Wow, I don't know how to review this.

The good:

1) Deng Lun and Yang Zi's chemistry. The lighthearted scenes between the two of them were the BEST thing about this show and they were sooo fun. I wish this show had been a twenty episode modern romance, not this long and dragged out mess.

Xufeng reminds me a bit of the main guy lead from What's Wrong with Secretary Kim. I loved it when Xufeng was being tsundere or jealous, it was so funny. The scenes where he grieves for Jinmi, especially near the end, were also amazing.

2) Luo Yunxi and what he did with his role. He was SO good. I'm totally going to watch the upcoming drama, Immortality, coz of him.

He played this ambiguous antagonist figure. He starts out as a quiet, gentle and kind person, who is picked upon constantly by the cruel Empress, causing him to be isolated, without many peers or connections. It makes him very lonely. He immediately falls for Jinmi, who is lively and kind to him.

The episode where the Empress then kills his birth mother before him was amazing. Some wonderful acting there. I felt for him when he debased himself and begged on his knees. That was the turning point in his arc, where he got darker and darker.

I really hated the Emperor and Empress that I didn't even care that he was turning immoral. I was just so glad that the Emperor and Empress got their comeuppance.

Luo Yunxi was able to convey Runyu's complex motivations, making you both sympathize with him, while also feeling more and more uncomfortable with what he does. It was really sad that he was still so lonely all the way at the end.

The bad:

1) The pacing. It was so uneven. This show started off really strong in the first few episodes, and it's quite fun to watch, but then it lags, and around episode 30, it gets so slow that I put it on 1.5x speed, and then in the end I ended up skipping all the way to episode 45, which is when the good stuff happens. Then I skipped all the way to the last three episodes. This leads to my second point:

2) Overly repetitive plot points. You know, you can only make a character die and revive ONCE to make dying have an effect. In this show, characters die and come to life all over the place. It just loses any emotional weight. What's the point? I barely feel anything when I see a character die. I'm just waiting for them to come back to life again.

This was not the only repetitive plot point. Jinmi and Xufeng's romance just about made me want to bash my head into the wall to end it. Their love story basically goes like this: they grow close together, Jinmi realizes she can't be with him due to various reasons and draws back, Xufeng chases after her, they get close together, Jinmi realizes she can't be with him... You get the gist. I literally exclaimed, 'Are you kidding me?!' when I skipped to episode 60, and they were STILL DOING THIS. After Jinmi and Xufeng both died and revived, after 60 episodes, they are still at this hot-and-cold, two-steps-forward, one-step-back mess. Many of the scenes could have been cut, many of the mini arcs could have been more succinct. A lot of the characters have repetitive plot arcs.

3) Evil characters who are evil for the sake of being evil. The Empress' arc was pretty much just her being progressively more and more evil until she finally gets her comeuppance at episode 40. FORTY. And then she's still around for convenient deus ex machina reasons. Ugh.

My overall opinion: could have been better. Other shows did it better.