The Dao of Magic

Synopsis - A genius cultivator is sent to another world and has to start from scratch.

Style - The story is in first person limited, but later has third person limited for view changes. The world building is done a bit at a time as the Cultivator (MC) seeks out, discovers, and processes information.

Story - There are some overdone tropes here and there, but they're usually lampshaded or have enough of a twist to still be interesting. We've had reincarnation, a dungeon crawl, talking to trees, and now a master/student arc.

Characters - The Cultivator (does he have a name? I can't remember) is a bit of a lazy cynical jerk, but at least he tries to take responsibility for his actions. His thought process goes something like: "Did I just save a baby bunny form her own mother? Oops. Might as well teach her to cultivate."

Spelling and Grammar - Only a few small typos per chapter. Grammar is of similarly high quality.

Originally found this story while looking for others. The title drew me in, but the unique approach to cultivating versus traditional cultivator stories. It takes modern day ideas and concepts, such as computing, and applies it to culvitating producing an original story not found elsewhere.

The characters are not dull, and all seem to have their own unique characters.

No clue where the story is going, but that just makes reading it more fun.

Spoiler-Free Review (as of ch. 29)

The greatest strength of this novel is in the way the author is able to quickly combine storytelling with worldbuilding and provide an enjoyable info-dump free read (or at least 'info-dumps' don't feel like one). It helps that while the world and mechanics are solidly laid out, the protagonist learns about both alongside the reader using a systematic sceintific (somewhat) approach. No real issues with the grammar.

Some issues:

Some of the (probably important) side characters lack development, and the POV changes aren't very smooth. Also, while the characters themselves have distinct enough characteristics, the snippets in some POV's don't seem to reflect them very well.

Having read the first 27 chapters, I feel reasonably confident I have a good sense of the story. It's excellent.

Update: After 90 chapters, I confirm my initial positive assessment.

The main character has a wry sense of humour, the Qi cultivation system is fascinating, the plot has unpredictable turns, and the writing is competent with fewer syntactic solecisms than one has become accustomed to encountering. That ticks all my boxes.

My compliments to the author. You are not merely a sentence-farmer, you are a story-teller!

Thousand year old cultivater is about to breakthrough to the immortal plane instead some one bitch slaps him to a world man and he has to start all over as of chapter 9 he just found a dungeon  we don't know much yet.    But it has one thing no other cultivation story has.             BUNNIE CULTIVATIER. That's right a pet bunny that could knock a mortal head clean off(?please do this author?) .   Too soon to know how the story will go but I like what I see so far. Also bunny.....

~half of a full score for half of a decent story~

Overall/story:
Its a pretty decent story until somewhere midway when its start trying too hard to be funny, but instaid becomes childish and chaotic.
The story starts making less sense and becomes more of a comedy sketch with no plot, and the humor isn't even that great and just starts to be an annoying mess.
Somewhere midway he proclaims the need to start seriously teaching his disciples but instaid it turns childish instaid and his 'teaching' becomes a library-jade with all the answers of life the disciples need.

Characters:
The MC was great in the beginning, with a semi serious mindset trying to find something to do in his new life, takes on disciples and starts teaching them about his power and energy use.
The disciples, a well varied bunch of youngsters with a mutlitude of personalities and backgrounds, some of which get a little bit of story time explaining their background but is mostly glossed over.
The love interest, she was interesting at the start but then turned into a clone of the MC with a slightly different personality.

Grammar:
Like most stories, theres a few mistakes no big deal you can auto-read over it mostly.

If this were a rating with accuracy, this story would be given a rating somewhere between 3.5/5 and 4/5. Some parts even call for 4.5/5. But seeing as writings are considered mangled dumpster trash if they get below a 4.7, I'm giving this one a 5. It's not really unwarranted.

This is obviously a story that has some planning behind it, and it's definitely welcomed in a genre rife with unplanned additions and last minute ideas that get retconned 500 chapters later. It definitely feels as though Alkaliho has put in some love into this story, and it shows. I can tell when Mr Alkaliho was sad, angry, and bored when writing this, and these emotions are gathered well into the stories characters, giving life to the story that some lack.

The world building that has been shown so far is the only thing that is lacking so far, but again, in a genre of garbled nonsense where scope is far off in the distance, Alkaliho still manages to clutch a B- while some tales don't event warrant a place on the scale table. This score also has a very good chance of improving as I believe this will change as the author continues.

My only thoughts so far are that the author needs to hurry the hell up, because I need more to read.

Thanks for the good read, and much love.

P.S. Dont rush, rushing leads to bad.

No mangled writting: 1 point

Decently believable characters: 1 point

Working background system (magic&cultivation): 1 point

Good balance between story, slice of life and action: 1 point

Nice chap release rate: 1 point

5/5

As for as I can tell from the 19 pages currently posted, it is a promising start to a great and unique cultivation story. It so far has gone in a direction different than other cultivation novels, and could lead to a promising future. The quality of writing is superb, allowing the reader to be drawn into the world the author paints.

I like this story, mc, side characters, the way author describe battles, everything.