel, noct, clearly had many ideas to implement, but rather than just throwing them all together on the pot and letting it stir, he tends to give hints and slowly let the characters, and us, figure out plot points as they become relevant. The principal plot-line is about Hui, our main character, trying to figure out cultivation with the help of (but more like, in spite of) having a genius Master, but there is plenty going on the background, such as wars of gods and sects that will become relevant as the MC grows. Without going too hard into details, Hui's situation leads to something you don't usually see on cultivation novels so early; a very self taught MC. His methods will sometimes fail, work, fail catastrophically, work again, be different and sometimes similar to other cultivators, but mostly make the story start specially slow. We can't expect Hui to up and be running laps around people when he is figuring out how to cultivate and what is so strange about him. I believe this story, right from the start and even now, has a lot of potential and leads to many fun interactions and clever fighting. The main issue is that when I say slow boil, I mean it. I think 50 chapters in you might had seen the MC fight once, and even then it's not much of a fight. Still, huge kudos to noct for managing to make playing death into a valid cultivation technique and developing the plot so much from there. With Hui's growth, more is revealed of the world, and there is more still that I bet we will be seeing when he manages to grow his cultivation further.  

Style: The dialogues on this novel always have a hint of Mirth; I can go from paying close attention to the plot, to laughing or smirking with the antics of the characters and the world around then, back to high tension. I think this style reaches maturity on the later half of the first book, as it happens with the story. The narrative is very descriptive, at least I always get a clear picture of what's going on and where, which I think is the mark of great  prose. The one flaw I would had marked at the start is the too slow pace, but again I think the story really grows into itself as it goes forward and had reached an very good tempo. To round style up, at no point did I felt either that the sentences were too repetitive, hard to read, or annoying. I think this last point can be seen across all the novel and shows how much the author has taken time to polish his words.

Another thing I would had pointed out at the star as a flaw is that at times you might think some things happens because they need to happen, but having read so much and seeing how much care went into everything, I will be giving Noct the benefit of the doubt, maybe there is more to it that we see. 

Grammar: Nothing much to say here; the novel is definitely polished and very few minor typos are ever found, which are quickly addressed by the author. 

Characters: Finally, characters.  I was saving this part to talk about Hui, the MC. I know he can appear silly, dumb, or even careless at the start, but I thought Noct presented a very good point. Would a person that has already died once and is living in a fantasy magical world take things seriously? Hui is a clever guy; he had lived a terrible life before his first death and mostly he just want to find happiness, not strength in particular. The situation leads him to cultivation and slowly he will have new reasons to grow, but at the start he just wanted to eat well, rest well, and play well. Which is fair enough. As a reader we want more and the story will deliver, but I understand the people that got feed up before reaching the really satisfying character development. I just hope whoever goes trough my whole review gives him a chance. I think his growth is all the more important because it takes time and feels real.  One thing I don't want to forget, though; Hui is not a violent guy. He will not go out of his way to look for a fight, and he will not look for strength for strength's sake, but by this point of the novel, if he needs to fight he will. 
I personally thought all characters were really well done from the start, in the sense that they have clear quirks; weak-points and strong points, that make them easy to remember and more life like. There are some side characters I already like and look forward to see more of. In particular one antagonist / rival character that's from a rival sect, but still manages to always be fun to read about. (the triplets) 

I doubt many people read trough all of this long review, but the main point was to say "There is more to this than what you might see at first". I believe the novel is the result of real interest and creativity by the author, a passion project of sorts, because I couldn't believe he would plan so many things that could had gone wrong so well, carefully and with such slow build, otherwise. I am kind of sad to see the low scores that mostly come from dropping the novel halfway. 

I'll admit, for the first 2-3 dozen chapters I was pretty skeptical. However, this is a story that builds on you and gets better and better as it goes on.

The current arc is amazing and it's currently one of my most anticipated chapters each release day.

I would have expected the release rate to kill this story or cause a bunch of problems but so far the author has managed to keep things going relatively smoothly.

Overall, this is an addictive, funny, while also serious, story. The MC has a bit of a ridiculous past as a basis, however, the MC is appropriately ridiculous themselves in their death faking. If you accept the one, the other follows in a natural feeling way.

Style-wise, the flow is both quick enough and slow enough that you don't feel rushed nor are you grumbling about getting to the point. If anything, like all truly good stories, the enjoyable combat scenes are NOT what you are waitng for. You are, instead, waiting for the character interactions, the internal development, and even the rare other character perspectives of the MC themselves.

Grammar, I have to say with great joy, is excellent. That is a thing to be treasured, not just on RR but even in paper published works, it is upsettingly common to find vocabulary, grammar, and spelling errors. If I encountered any in this work, they were so rare and minor that they were instantly overlooked.

The Story is enjoyable, becomes increasingly rich, and has a feeling of interconnection so it doesn't strike you as a randomly concieved plot as the author went along. Neither does it foreshadow heavily, so you are truly along for the ride in the best possible way. Without giving away too much, you will not be dissappointed by the gradual development of plot complexity coincident with the MC engaging more and more with the broader world, as if the MC is simply learning of an already existing and rich world.

Character-wise, the MC is excellently well developed. The theme for the MC is intentionally over the top and the MC fits it neatly and without feeling forced. The other characters are a bit lackluster in theri development, so I couldn't give this category top marks. Some of them, such as Li Xiang (who becomes very pivotol in some ways) starts to feel less developed as the story goes along despite increasing significance. Others, such as Bai Xue, begin feeling underdeveloped and grow into something not quite cohesive with their starting character, but a much more solid character type. In the end though, only the MC enjoys a richly developed character that doesn't feel too contrived despite being the most ridiculous of the entire set. Don't expect to fall in love with the supporting character's depths, but they are not so shallow as to be grating.

Overall, I'm addicted. Other than this and Beware of Chicken, I rarely find the Chinese themed cultivation stories that entertaining. The social constructs are so unnatural in them that it is downright painful. The MC in this and BoC do such a good job of being a foil for a modern, mostly western view of these contrived fictional societies that it gives you a place to stand as a reader.

This book is primarily a comedy, and that is in my opinion its biggest weakness, because if you don’t find it funny, you probably won’t enjoy reading this book. What people find funny or not is entirely subjective, so my advice is to at least try it out regardless of reviews. If you like it, great. Of you don’t, it wasn’t for you.

For me, I really liked the first volume (108 chapters), I laughed out loud quite a few times and had a smile on my face during most chapters, but the second volume just wasn’t working for me. The author relies heavily on coincidences, luck and small misunderstandings for both comedy and plot progression, and I don’t know if it became too repetitive or too unbelievable, but the second volume was a bit too much for my tastes. To be fair, there might be more to some of those coincidences, but unfortunately, they are presented as simple coincidences most of the time and it is mostly speculation on my part whether there is anything more there.

The main character can be quite unlikable depending on your tastes. He is a coward and a wimp. He doesn’t like fighting or pain, and while he says that he wants to avoid trouble, he always, unwittingly and oh so coincidentally, ends up causing chaos around him. He is constantly groveling at the feet of people even weaker than him because he wants to avoid conflict and doesn’t care about pride or reputation. His fighting style of pretending to die when his opponents touch him was funny and entertaining in the beginning, but as many other things in this book I feel like it was a bit overdone as the story progressed. He also gets very contradictory with what he says or thinks and what he does. Quite a few times he proceeded to do dangerous things that either he knew beforehand were dangerous or was told not to do them because they were dangerous while saying that he wants to avoid danger and just stay alive with poor excuses that are there to try and make the situation funny. It doesn’t work most of the time for me.

Li Xiang is a naïve and just beauty that everyone in the sect is in love with and is the main romantic interest. Unfortunately, as the protagonist is a wimp, I doubt that there will ever be substantial progress when it comes to romance, or at least not any time soon. Again, the joke of everyone in the sect sending killing intent or trying to assault the MC when he interacts with her was funny in the beginning, but loses a lot of impact as it is repeated with their every interaction.

Bai Xue might be the funniest person in this book. Unfortunately, the MC brings her down almost completely for me. I love innuendos, but in order to find them funny I need some back and forth. But their interactions boil down to Bai saying an innuendo and the MC responding with something like ‘Oh if you say it like that it can mean something else’. Yes, I know how innuendoes work, fire back and make something out of it, not repeat the same thing every time.

Weiheng Wu, the MC’s master, is one of my favorite characters. He is arrogant, aloof, honest to the point of insulting everyone around him, a genius at cultivation, utterly unskilled at social interactions, but most importantly, he is not an idiot even though he might seem like one. When he says that he is stronger than everyone around him, or that other people are bad at cultivation, it isn’t to be condescending, it’s just the truth, and everyone knows it. Unfortunately, he shows up like five times in the entire book. Or maybe I just like him so much just because jokes about his behavior aren’t repeated so often like others.

There are a few more side characters, but they are nothing special. Most characters are your standard xianxia fare and they serve the comedy well enough, but if you are expecting something deeper from them you might be disappointed.

As far as the story is concerned, it’s not bad, but as I have said, the focus is mainly on comedy, and those coincidences hurt the story in my opinion. There is only so many times I can find it believable that things keep happening coincidentally so many times. It doesn’t work that well in my opinion when you try to simultaneously make every chapter funny while using the same jokes and progress the story. I did say that the story isn’t bad because if you imagine all of the events developing naturally, instead of the forced comedy that I stopped finding funny more than 100 chapters ago, you would end up with an excellent story. But that isn’t what is written unfortunately. What is written are coincidences and luck built upon coincidences and luck in an unending circle.

I am still reading this book because I find the potential of the story very interesting, but all of the repeated and juvenile jokes that just make me groan at this point, and the MC’s constant inconsistent behavior really diminish my enjoyment of this book.

Having said all that, I really believe that you should give this book a chance. It’s difficult to recommend a comedy, but if you squint at times you are left with an interesting story.

I made an account simply so I could comment on and review this story. I marathoned the entire thing in a day, and it's definitely a fun read, with very good grammar and a grasp of xianxia world that isn't an outright parody but doesn't play everything straight, either.

Style-wise, I definitely enjoy the xianxia metaphors and how they're woven into the story so naturally. There was this one line that compared a voice to being able to cut metal, and the speech pattern of Hui is very distinct, very distinct!

Grammar is perfect. It's not an eyesore nor a struggle to read this story.

Story-wise, there's a very distinct plot that we've been following for 300 chapters. Things that were foreshadowed in the earliest arcs are paying off now. It doesn't feel as if things have been pulled out of nowhere.

Character-wise though, is where I'm a trifle hesitant. It's taken 300 chapters for Hui to start getting some confidence, and he even calls it a heart-demon. It's tiring to yell at him, stop making yourself so small! I'm glad that Ying Lin is helping out in that aspect and that things are getting better, but he needs a bit more self esteem.

I also struggle with Bai Xue and Li Xiang. They're both fun, of course. I like them both. But it feels to me that Li Xiang has been placed on a pedestal as perfect jade justice idol, while dismissing Bai Xue as "haha horny person". And there's the limitation of the genre, too: I'm never sure if things are in earnest or just being played for laughs. Even the relationship discussion with Li Xiang turned funny, and it feels like very little was resolved.

Hui, Xiang, and Xue are interesting, but I don't feel as though they're being utilized to the fullest just yet. I long for Hui to develop some self confidence and stop being so deferential to everyone. He even calls Ying Lin "elder sister"! How does that make sense? Xiang's origin story is great, but she just outright dismisses it. Why? And Xue deserves more than just being "haha horny person" with every appearance. Maybe all three of them just need to sit down for a DTR.

Ultimately, I recommend this story, because it's great. I hope to see it become even better.

While there are already many reviews I just wanted to also review one of my favorite RRL stories:

Style: The writing style of this story is excellent. It is a comedy story with a lot of innuendos whether in the descriptions or the dialogues and I am living for it!

Story: The story begins harmlessly with our protagonist reincarnating and becoming a cultivator. The more the story progresses however the more mysterious it gets. That is not to say that it ever loses it comedic tone. It is just an amazing story where even the funniest unreasonable things happening to our protagonist seem to have a deeper meaning. That makes me almost unable to wait for the next chapter.

Grammar: The grammar is excellent with no obvious mistakes. Note though thaf I am no native speaker.

Character: The characters. A cast getring larger with the amount of chapters and stilk every one of them is memorable. They all have their little quirks and so much personality. They make the book an absolute delight to read.

Overall: One of my favorite stories on Royal Road. It is a story with an amazing underlying plot that still manages to remain a lighthearted comedy.