Once a rising martial arts prodigy, Jagak Yang earned the moniker "Ten Strike Finisher" for his unparalleled ability to vanquish any adversary within ten moves. As the son of the head of the Great Martial Alliance—a coalition of noble martial arts factions—Jagak's destiny to lead the martial world seemed inevitable. However, his promising future is abruptly cut short when he falls victim to an assassination plot orchestrated by envious rivals. Miraculously, Jagak finds himself reincarnated into the body of Cheonso Ma, the debauched second-in-command of the nefarious Shining Light Cult. Now, Jagak must navigate this new existence on the dark side while striving to uphold his unwavering principles.
Original Web Novel
Original Webtoon: Naver Webtoon, Naver Series
Official Translations: English, S.Chinese, T.Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Japanese
Initially started as your usual murim story, mc died and transmigrated as another guy, who's coincidentally also the biggest scumbag in earth. His new body was well known for being a leecher, drug addict, and also useless in martial artist bc he had a body sealed all his meridians(wow,talking about all in package), all in ripe age of 16.
So just your usual protagonist, really.
Welp, looks tough, thankfully after he transmigrated, his body's now able to practice martial arts because the Og managed to opened all his sealed meridians before dying of qi reflux! Wow, talk about convenient! not only that but Og was also learning the strongets martial arts under heavens😕?? But then he just realized the owner of his body was the son of demon cult leader, so now he become the heir of demonic cult?!?! Even though he's originally son of Murim alliance leader, the sworn enemy of demonic cult?!?!
Initially this looks like just a set up for your usual Op murim protag who'll beat everyone with his super duper cool power, but it subverted our expectation with making Mc actually using his brains and using politics to manuvering his way in demon cults. Not only that, the story doesnt exactly going easy to Mc. Everyone around him either want him dead or making him as their puppets.
Also, in the nicest, most refreshing way in transmigration story, The Og body owner was actually shown having more relevance than just being "Greatest scumbag on earth who everyone hates so when mc takes over everyone will be happy with better replacement". In fact, it looks like Og body owner isnt what he seems?
Tbh, when i read it the first time, Its just another murim story, but the mystery of what actually Og's body owner doing is what keep hooked me up, and boy did the author deliver. Its amazingly complex and intriguing, making this become one of my favorites.
Of course its not without flaws, there's many, but i still love it very much, looking forward for the next season.
This series is much more about meticulous planning rather than "justice" or "power" leading to victory. The MC doesn't just go defeating increasingly stronger enemies, he makes complex plans and the villains also make complex plans. If cool battles are the main draw for you, this series has relatively few and they are of only middling quality.
Art is about average, rarely will you be awed, but also rarely will you be displeased.
The characters are likable.
The story is the main focus. The writing is relatively good, but not quite great.
Few parts are very good though, I particularly liked the beginning/first mini-arc of the second season.
The story starts off pretty well, all those fights and twists, everything is good but it changes in the second season. It looked like the mc will finish it off but then we go in the past and no it's not just a flashback, the mc's soul literally time travels and some insane things happens in the past. We get the answer to a lot of questions and it perfectly sets up the third and final season. Overall it's simply outstanding. Having said all that, everyone has different test, so you may not like it, who knows
They should really have told this story chronologically. It's all messed up.
They spent the whole first season telling a story, then skip way back and spend then next season as a very long prequel to the first - giving the feeling that the author ran out of ideas at the end of season 1 and decided to write a prequel instead of a sequel to buy some time to ass-pull more plot.
Or like a poorly-written mystery novel, the idea is to keep the readers in the dark on key plot points as long as possible without actually providing any hints to keep it all together. It ends up giving the impression of a half-baked attempt to merge two separate stories.
It feels extra dull when you have to read through 50 chapters before you get to find out why they're even relevant.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel; but when the tunnel is this long, is it even worth it?
Also, why do I get the feeling that they'll pull the same stunt again and make us read another 50+ loosely related chapters before attempting to tie them in...
up to about chapter 75 the story was a high 8 or a low 9, but it just gets worse and worse after then and i just gave up and dropped it at chapter 92.
if you want to give it a read stop at the end of season 1 before author just turned it upside down.
(i wish i had just stopped reading it at that point as now i'm just left disappointed)
Maybe my recollection of season one is faulty and I was overrating it, and I’m not bothering to re-read it, but season 2 seems to have taken a nosedive in storytelling. I had this series at an 8/10, but season two I would put 4/10.
I can't put my finger on it but I really quite like this one, maybe a couple of iffy spots and jumps in the plot but I find myself actively looking forward to the next chapter each week and feel disappointed when it's on a break which honestly you can't ask for a lot more.
Good premise, prominent rising murim alliance member dies from assassination and finds himself in the body of the feckless son of the heavenly demon cult trapped in a cave with the only option to train his body in a legendary martial art he finds there until he can break out. Once he finally escapes he's thrown headfirst into the cut throat and blood soaked demon sect's politics as he must fight tooth and nail for control.
I don't enjoy manga in which the protagonist has to live into someone else's body and has to keep up a facade assuming that other person's habits for an extended period of time. More so when the character the MC took over seems to have been a power tripping weakling and serial rapist, since he appears to have used his father's influence to get his way with as many women as he could. So now the MC to have his rise to the top has to pretend to be all of the above while on the inside being a good guy.
It's a shitty trope imo and outside of that the manhwa seems to be very generic. Not enjoyable for me but if you can see past my annoyances mentioned earlier I assume you'd find it being just average.