It is emphasised on the story that the gap within martial realms is very large, meaning the mc has to remain at them for a while to make sense, tbh for me I loved it, I thought the author managed to keep it pretty fresh regarding both the martial arts and techniques, which is often based on real world principles and science, that the mc uses as well as using exciting settings for the mc to grow. it’s not necessarily slow paced later on but the mc makes a lot of progress a lot quicker in the first few hundred chapters, I’d argue I actually felt the novel got better as I read more, so I’d give it a try, probably my favourite novel I’ve read, or maybe that’s just recency bias.