Initially I thought this is an abridged version of the Royal Nirvana and did not pay attention. Then someone mentioned this was an epilogue that would explain who was Xu Chang Nian. So I started watching it to my regrets.

The prequel, Royal Nirvana ended on a positive note - the Crown Prince was entrusted to go to the border to calm the situation as his uncle was assassinated. Lu WenXi was happily pregnant awaiting her baby and presumably the return of her prince.

Gosh, in this sequel nearly all the key people died. If you enjoy an emotional torment, go ahead and watch this. For all my ranting about the pessimistic story below, it was a good production. You can stop here if you do not want to know the rest of the spoiler as I am going to spell them all out.

Encouraged by the head of maids Jiang, the empress feeling sorry on how she had neglected her youngest son, the fifth prince, killed herself in an attempt to help and keep her youngest son stay on in the capital. The fifth prince turned evil, plotted against the Crown Prince, was set up by WenXi and was caned to death with the emperor not attempting to save him. Zhang Shao Yun was shown in a positive note as an anticipating uncle as his sister was expecting but was killed by Feng-en's soldiers when delivering medicine for the Crown Prince. Li Ming-An was killed by Feng-En. Gu Feng-en, embittered by the assassination of his father wanted the Crown Prince to overturn the emperor and claim the throne. When the Crown Prince instead plotted against him and decrowned himself to declared him a traitor, he committed suicide.

The Crown Prince returned to the capital disgraced, depressed and committed suicide. His son was born an orphan - the mother WenXi committed suicide after giving birth to join her husband in the next world. Xu Chang Nian as it turned out was the son of the Xiao DingQuan's uncle, the former crown prince who was forced to kill himself. The emperor put all hope on his grandson and appointed Xu as his tutor - I am surprised with his suspicious nature that he would appoint him as tutor knowing Xu was actually his nephew and had possibly a claim to the throne.

Actually, I blamed WenXi for all the trouble (or more correctly the writer for crafting it that way). If she had not misinformed the fifth prince to set him up, all the sequence of events would not be sparked off. She could have shaken off the control of the fifth prince by simply telling the Crown Price that the fifth prince had captured her brother to control her. In the earlier sequel, her father and brother was imprisoned because she failed to pass a message as she went searching for the lost seal and were eventually killed. Her interfering did not end well in both instance.

In the previous sequel, while it was a sob story but at least it ended in a positive note. In this sequel, the good turned evil; the evil who started to show their human side died. The Crown Prince after all his effort to safeguard his position killed himself. I would rather have kept the positive image of Feng-En and the fifth Prince as righteous people. Also Shao Yun and Li Ming-An did not deserve to die as they were good people. This sequel practically killed all belief in the humanity and the fight for righteousness.

Also, while explaining who Xu was, it created more mystery - why the fifth Prince said that if Xu was indeed the son of the previous Crown Prince, then he (the fifth Prince) was as good as dead was incomprehensible.

This sequel was certainly one of the most tragic story I had watched so far, beating Nirvana in Fire in being tragic. Nirvana should not be used in this drama - this is supposed to be the ultimate state of bliss and final goal of Buddhist - in this drama, it is the ultimate suffering.

I applauded the cast for their excellent acting but condemn the production team for being masochistic and taking pleasure in pain. If I were the writer, I would have crafted this sequel to focus on the story behind the death of Xu's father as that would have been sufficiently tragic and more interesting.