The Second Son of the Dancheon Sword Clan Prepared for Regression

I think this is a 3.5/5 but am giving it a 4/5 due to rating inflation. By my standard, 3.5/5 means good with its fair share of flaws. This novel is a Murim regression (AKA, one of the most common sub-genre) and with that generic premise comes several clichés: MC is a bastard of a prestigious clan, he is looked down upon by his clan, he has a sibling who is treated much better, mc's own talent is (originally) mediocre, MC regresses and has a chance to rise to prominence. But despite the ... more>> clichés, this novel is undoubtedly a tier above the dozens of other murim regression slop. For one, MC was aware that he would regress from the start, so he had the opportunity to spend the next several years preparing for his regressions. I like this approach since I hate how other mc's who regress randomly remember how every fortuitous encounter is. Image if you went back 10 years in the past: besides some generic stuff like buying bitcoin, what else would the average Joe be able to do to climb the ladder? But if you do know that you're going to regress, you'd surely prepare meticulously to ensure that you can take maximum advantage of your future knowledge. From there, mc's personality is also pretty interesting. You get a sense of what mc's 1st life was like and why he is working so hard toward his goal. MC also gets pretty strong from the get go, so you might like it if you dislike weak protagonists. Additionally, MC doesn't try too hard to hide his capabilities (which is somewhat necessary for his goal). Finally, there seem to be no annoying romantic interests (so far). It's a pretty solid read, but the reason I can't give it a rating higher than 3.5/5 is because it has its fair share of cliches. And my biggest grip by far would have to be the 500-1000 word exposition dump at the start of every chapter. For instance, a bad guy is about to swing his sword at the MC and the chapter ends before the bad guy can hit MC. The next chapter, instead of resuming where it left of, goes on to explain how some random sage thought that it would be epic if a body was impervious to swords. After explaining how the sage came to that realization and actually created the technique, the novel will then explain why the art technique is so hard to master. Then it will explain how MC managed to master it. Finally, the novel will resume where the previous chapter left off. More often than not, the exposition dump is something the readers already knew, so it's like the author wants to beat this one point into us through 3 exposition dumps that explain the exact same thing. It's honestly gotten to the point that I can spik the 1st 1/3 of certain chapters without an effect to my understanding. The best explanation I can think of is to meet a word count. This flaw is very annoying, but it might also just be me. If you can overlook that flaw, this story would be a legitimate 4/5 (I can't give it any higher because it is still fundamentally generic) I feel like this is the type of novel you can determine if you like or dislike after reading the first 5 chapters, so try to do that if you're on the fence. Overall, this novel has jefffffffffffffff's seal of approval. <<less