AleksandraSucur

Both. Li Mao perceives him as a foe bc: 1. from his pov, XWY put him on the path to power taking the girl he was supposed to be with, careless of politics. 2. Once knowing XWY is Wenxi CP, he set aside the fact XWY actually put him in front of a CHOICE: you either go with a girl and leave the power, or choose power and forget about the girl, bc. XWY identity - whenever revealed - is a direct threat to the power (he has chosen) 3. He sees JiaYu developed feelings for XWY and is ofc jealous. For him, she would never give up her freedom and accept palace costraints, but what if she was willing to sacrifice more for XWY? He lost her love and will rather go crazy than accept such a truth, bc it automatically means XWY outplayed him.
But they were also friends and shared certain visions, ideas and plans, difficult to sweep away completely

Grand Tutor's hypocrisy is becoming more and more annoying.
And each time there's a reference to his obsession with An-Lu case, I get distracted, reminded of two homonymous energies in Tai Chi and Qi Gong (Lu - deviating energy and An - pressing downwards energy). Have no idea if they are written and spelled in the same way in Mandarin, but these two names really deviate and press down my attention and inner peace 😂 I can't wait this old case is finally explained and settled so I can watch the rest of the drama in peace.

GT believes An-Lu families were framed in a similar set up he orchestrated now against Xiaos by XWY's biolological parents and that Xiao the father (Jing'an duke) knew that but never exposed the truth covering for Wenxi imperial couple

He was and he was willingly soo. He knew his mom well, he opposed her when extremely necessary but - tragedy - played along her script when her victim was he himself. 😞
Li Mao will never have that aura indeed

Peter Sheng 😏👌

Oh, and I'll also miss Peter Sheng as the emperor here. 😓

Few disconnected observations after watching the latest ep:
1. The dialogue between YuanJi and ED, niece and aunt, but such a different kind of women, I'd say polar opposites, overshadowed - at least for me - the FL's confession in ep 19. Both actresses were completely in their characters, thus the phrases exchanged were so impactful. The woman who was a pride of her family, a role model for younger siblings, simply lost herself in her determination to pursue power: she started to confuse goals and means, killings became her "habit" as well as the manipulation/harming her own kin, her family and even her own SON! And with no less determination (is it the blood or Pavlovian reflex or to revenge that Pei guy she loved, or all three mixed together, we can't tell and it doesn't matter), YuanJi cut that path. What matters is that dialogue greatly explained Ed's actions and decisions, rarely a villain gets such a closure, making space for the next one (Li Mao ofc)
2. The confession: the actors delivered perfectly the scene ofc but what I've felt was: oh, finally, we've past 2/3 of the drama for her to understand who's is worthy of her feelings, support and wit.
3. I actually like FL let go Lejun to the Qin. Plotwise smart and perfect to get some "natural" explanations regarding what happened 25 y ago, illuminating us on GT of the time as well

Yes, I agree. I actually like how she is imagined, how she is described through her actions/inactions.
And yes again, such a visceral attachment between the two is also something peculiar (/unhealthy), we don't see often in these types of drama.

GT only told her that her "brother was not of royal Li lineage at all" - textual translation of the flashback scene in ep 16m around 15' 20''. I don't know if he said more in Mandarin, bc we know smth always gets lost in translation, but there was no direct aknowledgment of his paternity.
For everything else you've said - I agree, she took that trip as a mission, I'd even say a life-death mission (thus, bringing some drugs is actually logical), and it was definitely GT who made a mistake by not limiting her action: her mission was to spy on his former wife's intentions, not to kill her. But he didn't send her alone nor she acted alone, she went there with a GT's henchman (the one who intercepted Yunzhou's pigeon and probably helped her to drug the horse) who certainly could know better his boss wouldn't approve his former wife being harmed...
So, it's either a flaw in this subplot or in GT's super calculative description, sufficient to make hard a suspension of disbelief for me, limitedly to this part of the story.

Yes, but I don't have problems with how her character was imagined: timid, subjugated, traumatised yet extremely courageous and ready to do anything for her brother. Imo, there's smth off with this specific subplot: she drugged the horse of the FL's carriage with poisoned water from the mine (!), then drugged the FL (hm, this timid princess goes around armed with drugs), in the carriage she tried to extort the token from FL's mother while the horse was racing towards the precipice (if the latter gave her the token how would she stop the crazy horse?), somehow survived that fall and finally - despite not being bright - figured out Mao's biological father was GT, although it was never mentioned in front of her... It's just too much, not to mention she killed a person who practically saved her life just bc she becomes too whimsical and overthinking when her bro's interests are in question.

yes, I find the entire bacground story very interesting, too, despite the difficulty to understand it thoroughly through translations.
But on the other hand, I think there are some flaws in the present day story: I find Lejun's motivation to kill Yunzhou weak under the aspect of logic and behavioural contraddictions of certain characters (Grand Tutor, the queen dowager, the Qin QD...) stretched to unnatural extremes

Yup, but PGB explained it in discussion section https://kisskh.at/790870-que-gu/discussions/153476-who-are-li-mao-and-li-lejun-and-how-are-they-related-to-the-imperial-family?page=1#p3553338

His mom was consort An from An family (An and Lu were rebels 25 years ago) and tutor was his father. He was probably given as a baby to the Qizhou landlords (prince Li, an imperial relative and his wife princess Qi) who treated him like his own. That fief was lost in a war and his non biological mother was abducted or given to some bandits, while the orphaned children were brought to the capital and neglected until the grand tutor helped them

Thank you. It was me who have asked.

Did you get where the Li siblings were when they were ousted from the palace?

I didn't get to whom Li Mao and Li Lejun were "entrusted" by this minister/censor Cui as they've lived in such a poverty afterwards. And how the grand tutor Xie allowed such a thing for his biological son, how long they were far away before the tutor brough them to his mansion/school or whatever.
Btw., do you also have impression the Eagle King has feelings for Li Lejun, it isn't just to humiliate Ye kingdom/empire?

No, the boy's father was Ruisheng's husband and one of his generals., who died. She was a military doctor, abducted by the enemy at the time, HWY married her later and claimed the paternity to protect her reputation

First 6 eps felt good. The plot nicely balances between a funny development of the leads' relationship and an interesting political intrigue the leads are subject to. I like it so far. 👍

Totally unexpectedly, this drama will remain for a long in my heart. I've never been a fan of Bai Lu (actually, this is an understatement, I deeply disliked her interpretations), but her interpretation of Ye Li totally conquered me, she literally embodied the character which will stay in my heart forever to the fullest! I've also liked Cheng Lei's interpretation of MXY, less complex but requiring as well...
Despite having a few flaws, the plot was overall interesting and well narrated, exchanging different narrative tools to create suspence, mystery, estrangement, time lapse etc. or to convey different kind of feelings and sensations. Even more importantly, the story had truly original and EXTREMELY BOLD objectives: to realistically depict a person affected by a severe PTSD through a (basically) idol-fiction genre and make us fall in love with that character. If it wasn't superbly performed and directed, it could have failed thousand times on thousand issues. Just for this courage and success in achieving our complete empathy with Ye Li, this drama would deserve 10/10, also bc. the music and bgm were always on spot. But the story contained those (very) few logical issues, so, for me, it's 9/10

hardly believable dialogues and behavior, felt as only meant to create a rift subplot.

So true