It’s not easy being the odd kid out, doubly so when your father is a cultivator and you have dozens of other kids. Do Live up to his expectations. Shen Yuhua, the youngest daughter of the Chaoyang Palace Immortal, has been told since she was a child that she lacks any meaningful spiritual power. A few years later, her mother was accused of adultery and treachery, thrown into the abyss, and stipulated that she could resurface if she was innocent. Surprisingly, to no one familiar with Europe’s witch trials, she did not do this, cementing Yuhua’s fate as the youngest of her siblings. Occasionally visited by her biological sister Yuying, Yuhua basically spends most of the time between her mother’s death and the beginning of the plot in a shabby corner of the palace, where she is basically a prisoner cared for by her manservant Yanwei (a failed practitioner).
It’s a pretty horrible life, made worse by the fact that her half-sister Yu Ling keeps bullying her. This is also a good starting point for Velinxi’s Xianxia webcomic The Girl with a Thousand Faces. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, Xianxia is a Chinese fantasy genre heavily inspired by various religious and spiritual beliefs, including Taoism, Buddhism, and various folk religions. It’s about “yogis”, people training their spiritual core in the hope of achieving enlightenment and immortality, and is probably best known to English-language readers from danmei novels such as Scum villain self-rescue system or Husky and his white cat master. (Although Xianxia is also one of the genres that influenced LitRPG, so if you’ve read any of those, some elements may be familiar.) Wei Linxi, the pseudonym of Xiao Tongkong, draws on classic Xianxia elements and mild urban fantasy influences to create a story with a richly painted world that’s easily accessible even if you’re new to Chinese literature and pop culture.
The core of Yu Hua’s story is that Yu Ling threatens to throw her into the abyss out of sheer despicability. Although we can guess that being one of Shen Daxian’s children is not an easy role to complete, even if you Do Possessing spiritual power, Wei Linxi will not go into details here. Yu Ling plays the villain in the volume. But it’s important because it frees Chu Tian, a real demon, not just a man trapped in the abyss for hundreds of years, eager to break free and wreak havoc again. This is necessary because Chutian is the one who helps Yuhua escape and gain unsettling powers – she forms a bond with him when she inadvertently wins a demon battle for the right to become his disciple… but he also forms a bond with her. While he now shares his power with her and will absolutely teach her how to use it whether she wants it or not (a deal is a deal, after all), she can also impose some restrictions on him. In the short term, this means that after she returns from the depths, the two must think carefully about how to get along, laying the foundation for their growth as people and practitioners. (Although Chu Tian 100% disagrees with this statement. He is very good, thank you very much.)
This book mainly focuses on Yuhua’s new identity as both the favored daughter and Chutian’s disciple. The former is actually more difficult for her. She had been neglected and abused her whole life so far, with the biggest focus being on Yu Ling’s bullying and her father’s attempts to marry her off to another tribe, and to suddenly be the center of everyone’s attention was a difficult thing to deal with. Her return from the abyss means that she now has powerful powers, and only she knows that these powers actually belong to Chu Tian – and since her father was the one who imprisoned Chu Tian six hundred years ago, that is not a good thing. Yuhua is out of her comfort zone, and Yanwei seems to be the only one willing to do something about it – except he doesn’t know the whole story.
Neither is he quite Who or what Yuhua thinks he is. It becomes clear early on that if he is a “failed” disciple, it is because he failed on purpose, and the fact that he persists as a servant of Yuhua shows that getting close to her is the entire goal. Only Leng Feng, a disciple from a different sect, truly knew that Yanwei’s strength was far from what it seemed, and this book listed the two as rivals, probably for the sake of Yuhua’s palm. Wei Linxi mentioned in the postscript that Yanwei was originally supposed to be the protagonist of this story, and you can tell; he has more chemistry with Leng Feng than Yuhua and any other character, which could have been a problem.
Still, it’s a story that draws you in. Verinsi’s art is smooth and engaging, and if the book is primarily a setting, it does a good job of making you want to know more about the characters and the world. Whether you are already a fan of Chinese fantasy and Xianxia, The Girl with a Thousand FacesVolume One is a fascinating book.