As my friend would say - "messy."

There's nothing wrong with wish fulfillment - most wuxia is nothing more than that, some are just written with more finesse than others. But the writing in EMS is stilted and awkward. The dialogue, as Vex said, feels like it's constructed by a five year old. The protagonist is a black hole of charisma.

I've read worse novels, but usually it takes me, oh, 200 or so chapters to really feel the story drag at me to a point where I'm rolling my eyes. I've read more formulaic ones too. I've read more blatant wish fulfillment ones. But something about EMS is special. After only nineteen chapters, I'm tiredly rubbing my face and rolling my eyes. Maybe it's that less than 20 chapters had to pass before we got THREE separate harem flags, one of whom is his (non-blood related) sister, and all of them I want to hear about as much as a case of herpes. I could tell you details about their respective breasts and asses, but I couldn't give you a concrete description of their personalities (pouty and flirty doesn't count, I mean who they exist as outside of their interactions with the MC). I can't even remember their names - or the MCs name, at that. Maybe its the rush the author was in, tripping over their own feet, to hit at least five or so of the usual plot points before ten chapters of the story. Maybe it's the way it took all that boring, bland, formulaic, wish fulfillment and condensed it into the first two dozen chapters. I think that's my main issue, in fact. I don't mind formulaic wish fulfillment novels with bland, one-dimensional characters and a slowly materialising harem. I actually don't. But they usually wash over me, very slowly, over a course of hundreds of chapters, in little bite sized chunks of mediocrity that I could digest.

EMS was an immediate overload of all these things.

I mean, to take a more positive approach, because I don't want to be wholly negative, at the very least this novel makes no pretense about what it intends to be. Absolutely none. Its immediate delivery of all these repeated tropes is very straightforward and it doesn't dawdle around and trick you into thinking it's something more (boy have I regretted recommending novels I thought were pretty great and then three hundred chapters in I just... sigh...) and you will be able to decide very early on whether this is the novel for you. That's refreshing. Props for that?

This is not the novel for me. Maybe it's the novel for you. But it's definitely not the novel for me.

Hold on, let me give a stellar example of the writing. From chapter 20:

"You... just who are you?" The two men's faces were full of horror as they retreated. [...]

"Who I am isn't important. What's important is that there are no grievances between us, and yet you all wanted to kill me. It's evident what sort of people you are. Today I, Xiao Yun, am going to exterminate an evil for the public and erase you all from this earth."

Son! Don't drop a line like "Who I am isn't important" and then proceed to introduce yourself by name! It's an absurd piece of writing. It's like it was just written sentence by sentence with no real thought about what preceded or succeeded it, just based on what sounded cooler.

Messy.

MC suffered for 8 years with zero cultivation progress... but is well versed in low ranked martial arts... He goes into the mountains, and realizes that his cultivation speed increases.... so does that mean he didn't go to the mountains for the previous 8 years?

Then his grandpa comes out and gives him an amazing inheritance with an unrivaled cultivation method... Gee, I wounder if MC had that 8 years ago, if he would have waisted 8 years...

Xiao Yun was a god in his past life in a different world. He goes through 99 reincarnations chasing Ling Xi.

Xiao Yun's father was also his father in his past lives, and was called the Nine Heavens Supreme. His father has had as much of a journey as Xiao Yun. I heard the author was contemplating about writing a novel about his father's journey.

Yiyi is some ancient primordial saint that has been going through reincarnations to survive an ambush he went through as a Saint. Yiyi's meeting with Xiao Yun has been prearranged between multiple Saints.

Ling Xi, the girl he meets at the beginning, Xiao Yun has chased her for his past 99 reincarnations

Xiao Linger, his sister (not blood-related), daughter of one of Xiao Yun's father friends

Ren Xiuxin, the daughter of the sect master in the martial sect

Yan Clan girls, Shiyan and Yufei, they get introduced in the beginning so

Supposedly towards the end of the novel, there is some ambiguity of Xiao Yun's millions of reincarnations that he creates for his avatars, that some of them partner with the other different girls met, like the two phoenix princesses, the qilin princess, and Yao clan girl, but that's up to debate.