https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-paranoid-emperors-black-moonlight-shizun/ I tried mtling it... but my brain was about to burst out... From what i gathered MC is a cultivator and helped ML to his throne and at the enthronement had to ascend otherwise the tribulation would do heavy dmg to the ppl. So MC left and found himself 5 years in the future in a slim like body and same face of his original one. MC is brought forward as pet slave by ML' relative for the ML. ML hates the person with that face aka MC. ML still has the sword that was given by MC and MC was almost attacked by ML but the sword reacted to MC and stopped the attack. MC is sent to the cold palace and later on meets a cat that was taken care of before by him? MC apparently is poisoned prior and the mastermind wants to make him find sth in the palace. I stopped til there. @Zhen_Qing Hope for someone else to continue the spoilers. It sounds promising. Just hope there won't be too much drama later on...
Can anyone pls spoil: How & when does the ML recognise MC? Any love rivals? Is their relationship more fluff or angst? Is MC still able to cultivate?
I've read to chapter 80ish MTL. (edit: If it isn't clear based on the below, I just wanna say I LOVE this novel. Haven't been able to put it down. It's a terrific blend of intriguing plot, romance, drama, comedy, tragedy, the works, and the characters are complicated and delightful!) ML recognizes MC fairly early on (I want to say within the first 25 chapters). ML has been carrying around MC's spirit sword every day - it's really all he has left of his Shizun. MC and ML spar before ML recognizes MC and in the duel, the spirit sword shatters (it wasn't really very high quality to begin with). MC makes an attempt to comfort ML by telling him it was a crap sword anyway (LMAO - MC is a prodigy of a cultivator but TERRIBLE at reading people, and this sort of "comfort" is typical from our awkward turtle black moonlight Shizun). Predictably this is the exact wrong thing to say and ML, half-crazed by grief already, goes into a fit of rage. He orders this presumptuous male pet to be beaten. After the beating MC sleeps for 3 days. When he wakes up, the servants plead with MC to find ML. (they've already figured out that MC has some special effect on ML, even though ML hasn't recognized MC). MC eventually figures out where ML is - it's a remote place that only he would know about given their history together. ML is up there alone freezing to death, out of his mind with grief. MC calls him "Xiao-er" as he did when he was the master, thinking that ML won't hear him, and saves his life. Once ML wakes up he knows who MC is but doesn't let on that he knows for a while. No love rivals so far. Their relationship is a mix of fluff and angst. The ratio changes throughout the story. There are some major misunderstandings and betrayals between these two, tragic stuff that is driven by both external forces (corrupt greedy ppl in the cultivation world) and their own internal insecurities and personality limitations. A bit about their personalities: ML can be cold and ruthless, and indeed does something terrible and some might say unforgivable based on a misunderstanding at one point. But he's also at heart very soft and vulnerable and loves his Shizun desperately - he ends up experiencing crushing remorse at his bad behavior even before the misunderstanding is resolved and takes great lengths to redeem himself. I don't want to let him off the hook. Suffice it to say however he's a complicated person who is constantly being torn apart by his nature and experiences so much loss and betrayal during the story. And even through this, and his own grave mistakes, he never loses the core of himself - that wide-eyed boy who's scared of thunderstorms and hides in his Shizun's bed, and loves to make him baked goods. He's neither a hero nor a villain, and that never changes, but he definitely has character development. MC is a VERY good person, noble, self-sacrificing, a talented cultivator and endlessly kind. He hates taking credit for his good deeds and always wants to save people. That's not to say he's some perfect holy mother type. He's pretty low EQ, somewhat lazy - terrible at taking care of himself - can be super oblivious to other people's feelings, and way too easily bribed by sweets! Not good at communicating. Not good at recognizing his own feelings. He trusts people too easily and this leads to him being betrayed by others. All in all a sweet, smart, somewhat simple guy who doesn't always grasp what's going on around him (not out of stupidity by any means, just bc he's socially inept) who wants to save people, cultivate, take good care of his little apprentice and eat treats. Other life goals include going barefoot everywhere and not doing his hair. You can probably see based on these traits that there is a lot of material for both fluff and angst. As to the final question, yes MC is still able to cultivate. Not at first, but he gets back his abilities fairly quickly (first 20ish chapters).
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Is ML also a cultivator? Is this cultivation story or just some ancient+cultivation+royalties? I’m confused abit about ML identity and strength in the story.
Is ML a cultivator: complicated? ish? ML was taught politics, composition, history, swordplay etc by the MC and they consider themselves to be in a master-disciple relationship. However, cultivation is not even in the top 3 of day jobs for ML and definitely not in the top 100 in terms of his priorities. He's in it for the shizun access rights. He's powerful and is certainly a student of certain cultivation techniques (the ones that MC teaches him) but he's not aiming toward typical cultivator goals. Is this a cultivation story: It has cultivation elements (entering secret realms to compete with other cultivators for treasures, battle between sects for preeminance, MC in particular working toward his goal of ascension, general themes of politics and worldbuilding in the cultivation world) but they aren't the primary focus. The story is more concerned with solving the mystery of how MC and ML are connected and tracking their individual character arcs. ML identity and strength: ML starts out as emperor of a human kingdom. He is not particularly powerful other than being a really strong human dude and an emperor. Spoiler: Spoiler on ML identity and strength ML is later revealed to be a demon/monster - specifically a dragon. And a demon emperor to boot. Pretty darn powerful.
This novel gives me strong 'The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System' vibes, since there was many instances where MC falls into misunderstanding with ML that causes a *ton* of grief for the both of them, that could be straightened out if the MC only spoke up about his intentions (but doesn't, since he feels he has to maintain a stoic image or doesn't want to admit the truth or what he's suffering with). Not to say the story is bad due to it, it's a rather epic story. Certainly it's a strong a plot device that's used multiple times that I give the author some side-eye on. Other than that, the real 'villain' of the story towards the end of the story was someone I semi-suspected halfway through the story, and there's some world-hopping to the modern world that happens later on in the extras that's a lot of fun.
Agree on the SVSSS vibes. The misunderstandings were a bummer for sure. I pretty much got why they happened, character and plot wise - there was the whole Spoiler Qiu Yutong amnesia thing for instance - he really truly did think that he dug out LX's pill. . And in general it felt true as you note to QYT's character. Our osmanthus-cake loving sword-obsessed shizun is not really talented when it comes to communication or human emotions or ANYTHING needing high EQ. And LX's too paranoid to be a good communicator, it's in the title hehe. The end was SO. MUCH. FUN. god. i read it like 5 times. edit: yeah the villain reveal was awesome. it was foreshadowed pretty heavily but dang. Intense!
was the person who made mc lose his memories intended to kill him? ....also can the ml stand up to cultivators? did the mc knew early on that the ml was a dragon?
>was the person who made mc lose his memories intended to kill him I'm kind of fuzzy on this part bc MTL also lazy reading but as far as I remember Spoiler: basic answer The 5 year gap in MC's memory at the beginning of the story was a side effect of not being able to ascend - so no, not an intentional act by someone. Spoiler: bigger spoiler he couldn't ascend because their fates are tied together or something like that. MC and ML are reincarnations of earlier versions of themselves that made some kind of eternal vow to be together. There's also another big memory-gap that MC gets later on, I skipped some of those chapters bc it was too stressful, lots of betrayal and misunderstandings so I just - didn't read it lol. That memory loss was related to MC incurring heavy injuries after being tortured by other cultivators when he defended ML against them. He almost died and his martial brothers had to rebuild his body from scratch more or less. When he woke up from that process he'd lost a lot of his memories. I'm not sure if that was on purpose or an accident. >can the ml stand up to cultivators? Spoiler: basic answer sort of in the beginning, definitely later on. Spoiler: bigger spoiler He's so-so against cultivators in the first half of the book, mostly scraping by on determination. They basically kill him in roughly the middle of the book. He revives as his dragon demon self. Again I'm kind of hazy on the details sorry if this isn't quite right. Once he's the dragon emperor he's much more powerful than the average cultivator. At the very end of the book he has reincarnated as a normal human and wouldn't be able to do much against a cultivator. >did the mc knew early on that the ml was a dragon? Spoiler: basic answer depends on what you mean by "early". In the beginning of the book, no. Spoiler: bigger spoiler if we're talking "early" as in early-early, he knew ML was a dragon when they were in their previous incarnations lol...that counts as early right?
can someone give more spoilers or at least the major plot points please? Did the ML kill his father and his siblings to ascend the throne? Why is MC's shifu the main villain? Thank you!