Dao Ascension (WIP) [(05-07-2025) 106K Words | 203K Patreon (19-07-2025)] [High Fantasy, Overpowered Protagonist, Chinese fantasy, Cultivation world, Xianxia, Jianghu]

[Wintertrooper]

first the story structure is fine if you weren’t as you said “powering through” you would have already learned that everything going on at the academy/sect is a set up for the future where we are back at the capital having to deal with the internal politics common to the genre, and you already knew this was going to be an OPMC story so why are you complaining about it being an OPMC story? again this is cultivation, when you start talking about the highest realms a casual training bout can affect the entire world because they are gods by that point

[Herdy]

I’ll be damned. Someone actually likes this kind of story structure. If you enjoy this then sure but this being a set up is not really a good excuse for this. Show me where exactly I was supposed to know that this story was about opmc. Even if you were right about this, this is still a pretty poor excuse that doesn’t actually adress why this instance of an op character is implemented poorly in the story. Even even then, the mc is still a massive mary sue that actively sucks life out of this story, op character does not mean mary sue btw.

[Wintertrooper]

Set in the world of Jianghu where strong thrives and weak suffer, you will play as a being whose power far exceeded those who claim to be strongest.

literally the first line of the summary

[Herdy]

Ok? No objection to the rest of what I said then?

[Wintertrooper]

i would but i don’t want the mods coming down on us for being off topic getting in to the opmc=mary sue debate

[Herdy]

This is sad. But the way I understand Mary Sue is rooted with the appearance of Mary Sue in Star Trek, where the name of the trope comes from. A lot of people are kind of centered on the idea that the reason for why Mary Sue was a horrible character was because of how smart and capable she was despite it making zero sense in the story. The way I view it is that Mary Sue was a problem because of how she didn’t actually bring any interesting plot lines to the story and instead the story revolved around how capable and likeable she was. This is in diametric opposition of how some op characters were implemented in the stories: Ainz Ooal Gown from Overlord have brought the theme of evaporating humanity and he is the connection to Yggdrasil and his friends which is also a fuel for why he ventures into the new world, Saitama from One Punch Man is suffering from his strength and he is adrift in life because he can’t find happiness so the entire OPM is about him finding out what matters to him and what makes him truly happy, Escanor from Seven Deadly Sins is a character that brings themes of Pride into the story, Gojo Satoru is a part of a theme about strength and the strong how either look like and what are their mindsets etc. So, that would be what seperates Mary Sue from op character.

Cicling back to the story at hand and why the mc is a massive Mary Sue is because of how a lot of stories in this work is centered around showing off the MC and that’s all that the MC actually brings to the story. There was one story about how absurdly rich they are, one story about how absurdly powerful they are, one story about how smart they are, tons of stories about humiliation in one form or another, one story about how skilled they are etc. The one time when the MC wasn’t the attention of the story about how awesome they are was when the genius sword girl needed to complete her technique and even then this was used as an excuse to boast about how great of a teacher they are. All of this would have been fine, honestly, if the mc had brought something to the story that is substantial. I mean the amount of boasts that Gojo gets is also absurd but it is balanced by the things he brings to the story.

[DaoImmerser]

@Herdy

The story structure is pretty bad. A good story structure will generally have this chain of events - X thing happened so the Y thing happens and/or X thing happens that stops heroes from achieving Y goal. Cause and effect is what ties the story together and engages the reader. As it is now I struggle to call this a single continuous story and it follows this chain of events instead -X thing happens then Y thing happens. Bad story structure is a pretty big problem of this story.

These events are here to shape our mc. If you want a single continues story then let me inform you that there are and will be arcs between these events containing continues stories and most of the events that’s looking random right now is capable of changing the story, the effects might not be immediate but you will see in the future.

@Herdy

The Mary Sue problem. The protagonist is a pretty blatant Mary Sue. MC doesn’t have flaws that are punished in the story, the story bends around the MC, and the story is mostly about how AWESOME the MC is. Now, it’s pretty debatable which characters can be called Mary Sue and why but I believe that a major Mary Sue flag is when the story is mostly about how amazing the Mary Sue in the story is, which makes the story boring and unengaging.

There are flaws but these flaws depends on the readers, for example if you are playing as evil mc then sometimes you will get urges to kill those important in the story or if you are playing as merciful mc then you can act naive and let go of even the most heinous people who’s surely gonna repeat the same mistake made by them.

@Herdy

Fights are unimaginative. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem if the story was not mostly about fighting but I felt like I’ve read 6 or 7 fights from this story so far and it is fair to say that the only piece of media that has more fights in it are shonnen anime. But the quantity is not really impressive. What would have been impressive if the fights had also been of good quality. The fights lack proper set-up, there’s also a disturbing lack of any drama. There’s no push and pull. All of the fights are just MC bullying another character.

Fights should be between those with same level of strength, but since mc is stronger than other characters then you can call these fights one sided beating, this is what being an overpowered mc is like. But these all sided beating isn’t all there’s to the story, there are options to go easy on them or fight in the same level as your opponent.

@Herdy

Lack of a central theme. What does story revolve around, except for the sheer amazingness of our dear main hero? Is this a story about competition? Is this a story about political intrigue? Is this a story about how ruthless and unfair the world of Xianxia can be? Is this a story of two siblings trying to survive? The problem that I believe this story suffers from is that it wants to talk about everything and ends up being about nothing.

The story is very much in the early state and calling the lower realm a tutorial might suffice, once the story of the lower realm reached a certain point, after that the main story of mc is gonna start, that is about the revenge and finding out about your true origin and the reason behind your strength.

@Herdy

Dry dialogue and lack of character. The problem is very simple and complex at the same time. The dialogue is used poorly, but how so? One problem is that every character sounds like each other. Whenever the two characters speak, they use the same words, the same sentences, the same cadence. Speech should be varied, imaginative, full of life!

Dry prose. Same problem as the dialogue. The narrator is monotonous and doesn’t inspire imagination from the reader.

As I’ve mentioned before in this thread, After reaching the next time skip in the story I will take some time and will work on these.

@Herdy

Setting needs to describe its surroundings. Cities, buildings, people, forest etc. How people clothe, what they eat, how they smell. What character the city has. is it a small hamlet in the woods? A bastion in the mountains? A city of no consequence in the middle of the dessert? What architecture its buildings has? How are the people like? What are they thinking? What problems they have? Is it humid? Cold? Are they under the threat of starvation? Is there a class problem? It is mindboggling how many places we have visited and yet all of them muddle together in indistinguishable, gray mass.

I believe I’ve already given a decent amount of details, now we won’t know what they smell like unless you want mc to go around smelling people. So far the cities I’ve mentioned are in the open green land and I’ve even provided the details but since you stopped after talking to Ruolan about the mission you haven’t even reached that point. And about the starvation or class, mentioning them is only possible if they are really starving and when there’s a problem related to their class.

@Herdy

These are the problems that I have been able to identify. I hope these are helpful. In all honesty, I’m not sure if you even like writing. Usually people who enjoy writing play with sentences, grammar, characterisation, setting, plot, expectations, metaphors etc. However, I read something that was so lack of joy. Of this creative boom. It is as if you are rushing for this story to end like a student who haphazardly finishes homework to play a new videogame.

Thank you for using your precious time to write this feedback, it was helpful.

[Herdy]

You are a pretty nice person. I know only a handful of people that would not allow their pride to get hurt but you took this in stride. Now, that doesn’t mean that I was right but I feel like that you will get far with an attittude like that. Good luck!

[BlueShayde]

Rather then developing our power and abilities, I feel we are developing our personality and identity and alliances right now. Of course mortal enemies won’t be a threat to an immortal with great power.

We the reader are being allowed to not be the one solving every problem with our opness. I feel I am raising up my allies like Ruolan, Li Hua, and Xu Yan. Helping them to become stronger to stand by my side. Cause I assume eventually our true enemies from the other immortals will notice us and come after us. So right now, we are quietly growing and gathering our allies till then.

But I also understand that while many of us enjoy being op, some ppl don’t. So this may not be your type of story.

As for flaws, my MC definitely has his. He is protective of his friends, a little too unconcerned about danger thrown at him (as nothing has actually threatened him yet), and a little detached from mortal concerns like ambition, politics, and money. He just wants to eat, sleep, and protect his loved ones. So I can see how easily he’ll get blindsided when something that can hurt him suddenly appears and wallops him into a wall.

An OP character can still have flaws, unlike a mary sue. Mary Sue’s are good at everything. An OP character can be op at something, but not everything. Such as OP in combat, but not in matters of politics, knowledge, hobbies, social, etc. If there is no physical flaw, one can still have mental or emotional flaws. So you can still have complex character with growth done right. An OP combat character isn’t directly threatened in a fight, so instead attack the world or ppl around them. Go for matters of the heart or mind to hurt them. Etc …

[JoshiYinmith]

That what is like in the story. Its original. Doesn’t seem like any other story.
i was laughting when u write that the story doesn’t write about the surround (you could imaginate those things).

What i got is that there no drama in the story and this story is not for your taste. Great !
That what i like about storys.

@Wintertrooper

i would but i don’t want the mods coming down on us for being off topic getting in to the opmc=mary sue debate

Be always wary of the zappers they are strong here .
They tolerate a little of debate but it need to have it own topic.

[Herdy]

@JoshiYinmith

i was laughting when u write that the story doesn’t write about the surround (you could imaginate those things).

Did you read like any book? Or is this a poorly thought out joke? Well, whatever if you are serious then I suggest reading any book that is actually written by a master and not fanfiction or light novel.

[Herdy]

@JoshiYinmith

What i got is that there no drama in the story and this story is not for your taste. Great !

Do you need help understanding what I wrote? You seem to be pretty good at quoting, so if you have problems with understanding some parts - point them out to me. I will patiently explain anything that seems hard to understand for you.

[JoshiYinmith]

@JoshiYinmith

I really really disagree with you. This type of “prose”/ telling make the story original. Each project on choice of games have the same type of telling a story. Describe each corner of the story but not the main elements that make the story going.

Right now at 185k, this story have more events than any other project on this plateform. Yes it have errors and spelling and grammar issue. It can be correct as the story goes this is a Work in progress after all.

Hope to read that those issue get corrected after the end of the story, but that my preference. And plz author don’t take an editor that will change the way the story is tell (making the story describe every corner and aspect of the story eurk !!).

The story is going and people are chop right and left. It remind me the walking dead and kirkman. The comics not every other crap that follow the succes of that series of story.
People in that story die a lot not 'cause they were sloppy but because of human nature and vices, when normality get chip people tend to loose their mind. Every character wasn’t safe and could get chop any time. At one time the kid of the protagonist get shot in the eye (that event change this kid forever and growing up around zombie messup his mind forever, and yeah this kid survive).

In those comic Kirkman, the author didn’t care to insert those apological and political decorum. He told a story that describe well what happen when corpses don’t die and what happen for those that live around them. Just read that the series stop in 2019 (coincidence i think not ! )

All this to say the story is great, things move at the pace of imagination. Don’t change, thanks.

i think i already wrote about it.

[Herdy]

Well, you have shown some difficulty with understanding my text. I want to help you. I will patiently explain anything that seems hard to understand.

[Herdy]

I have some experience with people that have some of your difficulties. So, don’t be afraid to ask questions - I will be patient.

[DaoImmerser]

This week’s patreon update is here with 18K words of new content, making the story now 203K words long.

[Ominking1]

Good Job on the new update

[DaoImmerser]

@Ominking1

Good Job on the new update

Thank you