Read-in-Progress Wednesday

[geraineon]

This is your weekly read-in-progress post!

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

Comments

[duckprintspress]

I started The Beauty's Blade! I'm about 100 pages in. It's kinda... all over the place? I think it's mainly that the pacing is weird. I thought weeks had passed but it's been 3 days or something. And new characters suddenly get introduced and are really important. idk, I'm not particularly impressed so far. I also wish the mc had more interiority beyond "mad at the jianghu" and "mad at her dad" and "likes to attack and kill." Like, where's my interiority about "hot woman is hot"?

[geraineon]

Ah, I haven't actually read many reviews of The Beauty's Blade, but I think I have seen mentions about random appearance/disappearance of characters. I guess I'll lower my expectations.

[duckprintspress]

I'm about 40% in now and the most recent chapter was the first that I read where I was like, "oh, I genuinely am a little curious what happens next."

I happened to notice yesterday, its average rating on Storygraph is a 3.2 out of 5, lmao.

[larryhammer]

Not a c-novel but semi-adjacent — Senescent Soul’s Delve, an English-language litrpg isekai webnovel, which is currently a little less than twice as long as Journey to the West. “Semi-” because I’m seeing more Japanese than Chinese influence on the litrpg-ness — the isekai-ness could go either way, I suppose. Still in progress, and chapters of late have been very slow, but there was a big lode of new ones since I last read it — which was long enough ago I had to start over, not that that’s unpleasant. Am up to chapter 208 of 273, which is around where I stopped last time.

In context, btw, a delve is an expedition into the deeps, done to find resources and to kill the special sort of monster that raises your level cap.

[larryhammer]

I should add, the MC played DnD in college and is a total minmaxing munchkin, who selects an extremely rare character class (aura mage specializing in AOE effects) that everyone ignores because it's almost cripplingly unbalanced at lower levels, because he sees the potential for eventually getting rather powerful.

[geraineon]

What would you categorize as JP vs. CN isekai tropes/influence?

[larryhammer]

Well, for one thing, the MC has pretty clearly entered a JRPG that handles stats and skills in an very typical JPRG way. But more telling, the system isn't sentient -- it's programmed (and Highlight for spoilers!*one sign the system, created a few thousand years ago, is breaking down is when error codes surface in the interface*). It never talks to characters but is a HUD they view and interact with -- which is something I see in JP isekais and not CN.

That said, the collectivism the MC creates with his not-quite-mercenary company (dedicated to raising the levels of all members) does seem to be in argument with the xianxia standard of the lone cultivator struggling against all others.

[silverblade219]

Read The Villain's White Halo volume 1! I knew very little about it going in, had originally preordered it based solely on the strength of the summary sevenseas gave on the back cover. I really enjoyed it, looking forward to the next two volumes. One particular funny moment - the MC hair has turned white due to a side effect of his transmigration, and everyone but him is freaking out about it. The doctor is like, "well...it isn't a qi deviation, so he must just be emotionally repressed".

Also finally finished erha volume 7, and started volume 8 - got up to the part where Mo Ran returns to the sect before stalling again out of preemptive sadness. This section at the beginning of Volume 8 with the original Chu Wanning flashback is actually the reason why I ended up skimming the MTL after volume 2 was published in English lol, since I was curious about the comments the little dragon talisman made and a few other things that weren't clear from the spoilers. *Though I still find it odd that the narrative switches to calling Hua Binan as Shi Mei once the identity reveal happens, despite in dialog him continuously stating that he doesn't want to be called Shi Mei - I was hoping that it was an error from the edited MTL but seems like it is not. Also, tangentially while already highlighting for spoilers, I like how the glossary indirectly explains the foreshadowing of why Mo Ran's eyes sometimes seem purple.*

[geraineon]

I think I might have skimmed through the fan tl before because what you said about The Villain's White Halo sounds vaguely familiar... How's the translation quality?

[silverblade219]

I think the translation quality is good! I didn't read the fan translation before, but I think it only went up ~chapter 61 which seems to be the middle of the upcoming volume 2.

[aurumcalendula]

I caught up on a bunch of chapters of Begging the Heavens in Vain!

[geraineon]

Nice! Anything exciting/unexpected happened in the chapters you read?

[aurumcalendula]

It was neat seeing how some of the political intrigue stuff played out and there was a reveal about an official that I hadn't expected!

[llonkrebboj]

I'm at the point in my life when I'm following six WIPS at the same time again 😆 and am only far away from catching up for one. I try to collect at least three chapters before reading them all at once so we're not literally reading all 6 in one night xD

Summarizing plots
- A-level Male Zerg transmigrates (with his own body) as a D-level Alpha in an omgaverse world. He's brought his male zerg culture here and wants 8 alpha boyfriends. Currently making waves in school with his unexpected genius for mecha engineering.

- (Sickly mc) Empress's son switched at birth to an abusive consort mother who slowly poisoned him to death, and had him take the rep for her real son's crimes over the course of his first life, now back to get to the truth behind his birth switchroo and figure out the identity of the puppet master behind the scenes.

- (Not sickly but started depressed, definitely has ISSUES) My favourite of the lot - a depressed hikikomori's closet quietly gets linked to the unlimited flow world. His gradual growth, the people he meets!!!! Love it so much. I think I'll write a review or post when we reach the end.

- (Not quite sickly, but he is injured often enough that I'll take it) Poor kid goes to pretigious school and the F4 of that school all fall for him. Same trajectory but with Powers, and a somewhat dystopian world. It's really delicious.

- Guy transmigrates into a rich 2nd gen doomed to be murdered and dismembered. He gets awful nightmares of murders and victims' ghosts visit every night, and gets sent packing by his dad to join the police.

- My second favourite one has sentinels and guides!!!!! Post apocalyptic world (likely inspired by two mushroom novels) where there are mutated living things that turned to monsters and can cause energy disruptions that lead to madness, and thereby turning into monsters themselves. People and monsters have power levels on a D to S level scale. The MC is a B-level guide with no spirit animal, but is a doctor (with an interesting background xD).

[halfcactus]

the F4 of the scjool lollll

I love how iddy half of these are, like I've probably read a few trashy shoujo webtoon variations of them 😂

[llonkrebboj]

AREN'T THEY!!!! I'm so pleased to have found them 😊 Feeling well fed from Feb - Mar 2026.

The unexpected cultural worldbuilding from the transmigrated Zerg one is very charming. I had a (!!!!!!!) moment because of the latest chapter today...

One of his classmates has vibes similar to the male zergs of his homeworld (it's just a coincidence - he's not actually a zerg), and while the classmate is trying very hard to decorate himself with jewels, limited edition luxury items, and chat about the newest luxury jewelry released to invite MC to spend his money (long, hilarious, quite palovian story), MC just finds all this very familar and comforting 🤣 It's very much zerg culture for young male zergs to be into collecting precious shiny jewelry and gems, and expensive things that caught their eye is also a standard conversation opener. Which made classmate even MORE similar to a male zerg in MC's eyes AKA an equal that he will buy gifts for, and take care of his feelings when out together as a higher class zerg.

And the classmate is like ????????? as MC buys him jewelry, compliments his hair, saying that the gems will match it, deshells lobster on his own (they're out with a friend, and the last time they were out together with a bigger group, all the other alphas peeled MC's crabs/prawns/lobsters for him LMAO), and texts the friend in private* to tell him to just mind his own food.

*Because typically when eating out, male zergs will have a female zerg attendant to serve/prepare the food. But lower-class male zergs may not have an attendant, and isn't polite to be served while your dining partner isn't, so in such cases, they'll both go without.

Ahhhhhh it's so much funnier and cuter than how I've described it. I was reading it as I'm waiting for a movie to start, and just HAD to come here to yell.

[geraineon]

F4... XD immediately I understand what kinda school and what kinda story, thank you Meteor Garden.

The second story seems like the kinda tropey nonsense I love to skim when I want to switch off my brain.

The third sounds nice and contemplative (is it?)

[bluapapilio]

What's the title of that third one?

[llonkrebboj]

It's 颓丧家里蹲的衣柜和无限世界相连了! By 上苍, from jjwxc.

[bluapapilio]

Thank you. :)

[halfcactus]

C-novel adjacent via games: Finished Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders (wrote about it here) and uhhh started another historical Chinese murder game called Murders on the Yangtze River, which is set at the end of the Qing Dynasty. There's some voice-acting in this one and a lot of historical trivia (basically footnotes! But gamified!), so I take this game as educational material. XD

[geraineon]

Oh, another murder mystery? Is there a whole world of these types of murder mystery games out there? XD