Cultivating Immortality, Starting from Childhood Sweethearts

I am happy be the first one to rate this novel. I read everything within 4 days so my memory is very fresh on this. Now, as per usual, I'll break the review down into story, characters, and romance/harem. This structure always works well. Everything I go in-depth can be found within the first 10 chapters, and regarding the rest which I'm more vague on (to not spoil you) comes later on. So this review has close to no spoilers (as long I did screw up anywhere).

The story is not at an 'masterpiece/mind-blowing' level. No  LOTM, or RI plot-weaving for you lads. It uses more than a couple clichés found in all Xianxias, which is normal since they all recycle some plot-twists from the same event-pool. Personally, I did not find these clichés bothersome nor repetitive. The author does not 'spam' the same events over and over, which is a big W. The basic premise is our MC, Xu Ming, codenamed Ming'er by momma, being reincarnated as a baby in this cultivation world. Alongside his reincarnation, he is granted a system, which gives him attribute points based on activity. Imagine this 1-month year old baby doing push ups to get [abdominal strength +1]. Yes, it does happen. Later, the system grants him skills and even items, but, and a big but, the more you progress throughout the story, the less impact it feels that the system has. It is still there, and it IS helping him by giving him points, but it is not shown as often. Something I noted while reading, no biggie though. Going on with the story, Ming'er is born inside the Xu clan. From baby up to baby + 4 years (meaning until around the age of 4), he has only 2 'friends', his elder sister, Xu XueNuo and a younger childhood friend Qin Qingwan, hailing from the Qin clan. Those 2, alongside Ming'er are born on the same day. But Ming'ers mother is a concubine, so he has no reach in the Xu clan and is treated worse. His 2 childhood friends, XueNuo and QingWan have both innate body constitutions, with Qingwan having a more rare one, while XueNuo having a less rare one. But they both are geniuses. Our MC uses his system to acquire points and attemp to catch up. If he does or doesn't... well, he does, and he goes further beyond. So for those complaining about a 'weak mc', that is only in the beginning, which makes sense since an overpowered baby within 5 chapters would be quite boring to read about. Our Mc is proficient in martial arts, cultivation (sword mastery) and confucianism (he is taught). He is slowly becoming more important in the Wu kingdom, where the Xu clan, which is dukedom similarly to the Qin clan, reside in. He basically climbs the rank-ladder there. Ming'er does not join any sect, and despite having a high position in the Wudu (Wu kingdom), he does not sit in the court. So we mostly see him traveling around (especially true for chapters 200-428).

Now on to the characters. The characters cannot be said to be one-dimensional, but are not either insanely developed either. We have the outer-cold-inner-kind older sister, a good-natured and kind childhood friend, a smaller seductress (and a *big* seductress later on), and more. I won't mention more characters explicitly or implicitly because you might guess who I'm talking about if you start reading. Most of the novels focus is on Ming'er with other characters having their development, but not on the same level as MC. Ming'er has good character development in my opinion. Becoming ruthless when he needs to and caring towards his family and allies. He does not go around collecting women, and rather tries to stay away from then and developing feelings. As of now, he has definitely feelings for 2 girls, and he has admitted this himself. He is not naïve, and thinks about others intents quite a lot. He is also not very dense. He notes rather quickly when for example a girl might show interest to him. At least, more quickly than your typical Xianxia protagonist. Not much more to say regarding character development. Everything I've read up to now is good, but there is not enough content to say more. The author goes back and forth with characters rather than him developing a character 'fully' and them becoming useless later. Regarding characters, this novel has me satisfied.

Now to the romance and harem part. Hmm... there are only 428 chapters as of writing, and the MC has admitted having feelings for only 2 women. There are plenty of romantic interactions with other women, but MC does his best to stay away from them. He is not a playboy gunning for multiple women. Even the fact that he has feelings for 2 girls, makes him feel guilty, despite being allowed culturally around 2 wives, 5 concubines and more lovers (sum like dat). The interactions between Ming'er and most of the 'main female cast' are good, and I wish for more development between Ming'er and them before tying the knot. The 2 gals he has feelings for is understandable, but regarding the others, I would like the author to develop them more.

I'll be honest, I forgot to write about these things, but better late than never. Something the author is bad with is consistency. He mentions a skill having side effects, but the MC does not get said side effects after using them plenty of times. I don't know if its a TL error or if the author forgot something. Personally, this did not bother me a lot, I quickly even forgot that the skill had a side effect. He also is bad with remembering the timeline sometimes. Something that happened 4-5 years ago is referred to as 8 years ago. Again, this could be a TL, but is probably not. In my opinion, these are rather small things which you can 'manually' fix when reading inside your head. The major error the author did was regarding his 'blood frenzy' skill which he disregards the side effect. These small things can either be critical for you, or totally worthless to others (like me). They are few-in between, with the blood frenzy being the major error, but hey, author is also human and can forget also. Thankfully, this happens quite early on so it's not as bad as others may say.

Overall, with only the translated 428 being read, I really enjoyed this novel. It does what it needs to do well. The only parts you could criticize are the clichés, and the authors tendency to forget smaller details, but depending on you, this will make the novel either a 1-2/5 or a 4-5/5. It transitions from a more action filled novel (0-150 chapters) to a more balanced action-romance one (150-latest). I personally did not mind this seamless transition, I noticed it only subtly. It's a 5/5 for me. I hope if you begun the novel, you enjoy it, rather than this review leaving you disappointed.