Chang Sheng Jie

The first episodes of the show are actually really good, and I’ll give them credit for that. The animation is top tier, the story has a nice, intriguing mystery, and the characters talk and act naturally. The show shows a lot of potential if it keeps going in the right direction.

BUT… everything goes downhill: animation, story, characters, dialogue - the quality drops tremendously on all of them.

They mess it up badly after those first few episodes. It honestly feels like the whole production team got replaced. They start copying the worst parts of BTTH Season 5. Character growth? Gone. The animation keeps getting worse as ... the show continues. The main conflict stops making sense and just repeats itself in a new place every time. It gets so bad that allies and enemies are literally running side by side through nonstop events with zero breaks. Everyone suddenly talks like an encyclopedia, the characters spout random details, pretending it will pull you into the world and everything turns into random chaos. To top it off, the characters just stand there watching helplessly, even though a few episodes earlier they were breaking the ground and tearing open the sky.

There’s no consistency. Things change for no reason, and we’re just supposed to accept it. You start out eager to see what happens, but soon just want to skip ahead, holding onto the hope it will get better.

Will you enjoy the show? Honestly… probably not. But at least you’ll understand why the reviews are so bad, and you’ll end up just as frustrated as the rest of us.

This show is bad.

The plot is a mess, just all over the place, the power system is so fucking bad.
If you've seen apotheosis, the negative traits are somewhat similar but this is worst.

Let's get the obvious praise out of the way, the animation is top tier, beautifully done. But just like Apotheosis it's just a facade, you draw you in.

The Plot: Na this plot is a mess, it's a simple straight forward story, but they're messing up the execution.
I mean, to be honest I can't say this is where the story is headed, random ass shits and fights just keep happening.

The MC is wrongfully accused ... of a crime, and hunted down, we don't know the full story for that, just it was murder accusation nothing more and that's literally what acts as inciting incident and we don't know shit.

The MC now in a strange world wants to go back home, but he literally has no plans and things just keep happening, forced plot.
I understand it's common in stories but this is the 2nd donghua I've seen that it's just too forced and the writers didn't put in any effort, or they were just terrible writers if this was their best.

The inconsistency, the MC kills people attacking him left and right, time to kill the one person that literally caused this and will keep disturbing, chasing you down, you said "Naaa", all the people you've killed were instigated by this person but naa, the writers needed the character to cause more problems in the future for story.
20 episode in and I can't say, this was a favorite episode or scene for me.

The characters: Personally they're all thrash characters, i don't like a single person.
No thought put into the characters, just cliche, generic characters.

The power system: Similar to apotheosis this power system is all over the place, but this is worst.
Atleast in apotheosis it's mainly the MC that's got the inconsistency.

Here it's everyone.

It follows normal cultivation route, but the characters here, just fights left with no clear power system.

I mean, they're on an island where there's a max cultivation level to access and it's rather low (BTW MC started from the beginning and already caught up to top dogs in days/weeks, but let's leave that aside cause MC quick leveling up is a common troupe but this was too fast)
Yet we've got people that are suppose to be at the max level fighting on scale of ancestors level (from other shows) and people on same level can't even do shit.

Then we got unexplained def unmatched fights, but suddenly they are matched, like WTF.
There's a prime example.

Monk A has a stronger older brother Monk B, Berkerk A attacks monk A and B, monk B tried to use all his strength to keep Berkerk A at bay long enough for monk A to escape, monk B didn't even last 5 secs hot smoked, monk A escaped thanks to plot.

Next time they'll met
Monk A is fighting unpar with Enraged, Powered up Berserk A, monk A was not shown to power up anytime in the donghua.
And he fought Berkserk A to a draw.

In conclusion, this show is just one you watch with brain turned off.

I won't recommend it

This is terrible. There's no other way to say it. The animation is amazing but wasted on a stupid plot with shitty world building and character development.

I've noticed a commonality in Chen Dong's donghua adaptations such as Perfect World and Shrouding the Heavens. Including this one, the MC all share the same traits: they are all arrogant idiots. They can never think things through calmly or logically and they always carry an arrogant personality thinking they are the s**t but just end up being the punching bag.

And the worst part is that the MC will stay a punching bag for next 70-80 episodes if ... they follow the same pattern as PW and STH. Even if everyone's amazed by the MCs fast cultivation speed, where the cultivation system is pure chaos is this donghua, he still end's up getting his a** whupped.

The female antagonist, who is literally the cause of every suffering and near death experience the MC experience, just somehow keeps living as a forced plot. The MOST F***ED UP moment was when the MC had the perfect chance to kill her, he was just like 'nope' and walks away. This was like an itch in my brain I couldn't scratch.

I've haven't read the source web novels, but if the plot is the same in the donghua, then I am sorely disappointed in Chen Dongs works.