LCD Dark Blood Age

Discussion in 'Latest Chapter Discussion' started by nonononononono, Apr 2, 2018.

  1. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    @Sinking Ship I agree with you that MC is a selfish prick. However, I don't agree that he did not get anything out of it. Giving cultivation knowledge to other people is the most stupid decision one can make in the apocalyptic story. Especially when he was constantly weak.

    The human race might be wiped out in what? a few months or a few years' time? But if he gave out Knowledge, you think he was going to survive untill the next day?
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2019
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  2. Harrow

    Harrow Member

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    Can @Sinking Ship even read your reply? Well, I think what wrong with people that have problem with this story is that they just interpret as a happy-go-lucky power fantasy where the main character by some chance discover a new source of power and use it to help humanity that are on the brink of extinction. There are more question that they don't even bother to ask, like if the author of the ancient book want to save the human race with his knowledge, why didn't he make it available for everyone, or leave a message for everyone to know about it, or at least make sure that the one who inherit the book will share it with the human race? Did the author and main character have to save the humanity or someone else already have the plan to save it?

    Furthermore, does the human race deserve sympathy and salvation when they- like all other sentient race in this story will backstab and betray their allies if the risk is low and the reward is high? They have absolute no outstanding quality that worth any sympathy or redemption, but I do not mean that not to say that human race is worse than other races. Just saying that if they don't want to be wiped out or enslaved by other much advanced race, they have to earn that salvation themselves.

    Regards the power growth scale of the main character, like I stated above, this is not a power fantasy. Storytelling wise, what good come from your character having growing stronger rapidly and be able to slap the sh*t out of every single one in that universe do for your story, except provided cheap, lazy, mundane, repetitive escape fantasy like other Japanese/Chinese overpowered-mc story that have been done thousands of times by everyone else (both well and poorly done)?. Also most of the time, power fantasy stories do not care about giving the purpose for that ultimate power level that a character can reach. What do they even do after being able to slap everyone in the universe? Kill the sh*t out of every living being like a monkey given control of a nuclear weapon? What do they want to gain with that power? Sex? Wealth? More power?

    Scaling the fighting power up too quick also easily drive the story to the dead end, mostly, because most author novel can't properly describe the surreal power level of their characters. Take a look at original dragon ball, how can the story advance even more when the characters have too much power that when they can sneeze the whole planet away? I also don't say that surreal high power level can not be describe, just there are not many writer can do it.

    Well, maybe I just like the story too much that I keep on rambling every time someone miss-interpreting it. Although we all know different tastes exist which also mean that sh*t taste exist (which I do have sympathy for you anyone with crappy taste *wink wink*). Just want to conclude 2 main points about this story, first, this is not a power fantasy (although it describes the surreal high power level better than anything else I have read or watched), and second, there is no absolute right or wrong in this story.
     
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  3. Sinking Ship

    Sinking Ship Well-Known Member

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    @Harrow I read the reply I just didn't really feel comfortable responding since this thread is for the ongoing releases (at chapter 500 and change) and I only read up to chapter 150 so I feel like any points I bring up will just be talking about ancient history for the folks in the thread.

    That said this is the only story I've ever read where there is clear in-universe proof that the MC is not remotely qualified to handle the ancient power or whatever that he randomly stumbled upon. The clear example is that MC has his ancient secret book that he never dreams of sharing and by using it he improves his own personal power to a level slightly above that of other humans who just randomly awakened their powers - and on top of his small amount of power he has a random assortment of trinkets (talismans, weapons, armor) which when all tallied up still only put him in the category of "strongest single human being". But even with all that he can probably kill like... 100 bugs consecutively tops. Then the story shows us a comparison. The MC accidentally transcribes ONE PAGE of his secret book for some military scientists and what happens? They revolutionize their tech and create (by chap 150) 30 odd "dark matter guns" that can be held by any random foot soldier and 1 shot 1 kill the bugs. That is to say IN UNIVERSE it has been shown that giving the military one page of the magic book is more effective vs bugs than MC having the whole damn book.

    And after that revelation I, the reader, am just sort of like... so why am I rooting for this imbecile main character?? He even reflects on the same problem many times, he's all like "I can only barely understand 300 characters in this stupid book, I need to learn more to survive! But I don't have time to sit down for a study session..." and then his idea is that he should find some scientists and force them to interpret the book for him and then just steal their work. I dunno if he ever does all that (again I only got to chapter 150) but that was his stated plan and its just like ??? He wants to go so far out of his way to make sure he doesn't accidentally help anyone but himself lol

    And since that's how he thinks/behaves, to me at least, he stops looking like a main character and starts looking like the big villain of the story who hoards knowledge he can't use to himself at the expense of every other living human in the story.

    I mean, I'm not fundamentally opposed to selfish main characters or anything. I understand his reasoning and his (probably justified) fears that "turning in his magic book" would not end well for him personally. I read Chinese web novels so I know all about how greedy/evil/selfish humans in these stories are as a general rule. Buuut... in this particular story I just really don't feel those fears justify the MCs behavior because ultimately MC is leaving like 99% of the books potential untapped because he only barely understands a tiny portion of it and while he (slowly, ever so slowly) tries to learn a tiny tiny tiny bit more all of humanity is getting wiped out in the background.
     
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  4. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    Wait, you said that you understand why he was doing it. But then you said it didn't justify it? I'm kind confused. Also, I'd like to hear your ideas. What do you think MC should have done to improve his situation.
     
  5. Harrow

    Harrow Member

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    "Even if the government gonna disassemble you like lab rat and take away your possession, you still should share it with the humanity anyway, for the sake of greater good". Well, I can tried taking this point to some extend and not using future plot beyond c150 for my argument. Let's say that he somehow intend to share the knowledge, the only problem now is how to make sure that humanity don't end itself murdering each other for that knowledge, or let the existence of that knowledge be revealed to other much advanced alien race and got it robbed from their dead cold hands.

    Double cross, plotting and betrayal are also the main theme of this novel. For example, remember the army unit that forsake the ally with MC and run away from the fire bird. They did not do that because they are evil, they do that because they don't believe in the pesonal strength of MC and deem him disposable in comparison to the scientists.

    MC action and personality might not be heroic when comparing to other hero type, but his ethic level are already much higher than most other characters. Also there is no hero or villain in this story, just living being that have his/her/its own cause and will do anything to achieve what they want. I will leave a spoiler summary regard the secret of the book in case you want to check them out.

    The existence of the book is not limited to MC, there is a super powerful political figure who have known of it before the apocalypse even happened. This political figure has to prepare for his master who is a unthinkable eldrich being with its age surpass the total age of a hundreds stars and its power so absolute that it can wipe out an entire advanced civilization without the need to move a single of its fingers or giving a single thought about sparing them to take the book of MC. Does that make this political figure evil? In my opinion, nah. He is just overwhelmed by hopelessness that there is no way to oppose that unthinkable being.
     
  6. Sinking Ship

    Sinking Ship Well-Known Member

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    I understand why he keeps the book secret - because he assumes it will lead to him dying and/or the book being taken away. Those are pretty fair assumptions so from the perspective of telling a story I 100% understand and am on board with his choice. It would be pretty unrealistic for "the guy who found the book" to have any power or authority if he turned it over to the government (in fact, he would probably just get killed!) so for it to be a good story he pretty much can't do that.

    But the problem is that the opportunity cost to all of humanity involved with the secret book being held by one guy (who can't even read like 90% of it) is so massive that it's pretty much completely unjustifiable if you stop and think about for like a second. Like, imagine, if the military had the book in the first week of the apocalypse - around the time "ice punch man" is being taken away from apartment building no. 8 that MC lives in at the start. What happens then? Maybe the dark matter gun gets invented in week 2 instead of in month 5. This sort of extrapolation isn't even really fanfiction because we know the government does eventually invent the gun and start arming their soldiers with it - but if they had the book they would be able to do it way sooner. If you follow that train of thought... if the humans have better weapons maybe they don't have to abandon Shen Cheng and other similar cities so quickly and they would have more time for the "awakened" to power up. If they introduced "cultivation" to their soldiers - even if it was reserved for elites or special forces or the well-connected or whatever - then they would have a whole super powered army instead of being forced to rely on randomly awakened citizen mercenaries. If the army could use talismans for fighting, defense, transportation... if they could use the magic book to make the monster meat edible the way MC does... and on and on the examples are endless.

    So from a story perspective, I understand WHY the MC never shares his knowledge but when I'm reading I can never suppress this niggling feeling that, through his inaction, the MC is pretty much directly responsible for millions upon millions of deaths. Worst of all MC never really gets strong or impressive enough to banish the thought from my mind, he's always just sort "a little bit better than average". He never shows me that him being alive and doing whatever it is he's doing was WORTH letting millions of people die. I'm pretty sure concerns like this are the reason why most authors make their main characters superpower something exclusive to the MC that only the MC can use - if he couldn't share then it would just be like "oh well, too bad". But since he can share (and in a way that isn't difficult ie: he could just take a bunch of pictures with his phone and distribute a .pdf, or just reel out a few dozen copies with a photocopier or whatever) but chooses not to... it makes it a whole different thing from both a moral and practical standpoint.
     
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  7. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    I think the problem is expectations. MC isn't a hero in this story, and he doesn't want to be one. The whole story is about an ordinary guy trying to survive and do whatever he can to stay alive.

    Yes, he can share it and give to other people. But you still forget the fact that giving other people cultivation method would just increase his chance of dying. To me, this is totally justifiable.

    Of course, if you think MC should have just sacrificed himself for the greater good, then the book will probably end in less than 50 chapters.

    Also he didn't force those language experts to work for me. He offered them shelter, food, and protection, when government simply didn't care about their lives. To me it is a win-win situation.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2019
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  8. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    Thanks reader wendigo for modifying the lament of the falling sky.

    Great mistake was made, tears drenched our clothes
    God’s wrath drew nears, thus blessing was lost
    Blades, swords, and armors, war banners were raised
    Point of no return now, purge all heretics
    Great foes swamp like clouds, warriors were vowed
    Miles after miles of corpses laid, sun, moon were dimmed
    Our own kinds were mourning, our state (Jiangshan) in ruins
    Mistakes after mistakes done, way too shameful to live
    Once souls return, past shall catch up
    Once souls return, darkness shall fall
    Once souls return, …
    Matter not countless millenniums, deities are eternal
    When heaven and earth are unsealed, war will be back.

    Will change the old chapters soon
     
  9. tirirism

    tirirism He who dealt it

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    This thing has the "Adapted to Manhua" tag but I can't seem to find the manhua for it. Has it not been translated?
     
  10. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    Because the manhua is so bad that no one wants to translate it. Trust me, the manhua is terrible.
     
  11. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    oh shit, just found another clue. in volume 3 when MC touched the black monolith, he saw a large space fleet just came out of dark space more than five thousand years ago. and then in volume 8, the entire solar system was covered with spaceships. So I guessed that the fleet was five thousand light-years away at that time. And the senior practitioner definitely knew about this fleet. That was probably the reason why he urged MC to get the hell out of Earth.
     
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  12. Zaroz

    Zaroz Existential Lurker Demonic Calamity

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    Hey, just a suggestion, can we get someone to go through the chapter links and attach volume numbers to their hyperlink text? It hasn't been an issue until now, but once we hit Volume 2 Chapter 46, we will start having multiple chapters with the same hyperlink text. After that, things might get confusing...
     
  13. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    K, I'll add v2 in the future releases
     
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  14. Zaroz

    Zaroz Existential Lurker Demonic Calamity

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    Thanks! :blobpopcorn:
     
  15. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    Finally, the author just released a new chapter yesterday and said that he will resume regular updates soon.
     
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  16. SummerForest

    SummerForest Well-Known Member

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    @nonononononono I stumbled upon this novel quite accidentally and reading it since then. Till now, couldn't reach more than chapter 380, but I like this novel. I was going through all the 'negative' criticism pointed at this one, and believe me, the MC's so-called weakness and selfishness made him more normal in my eyes. He looks more like a real struggling human to me who is caught in an unfathomable situation.
    Expecting to read more of it~
    :cookie:
     
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  17. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    Haha, I understand those who left negative reviews. They want a normal power up story where MC basically doesn't have any human emotions, and they want MC to beat the shit out of aliens. Too bad that this is a story about human extinction, and it was told from a normal guy's perspective. Can't be killed is the only plot armor MC has, but it is also a curse to a normal human being like him.
     
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  18. SummerForest

    SummerForest Well-Known Member

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    I really appreciated the concept of zero-dimension existence of consciousness. So far, it's unique, but is there any hint in the novel about some existing theory which influenced the author? It seems there is some theory behind this concept...
     
  19. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    That one, I'm not sure.
     
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  20. SummerForest

    SummerForest Well-Known Member

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    Let's see what's in store.