Xiaoli Feidao – Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword (Duoqing Jianke Wuqing Jian) – bonutzuu’s wuxia archive

[This post is half reminiscence and half praise of the book, just to give you a heads-up. Anyway, on with the post.]

[Just to note that I read the Thai translation, which transcribes all names and honorifics in Tae-chiew dialect. I will be using the Mandarin names in this post just for ease of the readers looking up more info, and I apologize in advance if I get any names mixed up.]

In my previous post on Cang Hai, I wrote about how I wasn’t that impressed by my gateway novel into wuxia. Although I enjoyed the books, I thought that maybe wuxia isn’t for me. It wasn’t until I found this one book that changed it completely.

That book is the first novel in the Xiaoli Feidao series, Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword.

Cang Hai (滄海) by Feng Ge – bonutzuu’s wuxia archive

I decided to start a new post category because of how much I have to say about this novel series.

Cang Hai is a 6-volume wuxia novel series by Feng Ge, and is part of a larger series which, from what I understand, includes another series called Kunlun and another series that is Kunlun’s prequel. I read Cang Hai in Thai, so I’m sorry if I make a mistake in any character or place names. Additionally, the Thai release splits the series into 8 volumes, so any reference I make about the volume number will be based on the Thai release version.

Cang Hai mainly follows the adventures of Lu Jian, a simple boy from a fisherman’s village who gets entangled with a bunch of weird people and the quest for the eight ancient scrolls that will shake the entire martial arts community.

For this review, I will talk about the overall plot and characters, then I will write my thoughts on the novel.

Lu Xiaofeng and the Craft of Character

Lu Xiaofeng has four eyebrows. He is known throughout the land as the man with four eyebrows. When people hear his name, they either shrink in fear or rush to see whether he really has four eyebrows,

That’s how we were introduced to Lu Xiaofeng, the wuxia equivalent of Sherlock Holmes. And this is a good tip on how to make a character memorable: give them special traits that both pique the reader’s interest and make them memorable.

In this post, I will attempt to break down the components that make Lu Xiaofeng so iconic that my dad, at 50 years after reading the novels, still remember who he is. Despite not being a qualified writer, I will try to summarize some characterization tips I got from reading the series.

*this post is done as an assignment that I half-assedly did, so I apologize in advance for the quality