Aaaaaaaaghghdskajdfsasfjlka; This story was so rough and I'm hesitant to give it a rating because when it was on, it was ON FIRE and I was loving it and it caused me so much delicious, delicious emotional pain but when it was off, it was really off and there's some pieces of it I really did not like. I actually DNF'd this one the first time I started it, around the beginning of the second arc, because I couldn't tolerate the combination of misogyny and thoughts that this was going to be another "steel straight man in denial" story. I gave it a second go, much later, because there were so many good reviews of it and had a much better reaction to it but I still have complaints.
So... to get my problems out of the way, right away. The misogyny and transmisogyny in this story is real. And according to a later translator, gets worse in the second book. This is really frustrating because there's some wonderful female characters in this book and it's really disorienting because every time you're in Qi Leren's head or hearing the comments of any of the male characters (which for the record, the main cast is all male) it's rough. I loved Xue Yingying in the first arc and then to turn around and have Qi Leren, stuck in a female body for the second arc, spend the whole time bitching about how much it sucked to be a woman because they're so weak and pathetic and so on and so forth was... infuriating. There's also a predatory lesbian in the second arc. And also, I really hate Doctor Lu. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to find him a cute and adorable character and he encourages the relationship between Qi Leren and Ning Zhou to develop, but at the same time, his encouragement comes off more as "delighting in someone else's misery" and he's so fucking obnoxious, especially in the way that he's constantly pushing Qi Leren into the dangerous situations because of his ability and digging pits for him and any fun he brings in is instantly drained because he will backpedal violently if any of his jokes get turned on him. He could've died in this first book and I would've given zero fucks. I may've even delighted in it.
YMMV heavily on whether or not any of the above is a problem and while it was frustrating to deal with it, the rest of this book is soo damned good that it can be seen past.
For one, the first arc was genuinely one of the best horror arcs I think I've ever experienced in these stories. I was genuinely concerned for how the characters were going to deal with these situations and survive. I was tense with them and every time Qi Leren experienced a death scene, I was on the edge of my seat, because his save/load feature, which could've easily been a broken ability, had so many limitations and restrictions on it, that it took some extremely clever maneuvering to use it properly, and unlike some stories I've read where the character has the ability to "survive" a death scene, Qi Leren is obviously dealing with some psychological trauma from dying repeatedly. It probably could've been a bit better developed or explored, but I understand why it wasn't. Also, this arc almost tricked me into believing that SuHe was the ML.
Secondly, while I recoiled from the idea of it at first, and I could complain for days about the instalove part of it, the emotional drama of Qi Leren and Ning Zhou both struggling with the fact that they fell in love with each other while believing they were women and then finding out that they were men and trying to reconcile that with the fact that they're both straight was actually really well done, especially when you include the very traditionally Catholic mindset that Ning Zhou was raised with.
All of this culminating in THAT ENDING, one big twist of which I guessed and was extremely validated to be right about (view spoiler) but just the way that ended... the set up... everything was perfectly constructed for some really good emotional drama and it was both very satisfying and made me desperately want to read the next book because oh my god.

that scene where Qi Leren wrote the 7 and then desperately regretted and was trying so hard to undo it because he knew that Ning Zhou was going to misunderstand it and be devastated over it and then literally everything with Ning Zhou (not) coping with believing Qi Leren was dead ffffffffffffffffffffffffff quality angst 10/10 so good

 Anyway, I really want to say this book was one of my favorites of 2021. I did have some serious feels. But at the same time, when the book was dragging, it really dragged, and there were some genuinely infuriating parts. I recommend it with the caveat that it is not, at all, perfect.