Battle Through the Heavens (Web Novel)

I have to say that this was one of the most excruciatingly painful novels I had to read in a while. pros: the alchemy system and the heavenly flames system along with the cultivation was well made. characters like yao lao, the MC, his waifus, his close friends and family are the only relevant characters which made this worthwhile to read. The ending was relatively mid. THE CONS:oh boy here we go 1) the plot is soo repetitive that it was making me bleed while reading this. 2) The first 300 chapters were horrible as at that point I was ready to give up this novel due to horrible writing and consistent errors. 3)The side characters are constantly braindead and the face slapping got real old real fast. 4)At some point in the story, I was honestly able to guess what would happen next-mc fights, loses, gets stronger, beats up the guy who beat him up, gets chased, gets stronger, takes revenge, moves on to next area and the cycle repeats. I honestly recommend you guys to just watch the donghua

one of the best novel in donghua history in my opinion. bt i fell bad for xiao yi xian, yun yun, zi yan, ya fei cause in the end of the novel, they Didn't marry xiao yan, because xiao yan Didn't proposed them. i am disappointed in this part

I enjoyed this novel. is it a bit basic? Sure. But that's the essence of such novels. A hero's journey is fun. The world building and alchemy is also well done. The translations have errors but they are usually minor with the most annoying ones being the wrong names being used. But hey it's free so I won't complain much. Overall a fun read.

Review time! Before I go on a humongous rant on everything that's 'bad' about this book, I just wanted to make it clear that I know this book is really old, and that it was one of the very first books in this genre that had reached the wider world through the internet. So that is to say that the many cliche tropes that it has are understandable and justified, since it's probably one of the progenitor books that the many novels nowadays have copied from. Now, onto my thoughts on the book: this book is really. . . average. Like, the plot is just your generic, good ol' weak-to-strong development, where the mc starts off in the dumps, his fiance breaks up with him, people trash on him etc. . . It gets even more generic when he meets an old grandpa in his family heirloom, who then proceeds to teach him how to become stronger. We all know about this trope, right? The reader then follows the mc's adventures around the world as he fights off arrogant young masters, offends old demons who were in seclusion, and rescues damsels in distress. Very, very common stuff. But, hey, 'common' doesn't necessarily mean bad, right? Well. . . in this case, it does. The reason? It's because it quickly becomes more and more apparent that the author doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to write, upon the mc's entry into a new arc, so he just resorts to rinsing and recycling those three aforementioned tropes over and over again. For example, I can't even begin to count the amount of times that the mc has literally entered the scene at the last second, like a freaking superhero from a kid's comic book, to save the people he's been acquainted with (mostly women) for a single chapter or so. The main character is like a harbinger of disaster; he never meets his friends when they're doing okay. He's always encountering them when an enemy of theirs is on the cusp of killing them off, and the mc's acquaintances are obviously helpless to do anything about it. The worst part is that the entry scene is pretty much always the same cringeworthy couple of lines being used over and over again: *The sound of thunder suddenly echoed across the skies, and suddenly a shadow sent enemy X flying back and grabbed onto the waist of the damsel* Mc: "I'm sorry I'm so late. " I legit wanted to shoot myself in the head, to rid myself of the cringe, so many times that it's not even funny. And the funny thing is, the main gripe that I had about this entire situation is that the mc never took advantage of the fact that he's practically surprise-attacking the enemies in order to quickly kill them off, and would instead choose to just push them back and say a few self-centered lines to the beauty instead. Just so g*dd*mn annoying and stupid. Oh, this also serves as a good segue onto the next part of this review that I wanted to talk about: the main character himself. He's THE definition of a typical Chinese mc: proud, hotblooded, emotional, friendly, naive (at the beginning at least), and relies on plot armor to survive instead of intelligence. He's the reason why I almost gave this book a 2 star rating instead of a 3 star. You may be wondering why I'm this harsh in my evaluation of his character, and I'll sum it up for you in one short, yet sufficient, sentence; he literally refused to kill this one woman, who was constantly out for his life and was just annoying af, because he is -- and I quote -- "an alpha male who doesn't hit women". . . Yep. I'm not kidding, he legit said that unironically. Folks, need I say more? The book's tropes are generic, the plot is forced most of the time, the main character might make you want to kill yourself out of hysteria, and the side-characters are as 2D as they could possibly be; his enemies are evil villains, for no reason really, and his friends are heroic figures who couldn't even hurt a fly. So, so bland. The only salvageable thing about this book is that it has a unique elemental power system. The mc is a fire element user, and I've never seen the fire element done so well in these types of books before this. But that's it. The book honestly deserves a 2/5, but in consideration that it's really old and its tropes weren't considered cliche back then, I'll give it a 3/5. I wouldn't really recommend you reading this book though.

Mediocrity. Good-ish type of popcorn with no aftertaste that you'd eat and forget shortly after. This title might be one of the founding fathers of the genre (vol. 1 really feels like ABC for future authors), but that's the only value it has. Everything kept pretty shallow and "safe". We do not explore human emotions. There is very little touch of morality - and one time we enter "chaotic zone" - author has to chew everything out like food for baby birbs. There are no politics - i guess they are too difficult for author. There are no character arcs - side characters are basically just plot devices. There is attention to detail - author makes some mechanic importact when he fancies it, and then he forgets about forever after (ingridient storage, relations between different characters, artifacts, etc) Overall - there is nothig to take from this novel. It does feel like "first work where author learns how to write", but the problem is - things don't improve much in 600 chapters i've read. Main character is hard to invest into; all his crimes are white-washed (so we wouldn't feel bad), and everything he does always succeeds - you will never guess "will this work, will this not work?". No, if MC decides to do something - it happens, period. It's perfectly fine title to pass time if you have nothing else; but if you are looking for something substantial - that's an easy skip, there's nothing here. 5. 5/10

Review Time: Overall I enjoyed my time with this novel. I did find the levels are little difficult to distinguish at the start. The MC was for the most part good besides a few moments. The side characters/love interests were also written rather well. The novel did drag a bit in the middle section but the last 200-300 were quite enjoyable to read. Knowing that this novel is one of the first cultivation most of the plot points are familiar and predictable but it gets a pass. I give it a 6/10 but one extra point for it being the origin of a lot of tropes. 7/10

Started off well, good world building and auction scenes, solid likeable romance. I liked the mc's abilities and his focus on alchemy. I liked the mythical creatures, races and his relationships with them. Side characters are also written well. The antagonist is cliche, final boss fight sucked and ending is very anticlimactic. Some terrible writing/plots in some stages but a decent read. Martial Universe (same author is way better)

One of my first cultivation novels. Was amazing in the beginning but got progressively worse. Most of it was average but after around Chapter 1300 to 1500 it become so bad that I couldn't continue reading. Still want to finish it and have it on the list for now 10 years. . . that should tell you enough. Could never bring myself to read the last 200 chapters. Not many cultivation novel authors manage to write a adequate ending once the power levels etc have reached the pinnacle but this is one of the few who managed to write it awfully beyond reason.

Although I haven't read the entire novel (I've read up to around 590- chapters), I can confidently say that it's not very good. The plot twists feel forced and cringeworthy, and the hype scenes are equally cringey. Honestly, if it weren't for that one intriguing girl with mysterious background, I would have dropped it long before chapter 40.

This is just generic Chinese cultivation novel. It is not bad, but also not good. Maybe alchemy can be considered as strong points because there is most detailed descriptions of it from any other novels, but you see, it is actually so descriptive about everything alchemy related that it just feels like useless info dump. I can recommend to read this novel if it is one of the first five novels about cultivation. I can not remember even one strong point, overall average. 6. 5/10