I just completed watching this drama. I first attracted to watch this series because I saw the ending clip in youtube. So, I thought to myself ‘wow another drama with a tragic ending. I need to watch this. This is exactly my type of drama.’ Then, I started watching it till episodes 11. At that point, I try to grab the ideas about the stories, the plots, each characters, the relationships between characters etc. I then keep watching until episodes 15, and I almost dropped the drama though. Yes, I almost did.

Imo, the first 15 episodes is a real struggle to watch because the paced is really slow. The story line focusing on the friendships that was form by respective characters especially between Zhousheng Chen and Shiyi. From how they started off as a master and disciple, and then developed feelings towards each other (although they never confessed their feelings to each other). Along with that, the story lines goes to political feuds, competition for powers, wars, etc. Up until episodes 15, there’s not much notable scenes worth mentioning.

However, the storyline started to become interesting in the middle of episodes 15. From that point, we can see the flow of the story and the tragic events that started to build up and emerges. Until the finale episodes, I do find myself enjoying the series. I able to shed some tears here and there, and my heart aches seeing all the innocence lives were taken away because of the stupidity of the emperor, the greedy empress and obsessive young guy.

Here’s some problems that I have about the drama. The storyline though is not exceeding my expectation. There’s so many loopholes and questions to ponder. There’s not much character development too. I wonder why the monk didn’t asked for help from his father when Zhousheng Chen was caught and accused for doing rebel. I expect him to do something worth mentioning because he was the closest one to Zhousheng Chen. Like, he literally did nothing tho other than being a monk. Probably, that’s how they wanted to end the story because after all, the drama only have 24 episodes.

I would like to give applause tho to the production team. I love the cinematography, it’s beautiful and spectacular to watch. They chose the dramatic cool kind of color in entire series which I find really mesmerising. I like the OSTs, it’s good and it’s nice to listen to. The acting is great esp Bai Lu. For someone who keep laughing during off set, I wonder how she can pull off such an agony and grief emotions in her acting. This is my first time tho watching these two main leads on my screen. They did amazing job in here.

All in all, this is a good drama. But, I probably won’t consider watching it again in the future except some scenes (sad scene specifically).