Renegade Immortal — Er Gen's novel
At a glance2,088 chapters · completed
Renegade Immortal adapts Xian Ni (仙逆), the novel that made Er Gen (耳根) one of the masters of dark xianxia. Serialized on Qidian from 2009 to 2012, it runs to 2,088 chapters. It follows Wang Lin, a village boy with no special talent, who enters the world of cultivation through the back door and, through loss and revenge, becomes one of the most feared beings in the universe.
Origins and publication
Er Gen has said he launched two novels almost simultaneously on Qidian: Tian Ni (天逆), on which he pinned his hopes, and Xian Ni. Yet it was the second one that took off, to the point that he dropped the first to focus on it entirely. The novel then built its reputation on a cold, methodical hero, far from the genre's talkative protagonists, and on a cosmological ambition that widens from planet to planet.
Xian Ni also lays the groundwork for a shared universe: Wang Lin appears in other Er Gen novels such as Pursuit of the Truth (求魔) and I Shall Seal the Heavens (我欲封天). A 16-volume print edition came out from Yunnan Education starting in 2012, and an official English translation is available on Wuxiaworld.
How it differs from the donghua
Build Dream Animation's donghua, launched in September 2023, is one of the adaptations most faithful to its novel's tone. It keeps Wang Lin's hardness, the cruelty of certain scenes and the slow rise in power. But the novel goes much further into darkness: murders, betrayals and sacrifices are described without filter, and Wang Lin sometimes spends dozens of chapters alone, meditating or forging artefacts. The animation speeds through these passages and gives more room to the romance with Li Muwan.
Reception and success
Xian Ni is a xianxia classic, often listed alongside Coiling Dragon or A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality among the must-reads. Readers return to it for its ending, one of the most ambitious in the genre. The success of the donghua, rated 9.4 on Tencent Video at launch, sent a new generation back to the novel.
Trivia
- The title Xian Ni can be translated as "the one who defies the immortals" or "the rebel immortal".
- Er Gen went on to write A Will Eternal, another novel adapted into a donghua and covered on Donghua Fan, with a much more comic tone.
- The novel is divided into 13 major parts, following Wang Lin's ascent from the small Zhao kingdom to the far reaches of the universe.
- Li Muwan, the woman Wang Lin loves, is at the heart of one of the most tragic arcs in online xianxia.
My take
This is the novel that showed me how grand and cruel xianxia could be. Wang Lin is not likeable, and that is his strength: every victory comes at a price, and the world gives him nothing for free. The opening chapters are slow, the English translation is uneven, and the long meditation phases can be off-putting. But the final part more than justifies the journey.
Who is it for?Readers who like cold heroes, revenge stories and uncompromising xianxia.
— Spidermas, for Donghua Fan
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The authorEr Gen 耳根The melancholy poet of xianxia