Nine Star Hegemon Review: Crude Jokes and Face-Slapping

Nine Star Hegemon Body Art starts as the most familiar story in the genre and gets by on its sense of humour. We read chapters 1 to 5 on Wuxiaworld on October 13, 2026. Our Nine Star Hegemon review lands at 6/10: the jokes are real, and so is the feeling that you've read this opening before.

Image: Wuxiaworld cover for Nine Star Hegemon Body Art

Nine Star Hegemon Review: Chapters 1 to 5

Chapter 1 opens with Long Chen waking up after a beating that left him with "three broken ribs" and a caved-in skull. He now has two sets of memories: his own, as a "spineless, good-for-nothing cripple incapable of cultivating", and those of a "Pill Sovereign". He can't tell which one he is. The Pill Sovereign half lets him see why he can't cultivate: someone has taken his Spirit Root, a piece of his Spirit Bone, and his Spirit Blood. His father, the Border Suppression Marquis, is away guarding the border, and the family is so broke his mother sold her jewellery for a pill that turns out to be "a trash pill".

Chapter 2 gives him a way forward. Without a working Dantian, he forces his meridians open with a cheap medicine he brews himself, then finds the one martial art in his new memories: the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art, which builds nine "stars" in the body, "equivalent to nine Dantians". The catch is cost: it "required countless medicinal pills". Then a noble heir named Li Hao blocks his road and challenges him to a duel.

Screenshot: Chapter 3 on Wuxiaworld, October 13, 2026

Chapter 3 is the duel, with a borrowed sword as his stake against five thousand gold coins. Li Hao, at the third Heavenstage of Qi Condensation, throws a showy punch. Long Chen, using no spiritual energy at all, kicks him "in the area between his legs" and knees his face in. Two veiled girls watch from the crowd; one of them is his fiancée, and she's already thinking about how to "withdraw from the marriage arrangement". Chapters 4 and 5 turn the winnings into a bronze furnace, two low-grade pills, the first star on the sole of his foot, and a challenge from Li Hao to a second duel, this time to the death.

What Works, and What Drags

The alchemy is the best part. The book tells you exactly what a pill grade means: low grade locks in fifty percent of the essence, middle grade sixty, and a middle-grade pill works "over ten times greater" than a low-grade one because of the toxins. Long Chen's method, burning his Spiritual Strength like firewood and sipping a recovery drink through a straw for two days straight, is the kind of detail that makes the system feel worked out.

The drag is that you've seen everything around it. A crippled heir with a stolen root, an old soul's memories, a fiancée who wants out, a sneering rival in the street: if you've read Battle Through the Heavens, the first chapters feel like a rerun. The comedy is what's left to carry it, and in chapter 5 it's a running joke that Li Hao lost a testicle in the duel and a "wild dog" took it, then a scene where Long Chen tells a friend he's too fat for his fiancée. Your reaction to those two jokes is a good test of whether this book is for you.

What Readers Say

Screenshot: reader reviews on the Wuxiaworld listing, October 13, 2026

The listing score is 68 from 615 reviews, but the three reviews it shows are all seven-year-old raves. Bel Shamharoth lists the running jokes: "The Divine Face Slapping Art, Nutbuster Kick, Dao of the Brick". Moonlit Sky Douluo opens with "SLAP!" and says Long Chen "practices the Dao of the Faceslap. The literal slap in the face."

Reddit is cooler. The best discussion we found is a 2020 thread asking whether it's worth reading.

• azai247: "Nine Star is just ok."
• Aedzz: "nine star hegemon body art is average but it is one of my favorite novels. The best part of the story is the characters interaction."
• mbahsur0: "the MC not talk too much just straight to slap or kill people".
• vfmolinari10: "Nah, not really worth it".

A 2022 thread by Ecchithanos is titled "I almost coughed blood reading this BS", over the fiancée plot we saw being set up in chapter 3.

How Long It Is and What's Free

Screenshot: Wuxiaworld novel page for Nine Star Hegemon Body Art, October 13, 2026

Wuxiaworld lists it as Ongoing with 7,348 chapters, licensed from 17k, translated by BornToBe. The Chinese original on 17k is still updating: the search listing showed 18,612,141 characters and a last update of October 12, 2026. The translator's latest notice is titled "Catching up to the author".

The free run is longer than usual. Chapter 100 opened in full for us; chapter 101 was the first locked teaser.

Screenshot: Chapter 101 teaser on Wuxiaworld, October 13, 2026

After that the timer gives 2 free chapters every 23 hours. Our arithmetic: the remaining 7,248 chapters take 3,624 unlocks, which is 83,352 hours, or about 3,473 days. That's nine and a half years. The Wuxiaworld paywall breakdown covers the paid options.

Nine Star Hegemon Review Verdict: 6/10

We'd try it if you read cultivation novels for the comedy and the face-slapping, and you don't mind a hero who wins duels with a kick to the groin. A hundred free chapters is enough to know. We'd skip it if you've already read Against the Gods or Battle Through the Heavens and want something new: five chapters in, we found the tone fresher than the plot. For other options, see the best xuanhuan in English or our xianxia vs xuanhuan guide.

How We Checked This

For this Nine Star Hegemon review we read chapters 1 to 5 of the Wuxiaworld translation on October 13, 2026, found the first locked chapter by checking chapter titles until the teaser appeared (chapter 101), captured the listing and its reader reviews, read the subreddit search and the top comments of three Reddit threads, and checked the Chinese original's listing on 17k. Each fact is matched to a saved copy.

References

• Wuxiaworld: Nine Star Hegemon Body Art
• Wuxiaworld: Chapter 3, Revealing his Sharp Side
• 17k: search listing for 九星霸体诀
• r/noveltranslations: Is "Nine Star Hegemon Body Art" worth a read?
• r/noveltranslations: I almost coughed blood reading this BS