I'm only writing this spoiler because I know a lot of people would like information as to how bad the male lead is and I can't remember much about what made him so bad because what remains is the feeling when I read the blurb and I was like yep this is the guy in that novel I hate to the heavens. Basically he was pretty evil to the female lead's body's Original host and then he continued to sleep with his concubines and I believe he brought a new main wife & basically continued his promiscuous behavior. He didn't care about what happened in his backyard once his favorite concubine was not hurt 🥴 I just remember him sleeping with all these women then acting like he loves the female lead then still sleeping with other woman, believing/putting faith other women over her despite knowing she's telling the truth, getting her pregnant yet taking her child away and making her essentially a woman whose child is said to be a stillborn (he gave her a f*cking DOG) and let this other woman raise her child and then gave her child to one of his other women to raise without her knowing that the baby was actually alive. Then he proceeded to threaten her with her child when she ran away after her postpartum depression and all of that.... keep in mind during all of this he still had his 'lovers', brought in new concubines and remained the abuser he is 🤢 he is even worse than the male lead in PGC and Legend of Hao Lan...

in fact it feels a bit like he’s only sincere to the freaking black lotus, which is even more annoying.

the ML imp**gnates the FL and two other concubines at the same time. He then kidnaps the child (though he has his reasons for it, which frankly are only for his own solo goals) and let's the FL assume that her kid died. She is borderline suicidal at this point

till the very end his own goals are more important than anything else. He still has various concubines who he still sleeps with and he keeps on having kids with them. He says he loves the FL but does absolutely nothing for her and what truly disappoints me is that the FL still loves the ML

I also have this strong desire for Ji Man, the MC, to be the first (at least that I've read) female protagonist to actually leave the ancient world behind when she has the chance to. Considering we're closing in on the half-way point and she still has no feelings for the male lead, I'd be pleasantly surprised if she never truly falls for him and just GTFO's, since she has a clear way back to the modern world.

May not be in order but I'll list off some things he did: 1) He "schemes" too much or in my opinion he's too concerned with his power and selfish so he fence sits a lot which results in him hurting the MC 2) He often uses MC as a magic problem solver disregarding her feelings (Ex. Knowing there's enmity between MC and wanwan, he constantly throws wanwan for the MC to take care of and the MC has to treat her like some master too) 3) In the very beginning he treats MC like dogsh*t and is very biased towards the novel FL (Ex. He has absolutely no understanding towards his own harem at all. Quickly judged MC in two cases, one of them leading MC to being hit as punishment to where she couldn't move for 2-3 days.) 4) After MC's baby is stolen and replaced with a cat, instead of consoling her (which he can't cause he a can't pick a side between crown prince and 3rd prince) or even secretly consoling her by visiting her in secret more. He does a lot of things without explanation like visiting other women instead and avoiding MC. 5) He hides MC's son from her, after he finds MC's son, he lets a random woman disguise as the mother and takes her as a concubine. (I mean I get it may be dangerous for the son but at least tell MC it's her son, she's smart enough to act. Idk if he even told the son that MC's his real mother while being raised by another woman. It's honestly really sad because MC missed the most precious time with her son and he doesn't even recognize her as his own real mother. MC was also pained over not knowing whether her son was alive or dead for 2 years) 6) Non of the people that harm MC ever got a satisfying death. Idk if ML has attachment problems but he always lets off the people who harm MC so easily. 7) After all this, MC finally escapes his damn harem and ML BUT GUESS WHAT he uses her son to threaten her into coming back to him

ML does supposedly have character development later on but like I stated before, it's not satisfying. I feel like in this book he's the only one who get's to be happy throughout the book. He constantly piles problems onto MC but whenever MC has a problem or has been framed, he doesn't help, heck she'd be luckily if he didn't punish her when she's framed or give her more problems. He doesn't really truly suffer and burn in regret for his prior actions to MC either, she just kinda forgives him and falls in love. This is what makes me hate the fact that he's ML the most. I'd be able to deal with it if after he did all that shit, he lost MC and suffers, realize how scummy he was, almost die in regret or at the very least properly dealt with MC's enemies. But he doesn't, at the end it felt like the MC herself kinda gave up, content as long as he loved her the most (much like the original novel FL). No requests of him not having other women or anything.

well almost. later she disguised as a man yo! even tried to marry a woman yo!