I must confess that I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Eastern Fantasy mechanics, but I suppose I'm slowly getting the gist of them. Regardless, it seems you have quite a good iteration of the genre here from what's available of your story! Here are my notes:~There are some immediate mechanical errors, but they don't really affect comprehension. Mainly, some punctuation (like in dialogue tags and run-on sentences) and verb tenses are off, and the characters' inner thoughts kind of switch the POV as they're not separated by quotation marks or another kind of punctuation. The latter issue is probably the most jarring. Some sentences are cut off in the middle by periods as well.~The descriptions and similes are on-point! They elevate some of the exposition scenes lots! The style is nestled between being simple and more complicated, and I really enjoy that as well.~I started reading this extremely late at night and forgot to comment much, but I also like the bits of humor interjected by the MC. He's a surprisingly wise person with a fixed set of principles that dictate his actions. I never found myself irritated with him, and his train of thought generally made sense.~This might be a genre thing, but it does feel like a lot of information is dropped close together and described in a very mechanical way without a lot of flow/emotion. Conversely, this is all explained quite well and isn't confusing to the reader, so I suppose it just needs balance. There's a lot of world-building done, and the mechanics feel solid as a whole with the whole flower cultivation concept being rather interesting. (In fact, I'm tempted to say this is one of the more intricate worlds I've read about on this site so far.)~As such, the pace lags quite a bit at times, especially when there's the issue in the bar. A bunch of information is dropped here and dissipates the tension from the cliffhanger in the previous chapter. (The mechanic itself that's used--of having the characters explain the world to someone else/a child--is, however, a good one! I love Huang Yin's reactions.) Another time the story is noticeably slow is when Chin Sha is described, and Morgiana's dialogue basically summarizes everything said in the descriptions in a more dynamic way.~However, since it is extremely early in the story, this isn't as big of an issue as if, say, I read through 100 chapters and had the same impression. You're taking time to build the characters and settings, so it does work!~On that topic, Morgiana is super cool! She falls and keeps on standing up for herself! (She upset me for a moment when she challenged Chin Sha, but I quickly understood where she was coming from.)~All the characters have complex motivations, and I like reading about them in detail. A lot of them seem two-faced in a sense, so I think that's interesting for the conflict.~Be wary of pronouns. When in doubt, it's best just to use someone's name to not cause confusion as sometimes, during the transitions between chapters, you don't specify that it's Xu An's thoughts. This would be fine in 3rd POV limited, but this is omniscient.~I love the showdown in the pub! I can feel the urgency and emotions of the characters during this moment, especially when Xu An prevents Morgiana from being punched.~I also think the somewhat spotty memories are interesting, and they really play into how Xu An acts. The parallels between his lives are cool!Overall, this story has a lot more insightful bits than I would have expected, and I think you've got a lot of creativity and good word choices in your writing style. It has an interesting premise and characters as well! Good luck with writing this novel!! ? (4.6/5.0)
