The Supreme Immortal of the Seven Realms

If you miss the unpretentious Eastern fantasy power fantasies of the early 2010s, The Supreme Immortal of the Seven Realms is almost a textbook specimen. The protagonist Liang Xi starts out as a street swindler who makes a living reading fortunes—greedy for money, fond of women, and full of tall tales—yet it is precisely a moment of kindness in saving a gravely wounded stranger that sets everything in motion. This "roguish but not wicked" character runs through the whole book and makes him stand out among the grim, vengeance-driven cultivation heroes. Author Liu Ya's style is brisk: lucky encounters arrive promptly, face-slapping comes right on cue, and the banter of supporting characters plus the protagonist's self-mockery supply plenty of laughs. It reads almost without pause for thought, making it ideal for binge-reading in spare moments. World-building-wise, the sixteen-tier cultivation ladder and the "Seven Realms" framework are expansive: from Yangdu City to Tianling Sect, then to the Dragon Clan of the East Sea and the Sangqu River fief, the map unfolds layer by layer, and the long-running suspense gradually shifts from "loot and level up" to the protagonist's origins and the secret of the Legend of the Great Emperor Ziwei. Note that the book bears clear marks of its era—the harem-style romance, internet-meme-style banter, and enormous length may not suit today's tastes, but as a veteran power fantasy with over a hundred million clicks that was adapted into an animation, it delivers pleasure quite directly.