Di Liu Ci Gong Lve (2025)

Intriguing new plot, sweet & satisfying slow-burn romance

(I rate vertical dramas on their own sliding scale.) Awesome fresh story! Plot set-up explained below. Fantastic acting, very interesting plot (haven't seen the exact same set-up anywhere else yet, 7/11/25), and fully emotionally satisfying romance (slow-burn). Great to see the leads as two smart characters working together in the lawyer profession. A healthy relationship with major green flag ML, good messages throughout (some I found quite quotable with a good translation), no unnecessary plot shenanigans (like kidnappings or assaults), and even the second leads are human- they are not all bad in the end. Some good cinematography too.

This is mostly explained at the very beginning so I don’t consider it a spoiler: There's a system that gathers emotions through people in this world and picks a rare number of people to be players. The system offers the players one wish granted if they complete their objective. The FL's quest is to get the SML to fall in love with her, but if she's fully rejected, she goes through death as her current alias and her quest re-boots. I loved that when the FL died after failing her target mission, she would come back and continue where she left off in age (didn't go back in time and start from the beginning); so the same body, but with a different name. And that her previous existences weren't erased or forgotten, just that people's memory of how she looked became too blurred for recognition. It allowed for an intriguing story to be woven. The story starts at her 5th failure. The system re-boots her quest, but this time she's unlocked the option to switch her target! So she gives up on the SML and chooses the ML (his friend) instead.

The FL starts pursuing the ML for her survival and end goal, but ends up truly falling for him. The two leads had great chemistry, seemed fully comfortable with each other, and played off of each other well. There aren't that many kisses, but they are meaningful, and realistic from both actors. There is a good amount of hugs and skinship, and multiple sweet moments. A satisfying ending too.

The screenplay and editing did a good job of giving enough information to understand the basics of situations and characters and then filled in the gaps at a good pace throughout the show with flashbacks and some exposition. Full understanding of everything and everyone is achieved by the end; I so appreciated that it didn’t feel like any threads were left hanging.

I found it posted at 2 hrs 50 mins run time (I shared the link in general comments). If you come across a post that is shorter by more than a couple minutes (I saw a few), it may have snippets missing. A little difference in time can be explained by how the recorder/poster edits between episodes (either lets the 1-3 second transitions play or cuts them out).

Edit 8/16/25: Now on iQIYI, with really good subtitles and info in parentheses! Makes things so much easier to understand! :D

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