Molting the Mortal Coil

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Reincarnated as a child in a new world a mild mannered programmer, named Sage, finds himself struggling to survive. The road to immortality is paved with danger, treasure, and conflict. This mystical eastern world is filled with Demonic Beasts, Treacherous Cultivators, and Extraordinary Legacies. Follow Sage on his journey to adapt to this new world, and find out if he can overcome the limitations of body, mind, and soul. Will he rise to the occasion and become a hero? Or maybe he'll turn to the dark side and end up a villain?

Molting the Mortal Coil is more of a slower paced journey. It's not about endless battles and conquering the next bad guy who spits on the main characters shoes or sends him a funny look. There's also not a treadmill of tournaments or love interests. It's more of a slower burn with lots of, and hopefully not too much, world building. It's still supposed to be stuffed with action, but that won't pick up for a while since we start with a weakling. The first 30 chapters have a lot of time-skipping, but stay with me it gets better. I plan to re-write and add more to the first 30 in the future, but if you can push through I feel it gets much more fun after!

Updates will be weekly. If you want to see more chapters, check out my Patreon(button at the bottom of every chapter)! Thanks everyone!

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2018
Author: JustinAnkar

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.0/ 5.0
Followers: 1,866
Views: 7,982,796

Reviews

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Community Reviews(10)

Titania136Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The story is following the reincarnated mild mannered programmer Sage into the strange, dangerous, and fantastical world of a Xianxia.
Sage's character is fascinating and a great vessel for this novel. He maintains many of his previous mannerisms and is docile and naive but throughout his adventures he changes in a way that is both realistic and engaging. He gets traumatized and heals, he lies to keep treasure, he furiously licks the boot of everyone in his path in order to survive a world that seems to hate him. He is quick-witted,loyal, creative, determined, and willing to do whatever it takes to live for just one more second. He is an amazing and unique character who I love and if you read this book I'm sure you will love him too. He is by far the best thing about the book.
Now another excellently done bit of writing is the system of power while the system to gain power is a bit basic it is sturdy, well thought out, and sprinkled with unique and interesting ideas, like the well done explanation of talent, cultivation raising training, and the use of Daos. But where the author really shines is in the abilities he has created hordes of unique and interesting techniques that he utilizes and examines very well. In particular the MCs main technique of Insect Control is used often, creatively, and the technique itself is very interesting and strange. Other characters techniques are explained and are very well done most of the time, leading to you being able to imagine an entire cultivation system for yourself. The treasures that Sage finds uses, and makes are also unique, not samey, or tiring, and well done with each having fascinating uses and being well thought out.
Hiw world building is quite good. Societies cities, and individuals affect and interact with politics, explanations of the cosmos inspire thoughts towards the rest of the world and Societies have cultures and beliefs that affect the outside world and there are many societies and cultures that interact and
fanobodyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
5 stars
Spoiler: Spoiler
When he was still a snakeman
I love the story, it is just a start but the ground of the story is solid.
There is many way to gain power body, qi, skill, formation + more
Plant, insect, animal and human don't cultivate the same.
No deus ex machina or power up of last second to win, if there is a power up there is hint 10 chapters before.
No marie sue, mc train hard and has below average result.
Multiple dimentional character
No chinese(repeat the same info, harem, vengeance)
Edit ch 347 change to 4.5 stars
Ok so the mc is stupid and do stupid risk like taking over a territory and all their debt, attaking bandit with no benefit.
Yes he is punished for it but he was show to be a prudent one and with him being greedy even if it was explained in the story it leave a bad taste. More so when he had all the tools to prepare fo the worst.
Else yes the mc has cheat ability but in xianxia he is still trash because others have even more cheat like sword that cut anythings or giant beast that can destroy city.
Moist NuggetRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Grammar wise this is above average. Apart from the usual non-english speaker mistakes (using 'was' instead of 'were') it's solid.
This story has a plot. We know who his enemies are, we know what his motivations and character is like, now we just have to WAIT in big bold letters because the Author doesn't rush through like almost every other Chinese novel.
The MC actually builds up his strength over time, not just getting some random power up or magical item letting him slay his enemies.
He's not some talented young master that everybody fawns over, he's just a guy trying to get stronger.
This story in general is a nice new perspective on Xianxia novels. Instead of seeing the disgraced young master or the random nobody, we get a normal dude with basic talent in a generally strong sect trying to make his way to the top. It'll take him some time, and others will pass him by, but he'll make it up there someday.
coldfire142Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
I like the story so far as is. I binged the intire story tell 298 in three days.
the only gripe i have is the massive info dumps and long revalations. They are not bad, just alot of them. I have read worse. For exzample the worse i read (NOT IN THIS STORY BUT ANOTHER) Is how the MC changing his pinky angle by 3 dagrees was a world shattering expernce for his techneek and cultavation and fighting power to greater hights.... took him 9 chapters...and 53483 words....i copied to word and looked up the word count... i hope you never torture your readers that way.
DocnoxRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
An enjoyable read with flares of originality and fun quirks.
However, the writing style is more in line with story book. The pacing slows to crawls and then leaps years. Honestly you can skip half the chapters and not loose much context.
I won't get into supporting cast, cause there aren't any. Nearly all conversations between the MC and other characters is abstracted instead of written out.
Finally the main character.... is an irredeemable, sniveling kiss @$$. While unique, isn't at all endearing. Theres a reason this personallity doesn't see much use in protagonists.
serg0Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
First of all I generally like this story. It has a lot of shortcoming though.
1. Stile is not quite good. It becoming better later.
2. Show, don't tell is absent at the start. However after ~100 chapters it becoming much better
3. Characters: Main protagonist is really good work. He is cowardly, egocentric common man. He is not an asshole, but not a moral beacon either. Someone you can see in the office or on the street. He is alwyas trying for easy way out (at least at first). It's refreshing to have xianxia witch such a main hero.
4. Plot. Form 3. it's obvious protagonist can't survive xianxia world by his own strength and deteremination, so he need some help from the plot. Its not annoying though, because if not for the plot help the story would just end. I consider it to be anthropic principle for protagonist slecyion.
Conclusion: If you can afford to invest time to crawl through first couple of hundred of chapters it's becoming good, enjoyable xianxia.
T.A. RockRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
I saw no relevant grammar mistakes but the style of the novel is tiring, it has almost no conversations and is too descriptive.
Characters: Although there is character development of the MC and I can even say I really like the proposal of what it could have been, in my opinion it was not delivered. There are too many time skips and not much interaction of the MC with other characters, almost the entire novel so far is just a description of what is happening and rarely there is any dialogue between two characters so there is not much development to be seen in reality. The character development is mostly happening in the MC’s thoughts and reflections and not in actual situations with action.
Example: when the mc family is annihilated, the MC is said to be sad, does some things because he is sad but it gets past so really quickly that is not felt by the reader.
Style: Not much to be said here, the novel has some really long paragraphs that make it boring and feels like a info dump some times and could have had many more dialogs.
Story: This is where I feel the autor has done well in some parts but did not develop enough in others.
The story is about a guy who isekai’d into a cultivation world, has no OP abilities and tries to deal with what the world throws at him. Several defining moments happen in the novel but they could be more explored by exploring side characters or events.
NaoggeddonRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
Review as of chapter 204.
Quick review : This story has alot going for it and explores a bit some interesting paths not talked about much in other cultivation books. But it loses out when most of the ideas are only lightly touched on.
Longer review: finally a cultivation story that explores a insect tamer... Was my first thought picking up this story but as it dragged on I lost my enthusiasm then my joy for the story. The time skips get ridiculous, the character feels like he has ADHD and can't focus even for a single chapter on an idea and any individual growth is lost within a paragraph or two where there has been a time skip and we see the mc repeating the same cycle. Cultivation takes a back seat to the author trying to force industrialization into the story and throw in some SciFi to boot. The further I read the more this feels like a shotgun of ideas splattered across dozens of pages and not a cohesive story. There are many fantastic gems of story hooks in here but it's lost time and time again under a mountain of filler bullshit or time skips. I want to like this story, I love so many of the concepts in it but the execution has really just pulled it down but by bit. Timing would change this from a 3 to a 4 but without depht this won't ever get higher imo.
BastiVERoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
I want to say I'm enjoying this story, it's not got a lot of issues and the few it does have can be easily looked over. My biggest issue with this is exposition, or rather over explaining. I don't need the hundredth description of how his Qi flows, or an in depth description of how he is using an array and how they work. Or the block texts about animals, insects and plants, if they had some life to them it would be better but it's like reading a textbook of what the thing is, not an observation.
FragmentedVoidRoyal Road
★ 1.0
Author does a good job of being unique and avoiding most cultivation tropes but ruins it through a lack of continuity, especially past chapter 300. The MC's personality and strenth is whatever the author needs for the plot. He never uses all his abilities and always has an even fight no matter the opponents. He also barely takes advantages of his programming knowledge. Also the fights just go on and on and on. Like their is no running away or quick fights, every fight is a hour long brawl no matter the strength of both sides. This was a painful read because I really liked a lot of the plot choices in the beginning. Their are just so many plot holes starting to pile up and with the the MC having no motivation as a character outside of the ones given to him by the Asncestor I just cant go on.