Luminous Lotus

I agree with points 1, 2, 5. Point 3 - I didn't notice Gu Langhua recognized Luo Zishang but it was weird how the dad was sensitive about their daughter in law visiting her hometown. Point 7 - they were playing politics, it's all ambiguous but Luo Zishang did mentioned how Jiang He seemed to be helping him but nothing worked out in the end

the latter half of the drama deals with politics so is therefore more "draggy" but i thought it was actually pretty fast paced with how all the events happened and things were wrapped up. They could have made it another 5 episodes longer and then it would have been truly a drag.

lol, I don't know that your description is the strongest endorsement but I'll check it out again when I'm done with my current dramas

thanks for saving me from watching "new life begins". Agree wholeheartedly with your review of "a dream of splendor". I had a bad feeling from ep one but wanted to give it a fair shake. Just finished ep 6 and I could tell it was heading further downhill. Went on here to see if it improves but apparently not.

both novels share minor appearances from a couple of gods but I noticed in LBFAD they changed the gods so you wouldn't recognize them anyway unless the director makes the same changes in this one

I had to brace my heart to watch the tower scene so I saved up the episodes. Now that I'm catching up on ep 36 I had a bad premonition and the comments confirmed it. Going to have to wait for these special episodes to air before I can continue.

thanks. You're right. I couldn't remember it clearly because the eunuch never flat out admit it

Who ordered the wrathful sword deity to assassinate xiao se? he denied it was xiao chong and it doesn't seem likely to be the emperor because he apparently had him leave the capitol for his own protection.

I have a question that was never answer by the end of the drama.

just finished the series on netflix but it sucks that the songs are not translated. I feel like i'm really missing out a lot and my enjoyment of the show could have easily been 10% more. I just went and found translations and it would have been sooooo helpful if they were there while i was watching the show

OMG I was totally thinking the same thing except I didn't know Miura passed away =[

I just found out and this is so sad. I was watching a new drama and the young actor reminded me so much of him I wanted to see what he has been up to =[

the translator has a password on the special chapters and gives hints on what the password is based off the story. I was able to successfully guess the passwords to the first two chapters and got stuck on the 3rd special because it's been so long since i read the novel I couldn't remember all the details.

ops forgot to mention that the novel translation is completed although there are some specials at the end that the translator locked behind a password. You don't need to read the specials since it doesn't directly impact the story

I read the novel first and follow along as it was slowly translated. it was good enough that I stuck with it. Even tried to translate it myself when the translator was on hiatus (not recommended). Definitely a different tone. The drama is more light hearted and comedic. The ML got soften up for the drama. The novel doesn't get super dark but it's definitely less comedic. I really love the ML and I gush when he does little things where you can tell he's starting to fall for her. There's nothing obvious like in the drama when he built her a replica of SiMing's place although that was very sweet as well. There's a little bit of drama at the end before you get your happy ending. I don't want to spoil the novel but you should definitely read it if you like bad boys who fall for good girls. He's not an evil dude but for sure a bad dude unlike where it's toned down for the drama.

i see your take on it and they quite likely changed it to suit mainland china's taste. Personally I'm just really disappointed after being super hyped up to see the first episode. I'm a big fan of the manhua and read it several times and almost bought the hardcopy in chinese when I saw there were no more translations (due to publishing hiatus). I hate drama (reasonable amount is fine) so the changes are not to my taste.

i feel compelled to write my first comment on MDL. I only watched to ep 7 but crazy chopsticks is right about how awful the FL is. The manhua is way better. They did all sorts of "add salt, add vinegar" to spice it up when it didn't need it. 90% of the stupid decisions she did in the drama wasn't in the manhua. they also added extra characters like the cousin. It took her four episodes to get out of chang'an when it only took two chapters in the manhua. (i read this years ago so I might be slightly off) The backstory isn't complete yet either. Her mother was supposed to have given her a hairpin which will later play a role.