With this novel I was left scratching my head as to how they went from dragon paper man and monk with mysophobia to together for eternity in 90 chapters, when they hadn’t even so much as had a natural, chemistry fuelled kiss let alone chemistry fuelled interaction not affected by dragon spit.

Throughout the course of the book, it’s never EVER depicted, let alone NATURALLY occurring that the main leads are genuinely starting to fall in love. The author then suddenly threw a random jerk off session induced by dragon spit before they even kissed- just how on earth would a monk be the one to initiate such a thing in the first place? Also they had never met each other before, how can this strong “I want to be with you for eternity” type of love suddenly bear an existence after all they did was uncover some bones and a few mysteries. The guy has amnesia for crying out loud and he’s a MONK!!!! He has the s*xual awakening of a 5ML teaspoon!

(Don’t even include that s*upid jerk off session coz that was ludicrous and so cringey that it doesn’t even count)

So the MC is a f*cking dragon, literally, and a badass one. I mean there are tons of stories where the MC is a mythical beast, or a cat, or a hamster, or something, but then for no real good reason they're still pretty weak (animal form is just for cuteness or something) and once they transform into a human you like never see them as an animal again. Not here. This MC is a heavenly dragon and he has the power to show for it, which means that most scenes where the MC does anything after about the first 1/3 of the novel is, by default, extremely cool.

When it comes to characterization, plot, setting, and even pacing, this novel does well again. The main focus in the plot is the supernatural, and revenge, as the MC recovers his power. Side characters were engaging and entertaining, a hodgepodge that the MC/ML picked up along the way, including a ghost, a blind dude, and a random craftsman. Although I will say the side characters really faded out into nothing at the final climax of the story, which would have been better if they were more involved somehow.

I also rather liked the MC's flippant personality and the ML's calm/introspective nature as well. The dynamic between the two was good, extremely enjoyable to watch MC bicker with ML as they both try to beat each other in shows of power.

However, the one thing I found to be lacking was the pacing of the romance.

At a certain point in the story, maybe about halfway through, it seemed like the MC was starting to develop feelings for the ML. Yada yada the usual slow burn... but then, the author OUT OF NOWHERE added a nasty gimmick that just felt out of place. (This is kind of a spoiler but not for any major plot points) --but uh yeah apparently dragon's spit is an aphrodisiac.

I think the author intended it to be comedy? And to be fair, when it was first introduced it was pretty funny, but then the author made it 10x more potent and serious of a matter than it needed to be, and its inclusion in the story at the time felt really pointless. It seemed like something that should be in an extra chapter after the story ended, not in the middle of mystery and intrigue. Not only were the MC and ML too h**ny to even think straight, but the MC just ended up getting rubbed off by the ML. The MC and ML already were getting along well and starting to develop feelings, so it didn't feel necessary at all to have this random-ass aphrodisiac gimmick put into the story so that the MC could then feel awkward about the ML for like 5 chapters afterwards. To make it worse, the author never detailed s*xual scenes, so this whole scene was just a vaguely alluded blurry m*sturbation, where some of the readers who commented below the chapter didn't even catch onto what happened--so it can't even be counted as a good smut scene.

Not to mention, this whole dragon spit aphrodisiac thing is permanent, which I found jarring. Like you don't NEED an aphrodisiac to have good s*x, but the MC and ML, because of that setup, now have to get hopped up every time they do anything, even kiss? YO... calm down author. This story is about monks, dragons, and ghosts with BL as the side focus and was doing that very well, not a kinky smut story. Like these two are goin' around collecting zombified dragon body parts after a horrific incident and you just gotta do a 180 and ruin the tension like that??

So yeah, the dragon spit gimmick felt out of place and ruined the pacing of the slow burn relationship. It kind of made their relationship seem more... shallow than it had before? Instead of that, there could have been a meaningful conversation between the MC and ML or like a roundabout confession scene or something.

Still, I did like the overall dynamic between them and the gimmick didn't take up too much of the story. It just was unsatisfying considering this IS a BL, and because the rest of the story was so good. I did really love this story overall, but if anything, it is 70% because the MC is a badass dragon.

Favourite detail about this story is that dragons spit makes you h**ny ahahaha, and when our CP kiss...... it makes them so h**ny like they're about to burst oh my godddd