- #1
Rather than a QT novel, and outside of the skills that get passed to each arc, it's better to see this as individual stories with an somewhat stoic MC that has a set of ethics she follows to decide what she wants to do at the start of the story. I think the moral of the story is to be true to yourself and don't lose your head over extreme emotions, especially love. Do onto others what you want done to you. We see a lot of the original FL falling into the pit and trying to be the best but failing and living a miserable life.Each arc does have a ML that plays a starring role in the MC's story. In the beginning, which was my favorites, she didn't love them, but they chose to stay at her side anyway. Honestly, that was the most wholesome (my favorite being the cultivation arc / where the ML stood by her and travelled with her to accompany her). I really liked it up to the mother arc (I was getting uncomfortable starting at the apocalypse arc), but I ended up dropping it in the middle of the gold-digger girlfriend arc. I enjoyed it initially because it was relatively low romance, had a smart but hardworking MC and was a little trope subversive, but by the time I dropped it, Lin Dan had become extremely Mary Sue - a female character that could do literally every woman's art and cure everyone's illnesses without a logical backstory (but had one in the OG char settings). Further downsides are that most of the arcs are open-ended, they get stick to a formula of talk sh*t about the original story's Lin Dan and eat sh*t after new Lin Dan reveals she can actually do it. (One of the reasons I liked the story originally was that MC developed the original Lin Dan's skills to OPness but didn't make it outrageously obvious the original got replaced or couldn't have done it without Lin Dan outside her hardworking hard for it (ie. Ten years to develop chef's skills in arc 1, but ends up showing god tier sewing/medicine/cooking skills within the two months of entering the world despite "no memories").They keep tr*shtalking western medicine and promoting Chinese medicine to a ridiculous degree. Weird point to promote that happens in multiple arcs. Her medical skills are my least favorite of her skills since it's "Oh, she's about to die - Lin Dan, can we do anything?" "Yes, golden needles/take this medicine." Patient recovers in X hours/days and is now a Lin Dan fan. Reading wise, very up and down, you can tell there are different translators throughout the translation: The last arc at present is really good translation, but at least a chunk chapters of the previous ones mixes up names and pronounces, and started saying "ya'll" instead of "you all"/formal version to the point of cringe such as when the empress was giving a speech (I kept imagining a rural farming town). Fortunately, it didn't last too long. MTL is a 3/5 on difficulty. Some hard, some easy.All in all, great at the beginning (with some parts that are tedious and can be skipped). I honestly feel like you could just read a few arcs and then skip to the end because literally nothing other than skills are brought to the next. Last chapter was alright, about expected given all the reviews about the ending. Bad if you wanted a true romance ending. I think the white lotus got a just end.