khyie's Reviews (267)

Tbh, I don't think it's going to be particularly memorable.  It was mostly just a sweet little story about two boys falling in love.  Any time it seemed like it was going to add drama, it moved so quickly over it that it left me wondering why bother in the first place?
Some of the things I was worried about, like the ML wanting to bully him into crying not really becoming a cruel thing.  He was upfront about what he wanted which let the MC easily see when he was saying or doing something specifically to provoke a reaction and call him out on it.  If you're afraid the ML will use his rejections of the MC's confessions to provoke the tears he wants

you can set aside your concern.  While he does reject his confession, he never attempts to "twist the knife."  He's blunt about it but never outright cruel except I such ways that the MC can easily suss out his angle.

It does attempt to build some backstory for the two main characters, delving into their families and some outside relationships but these largely seem to be for the aforementioned discarded drama.  It becomes more annoying after awhile simply because these things never go anywhere after a handful of words from one of the leads.  I would've preferred more time just spent on these two going on dates and teasing each other.

The summary for this story would give you the impression this was going to be one of those stories where the drama is played out in the relationship but nope. MC pretty much transmigrates, meets the ML, makes a bit of a fuss and 24 hours later they're happily married. The real drama comes in the MC repetitively needing to be rescued from everyone and everything, repeated ad neaseum.

Having recently read and reviewed another transmigration into ancient times with ger, farming wealth, looking back on this one fills me with fondness.  That doesn't mean it was great.  Just comparatively... I liked it better.
The ML in this one is a massive, silly puppy and a bit of a pushover.  The MC will often blame him for things just to watch him get anxious and dote on him.  He calls it "adding spice to the relationship."  With how simple the ML is and how he never seems to realize it's just teasing, but is legitimately anxious and concerned, I personally see it more as bullying but luckily it's not super common.  Also, the ML's feelings will be static throughout the entire story.  He was told it's a husband's job to dote on and love his wife and so that's what he does, from the very beginning of the story to the end.  While you can see the shift in the MC's feelings from "this person is nice" to "I've decided to be with and love this person" you never get that from the ML and IMO, it feels like the ML is so simple that he loves him because he's his wife, not because of the MC himself.
Overall, this is just a really sweet, feel good story.  The MC quickly develops a really good relationship with the ML's family and while he builds up his businesses, it sticks to a realm he conceivably knows at first (cooking) and as he expands, he's careful to give opportunities to his fellow villagers, building them up with him.
The villains were a particular breed of stupid and I wondered a lot about the village dynamics that encouraged some of the events and I think there's something incredibly hand-wavy and authorial about the fact that the

MC made good friends with a ger prince who was in the right place and time to save him within just two days even though he'd supposedly returned to the capital due to his father's demands

but this really isn't a novel to think too hard about.

I liked the concept of it, but the execution left a lot to be desired.

Just let the man be a hunter!
Honestly, I think this story would've been improved about 1,000x over if it had stuck to it's inherent premise which is that Cheng Duo was a hunter.  Instead, this very quickly discards any idea of Cheng Duo being a hunter, while continually insisting that is what he is and the further it moved away from it's beginning concept the more bored I got.
Some things I actually liked were that Cheng Duo wasn't a transmigrator in the usual sense. He literally found himself moved into a parallel historical world with ger.  He didn't replace anyone's identity or have a family to support him.  He also tells the truth about himself and his identity to the ML when they get together.  Cheng Duo also didn't have the traditional values of the world so he very much treated the ML as an equal despite his identity as a ger.  This actually led to some conflict early on because the ML thought he was leading him on and Cheng Duo had reasons to avoid a relationship.  Other than though, the author could never seem to make up their mind about the world building regarding gers.
On the laundry list of things I didn't like, was how quickly this fell into pretty standard tropes for the "transmigrated into ancient times" trope, such as aforementioned complete discard of his identity as a hunter.  He sells a few pelts and carcasses, then immediately starts getting involved in establishing other businesses that quickly make him very rich, such as creating a brick workshop and the establishing the ubiquitous hotpot shop.
The real killer that shifted the story happened when the ML's identity took center stage. 

Due to the ML being related to a powerful general and the collapse of the current empire, Cheng Duo goes from business man (i refuse to call him a hunter when he wasn't doing any hunting) to legendary general to fucking Emperor

The story went from mildly entertaining to straight up boring.  I literally dragged my heels on finishing for over a week because I wanted to do anything but read the last 10-15 chapters.  I would pick it up and immediately was bored to tears.
Also, ngl, I was deeply disappointed that the discussion about Cheng Duo not being able to have kids did not, in fact, allow me to have a ger story that didn't result in babies.  It was just a set up for ML getting pregnant.  I kind of hate that almost all of these BL ancient times transmigration stories have ger and mpreg.  I want ancient times transmigration stories.  I do not want babies.  At least it only happened at the very end so the entire pregnancy was skipped over and the kid only appeared for two chapters but honestly, I really do hate that happy endings always seem to involve kids that one of the parents resents the other parent giving attention to in some bizarre form of expressing jealousy.  Like, if you want that to be part of it, at least fucking own it and let both parents love the child without being resentful that the other parent shows some love or attention to the child that they didn't give to you. 

I get that the author might've needed to resolve the whole issue of making Cheng Duo emperor thus requiring him to have an heir but again... see my very first line that this story would've been vastly improved if it had stuck to it's title and inherent premise.

It was a fine story but not particularly compelling or engaging.  The summary for it is a bit misleading because I guess, yes, Pei Ce was supposed to be an evil spirit.  But you almost never saw any example of it except the one or two times he protected Jian Shu from threat.  Otherwise he was just a distant, reserved, and kind young man who had a vague but tragic backstory.  The author did a good job conveying the distant apathy or distant kindness of a god who spent most of his time sleeping but it also meant that it was hard to accept certain things about his relationship with Jian Shu.  I know you often have to just not ask "why" these people love each other but Pei Ce never feels like he's in romantic love with Jian Shu.  He's so distant, even when we get things from his own perspective, that it felt a lot like the author deemed this relationship so, and therefore it was.
Perhaps some of the subtlety of this story was lost in translation.  There were also a couple of times where the scene shifted very abruptly from chapter to chapter and it felt we were picking up events in the middle of a scene that didn't happen.  It felt like chapters were missing.  I don't know if that's how the story was written or if that's on the translator but ultimately, it doesn't really matter.  The characterization was pretty weak and the story wasn't super interesting so while it could be a nice, simple palate cleanser, it's very likely a month from now I'm going to look at this title and have no memory of even reading this book.

I think your tolerance for this story is going to entirely depend on whether or not you can forgive the ML, Zhi Xian, for the way he behaves in the very beginning.  It's... not a good look for him.  He also never apologizes for it and the author tries to do some hand-wavy bullshit justification that because it was done in a joking manner, that the ML didn't really mean it and wasn't actually going to do it, that it was it was okay.
It wasn't.  Just to get it on the record, it absolutely was not okay that Zhi Xian

threatened to rape and kill the MC, Tong Xiaosong, in order to get him to comply with his demands... even if those demands were not harmful to him

.  It's further compounded by the fact that Zhi Xian was wearing the face of one of Tong Xiaosong's tormentors when he did it.  Also, for the record, he will never gain his own appearance.  He is forever going to wear the face of the guy who instigated much of the bullying and torment Tong Xiaosong experienced.
Tong Xiaosong is an incredibly pitiful figure at the start of this story.  He's experiencing horrific bullying from his roommates, is being harassed by the most popular boy in school (who's encouraging the bullying with money as a way to manipulate Tong Xiaosong into a relationship with him), and is under a lot of pressure to succeed and do well in school so he doesn't let down his poor family.  It's to the point where the boy is contemplating murder or suicide.  There's some ethically super dubious counseling done after the graphic deaths of his roommates (I always have questions about the psychology standards of China in any story where counseling or psychology is mentioned but I'm pretty damned sure that it's ethically unsound and definitely grounds to lose your license to encourage someone to think that the deaths of their bullies is a thing to celebrate... it encourages the thought process that killing the thing that's harming you is a good idea) and then Zhi Xian starts actively stepping into his life.
Overall, I mostly enjoyed the first half of this story, but I feel like it should've ended way earlier than it did.  The story hit it's climax about halfway through

with the death of Gu Xuan and Zhi Xian gaining a living identity

and the rest of it had no real plot driving it.  None of the things that happened were something that needed to be conveyed.  They were extras and should've been properly annotated as such. 

And, in my opinion, either Ke Lan's death should've been done earlier in the story or just not have happened.  It didn't really have a point where it occurred.  I'm not sure it would've had a point earlier either but at least it wouldn't have felt so unnecessary.

Anyway, the first half was decent, if you can get over some behavioral barriers, but the latter half was literally just extras being billed as part of the main story.

Do you want something sugary?  Do you want something sweet? Do you want to constantly be grinning at your screen like a fool, feeling purified and at peace with the world?
Honestly the tragic backstories, this is the kind of book that can put you in a complete sugar coma and manages to do it entirely without miscommunication.  It's pretty standard in tropes and framework but the relationship is so good and so strong pretty much from the start that you keep coming back for more.  Just a really good, really sweet novel.  I'm stuffed full of diamond dog food. 

Dumb, childish, and codependent MC.  I kind of liked the D/S tones too their relationship but honestly the MC's childish and the gimmicks of the fairy tales only make him more cutesy