Meh. The acting was mediocre. The story was pretty boring. There was so much talking. I ended up skipping a lot of scenes. Almost all the characters I liked the most died. It's pretty unusual for a series to keep on killing off main characters. It felt unsatisfying. We were left with the most cunning and cold people, except for my favorite character Zhi Ming. He was the only comedic relief. And boy, did I need it. My favorite couple, though, was Jian Bin and Qi Zhi Kan. I would say they were the only real couple. They were obviously important to each other. They both stayed loyal till the end. Zhi Ming was into A-Li, and Meng Zhang seemed to be into Zhong Kun Yi. I believe it was one-sided in both instances, though. Zhi Ming was so into A-Li. A-Li was cold towards Zhi Ming almost the entire way through, though. He did manage to get him to smile a couple of times, but that was about it. Zhong Kun Yi just seemed to not care about Meng Zhang that much. I mean, he didn't even bat an eye when he was ill. Gong Sun Qian and Ling Guang were never that close, so I wouldn't consider them a possible couple. There was also so much repetition of the same issues. It became a little tedious. There weren't enough romantic moments for this to be worth it, in my opinion.