Transcending the Nine Heavens is a Xuanhuan series written by Fengling Tianxia (风凌天下) and translated by Qidian International.
We follow the MC Chu Yang who are ends up being betrayed and hunted down and eventually killed, all alone without any friends, family or lovers by his side at the end.
Being reincarnated into his 17-18 year past self, with his memories of a sad, unfulfilling life filled with selfishness, loneliness and carnage, on his unsuccessful path to reach the top. Now he has the chance to live again and make up for his previous mistakes
Transcending the Nine Heavens Synopsis
Chu Yang, the Ninth Master of the Nine Tribulations Sword, sacrificed almost everything he had for the sake of improving his martial arts, including the love of his life. After spending three years locating the fifth fragment of the Nine Tribulations Sword, he was ambushed by all sides at that very place. Mortally injured with no means of escape, Chu Yang executed a sacrificial technique by plunging the Nine Tribulations Sword into his very own heart. “With the blood of my heart, ten thousand tribulations will collapse!”After witnessing the death of all his ambushers, Chu Yang’s vision began to darken. At a distance, moments before his death, he saw the mastermind who had plotted his downfall — Mo Tian Ji. With that, his eyes finally closed.
However, with a start, Chu Yang once again awoke to find that he had returned to when he was sixteen years of age! Furthermore, the Sword Spirit of the Nine Tribulations Sword now resided within his Dantian, the energy center of his body! From that very moment, Chu Yang would then begin to right all of his past regrets, and carve his very own legend by fulfilling his destiny as the final Master of the Nine Tribulations Sword, and defeating the Heavenly Devils beyond the realm of the Nine Heavens Continent.
Series Information
Author: Fengling Tianxia (风凌天下)Title: Transcending the Nine Heavens
Type: Chinese Web Novel
Genre: Action Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Harem Martial Arts Romance Xuanhuan
Rating: 4.4 / 5.0, 1066 votes
Year: 2011
Publisher: Qidian
Status: 2680 Chapters (Complete)
Translator: Qidian International
EPUB: Wuxialand
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Series Reviews
by fallendustI don't want to disrespect anybody but i have to say it!
FORGET ALL THE NEGATIVE REVIEW BELOW OR ABOVE ME because I as novel maniac who has finished almost every popular novel being translated now have also finished reading this novel by reading it nonstop for 7 days. Yes all 2500+ chapter, finished And i have only one thing to say, this novel is a fu*king Masterpiece.
It's got out of the world comedy, action, also fulfilling romance that you don't see in any other novel. Most of all not one character in this novel is a brain dead idiot or stupid. Every character is unique and their characteristics are very detailed. Moreover, the plot of this novel is awesome, almost has no plot holes at all, most of all despite having more than 2000+ chapters its not repetitive, yes... people it is not repetitive!
if there was rating more than 5, I would give it 55! The plot and the characters are well throughout and comes together perfectly. The power divisions are well thought out as well. The MC is open-minded and doesn't do mindless slaughter if there's no need for it. Moreover, the MC is cunning as a fox until the very end of the novel, he doesn't get stupid as his powers grow like we see in many other novel.
Yes, he's ruthless too, but he's not unreasonable. As a romance novel fan, i specially love this novel, as you all realized from the harem tag, the mc has several wifus. Each wifu has their own unique characteristics they don't mindlessly fall for the mc like we see in some trash (!) novel, their relationship slowly builds up and all of them are very dedicated and compassionate. It also shows the various troubles of harem and slowly solves these issues by facing many situations and slowly building up mutual trust and understanding between the various wifus. The villains are all have unique characteristics as well, they plot and they see reason, they know when to back down, which is pretty nonexistent in most novel.
Politics, plotting, action, romance, comedy, adventures this novel has all of em and more.
I read this novel nonstop for 7 days and I didn't feel bored at all, every chapter was interesting and was a fun read.
In the end if you still don't understand the awesomeness of this piece of gold then if yoh this CD, ATG, BTTH, ISSTH etc are awesome novel then this novel is legendary level novel
Review by jaxx
Another masterpiece from Fenglin Tianxia.Start with reset life plot like any other novels which makes me feel kinda dull. (seriously? like theres no other plot to begin a story?). But overall the story aint so bad. The main idea of the story goes around how mc try to change the future of him and his gf by changing the overall future of the present time. The story written epicly with the authors sense of humour that gonna make u laugh n shake ur head.Recommended for those who seek a smart n funny novel
Review by parth37955
been reading it since chapter 3...easily on my top 5 for novels. MC is smart and thinks out the consequences of his actions (as in, not just killing everything that offends him). The language is poetic and the story is quite well-written. The characters are well-developed. Usually, in Xianxia's it's good if I can even connect with the MC, but in this novel I can connect with the side characters too. TT^TT I got the feels, man...the feels...
Review by kelkel
Firstly, I want to commend Walk The Jiang Hu for his excellent work in translating this novel. He is clearly well versed in Chinese as well as the wuxia/xuanhuan genre, his TL notes are definitely worth reading - he explains the names, terminology used, common Chinese expressions, references to other wuxia works and he even drew diagrams to illustrate hard to visualise scenes. Truly I have not seen many translators as dedicated and passionate about their work as this guy. I would definitely recommend this translation to anyone without any reservations.
Now as for the novel itself, now that I have read 7 volumes of this (there are 8 volumes in total, the 8th volume alone having over 900 chapters in it) I think I'm ready to make a conclusive judgment.
It was okay up to the middle layer. The start was absolutely perfect, definitely 5 star material. It had one of the best starts of any reincarnation novel. At the bottom layer it was good, all the secret scheming and tactics used was fresh and exciting. Schemes were continually deployed against one another and he was constantly striving for his goals, which were foreshadowed nicely. He faced dangers which he had to resolve using cunning and intelligence, and it was very interesting to see these 2 factions go against each other. The harem was justified because the 2 girls fell in love with him after spending a long time and getting to know him, so it's not like they fell in love for no reason. The dialogue was never very good though, they barely ever said anything to each other that might realistically resemble what partners might say to each other. At the middle layer the MC and his friends made good use of the tensions between different clans to manipulate them to their advantage. This is where it started getting worse. For example the juvenile humor where they just started beating each other up over petty squabbles acting like teenage delinquents (actually worse than that). The tension started dissipating once Mo Qing Wu was safe and Mo Tian Ji was firmly on the MC's side. At that point the novel started clearly going downhill and became a chore to read.
Once they got to the top layer the brains appeared to fall out of all the characters and the battles became much less exciting for example in the lower level the armies used terrain and formation to their advantage and heavily employed deception, in the top layer it was just mindless throwing people at each other without any regard for tactics. I know the author explained this by saying that high level cultivators can just ignore terrain and in the top layer strength trumps intelligence, but this is clearly not true because the MC hides in the snow and digs through mountains which is clearly using terrain to his advantage. Also the challenges that the MC and his friends faced became a lot less exciting and the way they solved it also was less interesting. One time the MC's new harem member was about to get taken to the higher realm and the MC suddenly went crazy and attacked the hand that was taking her and cut off one of the fingers, even though that could have killed him and he did it for no reason since the woman wasn't under any threat either. He just acted rashly for no reason.
The biggest problem was that once the MC found his parents the motivation for the story was basically lost. Literally the only reason for the MC to go up to the higher realm now was 1). To revive Wu Qing Qing and 2). To find his other harem member who went up. It's pretty easy to predict what would happen so there's basically no suspense from then on. Kind of like the case with RITF now actually. Once the MC got to the higher realm there's no real reason to keep reading anymore since pretty much all the mysteries have been solved and everything he wanted to achieve had been achieved. He was supposed to go fight the demons because that was his "fate", even though he could actually just choose not to. In the end he only went up to revive Wu Qing Qing and find the other girl and there was just no tension at that point so I stopped reading.
I was disappointed once they revealed the purpose of the 9-tribulations-sword. It is one of the blandest you can possibly imagine. It was created to select someone with the potential to fight the demon tribe on another plane. Feng Ling Tian Xia seems to love the idea of the human-eating demon tribe a lot, he uses the same idea in RITF as well. This godlike item was actually just a piece of trash thrown away by an even more godlike cultivator. Actually this is typical of the novel in that a lot of the things like the sword arts that came with the 9 tribulations sword are not really described in detail, like I don't even know if it's a stab or a slash or if it's AOE or single target or what. The novel kind of just glosses it over. A lot of the major details are glossed over like this, as if the novel doesn't want you to really think about it, and that's fine, but since the details are lacking, we don't really know what to do think about the MC's decisions since we don't know the context fully. For example the MC decided not to put the phoenix's soul into the sword. How much more powerful would that have made the sword? How long would it take to get the same level of power otherwise? A lot of these details are omitted so we don't really know what the MC sacrificed to save the phoenix and so the emotional impact is not really there.
The setting in this novel isn't very imaginative, it's pretty much just normal swordfighting or palm strikes. There aren't any interesting treasures or abilities like you can find in Reincarnator or LSG for example (and I don't even think LSG is that imaginative). This would be okay if the writing was really good, and it was really good to begin with, but it got dull later on and the lack of imagination made it stand out all the more.
Cultivation increasing with fighting, that is something that is definitely not "standard" for a cultivation novel. Normally people increased cultivation by shutting themselves alone in a room and meditating, whereas here it is by fighting to the death. You'd have thought that other people would have realized this? It is kind of obvious. In LSG this type of cultivation is also included as the main cultivation method in one of the many realms in LSG (there are probably countless realms in LSG). Definitely the world in LSG is far more imaginative and expansive than the one in TTNH.
Additionally, the number 9 is used a lot in this novel. I don't know what is the obsession with the number 9. The sword is made of 9 parts, the MC has 9 friends (actually more than that, but the rewards will only go to 9 people) there are 9 realms etc. It feels forced and not a natural consequence of anything in the story. There's a lot about talk of fate and destiny of the nine-tribulations-sword-master. Intrinsically the kind of novel that talks about the fate of the protagonist is limited because either the MC succumbs to his fate or he doesn't, but either way he's still driven by his desire to go against his preordained destiny and not striving for something real and tangible. This makes the novel feel restricted in a way and not as expansive as one which is not restricted by such notions of fate and destiny.
The plot of this story is very similar to RITF. MC gets reincarnated to repent to his former love interest, along the way he picks up a harem and some friends, they fight against demons from another realm, etc. After a while you just think: "did the author run out of ideas already?".
The characters are not bad, but most of them are pretty dumb. The're lucky that they weren't exposed to situations where intelligence is required or they would have died a billion times already. A lot of the time they just say or do something that's courageous but obvious and that's the end. It's not psychological like Reincarnator. Actually now that I have read Reincarnator the psychology in this novel feels really amateur in comparison. In Reincarnator the characters are constantly exposed to situations where acting in accordance with common sense would get them killed, so only the smart characters survived. In this novel, basically the only smart characters are the MC, Mo Tian Ji and Di Wu Qing Rou, and maybe the forest spirit guy forgot his name. Most of the MC's friends are actually dumb as a brick, like literally dumber than your typical 16 year old. The "brotherly love" in this actually feels disgusting. They say things to each other that actually made me feel a bit sick like they were homosexuals or something. The love between the MC and his harem members also made me feel a bit sick like I was watching some 3rd-rate romance drama.
