Review of a Chinese novel: Demon King Repays Kindness

Rating: 4.5/5

Associated Names

妖王的报恩 - Yao Wang De Bao En

Demon King Repays Kindness

Author: 龚心文 (Gong Xinwen) 

 

Word count: 550,809 characters

 

Status: Completed in 2020

 

Chapters: 133 chapters (no epilogues)

Thoughts:

This novel is absolutely adorable. I found it while trying to search for a second novel to translate. It’s really fun, heart warming and heart breaking at the same time. It deals with demons that are near immortal who both love, fear and hate humans and the relationships that can form between humans and demons - both romantic and platonic. Like a lot of other novels of this genre, it also deals with how everything is quite grey. There are good humans and bad humans, good demons and bad demons. There are human sects that kill demons and enslave them just because they’re demons as well as demons who like to kill and eat humans and other demons. But there are also humans who will treat demons with kindness and not fear them, as well as demons who will wait years and years for a human who promised to come back but doesn’t. 

The female lead travels to find her missing shifu and meets lots of humans and demons along the way. So it kind of feels like a bunch of mini stories within one story. Most of them have mostly happy endings. 

The romance between the leads almost takes a second seat to the other mini stories but it's definitely there. The male lead is a refreshing change from the usual cold and overbearing male lead. He's much less mature, a bit proud, stubborn and shy. He's more like a puppy than a wolf when they first meet and the female lead isn't romantically interested him until about a third/half way through the novel. In the beginning, she likes his puppy self and rubs his ears in the hopes that he'll roll over and let her rub his stomach.

I won’t be translating this novel as much as I love it because it’s super dense and made me cry too much. Props to anyone who does translate it because it’s a really lovely novel, there are also some 15+ scenes haha. 

Story: 

The female lead transmigrates into the body of a daughter of a poor family who gets sold to be an apostle of a man that she’d never met. With him, she learns arcane arts, how to seal demons, write scrolls and protect herself. However, one day her shifu disappears and leaves her to fend for herself and her shifu’s wife. 

She meets the male lead, an injured wolf pup who is all by itself and about to die after being attacked by other demons. It’s actually a sky wolf demon, a type of demon that is nearly extinct and it's the last of its kind. 

He’s very proud and shy because he’s still young and no one was there to teach him as his parents and the rest of his clan died when he was still young. The female lead teaches him a lot and it’s refreshing that she’s isn't always the passive one in the relationship. They meet a lot of humans and demons as they try to find her shifu, and grow a lot together. The side characters are also very well fleshed out, each having their own stories. 

***

///Spoiler/// 

The most heartbreaking arc is definitely when the main leads meet a very long lived dragon demon that is known for loving to eat and handsome men. On the way, the main leads also find a pair of brothers who are orphans, bullied and nearly beaten to death. They had a father who even at his deathbed, waited for his wife to visit him and died waiting for her. He wasn’t a good father and when he was really sick, it was the older brother who went out every day to work to care of his sick father and baby brother, to the point where he fainted by the side of the road and a stranger helped him up. 

It turns out the dragon is their mother and when they meet, the dragon couldn’t even remember who their father was. This breaks the boys hearts as they watched their father pine for this dragon forever, and she couldn’t even remember who he was. She’s so long lived that her memory is short, and she forgets everything quite quickly because there’s always new stuff to entertain her. However, she remembers their eyes and vaguely, a gentle man who was very reluctant to be with her before falling in love with her. 

She then remembers their father and thinks to visit him as it’s been awhile, not knowing that he had already died a year ago. To her, 60 years was the blink of an eye, but to a human, it was half a lifetime. She suddenly remembers that his last wish before he went back to live with humans was for her to give him a child. Dragons can switch genders and very easily give birth, just throwing up an egg - but it’s the hatching part that’s hard. The dragon’s mother had died before she had hatched so she didn’t know what parents were for, as she’d always just been by herself. So children were foreign to her, as was being a parent to a child. The children are very disappointed. 

The dragon feels vaguely uncomfortable when she finds out that the boys’ father died and eventually, goes to the underworld. There, she finds the spirit of the dead boys’ father looking up, mumbling about wanting to grow flowers for the dragon and that the dragon would sleep better with these flowers. 

She still doesn’t know what love is, but she reaches for him and he finally sees her and recognises her. Instantly, he turns around and hides his face, as he was old and wrinkled, and he knew that she only liked handsome men. He wanted her to remember him as he was, young and handsome. But when she saw that he was old and wrinkled but still wanted to be with him, that’s when she knew that she actually loved him. She just didn’t know what it was and protected herself by forgetting things that made her unhappy. It was her coping mechanism. 

He asked her if she had finally come to see him, and if she saw their children and how they were. He thanked her for coming to see him one last time and was just so happy that she’d just taken one last look at him. His final wish had been granted and he didn’t have any last regrets. 

When she realised she loved him, she thought about how she could take him and turn him into a puppet, so that he could be by her side forever. But then she remembered that she wasn’t truly immortal, and that she had a puppet her mother had left for her. The puppet protected her every day and remembered her mother, but was still here long after her mother had died. It could only wait day after day for someone who had already died, and death would actually be a release. 

She knew that she couldn’t be so selfish and so she said that she saw their children, and they were doing well. But she didn’t say anything about realising that she loved him, and how she had wanted him to stay because it would only mean that he wouldn’t get any peace after he died. When he vanished because he had finally seen her, she then leaves. 

/// End of spoiler ///

*

That arc made me cry for hours and I definitely don’t do it justice. The storytelling and world building in this novel is beautiful. There is a little bit of filler which I skipped over and I haven’t finished the novel yet (100/133) but it’s definitely one of the more memorable novels I’ve read in a while. 

 

Novel description: 

When the Demon King who had been betrayed by all was brought to a human’s nest, his heart was filled with humiliation and resentment. 

“Despicable human, I am a mighty demon, how could I be the servant of a lowly human.” 

“Shameless human, to actually touch my tail, wait until I get back my demon powers, I’ll definitely tear you into pieces.” 

But who knew that after that woman took care of him for days on end, fed him delicious food, soothed his fur and bandaged up his wounds, that she’d actually take him back to the forest. 

That person undid the restrictions on him, rubbed his ears and said to him: “Go back, I’m setting you free.” 

Yuan Xiang’er had only just started to learn before she entered the Demon Forest, captured a little demon and bound him with a contract to be her apostle. 

She saw a wolf demon be injured by many other demons, lying on the ground covered in blood, dying.

She couldn’t take it and brought him home, feeding him and bandaging his wounds. She took care of him well. 

Wolf demons were wild and hard to domesticate so every day, he bared his teeth at her and was very ferocious. 

Afterwards, Yuan Xiang’er came back from home every day to find strange gifts on her doorstep. 

The demon king that secretly hid and watched, gritted his teeth: That woman bound another cat demon to her, what good are cat demons for apart from their faces? 

She even touched that fox’s tail but I'm so much better than that fox. My tail’s the best! 

Type: Strong female lead, fun novel, Eastern fantasy 

One phrase summary: Proud demon king is online trying to be cute