Top 5 Sites for Wuxia Novel Translations and Updates
If you’re into wuxia and you want to read more, then you need to know where to get it. There are literally hundreds of great wuxia and xianxia series out there. The most popular format is the web novel, but the stories are also in Manhua (AKA Manga if you’re Japanese or Manhwa if you’re Korean).
Unfortunately, many of these series are locked behind the language barrier.
Thankfully, there are some brave heroes that take it upon themselves to translate these great stories into English.
Because of the web novel format, some of these series have more than 1000 chapters. When you take that in the format of traditional western-style novels, that means volume after volume after volume of reading. If you want to go down a rabbit hole of wuxia reading, you’ve got plenty of materials ahead of you.
A bit here about the web novel format: A web novel is a novel that is published online. Sometimes these novels are updated daily and sometimes weekly depending on the author and the speed of translation. It’s a modern version of the serialized format that appeared in newspapers.
I’ve put together a list of some of my favorite places to check out web novels, light novels, and manhua. Here you go!
What are the best Chinese novel translation sites?
If you’re looking for wuxia and xianxia stories, then this is the place to start. Wuxia World is the biggest name in the game. Full of the most popular fantasy, scifi, wuxia, and xianxia novels, Wuxia World has a huge collection of stories. They update often and the quality of their translations is some of the best on the internet. Wuxia World also has an app to make it easier to read. They have a great relationship with the authors and get their stories directly from the source.
WebNovel features a great community of writers and readers. They have paid models for writers that want to create web novels, so if you have a favorite writer, see if there’s a way you can support them. They also have rankings and ratings for new and popular novels. Web Novel has a great user interface and guides visitors on the site to popular titles according to your interests. WebNovel also has an app that lets you resume your reading from whatever chapter and paragraph you were on each time you visit (super useful for those 1000+ chapter stories).
While Read Light Novel doesn’t have as shiny an interface as the other two sites, this site has a large collection of novels. This site has a great detailed search interface that lets you sort from a wide variety of genres, languages, novels, light novels, web novels, and comics.
Tap Read started in 2019 and is one of the newer novel platforms in the game. While it doesn’t have as wide a variety of categories as some of the other platforms in the field, Tap Read still has a great interface that is easy to use and is updated regularly with completed, featured, and free weekly hits. It features an app that you can use to download chapters for offline reading.
If you’re looking for a place to chat with other readers that have similar interests in web novels, this is the place for you. Volare Novels has a great community that chats regularly on Discord and comments on Disqus. With more than 20 genres and hundreds of novels, Volare has great bookmarking and push notification features to make it easier to use.
Looking for more wuxia stories? Try these….
TALES OF THE SWORDSMAN
There is only one kind of justice in the jianghu: the kind you bring with a sword.
After maiming a nobleman’s son, Shu Yan thought the best place to hide was in the company of a legendary swordsman. But she certainly didn’t expect to join him in his quest to find the man who murdered his master and family. Li Ming is the last swordsman of Blue Mountain. He has sworn an oath to avenge his master’s death and bring the man who murdered his family to justice.
In the search for his master’s killer, the swordsman and the runaway will face bandits, conmen, conspiracies, and scheming nobles — because the road to revenge is never straight and always full of danger.
Inspired by classic Kung Fu films and spaghetti western movies, Sword of Sorrow, Blade of Joy is the first volume of tales of the swordsman—adventures of wuxia action, witty banter, martial arts camaraderie, bandits, princesses, and treacherous villains.
The martial world only respects the strong.
Bounty hunters have taken Shu Yan.
Li Ming, the last swordsman of Blue Mountain, will stop at nothing to free the girl. To save her, he will have to count on the help of some old allies: a deadly spearwoman and an (occasionally) corrupt magistrate.
Meanwhile, Shu Yan must rely on more than her wits and a snarky joke to survive the custody of the most ruthless and dangerous scum of the martial world.
But there is unrest in the land. Shazha Kui, the butcher of Blue Mountain, is building a powerful army, awaiting the right moment to topple an empire.
Has the time finally come for Li Ming to avenge the ghosts of his family?
DUEL AT BROKEN FURNITURE INN
Yan Tao's daily routine as the proprietor of the Green Brocade Inn is similar to most other proprietors: manage the books, order ingredients, train the staff, greet guests.
And clean up broken furniture.
Green Brocade is better known by its nickname in the world of the jianghu — the Broken Furniture Inn. For some reason, the popular stopping place draws in martial artists intent on proving their honor and settling grudges. Yan Tao is tired of heroes wrecking his place and his inn is always another brawl away from bankruptcy.
But when a group of bandits appears, the fate of his inn rests in the hands of a young pugilist with a mysterious past..
BROKEN CHAIR HIDDEN FIST
When amnesiac martial arts prodigy Miao begins to recover her memories, she realizes that a great threat looms over her comfortable life at the Broken Furniture (Green Brocade) Inn. The Hidden Fist, an ultra-secretive sect of assassins, never forget their own.
In order to protect her friends, Miao will have to face her dangerous past.
But will her former masters let her go?
