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It's a bit of a shame the final arc was rushed, but considering what the artist went through in his personal life, the fact that the fight choreography and art remained so good is already praiseworthy enough.

Despite the aforementioned rush, LotNB remains by far the best murim manhwa.

To go a bit more in depth - It's a revenge story through and through - set in a murim setting, one we've seen in manhwa in countless stories, as this one does not really stray from the well established setting nearly whatsoever, as the one big change to the usual "unorthodox" or "demonic" sects in the world ... is the existence of the mysterious "Silent Night", which acts as the nemesis for the orthodox sects of this world. Little is known about the Silent Night, only that the murim must be protected - and protected it is, by our main protagonist's, Jin Mu-Won's, sect - the Northern Heavenly Sect. As the threat of the Silent Night is squandered by the power of the Northern Heavenly Sect, the Sect Leader, Jin's father, is swiftly betrayed by the murim alliance.

Thus begins the path of bloodshed and vengeance - but what sets LotNB apart from your average murim story, is that Jin is neither infallible, nor omnipotent, nor omniscient and requires genuine help from his allies, who contribute greatly for the story to move forward. Jin meets people and grows, not only physically but also mentally - his worldview is shaped as the story progresses and does not remain stagnant throughout. This experience is welcome and greatly enhances the story, as all the characters that appear serve a greater purpose than be simple mcguffins like 90+% of other manhwa.

The fight choreography had me reading very slowly, as each page was so wondrously drawn that one can't help but get lost at how wonderful it is. The beginning parts of the story have quite rocky art, as it seemed that the artist was only starting to find his groove, but it later develops into stunning page after page.

Strong 9/10

Self indulgent and uninspiring, that's the words I'd use to describe this manhwa.

The author gives off a vibe of being completely clueless about any topic they write about. All of season 1 felt like a waste of time, as outside of cheap plays on emotion, the author could not for the life of theirs write anything even remotely close to a good depiction of acting. Whenever there is any acting being done, it feels like we're reading the aftermath of a scene, rather than the process of creating one.

That's a symptom of another problem, though, which is that the main character is simply too ... perfect. Everything he does is simply flawless and without mistakes, which is the aforementioned self indulgence that this manhwa suffers from. Him being too perfect means there is no room for error and thus, no introspection, or any kind of analysis of what a good scene should look like, how and why the characters should act a certain way, etc. and worst of all, no room for growth, as there is nothing for the main character to grow from.

All the characters have a degree of personality, but it always feels like it acts as a tactic to elevate the main character even higher up. Even if another character gets more screen time, it gives off the feeling that it's very filler like, or if the character gets their own mini arc/backstory, it always comes off as very barren and stripped off any purpose and lacking any detail. Usually in a story, when the focus is switched to another character facing an issue, it serves as a learning lesson for the main character and/or as an introduction of a new key character, but if the main character is perfect, it only ends up as a waste of time as we neither get the payoff of the main character growing as a person, nor do we get a new character introduced into the main cast, as the characters in this manhwa come and go and usually never come back and if they do come back, they do so for a few short scenes at most.

Even recurring characters such as the girl actress who acted with Jang in that one movie at the start, even though she's one of the recurring characters, she barely gets any screen time, and except for one or two times, it is inconsequential to the overarching plot. Obviously, whenever she does something even remotely important for the plot like forgetting her lines during a play, it's to once again show how perfect Jang Youngkuk, the main character is, when he decides to enter the stage and ad lib to cover for her mistake.

On a scale of 1 to 10, this series deserves no more than a 4. The author is wasting their potential away, as there are flashes of good writing in their work, but they are way out of their depth with a story about acting, as they are extremely uninformed in the topic and anything that gets explained in the story shows a very surface level understanding of acting and the industry as a whole.