
by Daybreak
~ AKA 1,000 Misfortunes ~ Jimmy "Jimi" Kawano is not a lucky man, but he's never let that stop him before. He's built a home from ashes and dismay, and with a bit of ingenuity even managed to carve out a remarkably happy life. Happy enough for someone who can't carelessly step outside without being mugged, struck by a car, assaulted, or accused of some random petty crime, at any rate. Now that his life is relatively stable and he can afford to wile away most of his time on the internet he's even started to try and make acquaintances - certainly not friends, because only terrible things happen to them. You'd think Jimmy wouldn't want to rock the boat, but when he stumbles upon a strange blog describing increasingly inane and esoteric ways of manipulating fate - ah, what the hell, why not? Jimmy doesn't exactly have much to lose... and it's not like his luck can get any worse, right? Xianxia was conceived as a love-letter to exploring the many wonders of classical East Asian mysticism, followed with beating those wonders up with your bare hands. I think a lot of newer xianxia (even translated works!) skimp on the mystical and exploratory aspects, in favor of getting straight to the high octane super-violence interspersed with closed-door cultivation time-skips. I aim to re-insert some of the magic, while preserving everything I love about Xianxia, all in a modern setting. Join poor Jimmy on his maybe-probably-ascent towards Heaven, as I put him through a hellish swirl of my takes on various modern Xianxia inventions, ancient folklore, and plot (in)convenience! He'll need the company. 1,000 Misfortunes is being written with people who have literally never read wuxia, xuanhuan, xianxia, any-kind-of-xia in mind, but even if you do practice the Way of the Infinite Pages like me and you've binged through hundreds, I do hope you'll give this story a try anyway - you might just find something new.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 6 Oct 2026, 16:48 UTC
Entry forecast updated 6 Oct 2026, 16:48 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Rising Stars history is uncertain, so no precise projection is shown.
beats 77% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 4% of similar stories
Hidden gem — exposure is the bottleneck
Readers who find this story follow it at a high rate; there just aren't enough of them. In our cohort data, near-daily posting lifted the odds of reaching 25 followers from ~0% to 17% — more chapters, shoutout swaps and ads buy the eyeballs this conversion deserves.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 10–19 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.