Did a bit of troubleshooting myself, uninstalling and reinstalling every component (wuxiaworld app, voice engines, individual voices) and managed a fix.
I speculate one of the Samsung TTS voices (en-US-SMTI05) was corrupted specifically for wuxiaworld app (despite it working on all my other apps) as it was my preferred voice of choice. And that corruption somehow made it so that I either I couldn't switch away from it or prevented any other voice from playing. Since reinstalling that specific voice, I've been able to use TTS perfectly.
That said, while I was tinkering around with all my TTS settings, I found a new favorite voice that wouldn't display on the wuxiaworld app. Wuxiaworld app only imports or displays google speech engine voices from English (US), and English (UK) voices do not appear despite being installed on my phone. Is there any way to pull in English (UK) voices (en-gb-x-gbg) as well?