ShortCircuit

All of them look like runway models, but there's just something about that full-toothed carefree smile of XZ's that makes me fall head over heels for WWX :D

So, cultivation means using martial arts (and meditation) to first form a Golden Core made of qi energy in your body, then raising your own level with help from that ball of energy. All orthodox cultivators begin as disciples of a Master from a Clan of their choosing or that they were born into. The idea of cultivation is bettering yourself until you're the very best of fighters and then helping others - for orthodox cultivators anyway, or reigning over your lesser opponents, if you're a demonical cultivator (cultivation in itself is neutral, how one uses it is up to them).

Every orthodox cultivator will learn a specific way to get that Golden Core, and there aren't two the same. What is common though is that everyone has a sword. Fighting with a sword is the only approved way of fighting. The swords of powerful cultivators become Spiritual Weapons and usually will bond only with one master. Someone who can defeat a cultivator without using a sword is considered unethical by the orthodox clans (and usually they're demonical).

Even Wen Chao (and his older brother, Wen Xu - his head was hanging off that gate when YanLi and Jiang Cheng meet again after their ordeal) have their own swords. And that soldier just brings it back as proof that its master is gone. (You can go back to past eps and check what his sword looks like - but it's also red, the colour of the Wen Clan, and that's another hint. All the major clans are colour-coded, LOL).

PS Every clan uses swords, but the Nie Clan uses broadswords, a very un-elegant weapon, according to the tastes of the cultivation world (they were founded by a butcher, and his method of cultivating is always getting the cultivators to go mad. Even their broadswords get "mad" and instead of being kept in a Sword's Altar/Sanctuary as with most clans, they're given burial rites and spiritual chains then buried in their own sword tombs, just to make sure they don't get away and start butchering people on their own.) This will also matter later, when the campaign is over and Nie MingJue is left to deal with the aftermath for his own clan.

Jiang Cheng has a bit of a complex about his foster brother. Their father (one biological son - JC, and one adopted - WWX) always held up WWX as a standard for JC, who wasn't always praised or even recognised for what he actually did - I mean, you already saw it in action. Jiang FengMian praised WWX for killing off the XuanWu monster, but it was JC who ran for seven days to Lotus Pier and back to bring help, and also he led all the rest of the clans kids to safety - he never got mentioned. He's seeing WWX with eyes that are just a bit clouded with sibling jealousy and with an inferiority complex.

Also, he's a VERY straight arrow who thinks in patterns that he assumes are the only correct way of thinking. And since he would never even conceive of making use of evil energy for anything, he kind of assumes WWX wouldn't either. He also doesn't really know if what the Wen clan people said is true, and that WWX really was thrown in the Burial Mounds. He just assumes WWX was kept jailed somewhere and just escaped. (You also have to remember JC just got through two of the most catastrophic events of his life - his parents were killed and he lost his Golden Core. He does NOT want anything more troubling now, since he's just became a Clan Leader and has things to do. He wants WWX to be okay, so in his mind WWX is okay. WWX being who he is, he's bullsh*tting his way out of any inquiry about what happened to him while he was gone and that's the norm for him, so JC doesn't even worry about it).

The evil sword from the XuanWu monster is now gone (WWX used to carry it in his magical pouch - in xianxia, there are certain items that can store huge things somewhere in a magical space - things like pouches or rings and whatnot. LWJ also has one, in the first episode he was playing his guqin - a musical instrument - until the juniors called him, and then he put it away in his pouch). That evil sword's Yin metal was used by WWX to forge the Yin Tiger Tally (the amulet) and Chenqing (the flute). He doesn't really need either of them to use his dark amulets (he can just write them with his blood or his qi, if he wants to), but they're useful to concentrate the Yin energy in order to do bigger damage and recover faster. You already saw him in ep 2 using his Yin magic to call and control a Fierce Corpse (Wen Ning), and he was using a bamboo flute he'd cut out in two or three moves, LOL. Chenqing is just his flashier and more powerful tool. So is the Tiger Tally.

The OTHER sword, the one JC returned to him, is his original sword - Suibian/Whatever - that was with the Wen clan and that LWJ carried around and then passed over to JC to give WWX when they met him again. It's a whole different sword than the Yin metal one. And it's also a spiritual weapon, one that has a kind of sentience and looks only to WWX as a master (no one else can un-sheathe it). Suibian (the sword) will prove important later, even if WWX won't use it to fight anymore.

The genres and tags are added by MDL users, sometimes they can be misleading. This is xianxia (and not even the regular kind of xianxia, but danmei xianxia, that can be very different. Of course, because of the censorship, the actual danmei bits didn't survive... much).

You don't need to read the novel (though it's very good, and it already got an official English edition). All stories include some details that are verbally presented, in order to streamline them, or due to other reasons (like costs, for example, or too long timelines), just looking at it won't be enough...

He can't and won't explain. He'll lie about it, because nobody has ever escaped from The Burial Mounds (not even the evil spirits). But he used the Yin Tiger Tally he forged from the sword found in the old monster (the XuanWu tortoise), in order to survive and get out of it.

The problem is he can't tell about it because 1. he won't fight using a sword ever again and he can't explain why, and 2. if he admits to using the demonical energy, then he's outcast from the orthodox cultivator sects and won't ever be able to walk among them.

... Not that he manages to remain inside the clans anyway.

Part of the explanation comes in the present timeline (around ep 44 or so, IIRC). But also part of it becomes apparent the first time WWX is seen using undead energy - and that's in eps 19-20. LWJ already knows - he even warns WWX about what happened to cultivators who used that kind of demonic energy and WWX laughs it off.

3-33 IS the flashback to the origins of the story 16 years in the past, 1-2, 33-50 is the present. WWX's way of using undead energy was already explained.

The thing is - you should be actually watching it, not waiting to be engrossed. Every drama has its own way of explaining / exposing / showing how and why things happen, and you won't get flashy fighting or qi explosions or swords flying or final bosses in TU like in the regular wuxia. This is NOT wuxia, and for a xianxia that does NOT build on romance (like 99% of the xianxia out there), they do things differently. There are way too many details that all link to each other, and if you don't actually pay attention because you only care about the main leads, if anyone at all, then you won't understand why things go the way they go.

They DO show you everything, and then tell you some, too, but you need to pay that bit of attention or you'll miss it.

OR, if you want to see what a flashy (and still good) xianxia has to offer, there's always Till the End of the Moon, Ashes of Love, Love and Redemption, etc.

Wen Clan was not the most powerful but the most crazy AND Wen RuoHan could make puppets that wouldn't die and so he could control the lesser clans. The other clans (even the bigger ones) didn't form alliances until some of them were almost wiped out - because politics, and because Jin GuangShan is actually pure scum and only sees his own interests.

Wen Chao was HAUNTED by WWX all the way from the Burial Mounds to the last waystation where he dies, what the heck, they TALK about how someone is cleaning up the Wen soldiers from everywhere using demonic means (each and every one of them died by suicide and all of them used different means of suicide because just some magical / demonic charm.) It WAS explained, maybe you weren't paying attention. As to how WWX got so freaking powerful to kill off masses of people just using amulets - maybe remember he lived in the Burial Mounds for three months, gathering and learning to use undead energy, just as he took the time to explain to Lan QiRen in school to such length, that anyone who was paying attention wouldn't miss it...

Lan XiChen was hurt in the taking down of the Cloud Recesses. Someone's rescued him, but it took months for him to recover and no, not even Lan WangJi knew if his brother was at least still alive, nonetheless where he was. The elder, Lan QiRen, isn't a fighter, he's a teacher, he just waited out in the secret cave with the surviving disciples of the clan, what would he do in a battle, just up and die?!

All the main cast at the time was made up of newcomers, maybe with the exception of Lulu Xuan (YanLi) who had some fame already. All of them auditioned, including the leads, one of them had to insist to be given the chance to audition for the role because they overpassed him at first. They became well known AFTER the drama aired.

The story itself was streamlined so that most people could go along with it easily, since the timelines are pretty intertwined in the original novel.

You don't like it - or don't get it - and that's okay, don't force yourself through it if you're not enjoying it :)

*insert Ruby Rhod bzzzztt-ing all over the place*

Commercial?! Commercial!!

(I guess :D)

I think he's considered not sound of mind in front of the law, given he's (functionally) autistic. At the most they'd lock him up in a mental institution, but given he didn't actually do anything but hide the body and not tell anyone about it, there's not a lot to charge him with that would matter, anyway.

Hulu re-edited them so they're different length. It's the same total time for both.

Maybe because this isn't a wuxia either and the fighting isn't the point...

This would've been a masterpiece even without the BL (which the Chinese censorship diluted into just a hint anyway).

Trust that the story is NOT about school antics or even childish disputes with pompous asses (of which Wen Chao is one - Wen RuoHan has his moments, but he's more of a hermit villain, LOL). Give it time - it's around the 15th ep that the tide turns.

... After all, the story starts with a resurrection, how can it be something too silly to raise up such a fame? :D

Yes. As close to a masterpiece as it gets.

MCS will have a (very) few flashback moments in NiF2, when TingSheng is thinking of him - NiF2 is about TingSheng's family - his two sons, their families or loved ones, and war. I think that drama has the absolute BEST ever war scenes (in a drama) I've ever seen. And I still have a little crush on Huang XiaoMing, LOL, told you already.) If you decide to go into it, don't expect it to be like NiF - it's a whole different tone, and while the production values are all still there, and Hai Yan also wrote the script, it's not a true sequel other than sharing the same time-space and having Xiao TingSheng and Lin Chen as charas (Lin Chen is in only for a few moments). There's 1000% more romance LOL (not really what I expected, but it works in the end), and the music isn't as impressive as in NiF IMHO. But Hai Yan seems to like tragic characters so well. It's still tragic. (And so UNFAIR T_T)

NiF is on my rewatch list since I first binged it, LOL, expect to still have cravings for it from time to time :) (I re-watched it about three times because I accidentally opened an episode and before I knew it, I was in the middle of the series and still not skipping anything hahaha~)

All the characters are amazing - I liked Prince Yu's side of the story despite him being despicable (the most like his father, indeed!), and Huang WeiDe played him beautifully. He's just his father's son and trying so hard to make it to the top according to the only rules he knows to play by... and I actually thought he was quite the tragic character, too, until the scene where he's actually serving his older brother, JingYu, the poison in the prison. The fact he WANTED to be there in the first place, just to make sure JingYu dies... GAHHH~~~ *extreme frustration-caused yells*

Also the Crown Prince, the slimey bastard... How on Earth could the Emperor pick HIM?! For someone so cruel and shrewd, Prince Yu was the obvious choice and still he picked the CP. Lame, lame Emperor obsessed with keeping power. (Also, I've watched Ding YongDai acting as an Emperor in three more dramas LOL, though Emperor Xiao is the best of them. He's the eternal monarch in truth :D)

*sigh* Such a great, great drama :) I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)

You should try some more cdramas, a lot of them are worth the hype :D

I was obsessed with the BGM for a long while (still replaying quite a few of the themes). It works wonders when the music just completes the scene - but also, one of my favourite scenes (the one in ep 23, the confrontation with Xie Yu) is almost silent. Only that heartbeat sound goes through while Xie Yu admits the atrocity he instigated, and then that sweet and sad theme - ah, I was long gone by then anyway, but that scene is a highlight for me in the whole drama (among many others).

Obviously JingYan going to Consort Jing and telling her he's missing Xiao Shu... but also in another scene when she tells him Xiao Shu would live long in his heart and he replies he doesn't want Xiao Shu living in his heart, he wants him alive in this world - and she already knew at that time and STILL doesn't tell him! He got quite the superb tragic arc, just as much as MCS.

And obviously MCS can see where saving Wei Zheng would lead - but JingYan is blinded by the fact that this is an officer of the ChiYan army and HAS to be saved. That part where MCS goes smoothly with Xia Jiang just because otherwise he couldn't misdirect the attention - and the PERFECT way the rescue went, LOL - master strategist indeed! I loved watching him plan and have all his plans succeed - you can't game the QiLin Talent :D

JingYan eventually got suspicious - that nervous fingers thing, obviously the sword trick, knowing the secret path, being SO FIERCELY protected by both NiHuang and (the no-poker-face) Meng Zhi... JingYan is not stupid, he just couldn't imagine his best friend forever wouldn't tell him he was still alive and let him mourn in such deep despair. At the beginning of the story, JingYan is basically the penultimate on the totem pole (the last one is his younger brother who has some physical defect), a chew toy for the Crown Prince (I hated that character so much! LOL) and Prince Yu. Obviously he was cold and not really given to being friendly - except with his own men, who love him. It's kind of natural for him not to trust MCS, since he doesn't know him, and he could be swindling everyone for his own gain. But I think he started warming up to him without even realising, I guess true zhījǐ get close even if one of them pretends he's not who he is and the other one doesn't recognise him either :D

They're 知己 (he who knows me better than I know myself - usually it's TLed as soulmates, but it doesn't imply anything romantically. They just perfectly understand each other). Which places JingYan at a disadvantage for now, since only Xiao Shu knows.

But JingYan is a bit too rigid and straightforward, so he needs someone to take over the bending and smoothing out of his path in order for him to become Emperor. And MCS isn't doing it because JingYan is his friend - he's doing it because JingYan will be the best for the empire and its people.

After you finish the drama, if you're interested, let me know if you want to read the novel. There are some parts that are different and some that they didn't include (because the "actors" didn't want to cooperate, LOL - they had a scene where Xiao Shu's very old hound would recognise him and go to him every time he's in the hunting grounds, and it was all they could do to keep JingYan from noticing, hahaha, but the dog actor just didn't want to play along :D) There are a lot of more little details in the novel that make it a pretty good read :D

He had so many sons he wanted to keep them in order and not have that many names to remember LOL.

A lot of people slept on it. It only started trending when it was already in its final airing week (the ratings grew in SK as it aired). It's a pretty good mystery, and VERY annoying characters (which makes you connect and hate on them a lot, LOL), but well done, well acted and well paced. So people who wanted to see what's it about tried it, probably, and got hooked enough to binge it.

Me, I put myself through the wringer of watching as it aired, LOL, but I had read the novel so it wasn't so much the wait to see whodunnit as the wait to see how they're going to go about it. It was worth it.

So I went and re-watched that episode because why not, when it's so good :D

I still love Consort Jing's reaction to him - she's just the best of them all. She KNEW it was him the second she got the book, and then she kept letting him know she'd keep the secret. And then she went and started building a backup for JingYan with no fuss and doing everything perfectly reasonable, LOL, while the Empress and the Noble Consort Yue were still thinking the battle was just between the two of them.

And she knows medicine, so she's not wrong to cry.

Sooooo... did you get the MCS virus yet? :D

PS All hail JingYan though - by now he's suspecting the truth and will sneakily and not so sneakily try to get it out of them :D (poor Meng Zhi has got NO secrecy game hahaha~)

What do you mean by watched at once? The drama spanned 8 weeks (2 eps per week, one episode was postponed because of a national holiday). On Hulu half was released, the other half comes on Oct. 8th.

It's a good thriller, adapted from Nele Neuhaus' Snow White Must Die novel. It differs from other thrillers / mysteries and even from the original novel by focusing on the convict and his accusers and less on the police work (as per the usual police thriller). Give it a try and see for yourself.