This was my 2nd venture into Chinese fantasy and much like it's predecessor, I found that there were so many characters I could barely keep up. I am slowly learning that this is very common in Chinese shows. The casts are huge. My poor brain.

This one starts with just full on attack of information that it's a little hard to digest at first. I can tell this has come from a book series because they were just info dumping all over the plot.

For me, at it's heart, this a redemption tale for the two male leads, and I loved the set up. Zhou, a tormented assassin's group leader and Wen, Chief of Ghost Valley. Both of them essentially the 'bad guy'. Neither of them have any will to live, Zhou is consumed by remorse for his past behaviour and is basically torturing himself while he drinks himself into a stupor waiting for death. On the other hand, we have Wen who is consumed with grief and hatred, and pretty much has the attitude that if the world is going to set me on fire and laugh as I burn, I'm going to take as many mofos as I can with me.
It's deep and it's complicated, and I love that since this is meant to be a romantic couple. It's not so much a 'love conquers' theme, it's finding a reason to live beyond pain, even in little every day things.

Having said that, there is very clear homosexual feelings from the get go. My first chinese series was Untamed, and it was much more subtle. You could pass it off as just a deep brotherhood. This is not. This is outright flirting and sexual feelings. At times I was in shock that this was allowed. But it adds to the romanticism of finding something to live for. In this case, it's each other, which ultimately leads you to th ending sequence. I think we jumped a little too quickly into 'soulmate' but that might be a culture clash. I don't know if soulmate has a more platonic meaning in asia since the sages of ajni were called soulmates.

What first started to let me down, was the constant back and forth between the two leads. I think they broke up about 4 times, only to be normal again 3 scenes later. I found that a little jarring and unnecessary drama, another pet peeve in writing. Speaking of which, there is major unnecessary drama towards the end and even though I saw it coming from about episode 15, it still sucked to see. I understand this happens in the novels so it's on the OG writer but still, it's something that really peeves me off in many types of shows. It was deliberately built up over the show, just to hurt your feelings at the end. I don't feel it added a whole lot to the actual plot.

I did not know about the extra episode, 37 or MV style ending so when I got to the end of 36, I was punched in the face. Understandably with the censors and they wanted to keep a happy ending, but it's such a random place to end a show. It really does feel like we're missing episodes and apparently they did cut several down due to the budget running out. (or they were actually shut down but that just might be me) When I managed to get the ending online, I was fairly satisfied with it. It's pretty romantic and ironic that the show started with both characters, alone, wandering and wanting to die, where now together, immortal on a mountain.

I feel like what let the series down were the cuts the most. As we were reaching the end, there were a few things just being forgotten about or happening off screen.

Visually, it's the usual dream like, chinese fantasy but I have to admit that I didn't like the styling on this one. I found Wen's robes to be unflattering on him the most. I liked the first one he's in, the white silver ones, and the Chief red robes. Both of which we barely see him in. I found the shoulder cuts and colours just to be unflattering on him. I think keeping everything soft and lose on him, would have looked better. I can tell by the hair they were trying to keep things a little more in line with historical accuracy but I just didnt like it, or Zhou's hair. You can tell it's a choppy cut with extensions. It's a good looking cast but the styling definitely needed more work.

I would still rewatch it but I feel like there would be scenes I would be skipping.