“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
At first glance, this doesn't look like a xianxia/wuxia story, until you start analysing the vibe. Sure's there's no wire-fu or epic wigs but what is every wuxia/xianxia story about? Discovering that you're stuck in a system you didn’t choose, coming to realize that you can’t escape it, and then deciding what kind of person you’re gonna be anyway.
Cultivation stories are endless cycles of training, meditating, break through, and then realizing there’s another level you have to grind because The Dao doesn’t care about your dreams, heaven is unfair, and breakthroughs aren’t guaranteed. There's no finish line. There's just you, the task, and time stretching on forever.
Then we have Sisyphus. His whole deal is pushing a boulder up a hill and then watching it roll back down again. Forever. On paper, that sounds miserable, because it is. But Camus’ whole point is that once Sisyphus understands the situation everything changes. The gods can control the hill and the rock, but they can’t control his attitude. Gravity is the law. repetition is the fate. There’s no rebellion arc where he can break free and ride off into the sunset. The rolling is the story.
So you cultivate anyway. You roll the rock anyway. You try to save your boyfriend for the N+1 time anyway.
I think the low rating is because people are trying to understand it as a time travel story, but this is a high fantasy, Möbius strip about the farthest boundaries of love .
Cultivation stories are endless cycles of training, meditating, break through, and then realizing there’s another level you have to grind because The Dao doesn’t care about your dreams, heaven is unfair, and breakthroughs aren’t guaranteed. There's no finish line. There's just you, the task, and time stretching on forever.
Then we have Sisyphus. His whole deal is pushing a boulder up a hill and then watching it roll back down again. Forever. On paper, that sounds miserable, because it is. But Camus’ whole point is that once Sisyphus understands the situation everything changes. The gods can control the hill and the rock, but they can’t control his attitude. Gravity is the law. repetition is the fate. There’s no rebellion arc where he can break free and ride off into the sunset. The rolling is the story.
So you cultivate anyway. You roll the rock anyway. You try to save your boyfriend for the N+1 time anyway.
I think the low rating is because people are trying to understand it as a time travel story, but this is a high fantasy, Möbius strip about the farthest boundaries of love .
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