Written By Kelly Wong
Image By 666skrskr
With the freely available and abundance of chapters, webnovels have become easily accessible with Wi-Fi connectivity, making it easier than ever to read anywhere, especially with the availability of phones.
Born in Heilongjiang Province, in Mudanjiang prefecture, Chinese author Er Gen 耳根 (real name Liu Yong 刘勇) is a popular and prominent author on the Chinese webnovel platform, Qidian. Er Gen is a major contributor to the xianxia genre, a genre of Chinese fantasy with influences from traditional Chinese medicine, mythology, martial arts, Taoism, Buddhism, and among others.
Xianxia is a popular Chinese fiction genre, with many novels and authors contributing to its development. Er Gen stands out from the many other xianxia authors, because he has hooked readers’ respect and love with his flagship novel Renegade Immortal (仙逆). Renegade Immortal, first published in 2009, is 13 books long with 2088 chapters. This length is typical for this genre, but what stood out is Renegade Immortal’s unique and mature plot. The novel follows Wang Lin in the cultivation world as he struggles to maneuver and rise above all with his own power.
Besides his most famous novel, Renegade Immortal, Er Gen has also written more modern wuxia novels including, Against Heaven (天逆), Beseech the Devil (求魔), I Shall Seal the Heavens (我欲封天), and A Will Eternal (一念永恒). A World Worth Protecting (三寸人间) is his most recent work, being published in 2018 with only 597 chapters.
As his career continued, his work gained recognition and awards. In 2017, he was titled as the “Second King of Novels,” one of the “Five Great Supremes in the King of Webnovel’s second annual selection” (Wuxiaworld). Furthermore, in the year that A Will Eternal was published, 2016, it had earned “third place on Forbes Chinese Original List for 2016” (Wuxiaworld), while in 2015 I Shall Seal the Heavens took “the number one rank on Forbes Chinese Original List” (Wuxiaworld). The popularity of I Shall Seal the Heavens has helped it maintain a high position in Qidian’s top charts for ten months in a row, an extremely difficult feat because the novels’ popularity is heavily reliant on votes (recommendation tickets) being given by the readers.
His works are also well read in English with the help of translators on Wuxiaworld (a large translation platform owned by Wuxiaworld Limited) and WebNovel (the English counterpart of Qidian International.) Complete with footnotes and a community of readers, these platforms make reading and understanding easier for new readers to dive into the deep waters of Chinese literature.
Plenty of resources are available on Wuxiaworld’s website, including a general glossary, a Chinese idiom glossary, recommendation lists, introductions to genres, and author biographies. Several interviews with Er Gen can also be found on the Wuxiaworld website, among the thousands of translated chapters of Er Gen’s works. Wuxiaworld Limited and its collaborators are interested in bringing the webnovels out of its digital form and eventually onto a physical copy.
Without a doubt, Er Gen has gained a large following in China and around the world.
Comments