Looking for something else on archive.org the other day,* I stumbled upon this 78-book, 24,000-page YY #xianxia series: https://archive.org/details/apotheosis-all-78-books-from-moboreader
I read a few chapters this morning out of idle curiosity and:
- it’s not very interesting to me, which was not a surprise as YY is not really my thing
- who the fuck is responsible for the names in this book?!
* This is how all my stories begin; I’m great at parties.
“That’s strange,” I thought, “Why did this guy Zen Luo use to be the young master of the Luo clan? Did they change his name when they kicked him out?”
Then in strode the new young master, his mean cousin… Perrin Luo!
“Weird and annoying,” I thought, naïvely, “but I guess the translator has a system for names, like Anna Holmwood did for LOCH, even though I hated what she did there?”
Then there were:
- Yan Luo, Zen’s sister
- Darren Fang
- Melvin Luo
- Grey (first name, not descriptor) Huang
@villainousfriend is there any translator credit???? (blame)
@Betty This novel is copied onto so many sites with so little metadata, I’m still not 100% sure it was actually originally written in Chinese, but the culprit may be one very prolific Ludmila Lyu.
@villainousfriend @Betty you’ve successfully baited me with this mystery 😂
https://apotheosis-manga.fandom.com/f/p/3128944475766975850 references an “official translation” with “English names” — alas the link to the translation they’re referencing 404’s and wayback never scraped it so I can’t go check what the old product page has to say about authors etc
@villainousfriend @Betty i also found a character list for the manhua if you’d find it satisfying to match the characters up with their original names 😆 MC is apparently Luo Zheng
https://apotheosis-manga.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Characters
@Satsuma @Betty yes, thank you, now I can reverse engineer a totally logical reason for Bryson, Marilyn, Eddie and major villain Fren Zhuge to exist!
I also searched on Amazon and found that there are audiobooks of at least some of the books: https://www.amazon.com/Cellar-Throne-Immortality-Transformation-Spiritual/dp/B089B6NH3G/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=Zen%E2%80%98s+quest+for+immortality&qid=1696701965&sr=8-4 🤔
@villainousfriend @Betty thank you for prompting such an entertaining rabbithole!
@Satsuma @Betty I searched for 恩赐解脱 百炼成神 and found the book here: https://m.zzdxss.com/bailianchengshen/2762484.html. It matches with the start of Zen’s Quest for Immortality, so I think we can confirm this!
@Betty @villainousfriend i *think* the original title was 百炼成神 / Bai Lian Cheng Shen) and the original author is
恩赐解脱 / Enci Jietuo based on the ever so slightly better metadata attached to the manhua but no one links directly back to the original copy of the webnovel, and the original copy of the manhua has been taken off bilibili so i’m reluctantly declaring the trail to be cold