The drama was extremely addictive with tons of positives.

The first 15 or so episodes were amazing. FL falls victim to her husband's heartless plot to kill her because his powerful lover ordered him to. She feels betrayed, confused, and heartbroken. Shortly thereafter, she assumes the identity of a dead girl she befriended and moves into the girl's family home to plan her revenge. The story has mystery and intrigue. I enjoyed watching Li Jiang/Xue Fangfei maneuver through the Jiang family drama, befriend new family members, and outsmart the evil step mother. FL's character was classy and mysterious making me always wonder what she would do next. What I like about this drama is that episode 1 jumps right into the plot. There was no set-up. We didn't need to sit through 10+ episodes for things to start happening.

Unfortunately, which is typical of most Chinese dramas, the story tends to deviate from the main plot into mini-arcs. Here, the story was the most interesting when Li Jiang was in the capital. After she left the family residence to meet the Ye family, the quality of storytelling went down. The Ye family, draught, and imperial diviner arcs were complete uninteresting. As soon as FL started dressing like a man, playing drinking games, and skulking in the mines with ML, the story hit every cliche trope and lost its air of mystery. Also, FL befriending the Ye family and gaining their backing did not add anything to the plot. They disappeared from the story as soon as she went back to the capital and did not re-appear to help her in any way.

One of the highlights of the story was FL and ML's explosive chemistry. They flirted, bantered, shared passionate glances, and were just a step away from ripping each other's clothes off. Unfortunately, due to incomprehensible Chinese censorship, this amazing romantic chemistry climaxed with a very underwhelming chaste candlelight kiss.

The story was worth watching just for the villains. Li Ming did an amazing job as the elder princess Wanning. She portrayed the character exactly how she would've been - conniving, hateful, jealous, resentful, and very very insane. Her smiles were deadly and her threats were real. Walking around and twirling her dresses made her look like the main character in her own story. I normally don't care for villain backstories because there shouldn't be any sympathy for evil. But, boy oh boy, did she gain my sympathy even though she was worth hating. It also made me wonder whether she was a different person before her father sent her to the enemy kingdom to be abused. I also felt like the punishment for every villain was fitting. Wanning killed herself with her beloved hand after realizing that he never truly loved her. Yurong committed suicide after realizing he will never get back what he lost and that his death was inevitable for committing treason. He dug his own grave committing one crime after another without truly taking responsibility for the all the evil he's done.

The ending felt rushed. Some cool characters were killed off in the very last episode just to get last minute emotion from the audience. It did not feel like a natural story progression, just something the writers decided to do the last minute. One moment, Xiao Heng was holding on to the pendant his beloved gave him as the token of her love while awaiting his death from the charging army, the next moment he rides his horse towards Fangfei standing by the tree they planted together. It didn't look very well thought through and felt rushed just to finish the show with a happy ending.

Overall, I really enjoyed the drama. The relationships felt real and mature, the intrigue was interesting, and the acting was brilliant.