- #1
I honestly adore this. Quite possibly my favorite xianxia of all time. But as a fellow reviewer said, the beginning might be difficult to get through. Though in this case, it's more of a matter of managing your expectations. As LongXi said, you MUST read this as a comedy. The MC is utterly goofy at the beginning before he finds his pace. He definitely wakes up as a transmigrator, and immediately starts looking for his 'special skill that will make him OP' or such. Frankly, he's reallllllly chunibyo lmao.But as mentioned, once he gets over himself and realizes he's not actually a protagonist of a tr*shy isekai novel (lol) the story absolutely takes off. Don't get me wrong, the beginning isn't bad by all means; it's legit hilarious how cringe and goofy he is, but as a reader if you don't expect that,... yeah he's cringe lmao. But his personality is great through out the entire story, with a hilarious blend of being a really good guy, while still being shameless and petty about certain things (yet still utterly caring towards his family and waifus). Him thinking 'the world has malice towards scholars' is a running gag, where due to him being a scholar who have weak physical bodies (to start), he's constantly overshadowed by the strong, such as his brother, wife, bodyguard... well, ALL his acquaintances lol.To be clear though, he's not a weak protagonist who survives off of cunning. He definitely has his own strengths, and the 3 cultivation paths are fascinating. The martial path is the most familiar to readers I'm sure, but the Yin path (Ghost path) is really interesting. The path he follows is of the Literary, which is SUPER RARE in fiction; I've only come across it twice, and one of them was a manhua. For example, he pretty quickly becomes completely immune to poisons and illusions. Just flat out immune. That is something that is literally just mentioned offhand as part of the Scholar/Literary path, which considering it's often highly coveted in other media as like the 10, 000 poison body or something, it's interesting.The waifus are freaking amazing. In fact, ALL the characters are amazing. One of the other reviews mentions that there's no filler at all, and all chapters actually provide meaning, and that's 100% true. More to the point, they develop the characters, and with the exception of actual faceless NPCs, every character is EXTREMELY well defined.On that note, one of my favorite parts about the story is how human all the characters are. And by that I mean that they're all petty as fu** lol. When you think about the average person gaining power, it's a standard trope in Chinese fiction that they become super flanderized. Young Masters are arrogant and face slapping and YOU DARE??? Old Fogeys have no shame and beat up the MC, etc. Well here, people with strong power are just... people with strong power. I can honestly say that there aren't any 1-dimensional characters. They're just... people. They have quirks and habits and beliefs and get annoyed and can be shameless, even while being good people. And outside of the true villains (small group of 'pure evil' psychopaths and such), even the antagonistic humans are still very well done. Honestly, the entire cast as a whole is hands down one of the best I've ever read. Very few can even come to mind with how... broadly well done the cast is. I've read stories with a strong cast, but that 'strong cast' is never as close to fully complete. Like a strong cast may be 50% of the total characters. Here, 98% of the characters are well done. It's fantastic.So yeah, as long as you understand that the start has to be read as comedy and you get through the first 20 chapters, you'll love this. And contrary to how the start seems, the author actually gets drastically better at writing romance too. There are some truly adorable romantic scenes.Oh, and as a side note, for the Fellow Men of Culture out there: the MC does have SnuSnu (not shown), and it is a true harem.Spoiler
As of 474, he is actually married to two of them, with (my best guess) 1 more guaranteed and another probable on the way.
[collapse]All in all, I absolutely do recommend this.
