Review Detail of Gradster in Reverend Insanity

I have no words that can describe how incredible this story is. It uses the very rare villain protagonist, and to a much better extreme than I’ve ever seen. What stands out even more that that though about the protagonist is his willpower. And yes, I know that’s a relatively common advantage protagonists have, but Fang Yuan takes it to a whole new level. He literally hasn’t rested for a single moment in the entire story. Not once. Every moment is spent increasing his strength or furthering his schemes. He literally only sleeps the amount necessary to prevent his soul collapsing from from over exertion. So don’t expect any romance in the story, as that would simply be a waste of time. I’ve talked a lot about why the protagonist is great but the other characters are incredible as well. Every opponent that Fang Yuan comes across is genuinely intelligent, instead of a mindless old man screaming “Junior! You dare” or “You’re courting death!” The protagonist and antagonists have to really scheme against each other, and Fang Yuan even loses sometimes! I wouldn’t say it happens particularly often, but enough to feel incredibly realistic while still proving to us that he’s a scheming genius. Onto the world itself. Like everything else in this story, it’s incredible. The entire world is pretty much displayed to us at the beginning, with Fang Yuan getting easier access to other locations and the upper echelons of society as the story progresses, and there isn’t the cliche of constantly going to a new world or continent every time the protagonist gets a power up to keep them weak. He always feels like he’s getting noticeably stronger all the time. There’s even a unique and complex creation myth in this world that ties greatly into the main story. Next, the cultivation system. It’s the most unique one I’ve ever seen and, admittedly may not be for everyone, but I think it’s better than most others for many reasons. Basically, everyone fights with ‘Gu’ instead of magic power or qi, so to use other stories’ terms as a comparison, everyone fights with magic equipment and medicine instead of their own strength, but there is a clear importance placed on the user’s abilities as well. The phrase “There is no strongest gu, only the strongest gu master,” is repeated often. Time scaling is also greatly shortened in this story compared to others because a person’s lifespan simply doesn’t increase as their strength grows. Everyone gets 100 years to live unless they are lucky enough to find a rare gu or special method that can extend their lifespan. In addition to the threat of their own dwindling lifespan, each cultivator basically has a looming threat over their heads at all times from their own source of strength. Every gu has to be fed every so often or it will die, so everyone has to be constantly fighting for large quantities of unique food for their weapons or they’ll lose them. Later on this becomes less of an issue, but tribulations that are usually very dangerous happen quite often to make up for it. This means that no one can lock themselves in a cave for 10 000 years and magically come out super strong. Everyone has to constantly compete for benefits. Lastly the story’s morals. I touched on this earlier when I mentioned that the protagonist was evil, but he really isn’t alone. There have been less than ten genuinely good people throughout the entire story so far, and the terms ‘righteous’ and ‘demonic’ are far less black and white than they seem. Though Fang Yuan is evil, and unquestionably a demon by nature, the ‘good people’ only appear kind themselves. This is a world where strength rules everything and kindness is nothing more than a weakness that gets beaten out of those lucky enough to survive. It’s dark but very realistic in a world where one man can flatten an army with little effort. This unique outlook again makes this story truly incredible. Final words: It’s great, it’s unique, and you owe it to yourself to give it a try.