(read all 6010 chapters)
The story was pretty good except for the parts that focused on war, which was 25-33% of the entire story and maybe I should give it an extra point for the sheer length of it.
I also like that it appeared to be a more mature story, I mean there were tons of bloody killings and probably the most sex I've ever seen in a chinese story (which still isn't that much and disappeared in the later half) but in the end it still ended childishly with the whole good vs evil trope and enemies becoming friends, although it was more subtle than that and not to the extent you see in anime.
So in short, the story was pretty good to great in the first half and I wish it would have ended there, it would have been more enjoyable.
Instead the first part of the 2nd half is just a slow setup for the war that takes up the entire 2nd part of the 2nd half and I have a lot of issues with that.
Since it's a war, gone are the funny bits, the adventure aspect, the sex, basically anything interesting/entertaining and instead we get the stuff that comes with war, and newsflash: war isn't entertaining and it drags on for far to long, plus as the story continues the author has more and more stuff to rehash for the 1000th time.
And after suffering through all that war we only get 1-2 chapters after it, what a let down.
As usual (since he's a chinese author) his story telling skills can only be described as revolting, just endless amounts of recaps, summaries, pointing out the obvious, speculating, repeats... etc.
Anywhere from 30 to 80% of the text is irrelevant, with an average of 50%.
This has the effect of completely destroying the pacing, you even forget what the conversation was about or with who since the author tends to add 3-5 pages worth of irrelevant garbage in between dialogues.
The whole story could be shortened down from 6000 to 3000 chapters and not only would you not miss out on anything, it would greatly increase the enjoyment of it.
Thankfully the manga version eliminates all that, but it also changes a few things, removes or heavily shortens all sex scenes and even leaves a few things out so I opted to read the novel version instead, but I'm not sure that was the best decision.
Cultivation worlds are my favorite setting but chinese authors are the absolute worst at story telling so this might be the last one I ever read.
I recommend reading this in tandem with its manga version and switch to the one you like best if need be.