I've read up to c353, so this novel can be considered alright just based on that. It kept me engaged enough to read that far and the translation is mostly decent throughout. Of course, there are a few erogious errors - for example, I really really wish whoever is editing this novel ran a find and replace on "shapeshift" and just replaced every single instance of that word with "Dharma Idol", since that's clearly what's being referred to - but I digress.
The basic plot is that there's a guy in a sect and he secretly cultivates super-OP powers to get stronger. The bombastic opening involves him arriving in his transmigrated body and finding himself in a woman's bedroom and being told to hide from her angry lover. It's a fun opening gambit but, unfortunately, the rest of the book fails to live up to that opening. I would say that the first 100~ chapters of the book are well-plotted out, extremely coherent, and enjoyable to read. Then from chapter 100-240(ish) the book is a series of singular events that are strung together into a barely coherent whole that is still more or less enjoyable to read, but the cracks have begun to show. Finally, past chapter 240, the book starts to come apart at the seams as the author forgets about earlier plot threads and begins throwing in all sorts of events in between massive timeskips (for example, one day the MC decides to randomly invent and propagate smartphones amongst cultivators, leading to an unrealistically good outcome where he becomes the wealthiest man ever and the whole cultivation world calms down and become more peaceful because they want to browse forums and play not-League of Legends on their not-smartphones). The whole farce lasts about 30~ chapters, including 2 chapters where some rando is livingstreaming his ghost-hunting so we can get the full urban cultivation novel experience - at least for a few chapters before the author forgets about it and never mentions it again.
The book (poorly) apes better novels with "steady" main characters. At times it really feels like a bad knock-off of books like "My Senior Brother Is Too Steady" or "Top Tier Providence, Secretly Cultivate for a Thousand Years".
Too many plot threads just get dropped, go nowhere, or even get randomly retconned to make the story flow, especially when he transitions from the "Lower Realm" to the "Upper Realm". After he breaks through to the nascent soul realm the entire process of him going to the Upper Realm is completed in two chapters, with zero closure for any of the people or things in the Lower Realm. There's no scene where he bids farewell to his master or sect master, and like two paragraphs where it's explained how he randomly brushes off the women who were in his life up to that point.
The woman who he sleeps with in Chapter 1 was clearly supposed to be important to the story at one point. He has a long-standing relationship with her during the first 100 chapters of the book, including multiple brief POV switches to her perspective which give the reader some insight into her nefarious plans - but all of that gets thrown in the trash and she gets a "new" backstory during the "ascending to the Upper Realm" arc so that her cultivation level and aspirations can barely keep up with MC. It really feels like a massive retcon when it happens, but she's barely even in the story anymore by the time it all gets "revealed" so it's hard to get too upset.
I think that's my biggest problem with this story. The author really failed to keep the interesting elements of the story in the freaking story. MCs cheat was thoroughly and carefully explained in the early chapters, and it was engaging to watch him painstakingly grind out his proficiencies in various skills and be rewarded, but the system all but disappears after chapter 100 or so. Sure, it's still there, but the detailed explanations are gone and 99% of the time when it gets mentioned it's just because MC is using it as an "Appraisal" tool. At the start of the story, MC makes a big deal of using the System to collect Luck and raise his spiritual root aptitude, but both of those stats disappear around the time he hits the Golden Core Realm, in a way where it more feels like the author forgot about them as opposed to the author willingly deciding to phase them out of the story. The same can also be said of pretty much every side character. The first 100 chapters were the most fun to read because MC had various relationships to maintain - with his senior brother, with his master, with the sect master, with a handful of women, etc... - but they all more or less disappear later on. Some of them also go to the Upper Realm, but even so they're still pretty much out of the story.
After reading other reviews I found that this novel was dropped by the author, and I think it's obvious why. At any rate, my final verdict is that the early part of the novel are an alright read, and I don't really regret reading as much as I did, but it's a shame how things went downhill.
