20 Books Like Reverend Insanity — Sorted by What You Actually Loved About It (Data from 45,000 Reader Comments)

r/ReverendInsanity has over 22,000 subscribers for a novel that stopped updating in 2019. That fact is most of what you need to know about RI's community: they love the book enough to still be posting about it seven years after the author was forced off Qidian, with no prospect of an ending, at chapter 2,334 out of an unknown final count. The subreddit posts an average of ~7 threads a day. Roughly a quarter of those are some form of "books like Reverend Insanity" or "what do I read while waiting."

That last part is why this post exists.

Search "books like Reverend Insanity" and you'll find the same handful of titles on every competing page — Lord of the Mysteries, Shadow Slave, Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, the occasional Warlock of the Magus World. These lists aren't exactly wrong. But they treat RI fans as one audience, when the community has at least eight distinct clusters — the reader who came for Fang Yuan's villain arc is looking for something different from the reader who came for the Gu system's internal consistency, which is different again from the reader who came for the 2,000-chapter immortality ladder or the one who genuinely just wants a hiatus-coping replacement.

We pulled 45,005 deduplicated reader comments across Reddit (r/ReverendInsanity, r/ProgressionFantasy, r/noveltranslations, r/Fantasy, r/litrpg, r/MartialMemes, r/LightNovels), plus 61 NovelUpdates reviews, 30 Goodreads reviews, and the full NovelUpdates recommendation graph. We tagged 34,558 RI-appeal mentions across 19 distinct elements. We classified sentiment on every series mention. Then, instead of asking "what gets recommended to RI readers overall?" we asked: when a commenter who personally talked about loving Fang Yuan's villain arc recommends something, what do they recommend?

The answer depends sharply on what you loved. Below: the data, then 20 series sorted by which part of RI sent you here.

The Reverend Insanity DNA profile

Before matching anything, we needed to understand what RI actually is to its readers. Here are the 10 most-cited appeal elements across 25,749 tagged items:

(Elements 11 through 19 cover dark/grimdark cultivation at 1,456 items, character growth at 977, pacing at 536, MTL tolerance at 494, slow-burn at 409, action at 298, completed-series at 235, morally-complex at 177, and banned/forbidden at 137.)

A useful pattern jumps out once you look at co-occurrence. Immortality and villain-protagonist appear together in 1,365 items — more than any other pair, by a wide margin. Gu system and immortality co-occur 1,273 times. Gu system and villain 733 times. This is the load-bearing core of RI: the long-term cultivation arc, run by someone morally unrestrained, powered by an internally consistent magic system. Three facets, one novel. Any recommendation that nails one but breaks a second won't land.

The eastern-xianxia flavor element pairs most with translation-community (518 co-mentions), which is obvious in hindsight — people discussing RI's xianxia-ness are often discussing it in the context of how to find and read untranslated Chinese web novels generally. That's also why r/noveltranslations is one of our richest cross-subreddit signals: for many readers, RI was their introduction to the entire genre.

Why RI divides readers

RI is polarizing in a way Cradle isn't. Cradle splits on craft — "the prose is simple," "book 1 is slow." RI splits on morality. Inside the fan bubble (r/ReverendInsanity, n=15,954 items), the top complaints are mechanical: power creep (32 items), slow start (28), overhyped (20). Outside the bubble — in r/Fantasy, r/MartialMemes, and Goodreads — the top complaints change shape entirely: shonen/face-slapping tropes, misogynistic treatment of female characters, amateur prose.

Compare critic reviews (≤3★, Goodreads + NU) against fan reviews (≥4★, same sources) on our detractor taxonomy:

Critics and fans are looking at the same book and cataloguing the same features. The disagreement isn't about what's there — it's about how to feel about it. One top Goodreads critic wrote:

Pokemon for edgelord middle school incel boys. The sociopathic protagonist goes around wantonly murdering innocent children, protected by plot armor from the results of all his moronic actions. (1★, 10 helpful)

That critic isn't wrong about the plot. They're just reading it as a flaw. The same "villain MC, zero moral constraints, 500-year plan" element that anchors 5,683 positive mentions in our appeal data is the same one generating the 1★ review. There is no version of RI that resolves this. Readers who want Fang Yuan to be redeemed, or who want the novel to condemn him, are in the wrong book.

If you're recommending to someone who bounced off RI for moral reasons, the honest answer is usually "this isn't for you" — not another villain-MC novel. If they bounced off for craft reasons (prose, bloat, translation), the anti-recommendations section at the end of this post has you covered.

The listicle problem

Here's the single most useful finding from the lift analysis. Every "books like RI" list you'll find online leads with Lord of the Mysteries, Shadow Slave, and Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. They're not wrong — those three dominate raw recommendation volume. But they dominate the recommendation volume for every popular progression fantasy, not just RI. LOTM shows up in 1,533 of our positive mentions. Cradle in 1,288. Mother of Learning in 822.

Those are universal defaults, not precise matches. Their lift scores — how much more often they appear for RI-appeal-specific segments compared to baseline — hover near or below 1.0 for most RI itches. LOTM's lift for the villain-protagonist segment is 2.78 (real), but its lift for Gu-system-rigor is 1.58 (marginal) and for immortality-arc is 0.90 (anti-signal: RI readers who talk about the immortality arc specifically recommend LOTM less than average).

The recommendations that actually land for specific RI itches are almost never the ones you see in listicles. Our top lift picks — Renegade Immortal (13.91 for immortality), Warlock of the Magus World (8.81 for villain MC), Worm (14.17 for Gu-system), Worth the Candle (9.00 for dark cultivation), Martial World (9.46 for epic length) — make almost no appearances in competing content.

That's what the rest of this post surfaces.

Recommendations, by what you loved most

For each of nine appeal segments, we looked at what commenters who personally mentioned that RI element went on to recommend. The key metric is lift — how much more often a series shows up for that segment compared to overall. Lift above 1.5 means the series is distinctively over-recommended for that audience; lift near 1.0 means it's just the genre baseline.

A headline finding before we start: Lord of the Mysteries and Cradle hover near lift 1.0 across almost every RI segment. They're the universal defaults — high raw recommendation volume, low distinctiveness. If you're picking on depth-of-fit rather than popularity, they're rarely the precise answer for any particular RI itch.

If you loved the villain protagonist

Top pick: Warlock of the Magus World — lift 8.81 Leylin Farrier is the only other MC in the genre who sits comfortably next to Fang Yuan on the "genuinely evil, no redemption" bench. Colder than Fang Yuan, less patient, but the same underlying "I am the villain and that's fine" moral engine. This is also NovelUpdates' #1 weighted recommendation (30 user votes, more than 2x the next pick) — the strongest cross-source validation in our dataset.

Also consider:

• Worm (lift 3.31) — the escalation curve is radically different, but Worm's morally cornered MC and ruthless competence are what RI fans often end up citing as the closest Western match.
• Overlord (lift 3.79) — Ainz is more "villainy by institutional obligation" than Fang Yuan's cold calculation, but the Nazarick framing scratches the same "watching the bad guys win without apology" itch.
• The Land (lift 3.42) — less evil than Fang Yuan, more ruthlessly pragmatic. Includes on-page slavery and harsh utilitarianism that most PF avoids.

Skip here: Lord of the Mysteries despite its 2.78 lift — Klein is one of the least Fang-Yuan-like protagonists in the top tier. A legitimate recommendation, just the wrong itch.

If you loved the Gu system / power system rigor

Top pick: Worm — lift 14.17 This is the highest lift score anywhere in our analysis. Worm has the most internally consistent power system in web fiction — every shard follows rules, every interaction compounds, and nothing breaks. RI readers who care specifically about the Gu system's rigor end up at Worm more than any other novel, despite it being a superhero story and not cultivation at all.

Also consider:

• Overlord (lift 8.82) — tabletop-style strict magic rules, no deus ex. Readers who appreciate that the Gu system has rules gravitate here.
• A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality (lift 1.72) — Han Li's cultivation is slow, deliberate, and rules-based to a degree most xianxia doesn't attempt. The genre-mate to RI's Gu system rigor.

Skip here: Cradle for this specific itch. Cradle's sacred arts are beautifully described but loosely ruled — closer to theme than system. Its lift here is below 1.0.

If you loved the scheming / IQ-driven plotting

Top pick: Warlock of the Magus World — lift 5.26 Leylin plans across centuries. The schemes compound, the foreshadowing resolves, and the MC outsmarts his opponents through setup rather than power spikes. Same basic shape as Fang Yuan's 500-year schemes.

Also consider:

• Renegade Immortal (lift 5.18) — Wang Lin's cold calculation is the closest tonal match to Fang Yuan's in the Er Gen library. Written by the author RI readers most often namecheck as a peer.
• Release That Witch (lift 3.91) — less villainous, but the MC's "I'm going to industrialize this kingdom using engineering knowledge" plotting scratches the same long-term-planner itch.
• Tales of Demons and Gods (lift 3.89) — reincarnation-with-future-knowledge plotting, lighter tone but the same structural payoff.

If you loved the immortality / long-term cultivation arc

Top pick: Renegade Immortal — lift 13.91, 274 distinct commenters This is the data's single clearest answer. The highest combined lift-and-volume in the entire analysis. 274 different RI fans across Reddit independently recommend it when they talk about the immortality arc. Er Gen's most acclaimed novel, same cold-blooded cultivator shape, completed at 2,076 chapters.

Also consider:

• A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality (lift 10.12) — "mortal journey" is the genre's most rigorous portrayal of cultivation as a grinding, decades-long process. No shortcuts, no golden fingers.
• Path of Ascension (lift 12.43) — the Western-published, progression-fantasy answer to the same itch. The "climb 100 ranks over the series" structure with RI-adjacent worldbuilding complexity.
• Arcane Ascension (lift 12.84) — less "500-year plan" and more "careful, anxious, studious underdog climbs" — but lands in the same segment reliably.

If you loved the dark / grimdark cultivation

Top pick: Worth the Candle — lift 9.00 Not cultivation at all, but RI's grimdark-adjacent readers end up here constantly. WtC's willingness to sit with trauma, moral compromise, and cornered decision-making is what lands. Also completed, also long, also free on Royal Road.

Also consider:

• Beware of Chicken (lift 2.49) — the curveball. RI fans reading for tonal contrast (farming, sincerity, low-stakes cultivation) gravitate here as a palate cleanser.
• Coiling Dragon (lift 2.42) — the "respectable Chinese web novel" pick. Not as dark as RI, but from the same lineage.
• Millennial Mage (lift 3.16) — a Royal Road original with a similarly patient, morally grey MC.

If you loved the worldbuilding depth

Top pick: Arcane Ascension — lift 5.86 Andrew Rowe's Arcane world has the same "each magic system is itself a puzzle you need to solve" texture as the refinement path in RI. Readers who appreciate RI's 10-path Gu taxonomy tend to appreciate Corin's layered magical engineering too.

Also consider:

• Forge of Destiny (lift 1.94) — the most rigorously worldbuilt xianxia on Royal Road. RI's closest Western-serial analog for deep-system readers.
• Pale Lights (lift 2.22) — Erraticerrata's political-magic-system novel. Different aesthetic, similar scope of system-craft. Free online.
• The Wandering Inn (lift 1.79) — 13,000,000 words and still running, with a cosmology that keeps expanding. The "watch the world widen" itch that RI fans who loved the late-game regions have.

If you loved the long / epic length

Top pick: Martial World — lift 9.46 Cocooned Cow's epic is the completed-but-massive xianxia RI fans reach for when they want another 2,000 chapters with the same genre DNA. Tighter plotting than RI, less morally complex MC, but the scope lands.

Also consider:

• Mushoku Tensei (lift 8.10) — wildly different genre (isekai LN), but the "follow the MC for seven decades" shape is nearly unique in translated fiction.
• Beneath the Dragoneye Moons (lift 6.05) — the Royal Road pick for readers who want multi-hundred-chapter progression with a single MC arc.

If you're just trying to cope with the hiatus

Top pick: Tales of Demons and Gods — lift 9.83 Another reincarnation-with-foreknowledge xianxia with the same structural shape. Still updating after 13+ years. The reader segment that talks explicitly about hiatus-coping finds this one a remarkably consistent replacement.

Also consider:

• Trash of the Count's Family (lift 8.88) — Korean, reincarnation-with-knowledge, calculating MC, 800+ chapters. Different vibe but the "cold calculator walking a long road" element carries.
• Randidly Ghosthound (lift 8.37) — completed-ish LitRPG with a similar length and a similarly unsentimental MC.
• Warlock of the Magus World (lift 2.82) — the recurring pick. Completed at 1,300+ chapters. If you want the RI experience with closure, this is the ticket.

If you can tolerate MTL

Top pick: Against the Gods — lift 20.22 Highest lift score in the entire analysis. Not because ATG is especially great, but because MTL-tolerant readers overwhelmingly recommend it to each other. If you're already comfortable reading rough machine translation, this is the highest-density same-audience pick.

Also consider:

• Release That Witch (lift 12.34) — a Chinese web novel where the MTL is actually readable and the MC's engineering schemes scratch the scheming-IQ itch simultaneously.
• Throne of Magical Arcana (lift 7.96) — for readers who want the dense, slow-burn xianxia-adjacent experience in rougher translation.
• Warlock of the Magus World (lift 13.72) — MTL'd from Chinese, but one of the cleaner translations in this tier.

If you bounced off RI for craft reasons

These picks emerged from the anti-recommendation analysis — series recommended by commenters who also expressed an RI-detractor sentiment. Worth considering if the prose, the bloat, or the translation defeated you before the story hooked you.

• Lord of the Mysteries — the "RI without the edgelord framing and with a real translation" version of the same reader experience. Klein is closer to a detective than a villain, but the scope and worldbuilding land.
• Defiance of the Fall — if the problem was length-without-payoff. DotF's arcs close cleanly.
• Azarinth Healer — if the problem was slow start. AH grabs immediately.
• He Who Fights with Monsters — if the problem was MTL. HWFWM is professionally edited and delivered in English from chapter 1.

Five series nobody recommends that our data says they should

Our lift analysis surfaced a handful of picks that score exceptionally high but don't appear in any competing "books like RI" list we checked. They're worth a look:

1. Renegade Immortal (immortality arc lift 13.91) — shocking absence from English-language listicles given Er Gen's status.
2. Worm (Gu-system lift 14.17) — never classified as cultivation, but the genre's most rigorous power system.
3. Worth the Candle (dark-cultivation lift 9.00, morally-complex lift 29.65) — the highest lift for morally-complex readers anywhere in our analysis.
4. Millennial Mage (hiatus-coping lift 6.53) — a Royal Road original almost never in mainstream recommendations.
5. Randidly Ghosthound (hiatus-coping lift 8.37) — genuinely polarizing LitRPG that RI fans disproportionately gravitate toward.

The method

Short version: 45,005 Reddit comments, 1,927 rec threads, 61 NovelUpdates reviews, 30 Goodreads reviews, and the NovelUpdates weighted recommendation graph. We tagged every comment against a 19-element RI-specific appeal taxonomy (67 of 67 unit tests passing). We classified sentiment on every series mention so negative contexts don't count toward a recommendation. Rec weights were normalized per-comment so a 5-series list doesn't double-count.

The core metric is comment-scoped lift: for each appeal element, we computed the share of each series in that segment's recommendations vs. the overall share, and reported lift = segment_share / overall_share. Lift > 1.5 flags a distinctively over-recommended pick; lift < 1.0 is a universal default masquerading as a match.

Full analysis pipeline is open-source and reproducible from the raw data.