Reborn to Strive Chapter Completed Discussion

3.5 stars, if it was shorter would have been a solid 4.

Usually these types of stories are not my cup of tea, I'm not a fan of them going back too far in time, but with all the great reviews and boredomi gave it a shot. This story was actually better than I expected, but it's s a good once type of story, I don't think I would ever read it again.

Shi Zhen is the MC and Guan Baiyu is the ML technically, but the story is focused on them equally. First half is mostly about SZ and second half about GB.

MC and ML are both good, I liked them both equally

The families are more realistic than most novels, no overly dramatic scheming step mom, ML's adopted parents weren't bad, but not good.

Spoiler

MC takes care of his family but doesn't spoil them, teaches them how to earn money. Only 1 of the step sisters causes a little bit of drama but she ends up married after running away and doesn't have anything to do with them after that.

ML finds out he was actually kidnapped and trafficked as a baby, finds his real parents who ofc are professors at his university and everyone is happy...I mean I could have done without that storyline, but whatever

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Do not read of you're looking for a romance focused story, out of the 183 chapters of the main text, I would say only about 20% is about their relationship. When they finally do get together

Spoiler

at around chapter 134....

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Their relationship is very sweet and I feel the relationship is balanced and healthy. I really loved reading their interactions and wanted more.

Spoiler

reading the first half from SZ point of view he seemed a little scummy to MC in the previous life, but then you see GB's point of view of their previous life. They were both at fault. Basically they were just both insecure and didn't communicate their worries nor express their love.

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I will say, this novel should have only been about 100 chapters at most. The business aspect dragged on. I almost dropped this at chapter 68, as I was getting tired of the small business to slightly bigger small business, then repeat, but I really wanted to see when they would get together so I skimmed until chapter 130.

Spoiler

all those small random businesses and he still ends up opening a construction company like his past life, which is fine, but all the build up seemed like it was going somewhere else.

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What made me actually stick around for the story was the insight into the culture of China from 1994-early 2000s. It intrigued me to learn how life was in rural parts of China and also spurred me to look up something's on my own for more indepth. Found an interesting article on the evolution of the Internet in china and found this tidbit amusing Spoiler

2009 – Users are blocked from using profanity or discussing politically sensitive topics online, so they use clever homophones to circumvent censorship. One popular homophone is "grass-mud-horse" (草泥马 cǎonímǎ), which sounds like "f*ck your mother" (肏你妈 càonǐmā). The coinage is popularized in a viral video that uses alpacas to illustrate the invented grass-mud-horse, and pictures of alpacas become a symbolic f-you to government censors.

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The main story is 183 chapters, then the extras. I MTL'd the whole thing, which was surprisingly easy. There were a few parts that had me confused though

Spoiler

For example when the step mom still breaks her leg in this life, MC freaks out that maybe he can't change major events and mentions ML having cancer, but it must have been mistranslated, because ML dies from being run over by a car.

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