A while ago I became curious and ventured into the online world of webserials. I found it to be pretty mixed--I enjoyed the first third or so of Worm, could take or leave the second third and quit when the author gave up in the last third and skipped all the way to the ending. Hungry's yuri horror serial Katalepsis is a lot better, but I was bummed when the story shifts after the great, suspenseful first arc to a baggier narrative driven by romance and power scaling. Many of these stories, from Mother of Learning to A Practical Guide to Evil, follow a similar format: put-upon teenager uses their unusual powers to defeat bad guys in a never-ending chain of escalating stakes. Some are better written than others, but they get repetitive after a while.
From what I can tell, Chinese webserials are pretty similar. Many of the ones that have been translated into English are found in the "xianxia" genre, which adhere to the humble beginnings, unusual powers, endless power scaling format I mentioned above. If anything, xianxia leans even further into the process by which its characters "level up" to face even greater challenges via meditation, relics and immortality pills. Flashy fight scenes and dramatic rivalries can be fun to read, but I find reading about characters power-leveling to be excruciatingly boring. Even the exceptions, like Mao Ni's work, have the misfortune of receiving poor English translations. You're better off seeking out the TV drama versions of "Joy of Life" and "Ever Night" rather than reading the novels, at least until somebody treats the source material with the respect it deserves.
Tai Sui, though, is interesting. It's a complete web serial written by Priest, who's best known for her BL series like Guardian and Sha Po Lang. Both are set to be published in English by Seven Seas next year, due to the success of the Netflix series Word of Honor (based on an early Priest novel) and MXTX's massive hit The Untamed/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. Priest's a prolific and influential writer in the BL world, having written everything from steampunk fantasy (Sha Po Lang) to police procedurals (Mo Du) and even grand-scale science fiction (Can Ci Pin). As far as I can tell, Tai Sui is her first long series produced outside the world of BL (even though there's plenty of subtext for those inclined.) It's also the perfect xianxia story for people who despise xianxia stories, like me.
Tai Sui is the story of Xi Ping, a wealthy playboy living in the kingdom of Wan. Xi Ping is a practical joker and virtuosic musician with no care for the cult of devoted immortal "cultivators" that rules the world. But he falls ass-backwards into it anyway, when his beau turns out to be a member of a revolutionary cell devoted to summoning the master of "evil cultivators," Tai Sui. Tai Sui's spirit ends up cohabitating Xi Ping's body, which becomes a real problem when fate earns him a training spot in the Xuanyin spiritual mountains. Xi Ping has no desire to work hard, but Tai Sui has other plans.
I expected that I'd be in for a Yu Gi Oh! kind of story, featuring "good" and "evil" characters sharing the same body. I was surprised to find out that the titular character of Tai Sui is dispatched early on in the narrative. But then, as we come to find out, there is more than just one Tai Sui. In fact, much of what we are led to assume at the beginning of the story is a lie. The cultivators of the spiritual mountains cling to their teachings without actually understanding what they mean. The evil cultivators they seek to purge from the world are physically deformed, but only because cultivation ravages the body. Only special crystals prevent harm sustained through training, which the spiritual mountains of course have a monopoly on. Meanwhile, the common folk die hungry in the streets because governing immortals prioritize the maintenance of their system over the brief lives of mortals.
Like many webserials, Tai Sui rapidly expands in scope to include a dizzying number of concepts and characters. Some get plenty of time in the spotlight (such as Xi Ping's cousin Zhou Ying, who has enough going on to be the main character of his own xianxia novel) while others abruptly disappear for hundreds of pages. The key to the success of the serial, though, is Xi Ping himself. He may be privileged and naive, but his willingness to talk to people and invent unconventional solutions to difficult problems eventually makes him a force to be reckoned with in a world committed to its own stasis. Best of all, while Xi Ping follows the same path of power escalation as earlier xianxia heroes, he almost always obtains those new powers by luck or circumstance. Priest is wise enough to know that in real life, power rarely goes to those who "deserve it." Xi Ping inhabits a world where martial arts ability is founded in institutional dogma; as that world becomes increasingly fragile, he and his friends must ask themselves is dogma is enough, or if the answer lies outside the spiritual mountains entirely.
This is only the tip of Tai Sui. There's all kinds of other wild stuff in it, like giant creatures, sword surfing, immortal lotus people and underwater skeleton fields. I'm still working my way through the fourth of five parts, so I haven't seen the end yet. Still, I'm excited to check out Priest's other works once they are released in English. Sha Po Lang looks pretty rad! Has anybody else explored these works?
tl;dr
what i expected from tai sui: i, xi ping, will become the strongest