When I first started the series, the beginning really caught my interest with the story of the parents’ death. The whole plot to separate the twins in order for them to eventually fight and kill one another was great! So I thought I would be plunged into some in depth series and I couldn’t wait.
Although the series so far is alright, i guess my expectations were too high. I’m at the point where I’m forcing myself to watch it to see if it gets better.

Before I get with the negative, the things I did love about the show was the acting of xiaoyuer. He just kept my interest every time and carried the show on his back. The other characters did what they had to as well (although I’m not too fond of hyt’s stoic acting, although there’s not much to do with his character).
The fight scenes were also 10/10 probably some of the best I’ve ever seen in a wuxia.

My problems with the show:
The characters.

In the beginning I really enjoyed the brother, xianyuer’s character way more than huque. He was funnier, smarter and was likeable and enjoyable to watch. Now as the series went on, his mysogynistic comments become too much to bear (I know the tone is due to the fact of the story deriving from an older novel), he’s way too arrogant and it’s like he does things the most difficult and chaotic way possible when simpler solutions are available. So it’s frustrating to see and scream a better solution through my phone screen. I must say his cleverness has still never failed him.

The other brother, Hua wuque, was first introduced as calm, collected and impressively strong. Although he was boring from the start, I didn’t dislike his character. What I don’t get is how someone so ‘humble’ always comes off as so self-righteous. For a gentleman he really stuck his nose in everything and it was also annoying to watch how easily fooled he was for half of the show. I understand he lived in solitude with his aunts acting as his masters, but to never question once why they want this random boy dead, especially seeing how the martial arts world saw his aunts as evil was just alarming. And then even working right next to the main villain without realizing, especially if xiaoyuer had been shouting about it for episodes upon episodes. Come on...

Xinlan in the beginning was strong. Strong enough to easily overpower xianyouer and fight off hoards of villains. But the moment she started to ‘fall in love’ she just turned completely useless. All she did after that was get in the way of every fight. They really did her character dirty and made her go from likeable to unlikeable real fast. So much for girl power.

Story:
This storyline could’ve been something great!
But so many things really prevented this.

Firstly, the brothers went from enemies to best friends way too quickly. Like all of the times Hua Wuque tried to kill Xiaoyuer and never believed him just flew right out the window in a mere second. I’m all for not holding grudges, but it made me, as the viewer, feel like I imagined all those episodes of them hating each other and they were lifetime best friends this whole time.

Unlike others who had a problem with the dragging story and found it boring, I was actually entertained by the potentials of the story. There were many ways these storylines could’ve been handled though but it seemed xiaoyuer and company wanted to take the hardest route every time.
For example, when Xiaoyuer first tried to reveal jiang biehe’s plot and yulang was disguised as a porter, you’re telling me no one thought to questioned how a porter would have those skills ?? And why didn’t xiaoyuer just take off Yulang’s disguise to reveal his identity.

It was also annoying to see the recurring theme: the main things being solved by Xiaoyuer before anyone else and no one acknowledges. But then episodes later the same thing is “discovered” as if we didn’t find this out episodes ago.

This story had such great potential. I’m still in the process of forcing myself to watch. But it’s so hard when I’m currently not fond of any of the main characters, probably only black spider. Looking forward to hopefully more character development but I’d say that’d be unlikely with about 10 episodes left.

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