Outside the Heavens - An Isekai Cultivation Novel (Rewrite in Progress)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Aarick (uhr-rik) never expected to be sucked into another world. Excepting his parent's poor naming sense, he was nothing special. He had read a few isekai novels, but now that he's in a new world, he has a few questions.

How has the Empire existed for so long, but progressed so little? It can’t all be because everyone is hoarding knowledge, right? What the hell are impurities anyway? Where do all these ancient artifacts and hidden realms come from, and what happened to the people that made them? How does cultivation download knowledge into your head? What even are demons and demonic energy, and why has it rendered most of the world uninhabitable? And all the numbers for how large the world is have to be wrong, right?

And, most importantly, how does he get a message home so his parents don't go crazy with grief?

A cultivation novel with a logical protagonist. This eventually brings him strength, but he has a lot of catching up to do. In many ways, a loving deconstruction of the Xianxia genre. That, of course, is inevitable when you start asking most important question of all.

Why?

Cover Image created with Stable Diffusion and Dream.

Chapters(12 total)

Reviews

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Community Reviews(3)

  • PotassiumRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    This is an interesting fiction. It has all ten standard tropes of the xianxia genre, with the impossibly huge planets, empires, lifespans and then stops and question this tropes. How? Why? And we know as much as our protagonist brought to this world without any knowledge but now having to live in it. The grammar is good, without errors, misspellings or weird word choices. The plot is still in the beginning, but it appears promising, the protagonist appears to have some perks without being boringly overpowered. I will continue to read this fiction with interest.
  • HellmanderRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 4.5
    While the start has been a tad slow I can see an incredible potential here, so far I love the main character and the world seems very well thought out and reasonable.
    I'll be really excited to see the story start to pick up and watch his cultivation journey begin!
  • EdLincolnRoyal Road
    ★★★ 2.5
    I *WANT* to like this book.  I like the idea of Rationalist Fiction, I like deconstruction, I think Xianxia is ripe for deconstruction. The idea behind it are very good.  But it's the ultimate example of Tell Don't Show.  Most of the book so far is this long dialogue with a butler where the hero asks questions.  The setup for the conversation is really cringey as well.  The butler doesn't know the MC is from another world, but the MC isn't supposed to lie for supernatural reasons, so it is this long conversation with the help where the MC must sound completely unhinged.  He's also being passed off as a noble for reasons that aren't clear.  It's a particularly uncomfortable way to do an info dump.