I’ve had a copy of the first volume of Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou‘s The Husky & His White Cat Shizun for a couple of years. I purchased it. I then borrowed the second volume from the local library.
Cruel tyrant Taxian-jun killed his way to the throne and now reigns as the first ever emperor of the mortal realm. Yet somehow, he is unsatisfied. Left cold and bereft, abandoned by all he held dear, he takes his own life…only to be reborn anew.
Awakening in the body of his younger self–Mo Ran, a disciple of the cultivation sect Sisheng Peak–he discovers the chance to relive his life. This time, he vows to attain the gratification that once eluded him: all who defied him will fall, and never again will they treat him like a dog. His greatest fury is reserved for Chu Wanning, the coldly beautiful and aloofly catlike cultivation teacher who betrayed and thwarted Mo Ran time and again in their last life.
Yet as Mo Ran shamelessly pursues his own goals in this life he thought lost, he begins to wonder if there might be more to his teacher–and his own feelings–than he ever realized.
I found the first volume of this slow, and it didn’t really catch my attention. I think mostly because it’s about the characters when they are practically children and…well, meh. I’m just super interested in the goings-on of young teens in training. I mean, yes, this series seems to do some really questionable things with characters’ ages. So, it’s never safe to take a character at their given age at any one point in the story. So maybe it’s not entirely accurate to say it’s about children, but this first volume felt like it was.
And yes, to address the ‘questionableness,’ there are definitely adult ‘impure thoughts’ about people who are too young at any given point. But with the twisty, time and timeline-skipping plot, it goes in every mutual direction. So it becomes easy enough to ignore (or forget) current ages and set the problems aside.
But still, I was a bit bored by the first volume. However, people like the series so very much, and I did like the characters. Plus, with 11 books, there is plenty of room for it to pick up. So, I moved on to book two.
Book two, I found a lot more engaging. It’s still about characters who are child-aged (some have gotten a little older and some much younger, but the two main ones have adult reasoning, no matter what age their bodies are at). However, the plot thickened and got more interesting. More importantly, I’ve become attached to Mo Ran and Chu Wanning.
The two couldn’t communicate their way out of a paper bag, and it’s kind of frustrating. They’re both kind of dumb, Mo Ran especially. But they’ve endeared themselves to me, and I’m interested in seeing them succeed, finding out who the villain is—I have a guess—and what their plan is.
Unfortunately, my library only has the first two books, and as I’m trying to clear shelf space, I can’t see myself buying the next 9 books in the series at the moment. So, I won’t be continuing at this point in time. But if I can borrow any more of the series somewhere, I’ll more than happily read it.
