ASmith

This series is so hard to move on from 😂

He looks so cool blind-riding that horse

Breaking the fourth wall-wise:
Keeping things suitably epic so that there will potentially be a S2, but without over-committing in case they can't get the same cast back. << my guess.

In-universe-wise:
When XHA said Pickles didn't side with him, he sided with the grain, he meant it. There is a third party (maybe Pickles, maybe someone Pickles works for) who has the wellfare of the nations at heart and wants to resolve the underlying issue (there is not enough food for the starving north Tiemo folks) but wants to find a better solution than "you starve instead".

They need some enemies dealt with to achieve this end, because the fact that nobles were feeding slaves to wolves to save the sheep says that Tiemo sucks morally, and since Tiemo king was only interested in being the one feeding others to wolves to save sheep, not in setting up stuff like trade to stabilise his economy, they would likely be in even more dire straights than they used to be since 200,000 fighting men who could have farmed or hunted just got slaughtered by some regional governors plus the emperor's army.

They have decided that XHA is a good person to kidnap and make do stuff for them because 1) he's smart, and 2) He's good at picking apart his opponents' weaknesses and 3) he killed the people who got his dad, but there's always whoever got his mum to sic him on if his enemies want him to form a team-up with them, and he's generally fairly pragmatic about how he gets the job done. You can rely on him dealing with problems.

Because of stuff like the blood thinner stuff he drank when his neck got stabbed, he's going to have drastically reduced aging (unless I remember that wrong). He also has unknown injuries from the fire that could have taken time to recover from.

We therefore have no idea how long after S1 the epilogue and special episode are even set. It could even be the children of the emperor who are now adults asking for his help now, we will not know unless s2 happens. o.o But one thing we do know is that XHA lived, because only he has that unmistakable, beautiful voice.

👏🏻🥳🎉

Yup. I mean I don't mind a hero who can forgive an enemy, but I can't stomach a hero who spends the whole time angsting about how tough they have it and/or how much they wish they weren't doing what no one's making them do anyway except themselves, or how bad they feel now that they did it, lol. Here, everyone's pretty confident in their life choices, A+ or F-, everyone except axe murderer picks their life choices and owns them.

Maybe this needs a spoiler tag, for those newly watching?

But agree, loved it too. 👏

SPOILERS FOR EP11-12-13+14+!!!!

(!!!!!in case you’re not meaning what I think you’re meaning, if you’re not up to there don’t read!!!!)

I think there’s a difference between intelligent and scheming. From the first moment we met her running through the snow, she was someone who ate a meal with sleeping pills bc she failed to detect them in it, stubbornly defended her master’s body despite being threatened with her life, spent all her life with him without realising he was Houben Army, and then ran straight back to warn another guy and he then died too. She also told XHA that she was the kind of person who if she wanted to stay, she’d stay, she’d do what she wanted regardless of what others did to her for it.

She’s brave with blood, she’s loyal, she is plucky, and she is willing to stab an enemy, but she’s not someone who plots and schemes with high bluff and sense motive. It’s the trade off to being raised in a loving home with minimal trauma that she isn’t a borderline psychopath or semi insane, thus she can’t outmanoeuvre the many of those who are and have it out for her as a way to target XHA. From the moment she first wrote letters to XHA, she became of interest to YSF as someone who could be used to find & hurt XHA, and from the moment XHA defended her in Ep1, XHA exposed the fact that he cared about her more than his own life. These two things were not good for her health with an enemy like YSF. I don’t think she’s not intelligent though; just not scheming.

Regarding her death, part of me wonders if she did half know though. She’s known since Ep1 she was being used to trap XHA, and known since he got stabbed in the neck that he will risk himself with no backup plan for her safety. I wonder if she felt the only way she definitely couldn’t be anymore was if she died, thus walked into the trap willingly so she could no longer be used to hurt him while having a small chance to see him again, we never find out if she knew 💔

With this drama luckily it’s generous enough to me that I can enjoy both logic and aesthetics 🤩🥰

I mean CY is amazing but yeah, he can’t do much to save the 19-30 arc when he’s only got 2 mins in some eps and the entire arc is filler, and he’s basically the only one still IC by the end of the show, though he does a phenomenal job himself 😂

1-13 can basically be watched as a standalone if you want a good break point; beyond that the source material ended and the writers were on their own , but its basically a self-contained arc that can stand alone and is like a 9-10 for me for enjoyment on its own 🤣

Yup 🤭 Hero Legends trailer << this

Maybe not tooooo ASAP though, I want them to have time to edit and do their post production ADR and SFX properly without skimping on it lol. I will wait a little longer if they can deliver solid editing at the end.

[Cheng Yi is honestly the only actor who makes me completely hooked on his dramas.]
^this. 👏👏 Helps he tends to pick roles that I love as well as acts them beautifully, double win king for him 👏👏

VoA was my first subscription to Youku too haha! On my PC I was like *side-eyes* when I went to the Youku website cuz Brave was like "let me block all this unwanted tracking, and btw the site wants to access the motion sensor cameras we r blocking this too," while meanwhile Youku was like "you gotta unblock all this stuff if you want me to play my content~~" and I was like... ah well, stuff it, Youku, you can spy on me for the duration of this show's airing, for CY it is worth it XD

Hope it does too, the trailer looks really good for that one. I can tell it's gonna be heavyyyyy but epic. And the black cat is cute XD (First few seconds of the trailer reads like a noodle stall advert, and I would go to that street stall in a heartbeat lol.)

I will miss you too, gotta say. I rarely watch shows while airing b/c the wait each day for the next ep is agony for a binge-watcher like me, but I made an exception for CY b/c I loved him so much after MLC after discovering him earlier this year, and the discussions here while the shows were airing were are the thing I'll miss most XD (As you say, after blocking the haters, which the nice people here taught me how to do as well.) Enjoy ur next watch 💚💚My next watch of an airing drama will probably be when Fifteen Days airs 💚💚

If the hair dye was really water soluble though it would cause massive problems for the disguise in the Hidden Valley whenever he washed or it rained. Maybe just turning white due to him wearing white and it picking up the colour? I think the rain can't really have been washing it away o.o Or maybe dye from his umbrella dripping...? (Can’t remember if it was white then…)

As for why Cen Pickles ended up siding with XHA, I would say it was for a few reasons.
1) Even in the past, the meat he got through murder and theft was hard for him to stomach, symbolic of the fact that he just wants enough. He doesn't want his enemies to suffer like he suffered, he just wants himself and other people to have enough to live on.
2) XHA's expression when he asked Cen Pickles if he was really on his dad's side was semi-chilling. I think Cen Pickles was a bit afraid of what would happen if he didn't side with XHA, because basically because they think XHA is a lot more omnipotent and powerful than he is. (eg. "He disappeared without a trace, he's so good at hiding.") (reality: "You fell asleep by your bro's grave, we, your other enemies, kidnapped you.") Because no one quite knows what he's planned or who's backing him, they tend to think he has a lot more planned than he necessarily does, and he's aware of that and exploits it, since sometimes he does have a plan and sometimes he's winging it.
3) Cen Pickles is backing whoever is likely to reach the goal the best of minimizing unnecessary deaths, and letting the people of Tiemo and Chang'an have enough to eat. While that's XHA, he'll side with him. If it's ever not, he'll stop.
4) Cen Pickles may have actually developed some sympathies in Chang'an. He was the grand preceptor of the nation for a while in a land that was kind to him, and came from a nation where he was raised a slave and slaves were worth less than sheep and used to bait wolves to preserve the flocks. He quite possibly genuinely has loyalties to both nations.

I don't think he's Tiemo, as his dad is definitely Chang'an, as implied by him sending the Huban Army spies to Tiemo that then prompted Tiemo to copy this and train their own spies to send back. But any number of things could have happened to end up with him in a cell, ranging from imprisoned by Tiemo/Pickles, to needing advanced healing b/c burns so a hidden place to hide, to the Houben Army themselves. The implication to my mind of him saying "After this the past is cleared between us" is that he's been captured by those he owes a favour to, and that after this he'll owe them nothing, but I'm not sure if it's their debt he's collecting, or his own debt he's paying.

This may need a spoiler tag-- as peeps on netflix probably won't get to access the eps till 29th+ at which point they'll I think only get 1 a day.

I think his hair turns whatever colour he dyes it 😅😅 When his sister died he was still having it dyed from impersonating the grey haired Huben Army guy, he dyed it back when the city fell and white hair was too distinctive to disguise, (unclear if either dye was more permanent than the other) and at the end he’s exploiting the fact that he’s prophesied to live till his hair turns white, so dying it white to indicate his life is on the line. Since his natural hair colour is still black it would just grow out or the paint dye would wash off 😅😅😅

That scene is interesting. It happened when Wang Pu was just a baby, and before Pickles infiltrated Chang’an since the woman gives them the idea to train up shadow guards of their own and reverse infiltrate. But Wang Pu I would think is older than XHA’s sister. HXA was on the run for 15 years, and she was too young to remember her past when they fled. I would say the woman can’t be XHA’s mother.

But not legal, and doesn’t support the platforms investing in producing or distributing the show. 😅