A hilarious, lighthearted cultivation comedy: Holy-light shenanigans and unconventional immortality cultivation
Once every ten years, the Sacred Mark Realm holds its “Day of Universal Madness,” when cultivators can turn into demons because of greed and envy. Su Xin, a young man from Qingyun Mountain, accidentally activates an immortal’s relief carving and obtains the ancient technique The Divine Spirit’s Redemption Formula. A glowing pair of wings is branded onto his chest, and he meets the disheveled old man Louis, beginning a cultivation journey full of laughter and tears.
The technique has six stages, including Sacred Embryo and Enlightenment. The Sacred Embryo stage’s “little sun” is a delightfully silly idea, but it comes with a bizarre bug: foul language. Whenever Su Xin has an evil thought, the glowing orb in his dantian flashes wildly and his holy light loses much of its power. Forced to “swallow his anger” and cultivate his mind, Su Xin discovers the strange rule that “you have to keep your emotions steady to shine.” Meanwhile, old Louis is the resident jokester, pulling off antics like “holy light shining upon a giant chicken drumstick” and “bread curing blindness” to show how goodness can overcome evil. He even works “scoring a meal and sneaking off with a steamed bun” into his everyday demon-slaying routine.
The plot keeps turning conventions on their head. The sorcerer Baye uses a “filthy words curse” to provoke them, but Louis easily counters by offering roast chicken and buns. When Prefect Fang of Sacred Mark City puts them to the test, the pair solve cases while thinking longingly of the aged roast chicken in the wine cellar. Clues like Fang’s thorn tattoos and the monastery emblem uncover a thousand-year feud between the Holy Light Formula and the Thorn Curse Seal, drawing Su Xin and Louis, this “unreliable duo,” into a conspiracy spanning reincarnation.
With its breezy, humorous style, the novel pokes fun at traditional cultivation stories, bringing modern jokes like “LED sacred marks” and “holy light like a mobile phone signal” into the world of immortal cultivation. Its solemn demon-slaying is infused with the comforts of everyday life. When holy light becomes tied to buns and roast chicken, this unconventional cultivation adventure invites you to laugh as a ridiculous master-and-disciple duo get out of trouble with their bizarre antics.
