Walking the Ten Thousand Daos万道长途

Stopped at 170+ chapters.
I don't really recommend if you are looking for a cultivation novel.
The novel as an idea is good, but it's execution is done very poorly. Like the cultivation systems. The novel has multiple of them that are somewhat equal. But when it comes to description, it's a total mess. The whole thing is just old Chinese understanding of the world. Which is good for them at the time but when we read it now it's obviously nonsense. So it's really hard to follow when the author uses these information as the cultivation system. So although the world building is good and the characters are somewhat good, the cultivation system is a turn of. Second thing that bothers me is the mc. He is a time traveller, and his first four years in that world were full of hard labour and eating the worst food. He encounter some things that make him be cautious then somewhat ruthless. After that he starts cultivating and meets new people and new experiences. While not all people he met were unreasonable, few were kind. Most were ruthless and cruel people. Then suddenly the mc decides that his personal dao and dao heart is going to be upright and righteousness. And he started helping every needing person in his way and offending a lot of people. I will not say more, but it was ridiculous. He says that he follows the Heavenly dao and natural order and acknowledge that murder and slaughter is a part of that natural order, yet he still interfere to save people if he ever sees someone he doesn't know in trouble. Idm if the mc is kind, but i can't read a novel were he takes righteousness as his dao. Because it's very boring and predictable. The hero sees injustice > the hero's apparent strength is not enough but still interfere > the hero turn the table and against all odds he achieve victory > the hero then save the day and refuses to take any reward because he doesn't do it for any return and he treats everyone as equals because he is very, very humble. Really doesn't recommend if what you're here for is a cultivation novel. It's more like an exorcism novel with some cultivation concepts as a secondary.

Edit: i forgot to mention the mc's golden finger. And there's a reason for that. First we can all agree that a golden finger doesn't have to be the ultimate treasure in the universe and can lose its effect at a certain realm. That's the case with this one. But what's unacceptable is that the author reveals that fact very early on. He mentioned the realm limit before the mc even entered the first realm and that it was nothing special. And there's a reason i forgot to mention the golden finger, is that it actually has no use, or the mc ignore to use it, except for the first few chapters when it helped him survive.

I am gonna dive in, i am getting the feeling that this is a deep, intricate and complex story from the comments and reviews below, which honestly is what i am looking for right now, i have been reading mostly fast food for half a year now and i am very tired of them, Pls give me recommendations for any deep novels you know, they are hard to find this days.

This is a novel about exploration, about seeing all types of Dao. That being the Human Dao and their arrogance/conquering (actually very interesting and not as 1 dimensional as l worded it), the Shaman Dao(MCs starting Dao) and their penchant for balance, or the Dao of Reason, etc. And the clashes of these ideologies you get to see.
The riddles the high level cultivators spew (mostly human and shaman) is astronomical. The amount of poems and ancient history they'll throw is honestly impressive.
The Focal Point of this novel is the differing cultures.
They are all unique and interesting (the best i could word it okay).

I wanna go on a lil rant of how cool/scary some of the Buddhist characters are. Slight spoilers.



5/5 enough said. Only downsides to me is the slow start and info dumps. I'll say it truly gets peak at around chapter 200, it isn't bad before then but you know... it gets better.
Just like Rl only got really peak around chapter 900.

Without a proper review this novel can't be judged by us mere mortals, anyone up for poison testing

Half the text, maybe more, is filled with descriptions of rituals and stories from the book's world (possibly inspired by ancient China). I found the novel extremely boring.

This is gold, Rank B

You can read it without fear, the author's other work is also very interesting, although I personally don't like it as much.

a man of Chaos dao