This drama benefits a lot from the plot of the source material in the beginning and from the eye catching performance of Wei Kexing (newbie actor Gong Jun). However it ultimately falls short due to the budget level acting of most of the cast and most importantly, the adaptation lacking necessary plot points from the book.

It's very clear that the budget is limited here. Firstly they don't have a single good big name actor. Gong Jun is charismatic but his inexperience shows when he is trying to portray more complex emotions.. Huang Youming as Ye Baiyi was fine and well suited to his role. The wheelchair kid was the best villain in the story. Almost everyone else had noticeable flaws. For a veteran actor, Zhang Zehan is better when he's not trying to depict any emotion however this is the case for most of his roles. The general acting level was hard to tolerate as the series went on because the story stopped being supported by the level of the plot.

In general the way the screenwriters chose to begin the series was promising, revealing a good trail of clues up to around the point when Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu reveal their true identities to each other. However by that point a lot was changed in the source material and the logic of the plot fell apart as a torrent of characters was introduced in quick succession. Wen Kexing's new backstory is ok but a lot of the background of the ghosts, background of Tian Chuang and so on were omitted making it hard to follow the motives of such a large cast. The writers tried to make up for this by majorly playing up fan service between the leads but this lowered the quality by taking away necessary plot development time.