The Wanderer (Xianxia)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Life is finally looking up for Jon, a 25-year-old engineer and recent $100 million lottery winner. He's overcome past trauma, built a successful business, made his mom proud, and moved on from a terrible breakup. What could go wrong?

Well, everything—when a casual walk to his job turns into an interdimensional abduction. Thrust into a world straight out of the xianxia novels he used to mock, Jon now faces murder-hobo cultivators and arrogant young masters with a penchant for "You Dare!" challenges.

He has no interest in this "magical China"—his real life was just getting good. Worse, he's been summoned as sacrifice fodder for a heavenly demon. After a botched escape, Jon accidentally kills the only man who knew how to send him back.

With dark humor and desperation, Jon navigates this new, strange world, determined to find his way home before fate decides he's the next big villain in this absurd fantasy saga.

This story is really just me having fun with a mix of everything - comedy( a good amount of it), slice of life, action, xianxia, world-building, and character-driven narratives.

This is mostly a story about a tortured young man finding his way in a new world, and not taking it too serious. Expect a somewhat slow-burn tale where a lot of elements are introduced and explained as you journey along. I loved writing this, and I sincerely hope you'll love reading it.

-Ace

New chapters M-W-F.

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2024
Author: Ace_the_Owl

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.2/ 5.0
Followers: 2,277
Views: 477,322

What readers say about The Wanderer (Xianxia)

“I have to say from the start the I was locked into your story . This is very quality work and one I am gape to continue to enjoy reading. Keep this going and I very much believe that will go down as one of the greats. I only see this getting better.”
Thehero12Royal Road5.0 / 5
“I’m enjoying this story so far. It’s fast paced and there’s a lot of mystery going on. In a lot of portal stories people seem to acclimate and go with the flow really quickly, the MC here is legitimately floundering in a believable manner. He (and we) are l…”
MareksRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

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Community Reviews(10)

Thehero12Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I have to say from the start the I was locked into your story . This is very quality work and one I am gape to continue to enjoy reading. Keep this going and I very much believe that will go down as one of the greats. I only see this getting better.
MareksRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I’m enjoying this story so far. It’s fast paced and there’s a lot of mystery going on. In a lot of portal stories people seem to acclimate and go with the flow really quickly, the MC here is legitimately floundering in a believable manner. He (and we) are lacking a whole lot of information that is being released as needed. No info dumps or out of place exposition.
He’s been on this new world for a couple of days and still hasn’t had a chance to really test out his new magic upgrades. Which I know sounds crazy but there hasn’t been any time or safe spaces to do it! It’s a breath of fresh air.
This isn’t a straight comedy, but the tone is reasonably comedic. One reviewer mentioned that it’s sometimes a few too many references and I agree it can be scaled back a bit. The MC is presumably traumatized and panicked and dealing with things by making quips so it’s not crazy but I think the flow of the story would work better with a little less. Maybe on an eventual second pass for editing it can be evened out a bit. Or not, I’m still enjoying it.
TheOldLord10256Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This book is pretty good from what I've seen so far. The characters, despite how much of them we've seen, seem to have actual depth or just seem like actual people despite their place in the tropes of a cultivation novel. That is another interesting part, the tropes. Tropes for cultivation novels are widespread and known in the community and despite that not all tropes are followed. The main character is basically bumbling along and has not even tried to cultivate so far and if they have and I just can't remember when writing this then he hasn't done much. Foreshadowing of the main character and his capabilities for the future hold strong and mysterious. The grammar is amazing and the style feels wonderful. We've also had glimpses of the grand powers at hand for cultivators. The book so far is a great runway for a very good future.
AtsocRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Slight Disclaimer first: This story was chosen as the monthly story of July 2024 of a book club in my Brazilian Discord Server. Our goal was to read up to chapter 46 which was the amount of chapters that were out by the time it won the poll.
The story began with a solid start with a light comedy tone that got me engaged at first but slowly started to lose me as the pace began to slow down and it became slightly generic*.
Slight spoilers, but:
I confess that, being a progression fantasy junkie, the apparent lack of progression at the start (the mc instantly becoming a cultivator for one)
made me less inclined to read it. But as I kept reading, the plot brewing on the background started to make things more interesting until it culminated into some very interesting developments.
* What I mean by generic is that it's basically a standard xianxia story, nothing wrong with that at all... It just wasn't what I was looking to read at the time so this is on me, not on the author.
As of chapter 46, it made me want to read more not only about the world but how the MC will develop.
Regarding the writing, I really like the author's wrtiting style and I didn't notice any grammar mistakes either. There was only one chapter that had some infodump but I already left a comment about my thoughts on said chapter (and I don't think it was enough to detract points from the story, seriously, it was only one chapter)
NaChaoticRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Doggo me likey
story's great, i have pretty much 0 confusion about the characters, if one thing to point out, its the fact that the mc randomly does something completely against his initial plan for no reason stated. i commented about it and havent gotten a reply, otherwise, loved the book. grammar is pitch perfect, no problem with sentences either and seems pretty good.
Update: the author fixed it a long time ago
Mridula RRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
As I mostly read to relax, feel happy and lose myself in the story, am enjoying this story as it fits the criteria which I usually get attracted to:
Good MC who is not unbearably morally grey (I dont mind "flawed" MC's but i just don't want to think too hard and justify all their actions and feel sad - I just want to feel happy about people trying their best to do the right thing) - so far the MC fits this criteria
3d characters with good dialogues - it's OK in terms of dialogue and banter but the MC's mind voice is super fun to read so far. Also there is not that much depth to the characters including MC so far. Big Dawg is a nice addition :-)
Strong female characters who are not just props and body parts - this is a sort of deal breaker for me and so far its fine but can't really tell as of now. I usually wait till a lot of chapters to write reviews - but since reviews help the story visibility (i think) have decided to not wait too long.
A story that is going somewhere - not just a "get stronger at all cost and defy the heavens" sort of thing - this is where most xianxia stuff usually ends up - unlimited fighting and defying - which gets boring and this story seems different and will be different hopefully and have an actual plot.
Fast paced with decent twists and not much of overly detailed fights, stats and lengthy internal monologues about agonizing and analysing all the numbers (if such are there I will be skimming coz I can't seem to get into it) - So far so good I think.
Interesting world building that leads the imagination on but doesn't leave me with too many questions and confusions. It was a bit of a stretch that the MC is in a world with archaic mandarin and he is speaking slang in it and knows how to read mandarin - but it's fine, the thing is there isn't much in terms of world building as of now.
Mostly i like the MC's mind voice so far and there is not much excruciatingly long fighting so i am continuing. So there - if something like the above is so
habanjamelRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Slow burn, but it seems the story is starting to get to the 'cultivation' part.. And it looks pretty good so far. Please don't drop this dear author XD
As someone who have read hundreds of novels, both good and bad. This looks atleast 3-4.5 stars worthy. Has a potential to be a 5 star but not lower than 3 atars unless our dear author does something catastrophic. So that's my first review on this novel.
KushiRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
The bones of this story are pretty good with relatively decent writing, good characters and a story, world and characters that make you want to read more. In fact I find myself surprised I am not giving this story a 4/5 or better but after 20+ chapters the constant modern quips and references do more to take away from the story than to add to it. From Chaotzu to Jet Lee, Big D to Terminator, while at first it felt like a fun easter egg, when there is multiple memes or references every chapter it starts to read like something written by that teacher that is trying too hard to be cool by making a bunch of pop references that are either slightly out of date, or they don't quite understand...
Basically - if you can ignore all the "easter eggs", the story itself is fairly decent, but the constant memes takes away from it, and the main character stumbling about because of having to constantly explain their jokes that they just made for the reader slows the pacing of the story down quite a bit.
For instance there was a whole 4 paragraph section where the MC said "Here you go Terminator" as a quick joke to a powerful cultivator, the author then spent four paragraphs having the MC bullshit what a terminator was... this happens multiple times in the story...
My advice to the author, your ideas are good enough to stand on their own merit, trying to borrow other people's fame is only hurting you. I'll probably keep reading and look forward to updating this review in 100 or so chapters to something better...
Michael GnizakRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
I really want to rate this higher, but… I’ve been bored so I kept reading it. Ever chapter I thought to myself, why am I still reading this? I felt like I was falling asleep at one point, granted I haven’t been sleeping the best. The story does get interesting, it just took a long time to hook me. Probably 30chapters. The story isn’t bad. My words probably sound harsh but it’s really isn’t that bad. There are some intriguing things happening but the hook wasn’t there for me to care. Once the story picked up I got invested. So IDK, maybe give it a try for yourself.
the art pictures at the end of some of the chapters were great. I really liked that.
the.corvan.readerRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
the story is funny and engaging, but the inclusion of ai art at the end of each chapter makes me queasy, since i dont really like generative ai.
me still reading still even against my usual morals does speak of the good quality of the story though (or the flimsyness of my moral compass).
(edit) kinda falls off hard when the first serious plotpoints start emerging.