tl;dr: This narrative revolves around a common plot progression of a martial artist's return, the revitalization of his sect, and the comedic events that ensue.
Comedy-wise, the protagonist behaves like an ooga-booga (actually, closer to these homeless drunks and addicts banging on your car window frame for changes), and can also be reminiscent of personalities like xQC and Paul Logan. The whole comedy is supposed to be his surrounding reacting to his antics, "omg he's so not real!", "he did the funny!". Think of the environment as twitch chat/enablers/clip watchers, and the author is using his behavior to farm engagements for Tiktok shorts.
Diving deeper into the comedy:
Initially, it's funny to watch the protagonist griefing his surrounding, but it gets bland and old fast. It's akin to those YouTube shorts/clipbaits where content creators go with "I WENT DOWN TO BRONZE FOR 1 WEEK AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED." (P.S. They're smurfing for kicks and good laughs in order to entertain their "audience". Think what it would be if a NBA player stood on the same court level as a middle schooler, how hilarious that would be!) The protagonist is also a hardcore flamer, a typical rage quitting gamer if transposed to the modern world (why is this middle schooler so bad😕). He's a good player (because of his experience) but a terrible coach (short fuse) who believes in the "grind and gitgud" approach by berating the weaker ones - it's fiction, but it would be irrational in real life. This approach should work on certain students, but in this work, for some reason it works for everyone (BECAUSE OF MAIN CHARACTER LOGIC). Imagine your math teacher one day deciding that yelling at all the students to gitgud would be super productive and assigning extra homework when you fail - it might work for a small subset of the class, it won't work for everyone. That's how the protagonist is, but he does it for martial arts. Unfortunately, hazing is a thing due to the way Korea conscripts work but that's for another day...
The Main Plot: The story hints at an "antagonist force", but at the pace it's moving, we might never get there. There's just a lot of side-tracking (that are not really fun nor engaging if you don't enjoy the "humor style" ).
Action-wise, there are some good scenes and paneling but most of the time it gets kinda lame. The Conference scene had some nice action. The artist's skill isn't to blame, but it seems more like a stylistic decision to focus the story on comedy. The "most impressive action" isn't about technical moments but more like "my sword can LITERALLY make the surrounding flowers bloom" kind of fantasy. Think of Hanzo/Genji from Overwatch that can spam a visual dragon (not illusion) that can damage people. In higher stake matches, it's about spamming summons from their sword skills, which kind of breaks immersion for me. (Hell, even boxing or MMA stories are better due to the emphasis on good footing, techniques, and positioning (this story does mention a few of these, but only for beginners and you won't see them in higher-stake matches). Murim Login has those so read that Murim story if you don't want endless cooldown spam like this one.)
Character-wise, the side characters follow the standard tropes without much deviation, they're mostly ass lickers. The only standout character for me is the Oldest Senior Third Class (I forgot his name) because he takes a rational approach despite not being the strongest. The supposed rivals have standard reactions (for some reason they all happen to be those narcissist bullies with anger issue you'd expect to see in kdrama plots with school bullies), and the main supposed-love interest girl feels more like low-substance waifu bait with little to none characterization (very cartoonish---like Komi if you enjoy Komi can't communicate, but this is not a romcom but an action story with a serious "plot" so this decision makes the story feel light and less grounded), meh.
The older characters (sect leader, finance minister, etc.) are much better in the sense that they contribute well to the lore and worldbuilding and serve as a good device of comedy (they do have little screen time though). The younger characters are kind of weak in that regard.
Wrap Up: If you're new to the wuxia/murim + return scene, you might get a kick out of this one. But if you've been around the block, it's more of the same old, same old.
There's a twist here and there but mostly, it's pretty predictable. The protagonist is protected by his smurf status (plot armor), so things get boring pretty fast and the stakes aren't really there. The good moments are outweighed by the amount of generic moments on a ratio of 9:1.
Why you should read this even if you've read 50+ murim stories: If you have the "I'm the main character" syndrome, love watching GMs dunking on bronzes (smurf clips), love watching streamers who troll and grief to "farm engagements from chat", have an addiction to power fantasy trips, can't glue your eyes off Tiktok shorts and popular rage bait streamers, this might be to your liking.
Otherwise, it's only worth your time once in a blue moon...
(-13)
(+28)
