The recruiter for this drama certainly had excellent taste for handsome actors. I counted at least 10. And there were plenty of special effects. Whenever the fighting got heated, some fantasy cartoon like characters would be featured to represent the type of inner strength of the martial artists.

The story featured three male leads each with their own romance story. Baili DongJun was the young heir and grandson of Marquis ZhenXi. He led a sheltered luxurious life. His ambition was to become a wine deity, well-known for the wine he brewed. Only when he was selected by Prince Xiao RuoFeng to become a student of the prestigious JiXia Academy headed by Li Chang Sheng, the top martial artist of the world, that he started on a different journey.

Ye Yun, on the other hand had an unfortunate life. He was a close childhood friend of DongJun. His family was executed by the emperor, on some untrue allegation of treason. He escaped and went on to become a highly skilled martial artist. Unfortunately for him, his life took several negative turns. The Beique targeted him as a candidate to acquire their martial art which required a special disposition that he possessed. They needed him to wake up their king who had been deep in a meditation since they lost their kingdom to Beili. For this, they lay several traps for him as he was unwilling to help the enemy.

Sikong Changfeng was a friend that DongJun made while the latter was trying to carve out a name for himself as a wine deity. Before this, he was a vagabond who had self-trained in martial arts and had no memory of his life before he turned fifteen. For him, his path to success was a lot smoother than Ye Yun as he caught the eye of Nangong ChunShui, the reincarnate of Li and became his disciple.

In this drama, you see the contrast in the lives of DongJun and YeYun. Both were disposed with special abilities. For DongJun, his life seemed to be a bed of roses. He rose from adversities to become stronger and seemed to meet the right people to help him. The love of his life turned out to be a beautiful Beique princess who had given up reviving her kingdom as she did not want another round of war and believed it was a futile attempt.

As for Ye Yun, in spite of his capabilities, his life was ruined first by a selfish and suspicious emperor and then by the cunning Beique Chancellor. There had been several times, when his life could have turned for the better but circumstances turned it into a nightmare. The love of his life was his childhood sweetheart and fiancee who was still in love with him through the years he went missing, presumably dead. She was a great beauty but was quite ignorant and somewhat stupid, and was easily deceived by the Beique and became a pawn to their plots.

Being a bit philosophical here: in life, some people are just so blessed that they rose from one challenge to another, gaining grounds each time. While others having worked hard through their lives but were set back with each turn.

Somehow, Chinese drama always have emperors less than qualified for their job morally. In this drama, it was no different. The emperor allowed Ye Yun's family to be executed, even though he knew General Ye was innocent - a complete asshole in my view. Somehow the best heir, in both capabilities and moral disposition, he chose turned down the throne in favour of a rapist - I was rather disappointed in this.

Neo Hou (MingHao) had this boyish look about him that made him very suited to the playful and mischievous DongJun in his teens. It would be interesting to see whether he could graduate into more mature roles when he grew older.

The cartoon-like special effects however, made the drama looked a bit kiddy, a little out of line with the serious nature of this drama.

However, on the whole, this is an interesting drama worth watching.