Discussion Recommendation: Desolate Era! (Ending Today)

A nice song to celebrate my favorite story's end!

So, this is it. Desolate Era has ended.. Well, a chapter remains (5x size epilogue), but whatever. Consider it complete.
The first novel I liked enough to MTL, I finished it two years back. It was a amazing story through and through. I'll give a brief rec here.


The Final Arc: I know I should begin with the cool points in the beginning, but the final arc is the best reason to read the story, it is just so amazing. There is a huge scale Outsider invasion, a war between hyper-macrocosmic worlds, with Ji Ning standing strong as the pillar and only hope of the universe. The enemy is foreshadowed earlier, the dangerous Sithe who invaded during the Dawn War, a battle that occurred aeons ago and have returned once more.
There are amazingly huge battles, and their scale is unprecedented. Worlds are used as weapons. Every battle has techniques that surpass comprehension of space and time, life and death being used.

There is high tension, mostly due to the fact that MC doesn't have many defensive techniques and zero clones. Sword cultivation focuses on offense, after all. There is a avatar which has 3/4th of MC's battle power but it is basically a treasure which will be destroyed after his death.

Finally even though the final chapter isn't up yet, this Aardwark guarantees it is the best ending ever! Better than all of IET's other novels! You can bite me if you didn't like it!

Sword Cultivation: The MC cultivates the Sword Dao from the beginning and to the end of this story. The sword is MC's primary combat technique and while he does train in other techniques, sword is best. There are other sword cultivation novels, but this is the best of them. MC trains in sword techniques, creates his own set of sword techniques and kills people with sword techniques!

The Translation: You might be thinking, this is a reason to read? Yeah of course, RWX translates good! Nice words for techniques, treasures and cultivation levels! Autarch, did you ever hear this word before? Seems really majestic, right? Well, more amazing words wait for you!

High Scale Setting: Desolate Era has a amazing setting. It was originally a xianxia set in the mythical world of the Three Realms, but left that setting for a cosmic scale fantasy. The numbers are huge, physics is thrown away and attacks on the scale of universes are thrown around! Like Gurren Lagann but multiply the scale by 10,000!

I'll say this, I liked the setting and world building in this story more than any other xianxia. Most of that is due to IET's writing.
Other novels have chapter 1 with 'Ji Ning dodged, covering 15 feet with a backward leap' and chapter 1000 with 'Ji Ning dodged, covering 15000 km with a flying leap'. Basically the same thing. Not here.

Fleeing through space, teleporting through space, shattering space to dodge through void, dodging through spacetime continuums... The scale grows until we reach the point where all characters becoming walking violations of physics. And it is awesome!

Cultivation: The pillar for the xianxia story is the cultivation system, and IET has a good one here. In the Three Realms, there is body cultivation, the way of Fiendgods and qi cultivation, the way of Immortals. Last but not the least the cultivation of heart, Heartforce is revealed.
And of course, Dao Comprehension, gaining insight into the mysterious laws of heaven and earth!

The cultivation system is pretty awesome, and acts as a good foundation for the entire novel. If you read Talisman Emperor, you might notice that it is similar... well, Talisman Emperor was written in 2008 and IET took some inspiration from it early on. That means that you'll feel bad reading Talisman Emperor early on as you'll compare it to this amazing novel, but who cares about that novel, this is a Desolate Era recommendation!

Well of course, after the Three Realms arc ends, the world and cultivation system change. The new cultivation system is... the old one, but with the scale multiplied 100x... but that's only what it seems like.
In reality...

Spoiler

there is a new system created by fusing all the above energies together, only the MC can train in this system and it is OP as hell!

Actually, I've only covered half of the system and didn't talk about the Omega Sword Dao that MC creates by himself, allows him to leapfrog through cultivation realms in battles and cultivate a foundation that makes everyone else inferior by a billion times. But I have more to write, ask someone on the LCD later!

Our MC, Ji Ning: Beginning from a Earthling like us who died after donating away all the money he made to orphanages, racking up a ridiculous amount of karma, getting a technique where he has to visualize the most beautiful female Goddess Nuwa in his mind to temper the soul, the Records of the Barbarian Ji in the Primeval Era begins with a reincarnation in the Ji tribe of poor barbarians!

Anyway, the world is really barbaric so MC leaves good karma and aspirations of becoming a saint aside to become a dual wielding sword god! Training the sword with his father, learning footwork with his mother and chilling with his maids, the starting arc in the barbarian tribe is a amazing introduction. The first arc is a story of the MC's coming of age so it has some bittersweet moments, as our MC rises from a talented child to becoming a man who takes responsibility. It has focus on building our MC's character.

After that, as the foundations of MC's character have been solidified, there isn't much character building. But make no mistake, there are some really nice moments where we come know more facets of our MC. Later on as the scale and MC's age rises, the mechanic of Daoheart means that his character is mostly unchanged. But, there is a something revealed about the MC later on that brings to light his human insecurities even as a immortal god.

Spoiler

After his wife's death, he is basically helicopter-parenting his daughter, never allowing her to venture into true danger. As expected of a xianxia, lack of exposure to danger negatively impacts her cultivation yet he protects her as he is extremely scared of her dying and leaving him alone for eternity.

The Three Realms: This is basically the world which Chinese Mythology is based on. There are Gods, Demons, Immortals, Buddhas and Ji Ning. Guess who the story focuses on?
All said, the mythological elements are good. MC learns Sun Wukong's body transformation technique, Houyi's bow technique, takes the master of Buddhism and Daoism as his teacher, marries a Asura Demon... you know the thing. Oh, the last one was a joke.
Anyway, this story does have nice cameos of mythical elements. There is more focus on Daoism than most xianxia... though it isn't a major focus. If you wanna read that...
Read Investiture of the Gods and Journey to the West if you really want to enrich your knowledge.

Spoiler

...There is a certain story on Qidian that focuses on Chinese Mythology, but that's poorly edited MTL so you'll just end up lowering your impression.

Romance and Side Characters: For the beginning of the novel, romance is done well. There is a false love interest, MC leaves her to realize his true love for the girl who has been pining for him all along, they marry and have babies, ooh la la. And then, because MC's Daoheart has to be tested, things happen.
One of these things is love interest being a Asura Demon... yeah, joking.

Spoiler

MC;s love interest dies a third of the way in the novel, and MC's primary motivation is bringing her back.

Anyway, IET doesn't like romance, doesn't like harem and doesn't like useless females tagging along MC for reactions. So, don't hold much hope for the romance.
As for side characters, there are some fairly important side characters but MC leaves them behind when the story moves ahead and they become useless. But as long as they are relevant, they are useful and a good backing for the MC. So there.

 

There's actually 1 more chapter to go
But your words give me hope that its ending will be better than CD or ST

 

Welp, time to read it again.

 

Okay, heard and edited.

 

I stopped at volume 45 ch1 and I cant possibly see how the author will wrap everything up in less than 17 chapters without leaving a very open and unsatisfying ending. If CD and ST are anything to go by, the ending will most likely be very disappointing. Nonetheless, the journey was amazing.
This is definitely my favorite from IET so far, I very much like his other not finished transl works, especially SS which was inspired by the middle realm of Stellar Transformation(which was by far the best part of the novel). Unfortunately, I have heard bad things about the ending of SS.

 

Great novel. Finally ending so we can read another great novel translated by RWX.

 

The ending isn't open.

 

Lost all motivation to read after what happened to Spring Grass... And I don't think that I will ever feel like reading it again.

 

Spoiler alert

Spoiler: Spoiler

hes going to revive all the people died from his world and the people from his universe and they are going to have the biggest , the loudest banquet ever

 

Su Youji just Tagging along to look beautiful at the end. XD
Talk about useless characters...

 

Yea that was brutal IET killed a lot of great characters in this novel. I wonder if Ning will remember to resurrect her and the other before the end.

Ren has already "stated" that he is filthy rich and doesnt need to be working his ass off translating, so DE was his last project besides the The Godsfall Chronicles which he already promised some time ago.

 

Really? That's too bad. Guess we'll see after he finishes Godsfall Chronicles.

 

If you check his Patreon, he is doing some novel called Dragon Talisman.

 

is that true~~~~~~~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!






time to read!

 

doesn't like romance mean he's SHIT at writing romance

 

Coiling Dragon had nice romance.

 

1st I Shall Seal the Heavens then Warlock in Magus World and Now is Desolate Era is ending too what the fuck im getting old

 

Battle Through the Heavens and Skyfire Avenue ended as well.

 

I'm still reading at book 33 when Ji ning enter the crimsonwave temple

I'm still reading right now and i will finished it all the way until the end

 

I didn't even start to read this one, and I dunno if I will ever do it (considering CD's pretty lame ending, etc.)... but guys! I'm so hyped about this story's ending, bc that means The Godsfall Chronicles will start spinning around! and that's goddamn good enough reason to celebrate DE's ending!