luckz

We got so convinced that there was reluctance between the two actors that we kept focusing on it for any kissing scenes. Their eyes don't look like they want to, anything up close is cut short, then cut to some far-away angles to fake it altogether...

To me it was like someone flipped a switch and now it's a completely different person with a fresh-out-of-the-oven personality :(

It just gets harder and harder to finish as it goes on.
If you aren't even excited by the start, there's so much side stuff starting around episode 09 ...

The characters I had the highest hopes for, all used for... nada :<

In the first timeline he worked for Prince Qing and helps kill ML&FL.
In the second timeline, he swears loyalty to ML during an interrogation, and afterwards plays a sort of double agent, pretending to defect to Prince Qing.

In EP01 at 40 minutes he wakes up and says he forgot everything. He doesn't ever remember, other than seeing FL when near-death.

Here it can be taken as "the character(s) had a very long dream" instead of being straight up reborn. Of course this doesn't really work with how the FL takes charge of things, but ...

No, he too is reborn or dreams their deaths in the future, and so is one SML, but ML doesn't remember while the other two do.
When ML first wakes up as a child, he says he had a very long dream but cannot remember anything. And that he feels he should not have forgotten it. (EP 01 40 minutes)

The first like 8 episodes actually still have some merit and premise.
After that there's basically no episode without the script derailing in some way, and the endless family intrigue and focus on irrelevant characters is really boring.

Struggled really, really hard to finish it.
If you are thinking about dropping it at some point after the first episodes, it's better to drop it.

At some point in the middle, the whole "knowing the future/past" element also randomly disappeared from the plot virtually entirely.
There's only one credited screenwriter, but it felt stitched together by about four, all competing for the direction the story should develop.
(There's other times where the FL knows events with absurd precision that she wasn't there for in her previous life, and uses this magic knowledge to intervene like a surgeon of fate.)

he's randomly transformed into a completely different personality later on 🤷

It's short and overall harmless.

In the drama he's basically the biggest evil of evils. Maybe, I guess, Zhuang Shen can compete.

Pros:
- The revenge really revenges.
- Important dialogues are well-written.
- The actors all put in the work.
- The leads' attitudes to each other.
- You don't have to wait to the 75% point for a lame confession, with one hug as it transitions into the credits. It's not that type of show.
- The viewer never suffers. It's not that type of angst.
- The villains aren't just clownish evil for evil's sake, but have reasonable motivations, with a dash of "once you're too far down the wrong path you can't turn around".
- Outside of the leads, there's a lot more characters delivering friendship, loyalty, brotherhood, family bonds, and so on. Compared to something like A Journey To Love though, the supporting characters of the ML's soldier crew are a bit more one-dimensionally loyal and otherwise don't have much personality.
- Some of the sets look really refreshing compared to the always-same palaces viewers got used to. The costumes are decent too.
- On the female general scale, this female military commander FL is typically more convincing than the average seen in Legend Of The Female General, Shadow Love, Wonderland of Love, etc.

Mixed:
- Once in a while, the cinematography or editing impresses you so much that you want to immediately rewind. Sadly, it's rare, and a lot of this powder is fired at the very start.
- In the middle, the plot gets a bit weaker for some time, when the twists all twist at once.
- The fighting scenes are a mix bag. There is strong attention to detail in the front, but later on you can spot lifeless actors/stuntpeople doing "left-right-left-right" pretend-fighting in the back. Maybe that kind of lazy production is due to budget limitations?
- The FL being voice acted by Duan Yi Xuan made me hear the Till The End Of The Moon FL (Bai Lu) all the time.
- The comedy is hit and miss; there's only one duo in the later episodes who really deliver.
- Kiss-wise 2025 viewers are spoiled by WDBTD, and this isn't it. One wouldn't be wrong to claim that another couple in Fated Hearts has more chemistry than the leads.

Cons:
- The OST. There's barely any songs, and the ones they have aren't memorable. If Goblin or anything Chen Xue Ran is 9–10/10, and Till The End Of The Moon like an 8/10 in the OST department, then this is a 5/10 or something.
- The ending / post-story could have gotten more screen time.

In the drama they were supposed to get married after that fateful battle; it did not specify if they had kissed or not, but it seems pretty clear that they did not 'consummate' their relationship.
However, finding out the horrendous death camp that trained her into a warrior was actually Jingshi's doing put a permanent stop to anything thoughts or feelings in that direction, plus of course him shooting her off that cliff.
She definitely did not "bring scholars home with her" or for that matter have other men.

What's a 'CKT'?

re "the ONLY believable female general we've had recently":
Besides the Mulan-ish https://mydramalist.com/754387-legend-of-the-female-general your list is also missing https://mydramalist.com/776871-qing-chuan

Unfortunately, the fighting scenes have a lot of "left-right-left-right" extras in the back. :(
(That just pretend-fight back and forth.)

I feel I've seen this storyline adapted before ("female official and emperor .. who still loves her"). Is this based on something historical or a famous story or so?