Standard IET stuff. Honestly all his books are the same and reading one means you read them all. I see no difference between Ji Ning, Qin Yu, Xu Jingming, etc are all literally the same character. But thats fine, people who are reading IET for the first time will get something that isnt straight garbage but I have a big problem with this particular novel. I can *feel* the nationalism when I read this. IET wasnt making it subtle whatsoever here. China #1 can be felt throughout my first 100 or so chapters, lemme explain. So the entire world is given VR technology and when they go online they can practice martial arts. After a while a ranking ranking is made with the strongest at the top and guess which nationality 2 of the top 3 are? Thats right folks, its granddaddy China with the other from Botswana. It just seems like China is naturally more talented than every other country by a wide margin. Lets not even get into the comments from the live streaming in VR, its constantly about oh man, these expert martial artists from [other country] are strong, but China is still better. I think the funniest example is in chapter 148 when the strongest from Korea is made out to be an arrogant mf who is going around challenging the top 3 just to get more views on his live stream. I feel like IET's recent novels have lost the magic from Desolate Era, Swallowed Star, COILING DRAGON, Stellar Transformation, etc and part of that is the nationalism here, while in the other recent novels its been a lot more logical. In his earlier works the MC got super lucky at the start and then had to muddle through the entire universe just to be the best and in recent time the MCs dont get lucky, they were just naturally talented and got some benefits here and there that make sense. My problem is that making sense doesnt carry the same *brilliance* of a moment like in Desolate Era where Ji Ning gets the inheritance and starts his journey or when Lou Feng died fighting the Gold Dragon.
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LIKEbruh it was mentioned that due to the large population in China there were more chances of finding good talents than other countries, while I do agree that extreme nationalism has been shown but I mean the author is Chinese so what did you expect. It's the same with American movies from Marvel but you don't complain about that,do you? and china is the most famous for martial arts so them getting into top 10 for 2,3 year is plausible. And it was even mentioned that the top guy was very experienced in martial arts and that is only why he was at the top and soon younger generation will take over him.