This is a book that I enjoyed a lot, but I also recognise that there were some serious flaws that I might judge much more harshly were I not so fascinated by regression as a concept.
Regarding that regression concept, there's not much originality here. It's the story of a sect master at the peak of his powers being sent back 10,000 years to get another chance to overcome the great evil destroying his world. Some of the minor details might be different, but ultimately it's a familiar premise that plays out in a familiar way.
However, there are some minor tweaks to the formula that did manage to capture my interest:
1. Character-focused storytelling - This genre of novels has a tendency to focus on its core concept over all else, and a usual weakness is a lack of character work. Authors tend to want to explore the concept of regression and world-building more than to focus on characters. Here, the author has taken an opposite approach, pushing some of those elements backwards in favour of focusing on characters first. The protagonist was at the end of an extremely long life when he regressed, and his greatest regret was having squandered his opportunity to enjoy his family and friends in favour of pursuing the path of cultivation. Now that he is back, he is determined to rectify that, and this book focuses on him trying to breathe life back into the damaged relationships he has with his three wives, his many children, and his grandchildren. Some other reviewers have marked this down as a negative for this story, saying it distracted from the overall goal of him regressing in the first place. I disagree, thinking it is instead a fundamental strength of the story, as it not only builds a cast of well-developed characters to care about, but also strengthens the foundations of the sect he is building and improves his position to face the threat, which is still thousands of years off at this point.
2. Not hiding his regression - This was another thing I really enjoyed about this book. So many stories like this have the regressor hide his knowledge/advanced skills from his allies for no reason I can determine (especially when it is so easy to prove). Here, the protagonist doesn't do this. He is honest with everyone he cares about regarding his situation, and it removed so much potentially forced drama that it was a breath of fresh air.
However, as much as I enjoyed those elements, I can't overlook the flaws in this book, so here are some things that I didn't enjoy:
1. Lack of description - This was by far my biggest criticism of this work, and actually was something that almost made me put the book down. This book lacks almost any kind of descriptive writing whatsoever. There are no descriptions of character appearances, of settings, of actions... of any kind really. The prologue was basically a list of names, dialogue between faceless characters, a huge amount of exposition, and nothing else. It was impossible to get invested in anything that was happening because I could barely form any image at all in my mind of what was happening. Were it not for the focus on characters once the main chapters began, I don't think I'd have made it far into this book at all.
2. Lack of progression - This book introduces you to a lot of characters, a lot of concepts, and starts you down the path of a lot of story threads. However, you don't travel very far down the path of those story threads throughout the course of this book. There aren't any completed arcs in this novel, instead just a long string of introductions that simply tread water until the story comes to a close. As much as I enjoyed this book, and I genuinely don't think this is the biggest issue in the novel, I do think this is the issue that could ruin the series if the author isn't careful.
3. The book ends abruptly - I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing this book was part of a web series originally. I only say that because this story doesn't really seem to know where to end; it just stops. This is a phenomenon I have encountered a lot with novels adapted from web novels, where a book is just a collection of chapters lifted from a larger work rather than something with a beginning, middle, and end of its own.
CONCLUSION
Overall, this is a book with some objectively frustrating elements, but also a lot to like for fans of the genre. I'm going to rate it 4 stars as the level of enjoyment I got from the book left me unable to lower the score to 3 stars after finishing it. However, I fully understand how someone who is not very invested in regression stories in general and who doesn't share my interest in character-focused storytelling might want to rate this one much lower.
I am cautiously optimistic about this series, though, as I think this book lays a good foundation for future books to come.