Discussion Distance in Xianxia

This is my first post (I'm generally just a stalker haha) so forgive me if I have posted this in the wrong place.

So I have an issue with spatial comprehension especially when it comes to distances. For some reason it never clicked. 1 meter, 1 mile, 1 foot (I only know that one because I think of a ruler) ... so when all these novels talk about leaping 1000 feet (ISSTH) and continents being 10,000 miles (CD) I'm just like "ooo that's far " and have to relate it to other things [1000 feet — "that's like, a lot of me " (I'm almost 6') ... 10000 miles — "that's like, 3+ USA's "]. But really the distance never really stuck. Until yesterday.

My friends and I have been doing the New England tallest peaks hikes before graduation. The 4000+ foot peaks in each New England state. Yesterday, we did Mt. Mansfield (gorgeous), but on the way up an old sports injury acted up and I had extreme difficulty with the hike — my knees literally kept buckling as we were summitting. The smart thing to do would've been turn around because it wouldn't have been funny for them to actually give out when I had poor footing (that and nobody would be carrying me down haha). INSTEAD I thought to myself "My boy Meng Hao wouldn't let some mountain stand in the way of his cultivation ... my Dao is the Dao of Perseverance, the pain will remold me, I shall reach the peak, achieve enlightenment on this mountain, and consume Mt. Mansfield turning it into one of my life-saving treasures!!!" (obviously the pain had made me delirious by this point)

So I reach the peak, see an awesome view, thank Senior Brother Meng for showing me the way. Then it dawns on me ... this shit was 4000ft, Meng Hao takes a step and crosses 4000ft ... WTF is wrong with these Xianxia characters that they can cross 4000ft in one breath?!!! Are they human?!!! Suffice it to say, my Dao Heart was troubled as I attempted to gain enlightenment, and was not able to successfully consume Mt. Mansfield. I did gain some enlightenment on the Dao of Spatial Visualization though, so all was not lost. I am writing this now, with 2 ice packs on my knee, my PT upset at me "throwing away all the hard work he's done," but with a much greater understanding of Senior Brother Meng's greatness.

TLDR: OP doesn't understand distance, climbed a 4000ft mountain, gained enlightenment, is now in a lot of pain but will recover with a stronger physical body!!!


This is where I almost fell (there's a cliff to the left) ... it's also where Senior Meng's teachings pushed me to continue on to the summit.

 

Congrats.

I don't get distance's either. I just ignore it and move on, or imagine them moving really quickly. Probably curbs my enjoyment of the novel a bit, but oh well.

 

I'm pretty sure a similiar thread has been made before...

 

Forgot the world when you were toddler?

In toddler's eyes, ten feet is the very long distant. Upstair and mountain are at the same height ..
And for jet fighter pilot, one breath is 5-10 km. One mindless blink, your enemy weapon that's previously 10km away is at your eyebrow.

 

Well first thing you need to keep in mind is that Xianxia will ALWAYSSSSSSSSSS exaggerate. Mountains that are so big theyd poke a hole in the atmosphere. Limitless deserts ect ect.

 

Well... most xianxias have greatly... and I mean greatly exaggerated... uhmm... everything.

A city has millions to billions of people... The planet is the size of jupiter... The sword weighs 10k lbs... MC has a striking strength of 60k lbs... Thrown dart makes a sonic boom...

Still... 4000ft in one step... Mach 4... LOL....
It's a fantasy... just take it as exaggeration humor.

 

Well... a blink? The enemy projectile won't cover 5-10km, even at mach 4. Unless laser weapons... Or railgun...
Hmmm... maybe an 8 second blink?

 

What irks me is when the chasing scene begins. 1 dood goes to the east for a hundred km/second and 3 other dood goes to west south north at the same rate.. how the hell do the MC manage see or follow a dood 1000 km ahead, kills the dood, talks about stuff, and loot their belongings.. and then he also manage to catch all 3 other doods that fled to 3 other directions one by one.. each taking his time with them... not to mention their cultivation arent that far off either. Just ludriculous.

 

No. Just ordinary warhead ..

Spoiler

equipped with basic minor teleportation talisman.

 

Well, aside from the fact that none of these stories actually measure in feet, some of the better written don't even use metric, everyone that cultivates is a superhuman. It really only comes down to, how far beyond human limits, they have gone, and how much are they exaggerating on top of that?

 

What annoys me about all these extreme distances/numbers/timelines used in xianxia/xuanhuan is almost all of it could be scaled down hundreds or thousands of times and it still wouldn't affect the story negatively, possibly improving it instead since the exaggerations is pushing suspension of disbelief to a limit.
Most of the time it is simply the author showing off...
The real problem though is that they are often inconsistent and forget/change what numbers they used before.

 

the best one as of now was from TWM when MC jumped 3km up with low cultivation, I read it then think WTF?

 

『Lol that was funny. And I'm also troubled by distances and therefore I pay them no heed and think "this must be far" and start reading.』

 

No, they are Immortals!!! That's the first thing that you think about? That they cross thousands of feet in one step? Not even once have you considered that they can fly, that they can use magic, that they can do who knows what other things?

Which one is that?

 

Yi Yun in latest chapters.

 

Well it was about time after 400+/almost 500 chapters I guess... in other novels flying is nothing by half those chapters...

 

It's like the growth of Superman in the comics, first he's just faster and stronger than normal, then he leaps over buildings, then there's flight powers - which are mostly for show - and finally, distance loses all meaning with teleportation. That's basically how a Xianxia and Wuxia story MC progresses, as their understanding of the Dao grows, the effort exerted to move decreases, by the end of it, they can wipe out the whole clan of the guy who was talking shit about them, regardless of distance.

 

I'm fine with super powerful characters moving 1000 miles in a single step and things like that, but it bugs me when the world itself is exaggerated so much. Planets that are bigger than our entire solar system, countries that are bigger than the Earth going to war with each other even though it would take years just to reach the enemy, a single city of mortals having a population of several billion, etc.

 

In one of the hard sci-fi story, written by legendary Master about 40-50 yrs ago, a being size larger than Manhattan was accidentally expelled from the core of the sun!

One jp anime .. the female MC height is about 300 metres ..

Spoiler

Male is normal juni ..

Our perception is very limited ..

 

It'd be interesting if one of those stories was rewritten with all of the exaggerations canceled/normalized.