Xiao Ruofeng should have been the main character

Let me start this off by saying never in my life have I watched any drama at x2 speed and never have I skipped and skimmed so many scenes in a chinese drama. Ever since the episode 20-ish mark, I have been skimming through the series and only watching scenes where none of the FL are involved and where the ML scenes are kept to a minimum. This was how absolutely unwatchable this series is.

Where to begin? The casting, I already had doubts when I saw the posters and saw some clips of the bts. But that aside, whoever wrote the script for the main characters managed to turn the respectable and lovable powerful senior characters of Blood of Youth into insufferable, annoying, arrogant people in Dashing Youth. I don't even know how they became the people they were in The Blood of Youth (alright maybe except for Sikong Changfeng in the last scene of the last episode.)

The romance. Why the hell on earth was it necessary? It was cringey and annoying and there was zero chemistry between the actors. The romance plots felt so extremely forced and the moment they became the focus for the rest of the series, I lost all interest for this drama. The reason I enjoyed and loved blood of youth so much was because how subtle the romance was. This show was the complete opposite, they tried to push any and all romance scenes (and that's three romance storylines mind you) to the viewer at every single chance they get. At least pick one. Or none.

The plot. There is no sense of pacing in this drama. First half of the drama was so slow with side plots that added absolutely nothing to the main plot (which honestly no one even knows what the plot is because that's how convoluted this drama is). But the second half was so extremely rushed. Here's what it feels like watching this drama: it seems like they hired one screenwriter for the first half who thought this drama would have 80 episodes instead of 40. Then fired this screenwriter and hired a new one who realised there's only 40 episodes and they need to rush every other political plotline into the remaining 20 eps. That was what it felt like watching this. What was the whole point of some of the side plots in the first half? They should have foreshadowed more of the political intrigue from the start, like what blood of youth did.

Side characters. The only thing that pushed me through this series was watching Bai Shu as Xiao Ruofeng. That was all. I was only watching his scenes for the last 10 episodes (and let me tell you how disappointedly few scenes he had, he was not even in any of the final fights. Guess what? Because they had to rush to complete the story in the last 20 episodes, so many of his scenes were watered down to fade to black narration — which ironically was actually more entertaining than the actual story itself).

They introduced us to a whole cast of characters the first half of the drama and by the second half, 80% of those characters will never be seen again. Which is one of the saddest thing about this drama because they were all enjoyable characters and was what made the drama enjoyable at first (since the ML was so irritating). I must add that it's honestly such a pity that we never got to see the interaction between the first disciple and the rest of Mr. Li's disciples.

Speaking of Mr Li. He was one of the few characters I really enjoyed too. It's such a pity too that they had to turn him young for no apparent reason to the plot, and then he completely disappeared so I don't really get the whole point of his character. One thing that annoyed me though — and this has to do with the script again — was how Mr Li seems to care so much for Baili Dongjun compared to his other seven pupils that he had spent so much more time with. Now that really annoyed me. One thing I did enjoy was the mentor-pupil relationship we saw in Blood of Youth and they could have had so much potential here but the scriptwriters sunk that boat before it even sailed.

Back to the casting. I will say, I found the casting for all the eight young masters of Beili to be really good casting. That, I think, goes without saying. So I want to turn my attention to the casting for Su Muyu and Jin Xian, now I think the casting for these two characters were phenomenal. The actors managed to portray the same essence of the characters in a really similar fashion to the actors who played them in Blood of Youth.

There's probably a lot more I wanted to say but I'm done with this drama. In summary, Liu Yue, Mo Xiao Hei, and Lei Mengsha deserved better. And Xiao Ruofeng deserved the world.

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