This novel is one of my personal absolute favorites. I am certainly biased because of the fact that it was one of my first Chinese novels ever, but I still think it deserves to be considered highly despite that. There are many things I’d like to say and discuss but I do not have a lot of time, so I will briefly discuss what I believe is the most misunderstood part of this novel, the main character. Yun Che was originally a peace loving and naive disciple of the greatest medical saint ever. He believed, or wants to believe rather, in the goodness of people over there evilness. This inherent trait will frequently be his greatest downfall all the way up to the more recent chapters.
This is not to say he is always naive like he once was. This character trait of his morphs a bit and becomes that he fully believes in the people he has decided are trustworthy. This is not a terrible trait at all. It would be far more annoying to have a main character who is ungrateful and doubts everyone, unless it was done really well in a different kind of novel than this one. Back to the exposition. He cherished his everyday life with the few people he knew and wished it would last forever. As the synopsis says, it doesn’t. His expectations of humanity betrayed, he lets himself be absorbed by hatred to numb his pain from loss. When he realizes that what he has done was wrong, he has already lost the last thing that was truly important to him. Filled with regret, he becomes suicidal to kill his enemies. This backstory is not given the time it deserves in the novel, which is why Yun Che is so misunderstood. When given his second chance, Yun Che decides to work harder to protect what he cares about, rather than being useless and lose everything. This is probably Yun Che’s most important decision and reflects greatly on his future character. Yun Che has fundamentally changed very little before and after his second chance at life. Besides the point where he was focused only on revenge, Yun Che has only become more resolved to be strong in his second chance. But to Yun Che, strength is a means to an end. It is a means for him to be happy. He cares far more about the people he loves than power and glory. Not to say he doesn’t care about these things at all, just that he cares more about his loved ones than them. Yun Che cares about his loved ones so much that he becomes practically insane whenever they are in danger. His behavior is almost self destroying because of how crazy he gets. He understands that he shouldn’t put himself in harms way, but can’t come to care. If he did care, he would fundamentally be a completely different person. This will cause intense rage among some readers as they only see him as being a bipolar(I’ll get to it), reckless, plot armored, fool. My favorite scene with my favorite character exemplifies this greatly.
The girls in this novel are great, but this scene has, in my opinion, the greatest girl of them all. Without spoiling, this scene has a lot of build up in this novel. To me it delivers. Yun Che receives a message explaining that one of his loved ones is going to die. He cannot save her. He is far to weak to save her. His master tells him this. His bound spirits tell him this. The one giving the message tells him this. His master tells him that he will only betray the expectations others have placed on him if he goes and dies just to save her. She tells him that he should just train and get revenge, that his loved one would want him to live and not die without doing anything. Yun Che understands this. He knows all of this. But, in my opinion, only a monster could abandon beloved at that stage. Someone so precious, so meaningful, so important to everything he has ever done, how could he abandon her now? Even though he knows it’s wrong, he goes anyways. Here is a quotation that contains now spoilers: ““Right… I can’t save her… Just how can a piece of trash like myself go and save her…” Yun Che could not move a single inch, but all of the muscles in his body were twisting and contorting, and it was clear that he was still struggling with all of his might(against his master who was restraining him for leaving), “But you want me to hole up in here and wait for the day of her death… I’d rather die!!””. He is being willful and stupid and is disregarding how everyone will feel after he dies. But that is a fundamental part of his nature that can’t be changed. I can’t talk more on this without spoiling, but you’ll know how the rest goes if you read. (Its a fucking badass battle scene in my opinion, more for the emotions behind it than description of action though.)
This personality trait mixed with an issue of Chinese online novels themselves brings about the greatest divide in the readers. I’ll speak shortly because this part annoys me greatly. Chinese novels have protagonist that pander to the audience. This pandering is creating ‘hot-blooded’ action caused by arrogant side characters. Then insures the ’face slapping’ scenes. If you don’t know what that is I am sure you can find a reference for it.The pandering is not what is wrong, it is the frequency and the fact that it often goes against how you expect a character to act. Yun Che is an example of both of these things. It makes sense for Yun Che to be a fool for his loved ones, it’s within his character. It also makes sense that Yun Che would beat up stupid arrogant characters, Yun Che has pride and is mostly worthy of that pride. However the extent to which the author takes it that causes the greatest problem for this novel. Yun Che will frequently go too far in beating up arrogant characters or do it for many chapters in a row. This, finally, leads to the misconception I talked about earlier. People think that Yun Che’s character is too face slap. They think his most base character trait is run around and beat people up. This is because it happens so much more frequently in the early chapters than him fighting for his loved ones. The author does not do this because it is within his character to go so far against the idiots, but rather to make his novel more popular. And it worked. ATG is famous(relatively) in the English and Chinese speaking countries. However most of those readers have huge misconceptions about Yun Che in exchange for this popularity. There was a... huge development recently that exemplified this attitude. People were really excited for Yun Che to act in a certain way. It is within his character to do such things, so it is not a problem that he was doing it. But people were praising and celebrating it like it was a “correction of his character” and that he is now “as he always should have been”. This development was not a happy one and did not have happy circumstances. However many readers (at least those that commented) found this new development to be great. Not that the circumstances behind his change were one they enjoyed, mind you. They aren’t that terrible. They were just happy about the future ways in which he would act. I can’t talk about this anymore without, 1.) spoiling everything, and 2.) derailing my whole my whole argument and train of thought. That’s all I have to say for now. I wasted so much time writing this it’s not even funny.
This novel is one of my personal absolute favorites. I am certainly biased because of the fact that it was one of my first Chinese novels ever, but I still think it deserves to be considered highly despite that. There are many things I’d like to say and discuss but I do not have a lot of time, so I will briefly discuss what I believe is the most misunderstood part of this novel, the main character. Yun Che was originally a peace loving and naive disciple of the greatest medical saint ever. He believed, or wants to believe rather, in the goodness of people over there evilness. This inherent trait will frequently be his greatest downfall all the way up to the more recent chapters.
This is not to say he is always naive like he once was. This character trait of his morphs a bit and becomes that he fully believes in the people he has decided are trustworthy. This is not a terrible trait at all. It would be far more annoying to have a main character who is ungrateful and doubts everyone, unless it was done really well in a different kind of novel than this one. Back to the exposition. He cherished his everyday life with the few people he knew and wished it would last forever. As the synopsis says, it doesn’t. His expectations of humanity betrayed, he lets himself be absorbed by hatred to numb his pain from loss. When he realizes that what he has done was wrong, he has already lost the last thing that was truly important to him. Filled with regret, he becomes suicidal to kill his enemies. This backstory is not given the time it deserves in the novel, which is why Yun Che is so misunderstood. When given his second chance, Yun Che decides to work harder to protect what he cares about, rather than being useless and lose everything. This is probably Yun Che’s most important decision and reflects greatly on his future character. Yun Che has fundamentally changed very little before and after his second chance at life. Besides the point where he was focused only on revenge, Yun Che has only become more resolved to be strong in his second chance. But to Yun Che, strength is a means to an end. It is a means for him to be happy. He cares far more about the people he loves than power and glory. Not to say he doesn’t care about these things at all, just that he cares more about his loved ones than them. Yun Che cares about his loved ones so much that he becomes practically insane whenever they are in danger. His behavior is almost self destroying because of how crazy he gets. He understands that he shouldn’t put himself in harms way, but can’t come to care. If he did care, he would fundamentally be a completely different person. This will cause intense rage among some readers as they only see him as being a bipolar(I’ll get to it), reckless, plot armored, fool. My favorite scene with my favorite character exemplifies this greatly.
The girls in this novel are great, but this scene has, in my opinion, the greatest girl of them all. Without spoiling, this scene has a lot of build up in this novel. To me it delivers. Yun Che receives a message explaining that one of his loved ones is going to die. He cannot save her. He is far to weak to save her. His master tells him this. His bound spirits tell him this. The one giving the message tells him this. His master tells him that he will only betray the expectations others have placed on him if he goes and dies just to save her. She tells him that he should just train and get revenge, that his loved one would want him to live and not die without doing anything. Yun Che understands this. He knows all of this. But, in my opinion, only a monster could abandon beloved at that stage. Someone so precious, so meaningful, so important to everything he has ever done, how could he abandon her now? Even though he knows it’s wrong, he goes anyways. Here is a quotation that contains now spoilers: ““Right… I can’t save her… Just how can a piece of trash like myself go and save her…” Yun Che could not move a single inch, but all of the muscles in his body were twisting and contorting, and it was clear that he was still struggling with all of his might(against his master who was restraining him for leaving), “But you want me to hole up in here and wait for the day of her death… I’d rather die!!””. He is being willful and stupid and is disregarding how everyone will feel after he dies. But that is a fundamental part of his nature that can’t be changed. I can’t talk more on this without spoiling, but you’ll know how the rest goes if you read. (Its a fucking badass battle scene in my opinion, more for the emotions behind it than description of action though.)
This personality trait mixed with an issue of Chinese online novels themselves brings about the greatest divide in the readers. I’ll speak shortly because this part annoys me greatly. Chinese novels have protagonist that pander to the audience. This pandering is creating ‘hot-blooded’ action caused by arrogant side characters. Then insures the ’face slapping’ scenes. If you don’t know what that is I am sure you can find a reference for it.The pandering is not what is wrong, it is the frequency and the fact that it often goes against how you expect a character to act. Yun Che is an example of both of these things. It makes sense for Yun Che to be a fool for his loved ones, it’s within his character. It also makes sense that Yun Che would beat up stupid arrogant characters, Yun Che has pride and is mostly worthy of that pride. However the extent to which the author takes it that causes the greatest problem for this novel. Yun Che will frequently go too far in beating up arrogant characters or do it for many chapters in a row. This, finally, leads to the misconception I talked about earlier. People think that Yun Che’s character is too face slap. They think his most base character trait is run around and beat people up. This is because it happens so much more frequently in the early chapters than him fighting for his loved ones. The author does not do this because it is within his character to go so far against the idiots, but rather to make his novel more popular. And it worked. ATG is famous(relatively) in the English and Chinese speaking countries. However most of those readers have huge misconceptions about Yun Che in exchange for this popularity. There was a... huge development recently that exemplified this attitude. People were really excited for Yun Che to act in a certain way. It is within his character to do such things, so it is not a problem that he was doing it. But people were praising and celebrating it like it was a “correction of his character” and that he is now “as he always should have been”. This development was not a happy one and did not have happy circumstances. However many readers (at least those that commented) found this new development to be great. Not that the circumstances behind his change were one they enjoyed, mind you. They aren’t that terrible. They were just happy about the future ways in which he would act. I can’t talk about this anymore without, 1.) spoiling everything, and 2.) derailing my whole my whole argument and train of thought. That’s all I have to say for now. I wasted so much time writing this it’s not even funny.
