Progress: Chapter 41 (the one named "Chapter Forty" by the author).
This should be more "No one under 17 admitted" and less "General Audiences".
This review may contain light spoilers for the very early (mostly first) chapter.
It's pretty much what I'm looking for in a story with an evil protag. Ruthless MC who still has some people he cares about and still has setbacks. Also one who knows when to back off.
Writing Quality:
Pretty Good. Half a star off for the occasional typo as well as grammar (such as full stops instead of question marks or a quote beginning with an apostrophe and ending with a double quote), but they are all pretty rare.
Another half-point of for the Chapter Names, which are simply numbered (and off by one). I find those quite important. In my search for answers regarding my next point, I found out that the hated scrapers have chapter titles for the first 15 chaps, and those do match what I came up with in spirit. I don't know if this story once had Chapter Names or if the Pirates came up with them, either way they are better than what we have now.
Stability of Updates
It's black magic to me. Most reviews I see are from two years ago where according to the ToC nothing was released. Chapter 6 (the one named "Chapter Five" by the author) was released before Chapter 1 ("Prologue"). There are also pretty large gaps inbetween chapters. I can only assume that maybe there was some heavy editing involved. I'ma give three stars for the recent chapters, but have honestly no idea what to make of the dates from the ToC in terms of stability.
But I will positively point out that these are long chapters.
Story Development
As the Sypnosis didn't make it clear for me: In the Prologue the MC goes from Broken to Slightly Overpowered, with hopes of becomming Completely Utterly Broken once he mastered Cultivation. As much as I usually dislike cultivation, this one pulls it of very nicely which I'd personally attribute to World Background. The Story progresses just fine (but without much time passing). Full marks from me.
Character Design
As there hasn't been much time which has actually passed in-story, we don't have that big an idea on the development. But the MC (if you forgot already: Evil, Ruthless, knows when to back off) does seem to adapt to his current situation(s). And the five years we time-skipped do seem to have made an impact (as we know he values his family). I'm letting you know that I'm not that picky here (especially when it comes to side characters, but they do seem to have personality for what I am concerned about), but I'll give it full marks.
World Background
We mostly only know what the MC knows when he encounters it in the world. I think this is isn't a bad thing, but I wish we knew slightly more. How many people have which cultivation rank? How many people are able to join that… institution he joins in what I think of as the second⁺ arc? As the MC doesn't seem concerned about these things (for he is one of the few people), we will also never know. We also don't know much political knowledge except for what can be found between the lines. I'll give four as what we have is sufficient for me to enjoy the work.
Overall, I'd recommend it if you are into an Evil Protagonist Novel which is more then the simple "Revenge" plotline.
