Mysteries of Immortal Puppet MasterAdvent of Immortal Truth

仙工开物

I'm currently reading chapter 670 and the author doesn't understand at all what to do with the subject of puppets.

Neither fish nor fowl is all I can say about the puppets in this novel.

This novel.... It's beautiful

Review of Mysteries of Immortal Puppet Master

It was a normal evening: I was reading some random novel, reached the end of a chapter, and saw a list of recently released “new picks” on the site. As usual, I skimmed the tags to avoid harem and romance, opened a few titles in new tabs, and started reading synopses one by one to decide what to read next.

The synopsis for Mysteries of Immortal Puppet Master didn’t impress me. But a couple things stood out:

“Buddha Heart Demon Seal” — sounds questionable. That kind of dualism often leads to very dumb explanations.

“Before dying, she passed it to him” — that usually means the MC won’t have deep roots (family backing, connections), so enemies can’t easily build schemes through them, and the MC can develop more freely.

“Mom, I’ll fulfill your wish and obtain the Immortal Palace” — at least for the first arc, the MC will be bound by a goal/obligation and will probably sacrifice a lot for it.

Everything else in the synopsis felt odd and kind of off-putting.

Overall: not great, but I love cultivation novels, so it didn’t stop me.

The first chapters: “Why does this feel familiar?”

From chapter one I had this strange sense of recognition. The writing quality was high, the style dense, packed with details that weren’t just filler — they actually fed the atmosphere and tension. After about 5–7 chapters I started thinking: this feels like Reverend Insanity. So I checked the author — and yes, it was Gu Zhen Ren.

That cheered me up a bit, but not too much. After Infinity Bloodcore, I already knew I probably shouldn’t expect a masterpiece on the level of Reverend Insanity.

I kept reading, and at the start the novel really delivered:

vivid characters,

constant pressure and genuine worry for them,

unpredictable events,

solid world “content” (it feels populated, not empty),

a more or less “classic” cultivation system (qi, foundation, golden core, nascent soul, etc.),

a neutral MC: he’s willing to do a lot for his goal, but not literally anything — he has principles. So he ends up feeling like a normal person, not a saint or a cartoon villain.

In short, it was looking excellent… until the end of the first arc, where things started falling apart for me.

Spoilers below (end of the first arc)

The “beginning of the fall” was the moment his mother stepped out of the shadows and onto the battlefield. It turned out she hadn’t died in the strict sense — she had turned herself into a puppet so she could protect her child even after death.

On the surface, there’s no problem: it’s an unexpected twist (at least I didn’t notice any clear foreshadowing), and it should even be emotionally powerful — sacrifice, love, family, motherhood. But in reality, this is the turning point that changes everything.

1) The synopsis misled me — and it left a bad aftertaste

Yes, you can argue that she “died” if she became a puppet. But then spirituality, memory, and the whole “what is life?” discussion enters the story, and suddenly you can’t clearly say whether she’s dead or not. In that case, she’s at least not fully dead, and that creates an unpleasant sense of being tricked by wording.

2) The story collapses into one goal, and “freedom” becomes fake

From this point on it basically becomes the second arc — or rather a chain of arcs — about restoring the mother’s spirituality. Which means the MC gets locked into a single concrete objective, and everything else fades into the background.

It feels like an open-world game where you’re promised adventure and freedom, but you’re only allowed to do the main quest. The text keeps saying things like “he finally broke free,” “he left the city,” “he opened himself to adventure”… but honestly? No. He just swapped one prison for a bigger one. He changed the location of confinement from small to large.

3) Tension disappears — and I stop caring

After that, things get worse not because the writing becomes “unreadable,” but because I fall out of the flow and start nitpicking everything: weird talents, a vague and messy “divine abilities” system, strange military tactics, lots of rough edges.

But the biggest issue is that tension is gone. I almost stop caring, because the worst thing that ever seems to happen is:

the MC spits blood,

his eyes bulge,

his eyes turn red,

the MC gets beaten up,

his brother gets beaten up,

his heart skips a beat,

his expression changes,

etc.

In other words: the “risk” is mostly cosmetic. People die, sure — but it’s either villains, faceless extras, or (at worst) some minor character who got a single line every few chapters. Meanwhile the important characters “suffer, grow tougher, and survive.” I got tired of it fast.

4) Fate… oh, Fate

And then comes the thing I’m personally allergic to: fate / prophecies.

I recently suffered through this in Infinite Save: I Cultivate Immortality Through Reincarnation, and here it is again. The explanation is something like: only the weak can truly pursue the path of fate, because if the strong did it, they’d become so powerful that even the heavens couldn’t stop them. It’s internally consistent on paper, but it doesn’t convince me. I don’t like this kind of setup.

It’s hard to describe everything I feel about fate in this novel, but I’ll try:

The MC is extremely “fate-marked.” He has the Buddha Heart Demon Seal, which supposedly carries insane karma because it embodies a real clash between the Buddhist path and the demonic path — whatever that actually means, because even by around chapter 700 it still isn’t properly explained.

The MC constantly complains that he’s too weak to use it… yet in critical moments, even with his “insignificant” early Foundation-stage strength, the seal can subdue a Nascent Soul-level cultivator or resist things on the Spirit Transformation level and beyond.

And the MC’s fate can’t be predicted in a bad way — but it can be predicted in a good way, because fate itself hands prophets the “correct” revelations the MC must hear and follow, because that’s the only path to survival — and it always benefits him. Later it turns out his mother can also divine fate and predicted a ton of things long before his birth — and that’s only what the story reveals up to chapter 700.

Fate has a huge influence. A peak-level expert (around Soul Formation) with official authority (some system where government ranks grant national power), tons of artifacts and helpers, spent 100 years planning to refine an artifact… and then the MC, at an early Foundation level, ends up obtaining and refining it. Yes, there was a big conflict around it for hundreds of chapters, but it wasn’t very engaging because the only notable death was Yan Feida — who? A merchant the MC met early in the third arc and who was mentioned once every 5–6 chapters. Tragic, right? My favorite character… totally. (No.)

Meanwhile the female army commander (a ghost — I’ve already forgotten her name) gets cut apart by a national artifact wielded by a Spirit Formation cultivator while she’s drowning in the River of Oblivion — and it doesn’t matter, because luck saves her. She survives and even steals the artifact. Miracles, I guess.

This all reminds me of the venerables in Reverend Insanity, who could set schemes thousands of years in advance even after death. But there, they still made mistakes, and they were at the top of the world. And in my memory, those prophecies (aside from a few major ones) didn’t feel like they removed the stakes from the story. Maybe my age back then mattered too.

Final thoughts

In the end, I was dissatisfied. Once again I’m struck by the contrast between Reverend Insanity and Gu Zhen Ren’s other works.

I can’t call this novel terrible — but I don’t understand its target audience. It isn’t brutal or dramatic enough for me, yet it’s too harsh for kids. So who is it for?

I often remember something Gu Zhen Ren once wrote — either in an author note or inside a chapter. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was something like:

“If, to convey my true feelings, I have to kill Fang Yuan, I will do it.”

When I first read that, I was offended, because at that time Fang Yuan felt like something incredible to me and I didn’t want him to die. But at the same time, it kept me tense — because it convinced me the author really could kill him.

A lot of time has passed. And after reading many different books, whenever I remember those words I feel something completely different: the meaning is so clean. How can you truly value something that you can’t lose? You can — but it’s not easy. As a kid, I feared drama and wanted happy endings. Now I feel like I’m being tricked — so I try to touch something pure, something real… and it keeps slipping away.

All the Fellow Daoists who falsely proclaim the inadequacy of this book are like people in the digging meme - they haven't read far enough to find and discover diamonds, and turn around before finding it.
And I tell you, other novels are gold, but this one is diamond.
Just read far enough, and you will be handsomely rewarded. It's sheerly and supremely brilliant, and I dare not spoil this diamond in the slightest.

Как же тяжело автору писать это, он подавил свою демоническую суть, чтобы не попасть в тюрягу, и пишет роман о "правильном"

Is it ML translated? Names of places, items and measurements change all the time, even in the scope of one chapter

Wasn’t there just a huge update with 400+ pages? What happened to it? Cause even mtl has less pages compared to what I've seen yesterday.

Вот тг канал который переводит ранобэ "Тайны Бессмертного Кукловода" до онгоинга

This is good! Mc isn’t a transmigrator so he’s a native and it’s good 👍 he isn’t cruel and honestly seems like a righteous cultivator and he’s willing to sacrifice things for his ultimate goal for his mother and has a reliable ally he’s known since childhood and has kept his cards close but also goes through lots of trials to make sure he matures in character during the first arc so yeah would read very good don’t go into this with the mindset of “oh Reverend Insanity’s author wrote this” cause it’ll raise your expectations too high and I don’t want that for this novels sake 👍

Now after reading author's all 3 novels, want to leave a long review.
Won't tell about RI, as all knows.
His 2nd novel, IB:
Well it was ultra super slow. Those who came after reading RI, they will be hugely disappointed. It's like the MC is exact opposite of Fang Yuan. You will just imagine what FY would have done in that situation while reading.
However, if u reach end of ARC 1. I guarantee you, you have never seen a plot twist like that. After enduring all those chapters, it was absolutely worth it.
I like kingdom/sect/clan/gang-building kinda novels
Sad that it got dropped just after just volume 2. Had good potential. It dropped bcs of RI ban mostly, who will like to write, after his best novel gets banned.


Now his 3rd novel, i already left a review below.
Here this mc is combination of 1st and 2nd MCs, more inclined to 1st.
Here MC doesn't expose himself to public. Ppl believe he is the most benevolent except few. This novel is light genre, not as ruthless as RI. Heavy scheming and manipulating is there, inclined to little faceslapping/comedy genre.
Mc is too inteligent and his talent is much better than any of other MCs. Doesn't make many mistakes, knows when to be ruthless and when to smooth talk.
There are cons roo, will write them after 1k chapters.

Now about our beloved author-
1st please understand that, he can't right any dark novel like RI anymore, china will ban it for sure.
Author is really good at executing small small things to make it bigger plot twist.
World building, character development, side char, power system, writing, what not he is not good at. But yeah he is much better in writing novels like RI. I can feel it when I read his novels. It's like he want the mc to do something, but can't.
If he gets free-hand, he will weite top notch novels better than RI.

Another important thing, RI not the only novel that got banned from author, there were others. Somewhere I read it, i forgot where. The TL only mentioned.
So don't be hard on author, even if he wants to write differently, he is forced to not write.
Also he is not getting that much support in china, puppet master is not even ranked currently in qidian.
I think qidian is somehow like webnovel, new ppl goes ro read