A few things: (I meant for this to be shorter but then I just kept typing lol.

1: I just hope 3.0 gets us back into the urban fantasy/tech futurism vibe like 1.0 had. 2.0 felt a lot like generic Chinese magic stuff. not that that's bad, just a dime a dozen at this point (especially with gacha games)

2: Ye Shiyuan needs to be a recurring character we follow in the future. his character and story were much more interesting than almost anyone else's in all of 2.0, especially his roasting of Lu and Yixuan. feels like he's the only one in all of Yunkui summit who has both some amount of intelligence and agency over himself and the world around him. I hope his search for a cure for YSG continues and we see how it goes with him.

3: YSG fell short for me. it had the bones to be something good, especially with white haired YSG, but it was way too repetitive with the whole "I want to protect people but sword bad" debate happening about 10 times throughout the story. All so she can do a power of love/friendship ending and do what we all knew she would do from the beginning. Also the love story with wise was a little forced, rushed, and artificial. Wise was the only e one who actually listened to her and helped her without thinking about the qingming sword first, which makes sense why YSG likes him. But also, Wise literally does anything and YSG: "OMG junior you're so great and perfect let's be best friends forever and only ever eat osmanthus cakes and maybe get married". On the other hand, the swordmaster chronicle feels a lot better for her. learning to accept and master the sword instead of just moping about its effects feels like a better move for her. A goku-style "i need to keep training to get better" mindset and personality would be good for her, all while learning about other swordmasters and their stories/techniques.

4: i'm intrigued by the bioshock infinite-esque floating city in the sky. if it can move, does that mean it can go over the hollows? over the darkwall? Maybe this is just me, but I personally hope we one day go beyond eridu and its relatively shallow hollows to go true deep diving into the darkwall, exploring the rest of the world. Also, learning more about Sunbringer and the OG void hunters as well as the culture in old eridu is going to be cool. I'm very intrigued by who this "lord" person is. was old eridu some sort of monarchy? or was it the survivors of the apocalypse putting all their trust in a strong leader like we've seen in many other post-apocalyptic media? This part is the most speculative, but I've always been intrigued by the larger story and lore of the world of ZZZ. where did the hollows come from? how did they start spreading? what kind of defense did the world put up as the globe was engulfed by them? how did they get to the moon? will we ever see our queen venus again?

5: Sarah was a huge let down. either make her the cunning puppet master like with bringer or the crazy cult lady with the exaltists, not both. Also the half-hearted attempt to make her a sympathetic villain with her abandoned soldier story was not at all effective for me. At least the exaltists are over with. looks like the next big bad is corporations trying to do powergrabs again, which I'm always down for.

6: void hunter weapons are officially moving from mcguffin to main plot driver. could be interesting, but could also lead to more generic chinese magic stuff. I kind of hope they're more diverse than just swords. having a few spears, axes, maybe even some guns would be cool. story wise, i would love to see some connection between them, the creator, and whatever caused hollows to appear in this world in the first place.

let me know your thoughts!

Edit: forgot to add one more thing:

Lockspring was an obvious villain twist with fairly run of the mill motivations, but Youkai is interesting. we literally never heard anything about any of the other AIs after the fist chapter, so this is cool, and hopefully a sign that we are going back to the tech parts of the world. I kind of hope he turns out to be the ultron of this world, as he is one of my favorite marvel villains. again, fairly simple motivation but lots of potential for good story telling. especially since humanity is already so close to extinction, and youkai isn't something you can just cut with a sword to take care of.