Not quite as bad as I expected, but still bad

I watched this because of Wang Zhuocheng. I do not know the novel. I expected worse. I actually managed to finish this. But it was still... well, definitely not good.

The female lead is extremely annoying in the first part. It's cringey thinking about this supposed to be a romantic couple later on, when she behaves like a little kid. I can only assume that in the novel she was actually a kid/teenager, but they didn't want to cast different actors; that thought was what got me through this part. She's extremely dislikable, bratty and incompetent, but still everyone falls in love with her; oh well, nothing new in dramaland.

Generally, what helped a great deal in getting through this drama was the genrous application of the 1.5x speed feature on WeTV.

The female lead gets a little better after her death and rebirth, but too often reverts to the immature character, being easily manipulated. You wait for her to finally take matters into her own hands, but just as you think she might, she turns into a sobbing "shifu" crying girl again. The male lead is devoid of any personality and character development and actually not a good guy at all. Their relationship is cringey, toxic and it baffles me that anyone will find this remotely romantic.

The immortals are apparently supposed to be the good guys, but behave worse than most others. They are also worse fighters than even Star Wars Stormtroopers, fail to protect anything and even fail to set the same trap properly for at least three times. I have no idea why in this world they are considered good and competent.

The demons - this is where it actually gets interesting. Most of the more interesting characters in this drama are demons. They have compelling background stories, motivation and show more love and compassion than the supposedly good guys. Even Wang Yue, the villain in this story, is much more forgiving than you'd expect, and apparently when he doesn't want to do something, you just have to say please and bow, and he will.
It constantly feels like the show wants to make a point with this, wants you to root for the demons - but it never really gets there.

Whenever the show tries to be dramatic and emotional with the lead couple, it falls short. You know while watching that this is supposed to be a heartwrenching scene, but it's always rather meh. They have zero chemistry and I was glad that in the end (at episode 40), they didn't get together.

There's a couple of times when the editing is really bad, too. Most of the time it's ok, but then there's a couple of cuts that are just bad and/or confusing.

The plot is messy, too. There are allegedly very important items, that are then never mentioned again for several episodes only to suddenly show up again. Random spells that are hardly used when they should be, never explained, forgotten when it fits the plot. Crucial events that turn out to be underwhelming. The big end fight is extremely anticlimatic; especially Wang Yue is dealt with in a couple of seconds. It doesn't make any sense at all. You never see any bad consequences of what is apparently the end of the world, and everything is easily repaired (albeit with sacrifices).

I did very much like Wang Zhuocheng as Wang Yue, he looked stunning and obviously had a blast playing that character. A couple of support characters are interesting and likable, but most of them killed off. There was a cute CGI demon kitty that didn't show up enough. I loved the different costumes of the demons, and some sets were really nice.

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