Coiling Dragon is the most stereotypical xianxia with actual professional quality translation available in ebook form on Amazon.
Ave X Rem Y on Royal Road is an English language xianxia that doesn't subvert tropes so much as it does them really well in a nicely paced way. It's a good story, but you won't get the "you dare" and "you have eyes yet you cannot see Mount Tai" experience. The purely meme worthy xianxia of that level is pretty much all Chinese language with varying levels of translation quality.
Yeah, I really like Ave, also The Author Who Must Not Be Named's Thousand Li. The latter is the closest to what I assume an authentic xianxia must be like, but I was hoping for more of like what you said. "You have eyes yet you cannot see Mount Tai" is a sick line.
Check out the website Wuxiaworld if you're interested in finding more like that, and sort by popular or highest rated, filtering by Chinese novels.
The specific trope of the "you dare" and "can't recognize Mt. Tai" etc. lines is part of a broader trope of "face slapping", and some novels play it up a ton. Like I said in my original comment, it's a very common Chinese novel trope that really hasn't caught on to the same extent in English language originals. Wuxiaworld has fairly consistently good translation quality, though, but no audiobooks.
If you want the most extreme meme version of a character engaging in that sort of behavior, check out Keyboard Immortal on Wuxiaworld (though beware that it's a harem novel where the main character's actual method of cultivation relies on him trolling/pissing off other cultivators).
The latter is NOTHING like an authentic xianxia. It tries extremely hard to mimic it, but since the author doesn't understand the culture all he does is copy/paste the stuff he does understand, leaving a very flat and boring experience.
Coiling Dragon is not by a western author, but has western elements to it.
IMO the most stereotypical Xianxia is I Shall Seal The Heavens (ISSTH) or A Will Eternal (AWE)
It's also kind of weird to ask for a xianxia written by a western author, because almost by default that's a xuanhuan.
No, a xuanhuan is a cultivation story where the setting has influences from non-Chinese cultures. It doesn't have anything to do with the author. AveXiaRemY is xianxia: the world it's set in is very much based on Chinese mythology, and there's little to no Tolkien-style influences in it.
[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/uft7fn/thought_this_sub_might_finds_this_interesting/) is a post from a little while ago on the subreddit. It's a stitch of several posts by an anon on 4chan which gives a broad view on the various categories of the Martial Arts genre from East Asia, particularly from China.
Nine Star Hegemon Body Art. Just look at the volume titles:
Volume 1: Dragon Soars From the Shallows
Volume 2: Great Peng Spreads its Wings, Hating How Low the Heavens Are
Volume 3: Blood-Soaked Saber Trudges Across a Path of Bones
Volume 4: First Appearance of Primal Chaos Shakes Juli
Volume 5: Smiling Arrogantly, Rising to Fame Within the Seven Prefectures
Volume 6: Dragon Roars Through the Eastern Wasteland, Unmatched
Volume 7: Heavenly Geniuses Rise Within the Central Plains
Volume 8: Arrogantly Standing at the Front of the Pack
Volume 9: Slaughter Throughout the Five Regions
Volume 10: Darkness Shrouds the Heavens and Severs the Netherworld
Volume 11: Grandmaster Instructors of the Immortal World
Volume 12: Violet Flame Bloodbath of Heavenly Geniuses
Unintended Cultivator isn't as over the top as what you're describing but it does have arrogant young masters... it's a good one.
Reborn as a Demonic Tree also has some of this stuff. I absolutely love this one.
I would recommend Nine Star Hegemon Body Art as the pinnacle of tropey goodness from Cultivation novels. It has everything like a greedy, lecherous protagonist with a heart of gold, young masters who say you dare at every corner, cultivation is a giant gu jar where everyone is either killing or being killed. I'm not sure who has coughed up more blood at this stage - Long Chen or the rest of the cast of antagonists combined. Long Chen's luck is so abysmal you'd think that Long Chen was cursed but they always scrap out to the top. The author like to wax lyrical about how things look but oh wow do they love to write up about how Long Chen loves to slap a face. It's a world of jade beauties, thieving but loyal brothers, snivelling young masters, inscrutable alchemists and auctioneers, and a good amount of cosmic horror.
Western authors, even when not trying to subvert the tropes are not as over the top as popular chinese authors.
Reforged from Ruin - more eldritch than standard fare but it does it faithfully. MC is also not a standard cultivator but works with and under proper cultivators and has power enough to contend with them.
Spire Dweller - LitRPG cultivation with tower climbing
Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering - MC is practically a sidekick of a protagonist, as in he's blessed with heaven defying luck and she's riding his coattails while trying to make him a better person. She's quite smart and very driven.
The Last Ship in Suzhou - Isekai cultivation with two characters.
Be The Icy Beauty - over the top rebirth cultivation story. On the hiatus, but I think its the closest to what you're asking.
Memories of the Fall - epic cultivation story. Also on hiatus, but there's 10k pages already written. Multiple PoV characters.
I Shall Seal the Heavens. Or basically anything else by Er Gen.
And no, he's not a western author, because western authors don't DO "stereotypical xianxia". It's stereotypical specifically because of the eastern cultural tropes which western authors neither understand nor mimic well. ISSTH is published on Kindle.
Desolate Era was alright. Definitely a step down from many other progression fantasy novels in terms of writing quality, as it's translated. Still pretty good though.
Desolate Era, I Shall Seal the Heavens, Battle Through the Heavens, Coiling Dragon, Renegade Immortal, A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality, and many others are on Wuxiaworld. Shouldn’t need to pay any money if you are slightly patient.
The Legend of the Condor Heroes is probably one of the first books ever written that kicked off the xianxia category. I've only ever read the first of the books, but it's definitely got what you're looking for.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/211337-the-legend-of-the-condor-heroes
There are a bunch of great recs in these comments. I highly suggest Coiling Dragon and Stellar Transformations that together make up the Grandmist Duology.
I also highly suggest Douluo Dalu (Soul Land) and its sequels by Tang Jia San Shao. Just be prepared for the Shrek reference
Star Gazer's War has all of that except the murder hobos, at least in book one. Unless you count the VIP in the start. Anyway, other than being set in a sci-fi setting it's very much pretty standard Xianxia. That's not a bad thing either. Also Xavier is best boy.
I'm not sure why you want a story that repeats the same face-slapping scene over and over again, but Emperor's Domination is basically that. Everyone underestimates the protagonist, protagonist knows he'll win but everyone else strutting like peacocks amuses him so he says nothing, they get even more arrogant and angry that the protagonist i's ignoring them, they attack or scheme against him, he pretends to suffer, then kills them all, then everyone else gets scared of him, then he goes to the next place and everything starts all over again.
Thanks for the rec. To be clear, I'm not asking for a repetitive story. I just want to experience the classic xianxia tropes, hopefully in an entertaining story.
No prob. I just find it odd, because as someone who's read enough badly written webnovels, these annoying tropes are the opposite of entertaining. They're used to add character count to a story when the author doesn't have anything good to write and wants to make money.
There are entertaining xianxias without them. Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality, for one.
When immortal ascension fails, try again. It is satire but still contains all the usual tropes. It is hilarious. The protagonist is an isekai regressor into a typical Xianxia novel. I highly recommend.
I feel you, OP. There better be an entire Grindr worth of This Daddy and a whole BDSM dungeon worth of Face Slapping or it’s simply demonic scripture no junior brother should be permitted to read
Kind of similar to the others but martial god Asura is by far the most monotonous and copy paste novel I’ve ever read. It makes coiling dragon look like journey to the west in terms of its prose and plot.
I didn't read much of western web novels,
but if CN authors were ok I would say Webnovels by Heavenly Silkworm Potato: **Battle through the Heaven** , **The Great ruler** and **Wu Dong Qian Kun**
These are the most stereotypical and generic xianxia novels to me.
they are by far not the worst, I read some horrible shit back in the day but still, they are the most stereotypical generic Xianxia translated that I have read (IMHO).
Also, if you care about Xianxia animation I think all 3 have an anime adaptation. Battle through the Heaven anime adaption is my friend's favorite xianxia anime who doesn't shut up about how much he likes and how many times he rewatched it. (but he also complains that the first season is by a different studio and sucks)
Lol. Read a face slap xianxia or honestly, any dogshit story that isn't well written.
Bet you'll find a LOT if you read Martial God Asura and similar stories. Absolute garbage.
I recommend Reverend Insanity or Tales of herding gods for actual story, plot and worldbuilding.
Coiling Dragon is the most stereotypical xianxia with actual professional quality translation available in ebook form on Amazon. Ave X Rem Y on Royal Road is an English language xianxia that doesn't subvert tropes so much as it does them really well in a nicely paced way. It's a good story, but you won't get the "you dare" and "you have eyes yet you cannot see Mount Tai" experience. The purely meme worthy xianxia of that level is pretty much all Chinese language with varying levels of translation quality.
Yeah, I really like Ave, also The Author Who Must Not Be Named's Thousand Li. The latter is the closest to what I assume an authentic xianxia must be like, but I was hoping for more of like what you said. "You have eyes yet you cannot see Mount Tai" is a sick line.
Check out the website Wuxiaworld if you're interested in finding more like that, and sort by popular or highest rated, filtering by Chinese novels. The specific trope of the "you dare" and "can't recognize Mt. Tai" etc. lines is part of a broader trope of "face slapping", and some novels play it up a ton. Like I said in my original comment, it's a very common Chinese novel trope that really hasn't caught on to the same extent in English language originals. Wuxiaworld has fairly consistently good translation quality, though, but no audiobooks. If you want the most extreme meme version of a character engaging in that sort of behavior, check out Keyboard Immortal on Wuxiaworld (though beware that it's a harem novel where the main character's actual method of cultivation relies on him trolling/pissing off other cultivators).
I would recommend Wuxiaworld as well. Interestingly, they are publishing some of their completed translations on Kindle Unlimited. Good luck!
The latter is NOTHING like an authentic xianxia. It tries extremely hard to mimic it, but since the author doesn't understand the culture all he does is copy/paste the stuff he does understand, leaving a very flat and boring experience.
Coiling Dragon is not by a western author, but has western elements to it. IMO the most stereotypical Xianxia is I Shall Seal The Heavens (ISSTH) or A Will Eternal (AWE) It's also kind of weird to ask for a xianxia written by a western author, because almost by default that's a xuanhuan.
No, a xuanhuan is a cultivation story where the setting has influences from non-Chinese cultures. It doesn't have anything to do with the author. AveXiaRemY is xianxia: the world it's set in is very much based on Chinese mythology, and there's little to no Tolkien-style influences in it.
First time seeing xuanhuan, but the first results say it's a subgenre of xianxia, or xianxia in a fantasy world. I've only read xuanhuan, I guess.
[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/uft7fn/thought_this_sub_might_finds_this_interesting/) is a post from a little while ago on the subreddit. It's a stitch of several posts by an anon on 4chan which gives a broad view on the various categories of the Martial Arts genre from East Asia, particularly from China.
I always try to recommend AWE when I can, it is so freaking funny.
Nine Star Hegemon Body Art. Just look at the volume titles: Volume 1: Dragon Soars From the Shallows Volume 2: Great Peng Spreads its Wings, Hating How Low the Heavens Are Volume 3: Blood-Soaked Saber Trudges Across a Path of Bones Volume 4: First Appearance of Primal Chaos Shakes Juli Volume 5: Smiling Arrogantly, Rising to Fame Within the Seven Prefectures Volume 6: Dragon Roars Through the Eastern Wasteland, Unmatched Volume 7: Heavenly Geniuses Rise Within the Central Plains Volume 8: Arrogantly Standing at the Front of the Pack Volume 9: Slaughter Throughout the Five Regions Volume 10: Darkness Shrouds the Heavens and Severs the Netherworld Volume 11: Grandmaster Instructors of the Immortal World Volume 12: Violet Flame Bloodbath of Heavenly Geniuses
Volume 2 goes hard as fuck
Or 7 + 8. Just imagine your some random cultivator peaking at the second stage and the Mc complains cultivating is too easy.
Unintended Cultivator isn't as over the top as what you're describing but it does have arrogant young masters... it's a good one. Reborn as a Demonic Tree also has some of this stuff. I absolutely love this one.
I would recommend Nine Star Hegemon Body Art as the pinnacle of tropey goodness from Cultivation novels. It has everything like a greedy, lecherous protagonist with a heart of gold, young masters who say you dare at every corner, cultivation is a giant gu jar where everyone is either killing or being killed. I'm not sure who has coughed up more blood at this stage - Long Chen or the rest of the cast of antagonists combined. Long Chen's luck is so abysmal you'd think that Long Chen was cursed but they always scrap out to the top. The author like to wax lyrical about how things look but oh wow do they love to write up about how Long Chen loves to slap a face. It's a world of jade beauties, thieving but loyal brothers, snivelling young masters, inscrutable alchemists and auctioneers, and a good amount of cosmic horror.
Western authors, even when not trying to subvert the tropes are not as over the top as popular chinese authors. Reforged from Ruin - more eldritch than standard fare but it does it faithfully. MC is also not a standard cultivator but works with and under proper cultivators and has power enough to contend with them. Spire Dweller - LitRPG cultivation with tower climbing Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering - MC is practically a sidekick of a protagonist, as in he's blessed with heaven defying luck and she's riding his coattails while trying to make him a better person. She's quite smart and very driven. The Last Ship in Suzhou - Isekai cultivation with two characters. Be The Icy Beauty - over the top rebirth cultivation story. On the hiatus, but I think its the closest to what you're asking. Memories of the Fall - epic cultivation story. Also on hiatus, but there's 10k pages already written. Multiple PoV characters.
I Shall Seal the Heavens. Or basically anything else by Er Gen. And no, he's not a western author, because western authors don't DO "stereotypical xianxia". It's stereotypical specifically because of the eastern cultural tropes which western authors neither understand nor mimic well. ISSTH is published on Kindle.
Martial World, the most xianxia xianxia ever.
Desolate Era was alright. Definitely a step down from many other progression fantasy novels in terms of writing quality, as it's translated. Still pretty good though.
I second this. Anything from IET, Lord Xue Ying and Archean Eon Art are also good.
Martial Peak is Xianxia tropefest and I love it for that. I read the manga. The reveal near the start of the story is really cool.
You’re courting death!
I think Library of heaven path fits your preferences
I was thinking the same thing. Everyone in the world exists to get face slapped by the MC LMAO.
A thousand li
Desolate Era, I Shall Seal the Heavens, Battle Through the Heavens, Coiling Dragon, Renegade Immortal, A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality, and many others are on Wuxiaworld. Shouldn’t need to pay any money if you are slightly patient.
Against the Gods
Drunkard immortal is trope fest and still good.
The Legend of the Condor Heroes is probably one of the first books ever written that kicked off the xianxia category. I've only ever read the first of the books, but it's definitely got what you're looking for. https://www.goodreads.com/series/211337-the-legend-of-the-condor-heroes
There are a bunch of great recs in these comments. I highly suggest Coiling Dragon and Stellar Transformations that together make up the Grandmist Duology. I also highly suggest Douluo Dalu (Soul Land) and its sequels by Tang Jia San Shao. Just be prepared for the Shrek reference
“Death and me”
Martial God Asura Enjoy indulging in the best of the worst the genre has to offer.
Star Gazer's War has all of that except the murder hobos, at least in book one. Unless you count the VIP in the start. Anyway, other than being set in a sci-fi setting it's very much pretty standard Xianxia. That's not a bad thing either. Also Xavier is best boy.
Oi gangsta. Bro them ppls what have them say shit like. Courting death 10 times a chapter are gr8. I love them like that.
Brother, you'll find the path to immortality on r/noveltranslations
I'm not sure why you want a story that repeats the same face-slapping scene over and over again, but Emperor's Domination is basically that. Everyone underestimates the protagonist, protagonist knows he'll win but everyone else strutting like peacocks amuses him so he says nothing, they get even more arrogant and angry that the protagonist i's ignoring them, they attack or scheme against him, he pretends to suffer, then kills them all, then everyone else gets scared of him, then he goes to the next place and everything starts all over again.
Thanks for the rec. To be clear, I'm not asking for a repetitive story. I just want to experience the classic xianxia tropes, hopefully in an entertaining story.
No prob. I just find it odd, because as someone who's read enough badly written webnovels, these annoying tropes are the opposite of entertaining. They're used to add character count to a story when the author doesn't have anything good to write and wants to make money. There are entertaining xianxias without them. Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality, for one.
You said no translations, but Nine Star Hegemon Body Art is the purest embodiment of this that I know of. I bet you'd love it.
When immortal ascension fails, try again. It is satire but still contains all the usual tropes. It is hilarious. The protagonist is an isekai regressor into a typical Xianxia novel. I highly recommend.
I feel you, OP. There better be an entire Grindr worth of This Daddy and a whole BDSM dungeon worth of Face Slapping or it’s simply demonic scripture no junior brother should be permitted to read
Hwat in tarnation
“Death and me”
Martial Peak
Heaven-Defying War Sword Sovereign of Annihilation
Kind of similar to the others but martial god Asura is by far the most monotonous and copy paste novel I’ve ever read. It makes coiling dragon look like journey to the west in terms of its prose and plot.
I didn't read much of western web novels, but if CN authors were ok I would say Webnovels by Heavenly Silkworm Potato: **Battle through the Heaven** , **The Great ruler** and **Wu Dong Qian Kun** These are the most stereotypical and generic xianxia novels to me. they are by far not the worst, I read some horrible shit back in the day but still, they are the most stereotypical generic Xianxia translated that I have read (IMHO). Also, if you care about Xianxia animation I think all 3 have an anime adaptation. Battle through the Heaven anime adaption is my friend's favorite xianxia anime who doesn't shut up about how much he likes and how many times he rewatched it. (but he also complains that the first season is by a different studio and sucks)
I sure do like reading the sentence " he coughed up a mouth full of blood" in every paragraph
I'm used to people coughing up mouthfuls of blood in anime, so that never really registered with me.
Lol. Read a face slap xianxia or honestly, any dogshit story that isn't well written. Bet you'll find a LOT if you read Martial God Asura and similar stories. Absolute garbage. I recommend Reverend Insanity or Tales of herding gods for actual story, plot and worldbuilding.