I love this drama so much that I created an account *just* to review it.

*This review contains some mild spoilers but I've done my best to be as vague as possible*

I want to start by saying this is one of my best Chinese dramas ever for several reasons (and I've been watching dramas for the past 5 years)
First, the FL here is a truly strong, badass, amazing character. I loved her so much, and sometimes, I would just pause the drama to squeal, "She's so cool!" The other major female characters were also super cool. Yang Ying for example, started off as a really weak girl who would always cry and run away. Her character development was magnificent to witness (tbh, I watched AvenueX's first impressions video and she's 80% of the reason I watched this drama, and I'm so happy I didn't regret it!) Chu Yue and Mei Niang had smaller scenes but they were also really cool-headed, strong and ambitious women. I really appreciate the writer for creating these awesome characters and actually sticking to it. None of that, they start off strong and become weak nonsense. No, these women grow stronger and stronger every day. Amazing stuff!! Here and there, they also included some feminist statements I truly appreciated (although they did fall short around the ending, like calling someone so-and-so's wife instead of her title, even though they kept mentioning that women are strong with/without husbands sigh..)

The ML was also super cool, and I really enjoyed watching the relationships between him and his group. Their brotherhood was a main highlight of this drama, and each of the 5 had their distinct attributes and characteristics. My favorite was Qian Zhao cos he just looked super cool! He's the quiet brooding type lol. But all the main characters were awesome! Even the stupid and wicked Emperors embodied their roles so well. Only exception was Li Tong Guang. I see people commenting that the writers did him dirty and while I can sort of, kind of agree to this, based on the info given to us by the writers, he should have died very early on. He was the most ridiculous, stupid, obsessive person ever. They kept trying to make it seem like he was just a child but he wasn't! He was in his 20s drugging someone to have a wedding with him. I wanted him DEAD at that point and I wish they had killed him off; such an annoying character. And he was soo mean to the 2 women he was connected with, at different points. So malicious and vindictive eww. I didn't even hate the war-mongering Emperor as much as I hated him.

*And now to the story:* it starts off really really really good. The politics, the fights, the plotting and the chemistry between all the characters just hits so well. Some bits were quite slow around the middle and I wouldn't have minded if they had cut out some of the FL/ML's scenes and given the other couples some screen time. I mean there's an entire 5-min sequence (or so) where we just watch the FL watching the ML make a sword for her, with some background music, like come on... Cut it short and let's move on! And a couple of smaller scenes weren't very sensible -- like the ML getting into a bath filled with ice and then holding the FL to transfer the cold temperature cos she had a fever? Just reduce the ice, put in more water, wait a while and put her in lmaoo?? But anyway, my rating was like 10000/10 till episode 35. Up until that point, I had decided this was my absolute best c-drama ever.

But then episode 35 came. The first death hit *hard* but it was expected, to me anyway. Usually when someone's actions are so out of character, they're probably going to die. I think the Chinese call this "不識好歹 bù shí hǎo dǎi -- not knowing what's good for oneself." Anyway, the second death happened IN THE SAME EPISODE (!!!!!!!) and broke me, but still I accepted it, it made sense. But then, the third death really pissed me off, it was soo ridiculous and annoying. The character basically ran 2 horses and himself to death without taking a rest for 300 miles (their words not mine) just to get across knowledge of the impending war. And after that, the people that were warned still had a coronation and marriage?? And then the 4th death was even more annoying. If you're hurt in a battle and you have the chance to escape, you fu**king escape not fight more?!?! By the 5th and 6th deaths, I was already numb and just wanted to get the drama over with. I'm not sure if it was an editing issue or censorship issue regulating number of episodes, but I hope there was a f**king good reason for killing off 6 people in the last 6 episodes. I have never seen this before. AND AND the last 4 deaths were soo unnecessary. 2 of them were caused indirectly by the LTG mentioned earlier (somehow, he still didn't die, they were still trying to comfort the asshole smh).

The final 5 minutes of the show were truly unwanted, unasked for and just plain ridiculous. Like another reviewer mentioned, if you have the guts to kill off nearly everyone, then stick to it! Why include a child and his sister whose names are made of the dead leads' names? Is it to make us discuss over and over whether or not they died? For a drama that had such high ideals, the ending felt cheap and unnecessary.

To conclude, I really liked this drama. I'm not happy with how it ended but I would still recommend it to anyone anytime.