Scent of Time

Scent of Time 10/10

Just finished watching this drama and I’m genuinely blown away. It’s already 2025, two years since this masterpiece aired, yet I only just watched it. Scent of Time isn’t the type of drama I usually go for, but here I am, about to drop my review after two days and 30 episodes later 🤣

While many might say the pacing was too slow, I’d like to disagree. This drama tackled strong themes like regret, trauma, and self-loathing. As expected, Zhou Ye portrayed Hua Qian beautifully. Hua Qian was originally introduced as a villain in the first few episodes, but after the downfall and eventual loss of her family and loved ones, she dies and is sent back in time. Unknown to her, this so-called second chance is nothing but a dream — an escape from her reality, not an opportunity to truly change the fate of her family.

Most of the episodes showing her “rebirth” focused on her determination to change her actions and those of her family, even though by that point, she and her father had already made the fatal mistake that destroyed them in her “past life.” Still, she never gave up. She fought to right her wrongs, even as the emotional weight of realizing some events in this new life differed from her past began to suffocate her. The relationships she rebuilt, the painful confrontations with her parents and older brother — all reflected the deepest regrets she carried.

One of my favorite aspects was the subtle foreshadowing of Zhong Xiwu as the true male lead. 😅 We can all agree he had less screen time than others. In fact, he appeared so little that he almost felt like a side character. That was heartbreaking for me, because he was the one I rooted for, not Hua Rongzhou. A part of me always knew HRZ wasn’t really the male lead, no matter how much the drama paired him with Hua Qian. Honestly, even Zhong Yelan, Hua Qian’s ex-husband, felt more like a main lead than HRZ.

The reveal at the end — that HRZ was merely someone Hua Qian conjured in her desperate attempt to not feel alone — was beautiful. She longed for one person to be truly sincere to her, regardless of everything else. Even though she had feelings for Zhong Xiwu, she clung to the belief that the one destined to stay by her side was Hua Rongzhou, though not even in a romantic sense. When she finally realized it was all just a dream and she still had to return to a reality without her family, status, friends, or loved ones, my heart broke for her. It’s devastating when the family you lost is still alive in that dream 😭.

And Zhong Xiwu… his silent love and unwavering dedication to her deserved more screen time. There should’ve been at least one more episode showing him by her side, helping her adjust to the reality she once left behind. Still, I think the drama tied everything together beautifully. Never in my life did I imagine loving a reverse-harem drama as much as I loved this one — and I’m glad the guy I rooted for was the one for her in the end.

After watching Legend of the Female General, I was desperate for another Zhou Ye drama and ended up picking this one, despite it having a trope I usually dislike 🤣. Honestly, I never thought I’d be able to watch her with anyone other than Xiao Jue (Cheng Lei) from Legend of the Female General 🤣, but Wang Xingyue delivered his role as Zhong Xiwu so well that I found myself on YouTube searching for clips of their chemistry. I still can’t believe how young he is — truly a super talented actor 👏🏽


Also, I just have to say how much I love Zhou Ye. I realized I might sound like a new fan since I mentioned her 2025 drama, Legend of the Female General, but I’ve actually been following her since 2023 when she starred alongside Neo Hou in Back From the Brink. That drama completely changed my view of her — even though I knew her from Word of Honor, I didn’t count that as my “first Zhou Ye drama” since she was only a side character and, honestly, I was too focused on the two male leads that year 😅. But after Back From the Brink, I truly became her fan and started watching more of her works, both dramas and movies.

Scent of Time actually came out the same year as Back From the Brink, but back then I couldn’t get over her insane chemistry with Neo Hou, so I wasn’t ready to see her with another male lead. Plus, I’ll admit I’m a bit childish when it comes to reverse-harem stories, I can’t handle it if my protagonist doesn’t end up with the person I’m rooting for 🤣🤣. Looking back though, I think 2025 was the perfect time for me to finally watch it. I’m more mature now, and I can appreciate it with a clearer, more critical lens. That being said… I still won’t be watching other reverse-harem dramas any time soon 🤣🤣.

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POV is EVERYTHING!

How many dramas have we seen where the fl's family is framed or wrongly accused and punished to death while the fl escapes narrowly and vows to avenge? Well that's the story of our 2fl Muyao here. Then there is a girl who drugs the guy she loves just to marry him, schemes and harms the other lady love of her beloved to get her out of her way, physically assaults a girl for revenge, colludes with enemies etc. Villainess, right? This mastermind behind everything going awry in the 2fl's life is our fl hua qian.
Even so, we as viewers are mostly sympathizing with hua qian for what she went through and bashing mu yao for her actions, including me, because the story is from her perspective entirely.


Story and characters: Let me start with hua qian's redemption arc. She does everything she can to prevent her family from being massacred again, assuming that she has got a second chance at life after doing countless evil, losing everything and dying once. Unfortunately, her redemption isn't real. The past cannot be changed, the dead cannot be revived unless it is a dream, which is exactly what it is. There, she goes back in time to when she has done whatever evil was to be done, and now she has to deal with the aftermath to prevent what happened before from happening again. We see in her pov, how she tries to do whatever possible to save the day, without doing further evil, to the point where she didn't even avenge her brother's murder. Now onto her brother's character, he is crap. He sexually assaults women, has countless concubines taken by force, a useless good for nothing. But, he is very sincere to his family, to the point where he takes the fatal arrow meant for his sister just to protect her. Her small family of four is tightly bound, with deep love for each other. Her character's biggest saving grace is her love for family. Even most villains sacrifice their families and close ones for their own benefit. She did everything to protect them in this second chance after knowing the outcome. But does that mean that she is a good person? No, she regrets losing her family and everything else so she tries to repent after making mistakes. She is a grey character at most.
Onto the men in this drama, Zhong yelan is the root cause of for everything to begin. It was to get him that hq did evil to get my out of the scene. But he still chose my both times. Albeit in the second chance, she chose to divorce him. And also, zyl is a very trashy 3ml. When hq drugged him or her father framed her family it was evil. But when his beloved my did evil, like when she caused her brother to die, caused her to fall off the cliff, those were justified to him. A duplicitous hypocrite is all that i can say about him. Next i don't know who is the 2ml and who is the ml. So first i will say about hua rongzhou. He is a dog for real. Loyal, ferocious, protective, possessive, all for his only master, the fl. He is willing to do absolutely anything for her, even despite all morals. But he overestimated himself often, didn't know his place considering the era and his position as a servant, proud and very rude to everyone else. I know why she would choose him over the one she possibly loved, the one who came with burdens, because she wanted love from zyl which led her to do the evil, so if she had someone as devoted as hrz already, perhaps she wouldn't do that. Alas he was just an imagination born from this exact sentiment in her "second chance", who doesn't exist in the real world. Onto the last male, zhong xiwu. He is not perfect but in the second chance, his love for her was intense but she didn't reciprocate it. The most important point to be noted is, since the second chance that spans over 28 episodes is just a dream, so we don't get to see the real povs of anyone else. Whatever we see is in the fl's pov, so i doubt its credibility and are led to believe that nobody did the fl right since that's how she feels. So all the men are rather twisted and seemingly not good enough for her. Coming back to reality, i think zyl's actions were justified as he hated her for what she did. She really caused 2fl's family to die, drugged him to marry her, tried to separate them, etc. Even so, that doesn't make muyao any good, she is still a bitch. In any other drama shown from the victim's pov, we would have been elated to see this happening to hq. As for zxw, i have to commend him for being this kind and patient. He saved her in the 1st ep, he slowly nursed her back to health all the while she was living her perfect life in that dream. But i also think he is quite foolish to like a woman like that. I believe he must have done his part in reality too to protect her as much as he could although we aren't shown much of that part. I wonder how pure and true his love has to be to save this kind of person. Must say that the dream was dragged out for way too long and ep 28 was unnecessary. In reality, she was not good enough for zxw. But didn't she deserve love? Yes of course she did. She knew what she did was wrong and was repentant and wanted to turn things around. Also losing her whole family and everything else was a pretty big punishment already. I won't spoil the final ending. But this really needs a s2.


Cast: That young man is fine af. First saw wang xingyue in one and only, he was good there. And he has even improved manifold since then here. He looks way more mature than his age. If he takes good projects and is in a good agency, he is going to shine real bright in the future since he is so young now and already so good. His acting as zxw was perfect as a conflicted man in a difficult spot. I first saw zhou ye in back from the brink and knew that she was good and here i wasn't disappointed too. She did her role perfectly. About zhang yajie and peng chu yue, i found the former too stiff considering his intense character, and the latter did good at the micro expressions that were needed for his character. As for others, nobody particularly stuck out.

Production: decent production. Didn't like the costumes and styling of the women. They just looked weird with those hair scarves. The soundtrack was so good.

Overall i would 100% recommend watching this. I was this close to crying so many times while watching this, that's how emotional it was. A hidden gem of 2023. It has a message being conveyed too. I got the rating down for its stupid pacing, useless filler ep, incompleteness, ending, misleading description and i really hate 2fl. I will rewatch this someday too.

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They had us in the first 29 episodes I'm not gonna lie

This review will cover up to the last episode, with a rant about the ending at the end. I'll avoid spoilers until then.

This drama is a unique twist on the currently popular trope of "I became a villain in a novel," except here our FL, Hua Qiang, isn't a self-aware book character but the villain herself who has a chance to redo the 2 years of her life that originally led to her and her family's death. She basically was the cliché antagonist in a c-drama who devoted all her efforts into an unrequited love, Zhong Zelan (who is a block of wood at that), and is overthrown by him and the "true" perfect female lead, Mu Yao, (who has such resting evil face it's hilarious, and also is super skilled at martial arts because she is our perfect wronged main). Her jealousy along with her father's greed, her brothers rampant misogyny, and her mother's coddling of him, lead to everyone dying.

But then she wakes up 2 years earlier, just as she's been married to ZZL. The past her tricked him into marrying her, but she knows now that he ain't worth it and her only wish is to live a safe and happy life with her family, but the problem is that they haven't experienced the death of everyone they love so they basically brush her worries and desires off .

HQ is so likeable. She's strong and ready to own up to her mistakes, and also find out who she actually is outside of her decade long obsession with a man who was not worth it. She's flawed sometimes but trying so hard, and mostly feels like she's fighting alone since no one else knows what the future may bring.

Everyone in this show is morally grey. Her family would be 1 dimensional villains in most dramas, but here they are loving parents and siblings even if to the outside world they're evil. MY and ZZL took u way too much screentime and honestly if your husband treats his ex the way ZZL treats HQ please run.

The surprise ML, Zhong XiWu, is the lord of the business HQ's dad works for, and he sort of is in the shadows watching this new and improved HQ, until he's a proper love interest. Then he becomes controlling, overbearing, and dangerous He basically makes decisions for her and about her with no consideration for her wishes, constantly talking about just wanting to "have her by his side," treating her as someone with no autonomy.

Then there's my boy Hua RongZhou. I fell in love at first beggar-y sight. He's an adorable cinnamon roll/puppy dog and must be protected at all costs. His trauma dump backstory is a little much but his devotion and silent bodyguard protection and small smiles and true support kept me going.

This drama kept me guessing, I never knew where it would go and I loved that until....

SPOILERS AHEAD

...it was all a dream. She never went back in time but was in a coma for over 2 years while ZXW cared for her. The major problem is that we don't actually know anything about him then. We just know he's the lord and he loves her, but we know nothing of who he actually is or why we should root for him as endgame. We never see more than a couple of scenes of what he actually was like, and honestly caring for someone's comatose body who barely knew you existed with so much devotion and expectation is kinda yikes for me. Just leave out an endgame romance if you want to stick this weird ending where HZR DOESN'T EXIST

That is the second huge problem. they wrote our boy HRZ as a dreamed up hallucination because HQ felt no one could love her. The show is basically saying, "see this sweet boy who is super devoted and supportive but also is learning to stand up for himself, and who can give her the free, happy and simple life she wants? Well, that is obviously just a figment of her imagination and she needs to wake up to the harsh reality" that ZXW (who we basically know nothing about in the real world). She decides to treat HRZ as a piece of herself that wanted to love and support herself.

oh, and the grand princess (ZXW's mother) is amazing until the twist where she becomes the typical matriarch villain, as opposed to a complex character of an older woman torn between her appreciation of HQ as a fellow woman trying to forge her own path who she genuinely likes, and her own responsibilities. She's so kind and interesting until the twist ending and I hated it.

Apparently this ending was shoved in to get through censorship, but they didn't change the story enough for it to make sense... I loved the story until this ending twist. Everyone was growing, and a lot of the "dream" endings were bittersweet and felt realistic. But now this was all a dream to make herself cope? So much shit still happened, and she worked so hard for the happiness, peace, and freedom she wanted. Almost everyone was learning and growing, and finding a world away from greed, money, power, and revenge. If this show ended where apparently the book ended it would be basically perfect imo.

SPOILERS OVER

This drama really moved me and made me feel and think (and binge watch it so quickly). I really do recommend it. It has such a unique take on reincarnation as a villain, and to me did a beautiful job showing why women (and and vulnerable group) need to stick together for all our sakes, and how important it is to choose kindness and compassion over selfishness and greed. I just really really loved the first 29 episodes, and it was pretty much a perfect drama until then for me.

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its good

the story is good, its worth to watch


here what i suddenly feel after ending
turn out most heartless punisment you can get is experience it again and to make you feel like you can fix something that already have done but you cant

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Ending ruined it all

Good things first before bashing.

The female lead was well written. I would say almost the best female lead I have seen for a while. Many dramas have either too childish fl or one that doesn't care about anything. I loved how the fl stood up for herself but was also vulnerable. This was one of the best things about this drama.

The plot was certainly interesting, and I was not bored throughout the series. I don't think it was special, but it was entertaining.

Then to the not so good stuff; the ending. In the last episode they decided to change the course of the whole story they built and pull the ''all of this was just a dream'', which is criminal. The ending made all of the episodes you watched pointless. And they left the ''plot twist'' to the last episode, so when the series ended it felt like there was no proper ending.

Well what can you say. I think this is worth watching, but be prepared that the ending is going to disappoint you.

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Ending could have been better

I really loved this drama and I feel like more people will like it if they go into it focusing more on the female lead and her journey to coming to terms with her situation. It's less enjoyable if you are solely watching for romance as she really doesn't end up having much skinship with either the ML or 2ML. Secondly, the way the story is written...she technically ends up with both of them...sort of...but you mostly see her spend the most time with the 2ML. Also, for this review, in my opinion, the 2ML is the guard, not the man she is married to.

The only additional thing I wish was added to this drama was either a part 2 or a special episode where we got to see what happened after she accepted reality. That short cartoon wasn't enough for me. I would have liked to see what led to her building up her relationship with the ML in reality as well as his reaction to her pregnancy. Other than that, it's a fun drama. It's full of angst though so this isn't a relaxing low-stress romance. It's mainly about the female lead pursuing a potential redemption arc.

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Not happy with the ending

Don't go for the poster of the serial ,it may give you hope . Yes, very less chemistry between the leads . I ship the love stories. I didn't find any love between the leads , actually unrequited love was seen . And even story was not match with synopsis. What i saw in the drama that a girl killed and pray to god to give her chance to do amendments , she thought she went to the past and changed her past but unfortunately she went in coma for 2 years . Rest i will not tell . I don't want to be spoilers and the drama end . Yes, she woke up called the male lead name and the drama was over . It was different story . But they should show some chemistry between lead beside she liked some other character in the drama only this the reasons i don't like the drama. I hope for season 2.

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Soo good but that ending...

I got sucked up right into this. I couldn't put it down.
I wasn't sure I'd like Hua Qian at the beginning, but Zhou Ye's acting was great and i really believed she was her character. She was clever but not in an overpowered way and very funny and cute. Definitely a big part of why i enjoyed the drama was her.
As for the male leads, I'm not sure i hardcore shipped her with anyone. Was not a fan of Zhong Yelan, was glad she didn't end up stuck with him.
Zhong Xiwu was interesting to watch, i think i have a thing for watching a man pine after one woman. I did swoon at him a few times but he was also an asshole at others. As far as a male lead goes he wasn't the worst. Wish we could've gotten more romantic interactions with the main two, a kiss would've been lovely but even just more connection would've been enough.
I didn't dislike Hua Rongzhou but i didn't ship him as much as i thought i might. It was sweet how he just wanted to protect her but it felt like a good friendship on her side at least.
Now i was ready to rate this even higher then a 8.5 but the last episode threw me right off.
I mean WTF???!!!
If they wanted to to do this dream twist i wish they'd done it a bit earlier, it felt so jarring and shit to realise basically all of what happened didn't happen.
If they'd revealed it with maybe two or three episodes to spare we could've gotten more of a resolution. They played it off as a forgiveness and second chance lesson but we don't actually get much of the reality.
The romance too, we could've gotten more of a satisfying ending, especially since the end means near all of their interactions were in a dream and not real.
It just felt like a real let down. After a great drama it ends like that? "It was all a dream" wow
Really mixed up about this now but i still enjoyed the most of it.
Just wish they'd given more time in reality if they were going to basically invalidate the majority of the drama.

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Breezy watch but huge plot gap at the end, inconsistent acting

It took me three tries to pick this back up as i couldnt for the life of me get past episode 2 with its heavy dialogues and so many female characters in the zhong residence introduced then.

Anyway it's nice breezy watch, weirdly. And has very high rewatch value - I've watched it 5x more since the first completion! I think it was because the plotlines and conflicts were focused and easy to follow, and it's not highly dramatic and political. It was all about the FL dying and coming back again to do some things differently so the course of fate will be changed. The writing sticks to this very closely and i appreciate that as alot of cdramas cant decide what they want and have poorly written middle arcs with tons of useless side plots.

However u are gonna get a huge shock of your life when you get to the last 3 episodes or so. Cos it literally means whatever u have been watching the past 25 episodes meant nothing lol. That was a massive letdown in my opinion and the writing completely fell apart around then too, with random cameos from different actors that made no sense to the plot and a very abrupt ending. Just a huge massive letdown. I was like whuttt did i just see.

Anyway there are 3 male leads and im only here for wxy, but he rarely appears for some reason. Although this is a yuzheng production and hes the main one in the poster. The other two have fully fleshed out stories and appear very often. However neither of them catch my attention and arent very outstanding in acting (esp the husband actor) so i ended up ff-ing alot of their scenes. Also I got the ick everytime they showed romantic scenes with her bodyguard - lilke seriously.

I also had no idea how zhou ye and wxy characters even fell for each other. It was so random and whatever. And he was chasing her all the time and she never showed interest. Head scratcher.

The acting is just inconsistent and not great. Wxy is not bad but his character wasnt fleshed out and he didnt have alot to work with. I feel he does well in charscters that are ambiguous and have an intense and ambiguous/not very pleasant side like zhong xiwu. Zhou ye wasnt outstanding though, she mostly had no expressions and i couldnt feel any emotions except in ep 1 and 30. And she had a very haughty expression throughout. Lol. The guard actor was fine and li yunrui was again outstanding. He always manages to stand out in side characters despite them not being great characters. The mu yao and the husband actors were the worst. Muyao only had one facial expression throughout.

The sets and costumes looked very low budget and cheap. The FL clothes always looked like they were recycled tablecloth. The men were also poorly styled with low quality looking garments and bad hair/makeup. Wxy didnt look good at all in this updo. But yu zheng productions always look and feel cheap for whatever reason

As this was a light watch with no tiresome revenge arcs and screeching characters, i see myself rewatching this in future often. Oddly. As i never rewatch cdramas. 30 ep is also manageable.

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The anti-hero female lead who we all love

It is a story about the stereotypical evil second female lead whose life is ruined but is given a second chance to redeem herself or more like save her family. Her second life revolves three male leads. However, there is also a big plot twist which I’m not gonna spoil as it’s the most important part of the story.

Our female lead, Hua Qian, is definitely the best part of this drama. She’s become smart, strong, cool, calm and badass due to the pain she suffered in her first life. She’s not the crybaby female lead who needs a prince in shining amour to save her. As her second journey goes, we can’t help but guess which of the three main leads is in her heart.

Zhong Xi Wu who’s in this life falls in love with her due to her changed personality (in previous life he fell for Mu Yao, the 2nd females lead there are more story to this but I won’t spoil). He’s the lord with controlling personality and willing to protecting female lead at all cost especially without her consent sometimes but he’s sincere and willing to look pass everything. Wheareas, Zhong Ye Lan, who she stole from Mu Yao, is now married with her. He is quite a coward and it’s hard to say whether he loves our female lead or not; however, he actually did something right for her near the end. Hua Rong Zhou is our female lead’s guard who has been loving her since he first saw her. He’s quite stubborn, cross the line sometimes but is willing to sacrifice his life for her. Each male leads have huge flaws which I cannot ship her with anyone.

The bond between female lead and her family is also worth mentioning. All of them started as the selfish family to sacrifice her lives for each other. Made me cry a lot.

All the actors and actresses did a fantastic job there. But I have to applaud Zhou Ye specifically. This drama really shows her range of acting and I was really impressed by her. And I love Ai Mi, she’s great as always. I’m glad to see the sly character of Li Yun Rui again.

I love the closing song 来(Come) by 陆虎(Lu Hu). It made me imagine and look forward the happy life that our Hua Qian deserves after those hardships at the end of every episodes.

I will definitely watch an again for the details that I miss during the early episodes. The twist was foreshadow in many episodes and in the title too. Whiling watching this. all I want is our female lead to be happy and I’m sure you’ll too as she suffers so much.

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Plain Piece of Toast

Life do-over very similar to "Till the End of the Moon", minus the crazy magical element. This is a very plain piece of toast drama.

The ML.... who is the SML up till now (ep. 9), is wonderful, as he always is. Actually, all the actors are well-cast in this. No weak players here. But there is no plot to be found yet.... at ep. 9... and that's pretty late to be looking for a plot. This could have easily been a really good "slice of life" drama.... except.... it wants to become a melodrama, which would give it some flavour, but I personally don't like melodrama. It kind of wanted to be another "A Dream of Splendor" drama, but fails in the story department.

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