watched for tiantian, stuck around for both him and xin zhilei. not a big fan of the tomb raiding genre so i was not emotionally moved by even the more brutal deaths in this show. the way that hong-guniang was written at the beginning was frustrating. you could tell her character was conceived of by a man lol. zhegu shao was a wonderful character, and i think this was gao weiguang's best performance to date. i always get nervous when a heartbreaking scene happens in movies and dramas that i'm detached from bc i automatically wonder if the acting will save it for me. sometimes it didn't (nirvana in fire 2 with huang xiaoming...i don't think he knows how to cry lol) but in this drama, yes, it did. my heart broke with zhegu shao and gao weiguang's performance made me love him. xin zhilei did wonderfully with what she had; an incredible actress for sure. she deserved to shine more.

as for the writing, if you've seen movies that torture their characters for fun and have no actual message being conveyed whatsoever, then this is precisely that. if you don't mind it, perhaps you'll find something to love in this drama, but i certainly didn't. random displays of misogyny and killing characters for shock value while writing off-screen deaths for others is not good storytelling for me and it never will be. production value is great. i can't complain about the makeup, sets, and cgi. makes me feel sad that so much money and work was put into a story that was so insipid and dull.