viraleksa

Not a good profile pic! Previous one was better.

Okay, you have a different interpretation, I can't convince you, you can't convince me. But how do you explain Xu Meng murdering the boy who bumped into her? Certainly that can't be blamed on Qiao Su Qing?

Also, when the boyfriend tried to ask Xu Meng to marry her and leave with him, Xu Meng's dad wasn't a loving father anymore. It doesn't make it better if he has turned evil and crazy just because of the medication and wasn't a bad person before. He is now abusing her, and your argument is that since you love your parent you should stay and allow them to abuse you? My heart bleeds for people who are manipulated and gaslighted into staying in an abusive relationship of any kind by making them feel they have no right to leave. I had a neighbor like that: no matter how many times I called the police to come rescue her, she would lie to them and tell everything's okay and nobody hurt her and she herself hurt herself... so the cops couldn't help her. It's not healthy, and no one has the right to require an abused individual to stay for any reason to be abused. Yes, she should have left. But she was brainwashed into thinking it's her duty to put up with being beaten and her body sold for sex because she owes him. If that isn't pure evil, I don't know what is. For the father to appeal to filial piety as a reason for her to stay was wrong when he himself was not behaving in the way a parent is required to behave. A parent owes his/her child to take care of them and be a good parent, it's not just a child who owes their parent. A parent doesn't own their child, they are not the parent's property, and they have no right to use their children's bodies to sell them or to hurt them in order for them to feel better. Maybe this is a cultural difference: here in Finland parents aren't allowed to beat their children, and if they do, officials will come and take the child away from them deeming them unfit to be parents. Here any violence parents do against the child is considered evil, it's not even allowed as a punishment. We have such strickt rules about it here that it affects me when I watch dramas like this and all I can see is how evil these kinds of people are who think they have the right to hurt their child. Breaks my heart.

I think you misunderstood me a couple times. Especially this: I wasn't saying the father should have committed suicide. I was saying that there are fathers who love their daughters so much that in order to protect them and make sure nothing bad happens to them, they might even go so far as to sacrifice themselves for their child's wellbeing. I was making the argument that he was not a loving father, just a selfish man who only cared about himself since he would allow his daughter to sell herself like that. But you didn't see it that way.

Anyway, both ladies were wrong and both evil. I just don't agree that Xu Meng was an innocent poor girl who Qiao Su Qing manipulated, I think it was the other way around. Or maybe it's a whole mess and they are both manipulators manipulating each other and everyone else. We'll never know, I guess. The only two people alive who were at Mount Wu are now both in custody, one is getting a death sentence and one is jailed for life, so no one can no what really happened up there.

Anyway, such a good drama, happy we got the enjoy it! I think at this point it's best we agree to disagree about how we see the plot and the characters in the drama.

Love both, surely will support, don't care what anybody else says. Can't make my decisions based on some haters. Just finished watching Wu Xin: The Monster Killer which was aired in 2015. I absolutely loved the old fashioned atmosphere, didn't bother me one bit, it was just cute. So I have hope I will enjoy this drama regardless of it being "outdated" like some are labeling it. Who cares? I guess I am outdated too since I was born ages ago, yet, I still matter too. I think if people would just support more and use less time on hating and/or worrying what others think/say, C-dramaland would be much more enjoyable for everyone.

I know the competition is fierce and people are worried about negative comments. But did anyone think about the situation in C-dramaland now: the industry is faced with hard times, some even considering switching some actors for AI because it would cost less, many actors/actresses struggling to get work. At this point I am not surprised they are rushing to release old unaired dramas to fill the void and try to win some money back and maybe also try to save some money while they are at it. Right now, releasing old dramas is benefitial for the platforms since it doesn't carry high costs unlike filming new ones. I just hope we get through the tough times and filming new dramas will continue, and preferably not with AI replacing actors/actresses. Because if AI takes over their roles I might as well start watching more of these old dramas that I haven't seen yet but have real people acting in them!

I know all this and understand that you are right about it. Still, usually the rule for cops is to not get involved with anyone from a case, and also it is unwise to just leave a child attended by someone you just met. Even though they didn't know there was anything wrong with her, it's still a basic common sense rule in life in general that before you leave your child with someone, have a confident knowledge of who they are. Yes, I know, even with familiar people horrible things can happen. I just can't get over how careless it was of him. Also, I am kind of going through some trauma in my own life, so I am probably being overly sensitive right now about safety issues like these, overreacting here a little bit, so never mind me and my outburst! 😅😭

My differing analysis:

I agree with your first paragraph about Qiao Su Qing's background. You said, and I quote: "Qiao Suqing is from single parent family and her mother wants to sell her, her aunt hits her, and her uncle covets her. It seems she lived in darkenss and can hardly breathe in her dysfunctional family."

I also agree with the following you said, and I quote: "Xu Meng’s mother passed away early, but her relatives have always treated her well and cared for her (they have been helping her 💴 since her father fell ill, even feeling that he was a burden to her)." However, next you say that she has a boyfriend who loves her and that she cares about her father... I disagree. She HAD a boyfriend who loved her but when the boyfriend tried to rescue her from her situation by asking her to marry him leaving it all behind, she refused and told him to just stay with her in the same town so she could stay with her father. Yes, she cared about her father, but she herself chose to stay in that toxic situation and gave up her chance at love and getting away.

Yes, I know filial piety is very important in China. But that is just it, it weighed so heavily on her and her father used it against her to the point that he allowed her to sell herself for money. So I disagree with you that her father didn't want her selling herself. What I got from their conversation was that he despised her selling herself and blamed her for not being able to get them money in any other way, but I didn't see him stopping her from selling herself or telling her to stop. He was just worried about the loan sharks coming to kill him, he wasn't showing his care for his daughter or trying to rescue her, she was just his meal ticket and his way of surviving so he needed her alive to take care of him. If he really cared for his daughter and didn't want her selling herself or harm herself to get money for his medicine, a truly loving father would opt to possibly kill himself so as to not burden her daughter and put her in danger. Xu Meng is completely indoctrinated by him and under his control to the point that she chooses him over her boyfriend. It is not until her father threatens Qiao Su Qing that Xu Meng finally snaps and pushes her father. At this point she has already murdered one person without anyone's knowledge, the creepy abusive old man Yao Bai Yuan, so it's not a big deal for her at this point to push her father and watch him die. She has already let the evil inside her heart.

I also disagree with your assesment that Qiao Su Qing is most likely to have snatched her mother's clothes in the mountains. Qiao Su Qing was not a manipulative, rebellious, violent or angry person at that point of her life, she was a victim and just allowed everyone else to walk all over her. The narrative that she was the one who pushed her own mom down was given to her by the only two other people who were there: Xu Meng and her dad. Later on Xu Meng said to Qiao Su Qing that actually it was her father who pushed Qiao Su Qing's mom down. That seems much more likely to me. Yes, maybe the accident and medication had changed the father's behavior drastically and turned him into a nasty violent creep BUT there is another option which is that he wasn't a very nice person to begin with.

We only have very little knowledge of what Xu Meng's life was like before the mountain accident. She was pen palls with Qio Su Qing and they shared some aspects of their lives with each other but Xu Meng could have lied and covered up what it was like for her living with her dad. We don't know if her father was manipulative already before. Her relationship with her father was not normal. Even if you love your parent and are filial and trying to take care of them, that does not mean that you will automatically allow them to mistreat you like he did. For someone to allow being treated so badly, it has to be years and years of her being brainwashed and manipulated by her father, living in a twisted relationship where the father justifies anything he does with filial piety and demands absolute obedience from her daughter even at her own demise. I think the father was nasty already before, and the accident and the medication only enhanced his nasty character. I even believe Xu Meng might have told the truth when she said it was her dad who pushed Qiao Su Qing's mom down, because to me it seems something that a selfish nasty man like him would do. The other option I have in mind is, her father might have manipulated Xu Meng into pushing the lady down. The most unlikely scenario to me is that it was actually Qiao Su Qing who pushed her mom down.

I also strongly disagree with your following assesment about Yao Baiyuan and
Yao Xincheng. You said, why would Yao Bai Yuan go up to the 17th floor to look at the ladies when he already had Qiao Su Qing at home. Why do evil creeps do anything? He is an insatiable creep, of course he would have no reason not to peep at other women as well. The nature of abusers isn't to just settle for one victim, there is no such rule of behavior. They are greedy and want more. Serial killers aren't just satisfied with one victim, pedophiles can often have several victims, rapists might be repeat offenders etc. Yao Xin Cheng knew exactly what a creep his father was and felt bad having to hire someone to take care of him and to be subjected to that kind of treatment. Qiao Su Qing wasn't a mistress having an affair with Yao Xin Cheng to get money from him; she was sometimes locked inside the apartment by Yao Bai Yuan (remember she was found inside passed out and covered in blood after Yao Bai Yuan had abused her) and she was continuously being sexually harassed and physically abused by him. Yes, she was able to get out of the apartment when Yao Xin Cheng came to bring her gifts and to ask her to stay, so she wasn't locked in the apartment all the time, she also went out of Yuanlongli etc.

However, her family had sold her and she didn't have any place to go. She also didn't have a good education so her ability to provide for herself was not good. If she has nowhere to go and no way to provide for herself and no money, she is doomed or has to end up prostituting herself. So she forced herself to stay in that job in that apartment so that she could one day have a home of her own, a place where she could stay, at least it was the best of all the worst options, better than starving, being homeless or being a prostitute. Nobody was going to come to rescue her, she felt she was on her own. After all, she hadn't met Ran Fang Xu back then, nobody cared for her, and the neighbors all thought badly of her thinking she was a mistress. She didn't ask Xu Meng for help, she didn't manipulate her into killing Yao Bai Yuan for her. That was all Xu Meng's doing, a response to the rage she felt when seeing Yao Bai Yuan treat her the way he did. At first, she takes out Yao Bai Yuan, her big sister's abuser. Later, she takes out her own dad, her own abuser, but only after he threatens to kill her big sister.

You also mentioned that Qiao Su Qing wasn't short on money and got expensive gifts from Yao Xin Cheng while watching Xu Meng drown in her debt with the loan sharks. But she firstly didn't want the expensive dress from him, and secondly gifted it as unused to Xu Meng (she could have sold it BTW if she wanted the cash since it was an expensive dress). Also, Xu Meng didn't tell her about the loan sharks. Qiao Su Qing knew about her selling herself in Pattia but I don't remember any scene where she would've been informed by Xu Meng of her financial predicament. Previously when they caught Qiao Su Qing she had cooked up a lie that Xu Meng used to come to extort her for money, but when her lies were revealed, it turned out, Xu Meng never came over to her for money or to extort anything from her but she only came because she was obsessed with their "sisterhood" and had the obsessive dream of getting a home where the two of them could live and kept trying to make that happen.

I also disagree when you described Xu Meng as helpless. She didn't seem helpless to me at all, instead, she seemed cold and calculative. She was calmly telling Wu Shan Long she wasn't going back with him to his apartment after she climbed out of the trunk of the car when he took the pictures of her being "dead". She calmly made a plan to get rid of Yao Bai Yuan and executed her plan without hesitation, then calmly manipulated Xiao Qiao into getting rid of the evidence of her dad's death, calmly brought the bucket of that substance that could get rid of the blood stains when they were chopping the body to pieces (I can't remember what it is called), calmly made a plan to stage her and her dad's "disappearance", calmly set the place on fire to kill the kid who had seen her in Yuanlongli just to cover up her tracks, calmly kept following Qiao Su Qing, calmly made a plan how to fool Ran Fang Xu with similar clothing and to get him to crash his car, calmly lived in her home alone all those years after Qiao Su Qing had cut ties with her following the death of Ran Fang Xu. These are not the actions of a helpless victim, this is a coldblooded psychopath. She is willing to do anything and everything to get what she wants, she has no conscience and no regret, and if she doesn't get what she wants, then nobody else gets to have what they want either, and she will easily turn against the person she has previously been loyal to if this person lets her down. She turned against her dad, then turned against Qiao Su Qing, after first being completely obsessed with the both of them.

Also I disagree when you said, and I quote "Xu Meng would not even handle the matter of disposing of the body properly, Qiao had to take matters into her own hands to frame Wu with the fake stilettos and cause his death." Everything was instigated by Xu Meng, not Qiao Su Qing. She manipulated Qiao Su Qing by telling her "oh, BTW, it was my dad who pushed your mom", justifying the killing of her dad. Why, if she knew all along that her dad killed Xiao Qiao's mom, did she cover it up all these years and not tell her the truth and let her think she had killed her mom, if she really cares about Xiao Qiao so much and is an innocent victim? No; she knew, covered it up, and used it to manipulate her at the right moment, getting Qiao Su Qing to fully commit to covering up for Xu Meng. Now she is overwhelmed with the feeling of "oh, it's okay that he is dead, he was a bad guy anyway, pushed my mom down, poor Xu Meng is a victim, she calls me big sis, I have to protect her" and so she tells Xu Meng to bring the body to her apartment so that they can get rid of it.

BTW, it was a terrible plan, there were so many much easier and better ways for them to do it, but for the sake of the story and plot, the writer decided on such a plot twist, even though dragging a body in a suitcase into an apartment that was quite far away from Xu Meng's home just so they could get rid of it there makes absolutely no sense, they could've chopped it up in Xu Meng's house as well. It would've also worked well to fool the loan sharks into thinking they are both dead, a much better plan than that complicated "cursed Yuanlongli made them disappear" plan.

Also, it wasn't Qiao Su Qing who instigated framing Wu Shan Long. Xu Meng came up with that idea, she said "I know someone who can die in our place", so I really don't get where you got the idea that this was all Qiao Su Qing's doing. Xu Meng had been used by Wu Shan Long, then she staged her death with Wu Shan Long's help, and now she chose him to be the one they would frame and lead him to his death. It was her signature move to use something slippery to create the false sense of accidental death. Yes, Qiao Su Qing took part in it by yelling the instructions which entrance had been opened so that Wu Shan Long would hear her and turn that way and ultimately run into his death. but yet again it was Xu Meng standing in the shadows with a knife ready to finish him off if the plan should fail.

Qiao Su Qing also didn't deliberately tell Xu Meng Ran Fang Xu's whereabouts and schedule to get her to kill him. She said she would turn herself in. She didn't tell the exact details on the phone; during the interrogation Xu Meng said she knew where Qiao Su Qing worked and that Ran Fang Xu would come pick him up from work to go to He Yuan Hang's home for New Year's Eve. She herself went there to check the route, noticed there was some construction going on on the road and then made a plan to use her usual accident style of murdering. She had followed Qiao Su Qing without her knowledge, seen her with Ran Fang Xu in the mall buying the clothes, so she knew the exact clothes to go buy to make herself look like Qiao Su Qing, even buying a wig. She hated Ran Fang Xu for taking Qiao Su Qing away from her; "if I can't have her, nobody can have her". She was driven to murder by jealousy. She wanted her big sis living with her in their home together, and there was absolutely no room for Qiao Su Qing's romance in this plan of hers. She claimed to at first be concerned for Qiao Su Qing's safety and that this was the reason she originally followed them around, but the concern turned into rage and jealousy when she realized Qiao Su Qing was ghosting her because she was in love and happy with Xiao Ran. When someone is this evil as Xu Meng, seeing someone else being happy and having what you didn't get can make a sick mind like hers justify to herself the evil things she then does to destroy that other persons happiness. Xu Meng has been through hell, she has killed for Qiao Su Qing, and now she thinks she can just forget about her, leave her behind and live happily ever after? Hell no, she has to pay, this is in Xu Meng's mind the greatest betrayal, so ultimately killing Ran Fang Xu becomes about revenge against Qiao Su Qing. After all in the interrogation she screamed about Qiao Su Qing that "She deserved it!"

Even if you overlook everything else to back up your interpretation of the events, how do you explain Xu Meng murdering Xiaohe's keyboard playing friend? That had 0% to do with Qiao Su Qing. If Xu Meng can burn a child alive just because he bumped into her, that tells you EVERYTHING about her. She is evil, rotten to the core, she has no soul left, she's turned into a demon. Qiao Su Qing on the other hand had little Xiaohe in her apartment overnight just a little while after they had chopped Xu Meng's dad up in her bathroom, yet it didn't even occur to her to ever do Xiaohe any harm. There's a HUGE difference between these ladies. Both suffered terribly, both did wrong evil things, but one of them is beyond humanity whereas the other is still capable of feeling guilt and shame and apologizes for her part in all of it.

Sorry, I don't mean to tear your analysis apart, it just felt to me like "did we even watch the same drama", so I wanted to analyze how I saw things from my perspective.

I loved this drama so much. I was just left with a few big issues.

Firstly, it left me thinking that Ran Fang Xu, however brilliant, intelligent, upright and wonderful he was, unfortunately did a few things a cop should never do:
1) never fall in love with someone involved in the case because it can affect your impartiality and judgment of the case
2) never give someone a promise they can turn themselves in later but instead arrest the culprit at once
He was exceptionally amazing, but he broke these rules and it had terrible consequences. The rules exist for a reason: so that tragedies like this could be avoided.

If he hadn't overlooked his duty as a cop to suspect every single person in Yuanlongli instead of being so smitten by Qiao Su Qing that it made him not pay attention earlier to the warning sings (the mud on her clothes the first time they met etc.) then maybe this all could have been avoided. On the other hand, it is human nature to fall in love, so it's understandable. But when he went to see her after finding out she was guilty he made the second mistake which was the ultimate deadly mistake: giving her time until the next day to turn herself in. He of course cared about her and was thinking that turning herself in will possibly reduce her sentence. And of course he didn't have any sense of danger at this point because he thought the culprit was just her; he had no idea that Xu Meng was still alive and that giving Qiao Su Qing more time would put his life in danger after Xu Meng found out about it. Of course, yet again, his choice was understandable and very human, and he can't be blamed at that point for not knowing that Xu Meng was the main culprit and that he was in any danger. It just hurts to know that if only he hadn't given Qiao Su Qing any leeway and mercy, then he would've probably survived and stayed alive and had a chance to keep investigating and perhaps catching Xu Meng himself.

The only thing that made me feel better was seeing that, before he died, he saw Xu Meng standing above him, so he died knowing that the woman he loved was not the killer as he had thought. The look in his eyes when he went to meet Xiao Qiao was so painful because the poor man thought that she was the cruel coldblooded murderer and that he had been in love with a murderer this whole time. After all Qiao Su Qing didn't personally kill anyone: she only chopped up a dead body and lead Wu Shan Long to his death (the trap itself was made by Xu Meng).

Secondly, there was another big no-no in this drama. No matter how experienced and excellent a cop He Yuan Hang was, he also did something a cop shouldn't do, or should I say, something that a father shouldn't do, or should I say, something that no human being with a brain in their head should do: he left Xiaohe as a little girl in the care of a woman he had just met in the building where they were investigating a case. He knew nothing about Qiao Su Qing, just made the assumption that she seems like a nice lady, and asked her to take care of Xiaohe overnight while he went on to investigate because he was too busy to take care of his own child. Qiao Su Qing had just a while ago chopped up a human body into pieces in her own bathroom and hidden the pieces in the woods and now little Xiaohe is left alone with her in her apartment. Of course He Yuan Hang couldn't know this, and of course Qiao Su Qing wouldn't have hurt Xiaohe (unlike Xu Meng). But still, come one, this is the reason why you make sure you have a safe person as a babysitter if you yourself are unable to take care of your child because of work or something else. I now find it creepy to think that poor Xiaohe was staying overnight in the apartment, where something like that had happened, and with the person who had done something like that to another human being (no matter how horrible that human being had been while he was alive). In all honesty, actually also the fact that Ran Fang Xu brought Xiaohe with him to Yuanlongli while he was investigating was also something that goes against the rules of being a cop but I understand they of course made some choices in the drama for the sake of the storytelling and dramatic effect.

All in all, a wonderful drama, and the fact that it got me this emotional and that these things bothered me so much, shows what a deep impact the drama had. I haven't cried like this in a while watching a drama, I really almost grieved Ran Fang Xu even though he is a fictional character. I already started re-watching, it feels very different seeing it the second time around now that I know everything that happened.

What was wrong with all this...

I was admiring how he used restraint in this role, suttle little changes of expression on his face, one single tear falls from his eye, the look in his eyes changes just a bit. It was different from his previous roles where he is usually very vocal, animated and expressive. This shows such growth yet again in his acting skills. Thanks for the suggestion, but I am yet unable to watch Per Aspera Ad Astra. I'm from Finland and I can't yet have access to watch it anywhere, I know it's on Tencent and Youku but I only have international Youku (it wasn't available there) and access to WeTV (it wasn't available there). I'll have to wait for it to arrive on Netflix and even then I am not 100% certain that Netflix in my region will show it. I really struggle as a C-drama fan to be able to watch some of the content here in Finland...

So proud of Didi ❤️I do love him in his previous roles but there was just something so special about Ran Fang Xu, I absolutely love this role. I cried my eyes out; all it takes is to see Didi's gentle eyes and smile to genuinely care about his character and then when something tragic happens to his character it freaking hurts! Still, even though this was a crime investigation drama and at times quite heartbreaking, I don't know what it is about Didi, but whenever I watch his dramas I just immediately somehow feel better no matter what is going on in my own life.

This whole drama was amazing, well written, well directed, interesting, proceeded calmly in its own pace without trying to please people who are obsessed with fast paced dramas. Everybody did such a good job. I didn't like Ren Min before but she was really great in this role and this is now my favorite role of hers. Pan Yue Ming was a new acquintance for me, he is such a good actor. Broke my heart, he was like the father Ran Fang Xu didn't have, treated him almost like a son and then lost him 😭Jiang Pei Yao was really quite surprising in this drama and truly showed her acting skills.

I love the ending song, I can't find online who sings it, it keeps playing in my head, so captivating.

Yes, good news!

Yes, happy, happy, happy!

Does anyone know if it is true that Dou Xiao (Shawn Dou) will have a guest role in this drama? Because I saw him on the filming site dressed up as a soldier but he hasn't been listed as one of the actors in the drama... If Cheng Lei and Dou Xiao are in the same drama even for a very short part of the drama I am totally going to freak out over here!

Really?!! I am not there yet, I get to see it tomorrow!

Yeah, exactly, where is the cigarette burned guy?

Okay, so patiently still waiting.

What does "will launch on May 11th" mean? Does it mean it will be aired on May 11th or does it mean the advertising and promotion for the drama will begin on May 11th? And then the drama will air later on some other date?

I don't know, I'm looking for an official platform, not a pirate platform.

And also it is on WeTV with a different name The Lead, instead of Main Character, I only found it because someone else told me about the name change. They only now changed the name here on MDL as well.

Thank you, I found it!

Exactly!