This is another revenge drama led by Wu Jin Yan but this time, she’s a powerful assassin with martial arts skills. This drama should have been directly in her wheelhouse. Liu Xue Yi has always looked good in period dramas and has decent acting chops to match. It just didn’t quite click (at least for me).

I get what the drama was trying to do but it was just boring. It ticked the box for every trope used in period romance dramas. Are the protagonists outwardly cold but with hearts of gold? Yes. Are there love triangles? Yes. Is this another power struggle between siblings? Yes. There really weren’t that many surprises.

The world also seemed small as we learned of the main antagonist early on and it was rather frustrating to see the protagonists try to get closer and closer while the antagonist really wasn’t hiding what he was trying to do. It also really focused on the same characters which made the drama drag for me, even though this drama was only 32 episodes.

This is a fine drama if you want to watch in the background but I didn’t feel compelled to chase it. This drama aired without much fanfare and sputtered along in October, a far cry from Wu Jin Yan’s other hit The Double 墨雨云间 this year. It also doesn’t help that Wu Jin Yan announced her marriage earlier this year, which meant she couldn’t market her “CP” with Liu Xue Yi while promoting this drama.

What I liked 

• The leads of Wu Jin Yan and Liu Xue Yi: I haven’t seen that many dramas starring Liu Xue Yi, but I always thought him as a decent actor and he was very good in this drama. He portrayed the dismay, the joy, and the surprises experienced by the character of Mu Rong Jing He. Wu Jin Yan excels in revenge dramas and this was no different. The two make a very handsome couple and this is a more mature couple in the sea of recent dramas. It’s funny that Wu Jin Yan decided to use her own voice for this drama because people (including me) have been so used to her Story of Yan Xi Palace and the Double voice dub that we were taken aback by her actual voice.
• Filmed On Location: Real snow! Real mountains! It’s the little things these days for dramas that really make a difference. Too many dramas are filmed in front of a greenscreen or in a lot (which is very obvious) so I enjoyed seeing the wide shots in this drama of characters actually in the mountains or wilderness when they had to.

• Beautiful Costumes: The costumes for the characters were top notch throughout the drama even if they were worn by the character only once. I really enjoyed the visual feast from Mu Rong Jing He and the Crown Prince with their formal attire and would focus on the whenever they were on screen

What Could Have Been Better

• Very Small World: This is my biggest and overall gripe with the drama. There are two kingdoms, multiple princes, a princess, an emperor, and an assassin in this story so this should be a sprawling story right? No, it literally just revolves around these 10 people as they move their chess pieces on the playing field. It just felt rather boring because everything led back to the same people. I couldn’t help but keep comparing to The Double as to why that drama was so engrossing whereas this was was pretty average. My conclusion is that in the former, Xue Fang Fei had to use her wits to defeat each enemy and she beat them as if she was in a video game. She leveled up with her opponents. For this drama, Mei Lin is a very powerful assassin and all of the other players are known pretty early on. She just keeps fighting the same opponents and therefore there’s little appeal because we know that she’s going to have some setbacks until the end of the drama. It just didn’t make for compelling tv.

In conclusion – I decided to move onto other dramas after episode 14 but it’s not a terrible drama. Just average.

Cathy