I'm the one that requested this novel. I expected it to be a story of a guy who secretly shaped the world over thousands of years but ultimately died low key. Then his diary is found and his life story is laid bare, including his romantic escapades. So far it kind of is that but also isnt. He isnt dead, he is in seclusion. The diary is laying the groundwork for something bigger and MC will come back in the future and take that plot forward. So far (ch 30+) it is people reading the diary (due to plot shenanigans it is revealed a few pages at a time) and reacting to it, even fighting each other due to revelations made and opportunities revealed, etc. Its a bit unbelievable but for a popcorn-read it is fine. Enjoying it so far.

Slow paced and boring tbh.

the actions or choices these characters take make no sense. didnt like the characters either.

typical plot of many xianxia. nothing special. read it if theres nothing else to read. for people that read for the harem plot... its there, but theres no romancing as such. it is not the focus of the novel. at least not in the 100 chaps i read.

trash. juvenile. interesting premise - you go to reveal a scammer but you end up uncovering a bunch of mysteries... or secret identities in this case. as a concept it is nice, if only it had been done well. but this execution is a bit too much. like sweet is nice, but cloyingly sweet is not. so mc having secret identities and being accomplished in secret is nice. he does it for his own enjoyment, not for fame or whatever. but you dont give him just one or two, you just start heaping one achievement on top of another. not only that he is such a good guy, you cant help fall in love with him. no wonder he has a harem! and so far we are only learning this from one girl in the harem group chat, to her he is a great writer and they uncover that he is at least 2 prominent wuxia writers of china and 4 nobel prize winning authors (written using a foreign pseudonym). perhaps the other girls know him as some impressive in something else?

Was going well until ch 200 or so when it started going downhill for me. It was a 3-3.5* until then. Nothing great, but enjoyable in a popcorn flick kinda way. It had some flirting and romance, there werent too many women in the harem then so they got their bit of screen time. Though the romance itself is quite standard, nevertheless... enjoyable. The rest of the plot was moving along too. But then came the Buddhism mockery typical in these Chinese novels, I have a bit of a low tolerance for that. Soured my liking immediately by a bit. Then there were some typos or oversight issues in realm names, realm levels, the period of an ancient era (which keeps alternating between 10k and 100k years ago) all of which made things confusing (and annoying to read). There was one realm name mixup where it read something like (paraphrasing): "MC was in the Nascent Soul realm, but X was only in the Nascent Soul realm and was no match for MC who was one whole realm higher". And finally the ending is ass. The final plot I mean, about the last 50 chapters or so. In the last chapter the author wraps it up with essentially "and they lived happily ever after". Seems a bit juvenile and a rushed ending. Guessing the author got tired of the story himself.

I read the whole thing on a different site, thought of reading it again here but this copy is terrible. Lot's of repetition, multiple times in the same chapter. Part of chapter 5 pasted into 4 multiple times. Then ch 6 in to 5, 7 into 6 and so on. Read till 30-something and dropping it. I tried re-crawling a few chapters and it didnt seem to help, looks like the source itself has the problem. Anyway, 3.5* for the novel itself I think, rounding up to 4. I didnt quite like the ending though, seemed a bit rushed. This story also seems to be the prototype for Keyboard Immortal, by the same author, some of the plot points match. However this story only has humans, no other races, which I prefer.

Read it at face value, let the author guide you through the story and you will enjoy it. Not that it is great, it is a bit silly at times, tries to be scheming at times and so on. But just let your brain rest and enjoy the story. Dont think too much or you will start realizing that most of the plot points dont make sense, characters behave in ways that dont make sense. There are glaring plot holes. MC is overly paranoid and has 10 different backup plans to serve up the inevitable twist. Edit: typical anti-Buddhism propaganda around chap 206, I despise that stuff so dropping it. And dropping it to 1* from the 3 I had given it originally.