Release That Witch (放开那个女巫) is Er Mu’s kingdom-building transmigration novel, following an engineer who wakes in the body of a medieval-fantasy prince and decides to industrialize his fief — using the local witches as his scientific and military vanguard. The premise is closer to alternate-history engineering than to xianxia, but a cultivation underpinning (witches’ abilities, divine martial artists, demonic beasts, and eventually cosmic-tier foes) places it adjacent to the genre. The tone is pragmatic, optimistic, and engineer-puzzle-solving.
What makes Release That Witch distinctive is the seriousness with which it treats its central conceit. The protagonist, Roland, does not simply introduce guns and move on; the novel walks through metallurgy, chemistry, steam power, ballistics, public health, and education in deliberate detail. Each witch’s ability is treated as a research problem — what does it imply about physics, where can it be applied industrially, what are its limits? For readers who enjoy hard-SF sensibility applied to a fantasy frame, this is the draw.
The witches themselves are the emotional core. Each is given a name, a backstory, and a domain — fire, lightning, plants, summoning — and the novel treats their liberation from a witch-hunting church as both a moral and a strategic project. The supporting cast grows large, and the kingdom-building arc is structured around milestones (first firearms, first steam engine, first flight) that give the long runtime a clear shape and a sequence of genuine payoffs.
Within the broader Chinese webnovel space, Release That Witch sits at the intersection of transmigration, kingdom-building, and cultivation-adjacent fantasy. It is not pure xianxia and should not be recommended as one — readers expecting Dao-seeking, sect hierarchies, and tribulation will be disappointed. But for xianxia readers looking for something different, or for fantasy readers curious about the Chinese webnovel format, it is one of the most accessible bridges.
Pacing is moderate. The early chapters are slow as Roland establishes his industrial base; the middle accelerates as military campaigns begin; the late game shifts toward cosmic-scale conflict that some readers find jarring relative to the grounded opening. The engineering detail can feel exhaustive in places, and the protagonist’s competence borders on the wish-fulfillment that the novel otherwise works to avoid.
Content warnings: witch persecution (including burnings), medieval warfare, body horror in the demonic-beast arcs, and a church portrayed as systematically oppressive. Sexual violence is referenced but not depicted in detail. The tonal shift in the final arc is itself a content consideration — readers invested in the grounded kingdom-building may find the cosmic pivot off-putting.