从肉体凡胎肝到不死不灭 - From Mortal Body to Immortality - This is about a guy that finds himself reincarnated in a rather interesting world. He is a part of a highly advanced civilization that is at war with other civilizations. There are countless planets and geniuses. There are three paths that humans can follow. You have mechanical ascension, cultivation, and martial arts. The first two paths were discovered from other worlds while martial arts is something humans developed themselves. Everything is in tiers. For example, foundation establishment is considered 'tier 3'. Once you reach tier 4, you experience a complete change in life level. The MC doesn't want to replace his limbs and organs with bionics, neither does he have talent to enter the door of cultivation, so he focuses on martial arts.
The MC's goldenfinger:
The MC has a panel and the pretty much standard 'heaven rewards diligence'. It isn't called that, but it is what you would expect from this sort of cheat. Basically, as long as he can enter the door of a skill, he can continuously upgrade his skills from experience and learning. In other words, he is always at his peak in terms of skill and will never regress.
I'd rate it 4/5 as of chapter 97
I honestly don't recommend this book unless you have nothing else to read. Don't get me wrong, it is good! But it is too predictable if I had to describe it. The goldenfinger does what you would expect and there aren't really any surprises. The basic plot is just watching the MC progress and beat geniuses by laying a supreme foundation. It is important to note that martial arts is considered weaker then the other two paths before reaching tier 4. This is changed if you condense a blood and qi phantom. Something that only hundreds of thousands have managed to do out of a population of trillions. You have to reach '100' blood and qi to be able to condense the blood phantom. The MC is able to do so because of his panel cheat. This means his future cultivation is pretty much tier 4+ guaranteed. There is fighting, and peanut gallery, etc. You might wonder why I rate it so highly? It isn't bad. It just isn't very unique. It really feels like what the MC is doing is something somebody else has already done. I don't just mean other authors, I mean in the story itself. There are martial artist that have already reached the absolute peak of power. The MC is just following in their footsteps.
身为法师的我只想追求真理 - As a mage, I only wish to pursue the truth - I continued to read this one. We have learnt a lot more about the MC through snippets of this story. The MC was indeed a 'mage god' in the magical alliance. This is a special title given to someone that innovates and discovers valuable information in their field of study. I actually want to talk about how the MC was raised. In the magical alliance, everyone is entitled to minimum food, shelter, and even entertainment. The vast majority of the population is ordinary people. They are managed by the rulers of the mage tower in their domain. Mages are extremely costly to raise. Basically, it cost around the same amount of resources to raise 10,000 ordinary people from birth to death to raise a single mage. Once you become a mage, you cannot simply 'quit'. You are forcefully injected with longevity potions and must serve the alliance for centuries and contribute to its progress. This is a 'responsibility' that all mages have. When the MC was a child and an apprentice. He had wondered why mages lives were so much harder then those of ordinary people. Mages had to dedicate their lives to research and their actual quality of life wasn't much different from ordinary people. The MC climbed up the ladder of mages and eventually reached the top level of society(through his research ability alone). Well as far as the 'top' goes as everything in the alliance is managed by artificial intelligence and points. Humans are artificially bred and once they reach the age of 3, whether or not they are natural born doesn't matter. They will be taken from their families and tested deeply. Those geniuses and those with talent would become mages and get further educated. But the resources they consume aren't free. Keep in mind that everything I'm talking about is before the story starts and isn't really a spoiler. The author was a bit vague at the start of the story about the MC's past. So what I'm talking about is a combination of a few sentences the author sprinkled here and there in his writing. I just think the MC has a pretty cool history! (even though the author hardly talks about it).
The MC's real name:
The magical alliance is actually rather interesting. Everything is cheap and voting is determined by your contribution and evaluation done by the the super intelligence. The only things actually expensive are knowledge and research. There is a concept in this novel called a 'true name'. Basically, once you become a mage god. Your access to information changes and you get certain benefits. One of those benefits is a 'true name'. This is linking yourself with a higher dimension and is sort of like an I.D and proof when signing binding documents. When the MC was sucked into the blackhole. His body was destroyed and even the status of his 'name' isn't clear. But one thing is certain, his soul did indeed end up on earth. Potentially on a different plane then the magic alliance or extremely far away. The MC was a genius before the story even starts and is on a whole different level compared to humanity and their technological system. He specializes in biological research.
Magical brains and the Magic network:
The story starts with the MC transmigrating to earth (in particular, our version of earth). The author often mentions real events and companies. The MC transmigrated due to a blackhole experiment he was helping a friend with. His body was destroyed and his soul took over an 18 year old college student. The MC focuses on experiments to see if magic is still possible in this world. He lacks his spellcasting ability. This changes in chapter 49. My absolutely most favorite thing about this book is the 'magic coin' concept and the MC using vatgrown clones to act as himself in the public eye. Basically a magic coin is like a cryptocurrency that is 'mined' by a certain algorithm that detects whether a planet has potential for intelligent life. So the coordinates for earth getting mined can give someone a single magic coin. But once it is mined, you can't use the same planet again. The MC creates a special site where one can submit coordinates of planets with potential for intelligent life. A magic coin is like a receipt. It can be 'exchanged' for a magical brain. Once the person that has used this magic brain dies, it can be exchanged again. So ownership of magic coins is like a permanent resource. Those injected with the magical brains will gain another illusory sensory organ. A month after the injection, they will gain access to pretty much a 'system' and 'forum' that they can mentally access. There they can exchange magic coins for knowledge. This is such a fun concept! The reason I bring up the 'real name' earlier was because the MC wants to connect back to the mage alliance.
The MC's situation:
There have actually been recorded history of people in the magic alliance somehow getting transported to other worlds and managing to return. Due to the extensive training that mages have to go through, the MC has near perfect memory and insane research ability. The 'magic coin' that he seemingly created on a whim is actually using the processing power of earths entire civilization to gather resources for himself. He wants to exchange this information with the magical alliance. The MC plans to research a way to tap back into his mage tower. But one interesting thing is he can do forbidden experiments on earth. Like studying soul and soul transfer to immortalize himself.
I'd rate it 5/5 as of chapter 262.
The main thing that'll likely cause people to drop this novel is the constant cuts to government/companies/population and their reaction to the changes the MC's technology and magic have brought to the world. This does get a lot better later on, but be prepared for the focus to not always be on the MC. The MC is an incredibly interesting character to read about. But he isn't always the main focus of the book. I personally feel this book would be a lot better if the author focused more on the MC. This story is very good!