I love cultivation/weak to strong stories set in any other time but modern times, i hate almost all cultivation stories set in modern times because they never feel "realistic" in the character behaviour or how the would around them would act, if i went into more detail about the many other problems i have with cultivation manga set in modern times it would border on nit-picking so i wont, But the biggest problem is that very few manga cultivation stories do a good job of telling a story in modern times imo, which is frustrating since there are so many out there trying to grab an audience by relating to their every day life in a power trip fantasy, thinking it will be easier and more relatable if the story is set in modern times. alas they're wrong imo. The only cultivation manga/weak to strong story set in modern times i've overwhelmingly like so far is Murim Login and most of the others have been lukewarm at best. I though this one would be another probably badly written modern day cultivation manga but if you're like me then i have a happy surprise for you, it's not set in modern times it's sett in... (insert your expectations here). I almost quit reading but it turned out to be... different.
I don't know why i felt like saying what i said... maybe it's because i wanted to warn people like me that the beginning of the manga is a ruse!
Time for unorganized thoughts and spoilers, The manga starts out as a typical modern day cultivation story in chapter 1 but you soon realize that the entire manga after chapter 1 is set in ancient China, the character from modern magic times is reincarnated in a fat ugly guys body. I like the fact that his body he reincarnates into is fat since that way the transformation from weak to strong is not only displayed in stats but we can visually see the transformation.
He is ofc level 1 with a status window like most other cultivation stories, so he starts absorbing "souls" or "mana" or "Yin energy" it's not very clear what it is he is absorbing the only thing i'm certain of is that the place he absorbs the powers is a place where many people have died previously. He slowly levels up in the first few chapter, establishing a villain his brother and a clear goal for the protagonist, to overthrow his brother and take back his birth right as the eldest brother.
His abilities reminds me of a necromancer from Diablo the game, not Diablo 2 but Diablo 3, the less fun version imo. His summons like skeletons disappear fast and he even mentions abilities like Bone Spear and Corpse Explosion which are actually ability names directly copied from Diablo 3s necromancers. I like that the author used the Diablo 3 necromancer as an archetype.
1 thing i don't like is the fact that when they talk about the abilities he had in his previous life they mention for example that main protagonist is unique because he uses his hearth to store mana rather than his brain, and this is supposed to be a great benefit since storing mana in your brain apparently can come with serious side effects like early dementia, Alzheimer's and other nasty things. The problem i have is that the manga tells us all this but doesn't explain why people used their brains instead of their hearts to store mana, did they not know about it or is there some drawback to storing mana in your heart?... we don't know because the manga did not tell us which i find very annoying, why tell us about this and not explain in clear detail why someone would use their brain as a mana storage instead of their heart since everyone except the main protagonist apparently did, which in turn must mean there has to be some reason for it, but like i said we never got to know the reason why.
Another thing I find a little disapointing is the lak of detail in his stats, he has mana and HP but they seem to never come in to play in action parts. For example the manga Gamer the protagonist levels up using XP and his mana use need to be regulated. Something like that would have been great imo instead of this not very serious thing they're doing now. Basically why show a protagonist stats if they never come in to play? Its like the old saying goes, "if you show a gun in a scene of a movie then you need to use it at some point before the movie ends"
That's as far as i've read and all that i have to say, nothing concise just a ramble about the manga with very little structure.