A highly personal review.

First of all I started watching this because I am a Lusi fan. Second of all I knew this would be a patriotic drama aimed at a specific audience containing political views and opinions. The political theme is not subtle, so if you are not a fan of something like this I do not recommend you watch this. As someone who did not learn anything about this particular time in Asia in school I took this as a history lesson written from one point of views.

The story: The first episode is probably my favorite. It starts in the year of 1950 in Beijing with our 18 year old female lead Tian Zao, an orphan, wanting to avenge her father. This particular plot point is finished quite quickly, as there is only 14 episodes to complete the story. Her childhood sweetheart Tie Dan, our male lead, is a wrestling teacher who studied under Tian Zaos father.
The new government is formed and Tian Zao is impressed with the way they want to help the common people in Beijing and therefor wants to join her local government. This will as the story goes on lead her to help catch spies, gather support from her neighborhood to support the war effort and more. She is often too enthusiastic in her efforts, and causes problems at times, but she is well liked by her area and by her chosen older sister who works in the local government.

Acting: I have no complaints about the acting whatsoever in this. Zhao Lusi and Hou Ming Hao made me believe they had known each other basically all their lives and they were very cute as a couple.

Tian Zao is an orphan and grew up in a hutong area in Beijing, where she has a very big support group amongst both adults and the other children in the area, which helps her throughout the story.
She is a very headstrong girl and acts before she thinks at times. She was described as a person who dares to love and hate. I also find her very passionate about wanting to improve the lives of the people in her community.
Tie Dan is not your usual male lead with a stone face, he is actually a guy who is well liked and smiles a lot. He is also one of my favorite personalities in mls since he is not just kind to his one true love but an overall good guy. He is also willing to communicate with his love when there is a problem, which is definitively a skill more leads need.

I found most of the side characters quite interesting as well, but my focus is mostly on the leads.

Music: There is not really a lot of music in here but I do enjoy the instrumental music.

Rewatch: Would I rewatch this a whole? No. If I do rewatch something it will be the parts that I enjoyed together with the main leads.

Again, this is my point of view so you may not agree with me and that's alright.

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A review based on personal enjoyment

So first of all beware, there will be a few minor spoilers below and that this review is only based on my personal enjoyment of the show without me analyzing to much.

Story: As a reader of the novel I had a clue of what the basics would be, even if this is vastly different. We start out with an epic opener in the martial arts world with our heroine Bai Feng Xi on adventure. The first episode is a very good introduction to her character and there are some really fun fight scenes. Our male lead Hei Feng Xi looks very dashing and lets the viewers know that he is intelligent and likes to plan ahead.
Soon enough we will find out that Hei Feng Xi is actually a prince of one of the states, YongZhou, and has been leading a double life. After this revelation a lot of the drama will focus on our prince Feng Lanxi and his struggles amongst his own treacherous family. Bai Feng Xi will be around of course but she does not do a lot of meaningful things in the first half of the drama, as she has no place in the politics in Yongzhou.
There will be a few episodes they venture out of Yongzhou but most of the plot takes place there. There are quite a few palace schemes, but they are solved fast and not the long game kind of schemes.
So who will rule the world? That is the question that you will not have the answer to until the end of the show.
Is this the best script ever and the most well written plot? Not really but I as an individual did not find any time spent watching the show boring, I was engaged all the way through even though I was sometimes impatient for Bai Feng Xi to do more things.

Cast: First of all if you are here for Yang Yang, chances are you will not be disappointed as he is the central character of this show. Most of the plot is about his struggles which gives him ample opportunity to showcase his abilities. Yang Yang is a very good fit for Hei Feng Xi as he is a very good looking man. As I have only watched one other show with Yang Yang fully I cannot say if he is better in this drama compared to others, but I feel that he did a very good job.
Zhao Lusi who plays our lovely Bai Feng Xi was the reason why I started watching this drama. When I learned that she would finally play a kick ass woman who was equal to the men I was really happy for her. She portrays the easy going BFX very well and her fight scenes were a lot of fun to watch as she looked really cool doing them. When we finally get to the emotional parts of the drama we are will into 3/4 of it and I think Lusi did a fantastic job with all her emotional scenes. When she cried I cried. I felt her pain.
The supporting cast were in my opinion very well cast. We have Feng Chang, who at first I was not sure if I liked his character made me really impressed with his acting. Zhong Li was a good aide for Lanxi and he did a good job. Kid Han Pu was very cute but did not have a lot of development as his character was not present for most of the drama. Lai Yi was an excellent Huang Chao, I feel that finding someone who fit better would be hard.

Music: I adore most of the music in this drama. The opening song by dear Liu Yu Ning, the ending song plus a song that is played very late on by Tan Wei Wei were all fantastic and I have listened to these three many times over and will continue to do so.

Rewatch: So even if this show has it's faults in story telling, plotholes and other issues someone who likes to analyze what they are watching might not be up to your standards. But for me this is the series I have enjoyed the most in a long while. I will for sure rewatch this many time, though I might skip the scenes I found less fun. I will never forget the journey I made with Bai Feng Hei Xi.

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