I tried to read this story twice. The first time was a few years ago and I couldn't remember exactly why I dropped it. Finding it by accident on the site and reading the advice of those encouraging to start with the new translation, I said to myself, "Maybe the translation was terrible and I gave up because of that since I remember the premise was interesting."

I have to say that this was probably not the case. The story does indeed have interesting premises - starting in a small village and immersing us in its family politics, which is rare - but it soon shows its major weaknesses. First, the protagonist, a reincarnated person who has been forced by circumstances to live with his head bowed for many years, orphaned of both parents and living with a brother and a sister-in-law who mistreat and undernourish him, exploiting and abusing him. For a person with several years behind him, his character is extremely dull. In 30 chapters, particularly after the breaking point with his family, he has expressed himself almost exclusively with short sentences usually closed with an exclamation point. He has rare moments of reflection, but of little depth and tends to act rather than think, as if he were an impetuous kid who lives to be recognized as strong by others. The author tries to pass off this attitude as self-confidence, but it is clear that this is not the case, because a self-confident person does not need to constantly seek recognition from others with acts of arrogance and strength. Unfortunately, this is not just a flaw of the protagonist, but we'll get to that later.

Of the secondary characters, the only interesting ones are those who will probably accompany him for the rest of the story: the little ghost and the ox. I think they are also the only two well-written characters we encountered far, but unfortunately, their deepening, for now, remains marginal, as their presence in the work, which focuses more on the "deeds" of the good old protagonist.

And here we come to the other characters. If you take the main character and paste it on adults, you will have 50% of the other characters with a name. The other 50% are like the main character, only even more arrogant and with petty tendencies, and these are usually the boring, boring antagonists.

The story had a great premise, which was to explore the world and experience the best it had to offer, but for now, exploring the world seems to mean meeting mean, petty people and killing each other.

Ultimately, it falls into the usual boring stereotypes of Chinese wuxia and that's a shame because it started well, it was down-to-earth and the characters were flawed but believable because of this. Coming out of the initial village all that ends quickly, and so my interest.

A note on the translation. It has a good vocabulary, but tends to be overly artificial in the structure (I don't know if it's the translator's fault or the author's) and has several grammatical smears that clash with the flowery style, making it even more artificial. So a decent translation, but it could be better (and perhaps over time it has become so).

To conclude: not that bad, not that good, average. Mao Ni works in the same genre are better and more well written.