This was a shocker to me, since stepmothers are usually depicted as plotting against the MC and favoring their own son. At first, the stepmother came off a bit like that in the beginning, but as the reader learns more of her character, she truly loves the MC in her own way, and pretends to be long-suffering and strict on the MC -- but is like a lioness towards anyone who wants to hurt any of her children -- stepchild or not. Essentially, she's a tsundere.

A perfect example of this was when MC's his past life's real mother slapped him for digging up his past life's grave and leaving a hand print on his face. MC's stepmother happened onto the scene, seeing the MC shed tears, and went batshit-crazy, you-do-not-touch-my-son on her, swinging her arm with force to leave an equally red imprint on the woman's face. (This horrible woman, who abandoned MC as a child during his past life at a mass grave to climb the social ladder, so in his past life, he never experienced the true affection of a mother.)

She has a hidden sense of humor as well, and was the one to slowly convince MC's father to accept MC's relationship with the ML, despite initially claiming ML was "too good" for MC, lol.

There's so many gems of interactions between the MC and the stepmother that build so much depth between their affection for each other, too many to spoil. I actually feel she shows more depth in her love to the MC than his own father does.

The other thing I like about the story is the MC fights using his own abilities, and the ML mostly stays out of his battles, except the final battle with a powerful zombie.

Another big spoiler is the MC's original father is Yama (sometimes known as the King of Hell, King Yan or Yanluo).

there's this scene were they confronted an offender in the ghost market and one of MC fan just farted in the middle of such a tense confrontation. I almost died laughing.