The story has a novel take on a modern day Korean reincarnating into 12th century China.
There are some interesting ideas like bringing modern ideas and concepts into the ancient murim world, but unfortunately, the execution was not quite up to par. Some ideas were done well but others not so much. It could've been better if the author did more research or simply not go into so much detail that readers could easily debunk their ideas as not feasible. It is a real shame because I thought the concept was quite interesting.
For example the protag introduced the concept of food delivery as some sort of unique game changer that everybody wanted to have a piece of. But really, it's not that big of a deal—it's more like a sidegrade. Ancient China already had busy commercial areas with restaurants and food vendors that people would go to to grab a bite. Traveling a bit to get food is not a big deal to ancient people, especially considering they have to haul water from canals and wells every day as part of their everyday routine. Moreover there already exists things like food carts that vendors use to bring their food to service more remote locations. The lazy rich folks who might be interested already have servants and couriers who could get on a horse and pick up the food from the restaurants just like the delivery people. So I'm not sure if there would actually be a viable market for such a service.
Many ideas the author brought up unfortunately fall into the same trap: Manually creating ice - inefficient, during the Tang dynasty era people just stored ice from winter in underground cellars. Black licorice/caramel water - ew, the normal green tea with some citrus/honey that was popular back then tastes better and is healthier. Hamburgers - sidegrade, steamed buns, chinese tacos, kababs and noodle dishes serve the same role. 10-story apartment buildings - very inconvenient, the author touched on this but never explained how this could work. Without modern plumbing and diesel/electric pumps, people would have to haul nightsoil pots and buckets of water up and down 10 stories. Glass of this era was also opaque, not clear and very expensive. You wouldn't have the nice views of modern apartments which was the main selling point of the project.
Another theme the author has is this idea that money is everything. Such a viewpoint is a product, in my opinion, of an overly financialised capitalist society like South Korea, people in ancient times would not share this mindset. In other murim stories these martial artists are described as ascetics, forgoing secular desires to train decades in pursuit of higher martial prowess - punching sand, wood, and rock to toughen their fists, training with swords so much they form blisters and calluses, balancing for long periods while getting struck by water under waterfalls, sleeping outdoors regularly in the wind and rain etc. The idea such people who voluntarily commit themselves to such an austere lifestyle would become addicted to banal creature comforts like sugar water, chilled wines and slightly more comfortable carriages just crosses into the realm of unbelievability.
Anyway I enjoyed this title initially, but when the author started rolling out Gucci jackets it was just too much haha. Maybe readers who are better at suspending their disbelief can rate this higher. For others, I would recommend the novel Release the Witch, which had a much better execution of this genre.
(-213)
(+534)
