People always shamelessly want to put boys and girls into ML's harem (what is he, the emperor?) and ML is constantly angery about it and will take this as offence that warrants that opponent's fall or bankcruptcy. Sure... he's powerful. but even mountains can collapse with hundred strikes. You said you want to protect your family, why are you killing left and right? Later, MC worries they are too much and has many harmful karma, ML begins to do charity, but the revenges doesn't stop. It's so brainless. No one has restraint or logic or morals. The more ML's power is explained, the more I don't believe it. Why would ex-soldiers be intimidated by him? or respect him? It's not like he's a general.

Don't get me started on the claim that before rebirth ML loves MC soooooo much. That ML, who hid everything from MC, never went to see MC, never talked to him face to face, doesn't take care of MC's food or wellbeing when pregnant, lets him go through dangerous childbirth alone/with maids who doesn't care about his life or death, doesn't expel maids who bully him and his kids in a dillipidated house, LOVES MC.

And he loves MC simply because they got married and did the do.

That ML who loves MC very very much, makes MC pregnant again without consulting MC, just cause he wants to see the baby grow under his watch, since you know.... he didn't get to do that with first kid. And why didn't he get to see his first baby grow up from embryo to birth to little lad? hm??

Then MC is like, I didn't know you loved me that much..... I didn't know you gave me sleeping incense and air conditioning, I only knew I never see you when I need you and I can count our meeting with one hand in all those 10 years. I only knew I almost died when giving birth and was expelled with no one to turn to... feeling hopeless in a yard outside with maids who don't respect me or my child and ab*ses my child behind my back... I didn't know you were 'letting' me leak business to my family, I only knew your family finally kills me for giving those shops to my family when they are in fact working with each other just to exploit me.....I'm so sorry, I didn't know just how much you love me! *cries and hugs*

..... make better excuses, or just admit this guy doesn't care about him before rebirth. Emotional neglect is ab*se. It's not like he's mafia or undercover agent, he doesn't need to never see MC at all. He can show he cares for MC or protects MC even as a weakling.

What made me stop reading is combination of this all and how author sets up the plots and characters simply to make MC and ML justified to kill people. ML (and MC) takes recipes made from other people that would've brought them fame and wealth. But since MC (and ML) makes the cakes first, THEIR shop now gets monopoly. MC does it in slightly moderate way (takes recipes from 5 years later, obscure makers and limits cakes made everyday), ML takes a recipe from a big pastry family and within 2 years of its popularisation.... but still it's theft, they came up with it first and now the original makers can't even credit themselves for their research and work.

I feel iffy about morals lesson from a thief. Some daoists remarked that if MC takes what should rightly belong to someone else, heaven might expel him from this timeline, that's fair. After ML robs a recipe and got found by the original makers, the pastry makers confront MC. Seeing this, the daoists decide MC can't stay in this timeline because he'll ruin the balance of universe sooner or later. That's fair. They did let him go before because he was pregnant which is sign heaven accepts him in this timeline, but acted later because of the confrontation with the pastry maker. But while they had mercy on the pregnant MC, ML wanted to hunt them down and make them pay for a while before MC stops him.

First revenge was justified. Second arc, they just go overboard. They do anything they like, no one can tell them they're wrong. Even the original makers can't prove that they're in the right and they don't get to prove, because MC has an accident because of them and ML is now justified to kill their whole family. So what started as their wrongdoing is used as a plot just to make it okay to revenge the daoists (who are just doing their jobs) and the pastry makers (who makes cakes from generations to generations and comes up with a new cake with their family's secret skills) !

MC was pregnant from c 173 till c 260 with his second child.

ML is also reincarnated after getting news of monks stealing his pregnant wifey (husband), he remembered everything in the other world where his wife and child got killed by his stepmother and Mc's father

In January of the fifth year of Hao, Pei Cheng, the male wife of Jiang Second Master, and Jiang Yanzhi, the eldest son of Jiang Second Master, both died of natural disaster and their bodies were nowhere to be found.

what happened to their bodies omg wasn't MC just sick??? Idek maybe mtl didn't convey it right in the later chapters