AleksandraSucur

I am 99% sure the Man in Black is somebody from the older generation from those rotten 6 "righteous" sects. All the sects' leaders look suspicious except Cai Zhao's father, starting from Zhao's shifu.
Dear novel readers, feel free to spoil me who's that person hereunder, tnx

Indeed.
"At least I've never abandoned him" (talking to the ML's mother)

This is not about what I support or not (no normal person of our times will support a thing which was quite a norm in those times, actually opposing the parents and eloping with a love interest was a rarity, and that thing was regularly perceived as scandalous, an act of foolishness, a whim, definitely far from anything "noble" as you've put it). You've described him as hypocritical, while imo, the hypocritical is the society in which it is normal to marry one person while having romantic feelings for another.

Besides, we still do not know what are exactly the feelings he has for Zhao. To me, they look more as an admiration (of her heroism and bravery), deep gratitude and concern towards a disciple-sister (whose bravery and entanglement with a person from an enemy sect could harm her) than as romantic feelings towards a woman. He isn't obsessed and doesn't delude himself she has any sort of romantic attachments towards him either and isn't prone to overstep. He doesn't even look hostile towards MQY, no matter how much the latter provoke and hurts him out of his jealousy. Instead of plotting or doing anything against MQY, he openely shares his worries in front of MQY regarding Zhao's entanglement with him. Totally fine guy and - till this point - a well-written, coherent character

It was very common to marry one person while having feelings for another. In this story, we've seen Lingbo's mom had (btw. shared) feelings for another man and still married Lingbo's father. Actually it is still common today, in societies in which arranged marriages are the norm. You can't order to your heart whom you love nor you can go against the orders of your family to marry a person they've planned for you.

He explained why he didn't want to break the engagement with Lingbo to his father: it would have tarnished Lingbo's reputation. In ancient times (which inspired the setting of this fantasy world), if a man broke an engagement with a woman, it meant: something is off with the woman (and the first suspectful thing would be her chastity). The truth didn't matter, it was so, period.
What is wrong is to look on such societies through the lenses of our times.

I've got the opposite impression: he is even too respectful towards his spoiled, arrogant, trouble making & bully fiancee. He even stopped his father in thinking/talking to break off his engagement with her.
He is not a hypocrite, his personality is simply... respectful, upright with great sense of duty. He doesn't "go after another woman" - this simplified interpretation reminds me a lot of Lingbo's childish, impulsive and superficial way of thinking - in the first place, he is immensely grateful to her for the cure she provided to him hiding all the difficulties she sustained. 2) Their trip to the Demon's Sect has two purposes of vital interest for their sect. As a senior and the most capable disciple who already recovered from his injuries, it is his duty to assume that task. Or do you think he should demostrate "the respect for his fiancee" by letting a junior sect-sister who already has done a lot for the sect and for him personally to go alone or with someone less capable, and potentially damaging for Zhao's reputation? He knows well she is going to the Demon's Sect not only in their sect's interest, but also bc she is worried or at least feeling obliged towards MQY, who (he knows well) helped her to obtain the cure for him. It's only right he goes with her. Or maybe you think he should show "the respect for his fiancee" taking that chicken-brain along with them? 3) Ofc. he likes Zhao and we can all understand why, but he is not the person who will ever overstep; Lingbo's mother was totally right in describing both his and Zhao's personalities. His marriage with Lingbo is an arranged marriage, Lingbo's feelings are totally one-sided, she is his fiancee only bc. it was decided so by his grandfather when they were kids. If the elders (who are true contractors of arranged marriages) don't rush it, why should he rush to marry a silly girl to whom he has no emotional attachments? I think that would be ultimately disrespectful towards his "fiancee" who, most of all, needs time to figure out many things of the world she belongs to and of the persons in her surrounding.

The first five eps were oddly interesting. Rarely a romance can keep my attention, I've checked this one only out of curiosity on latest projects taken by two actors playing in it. I've thought I'd never watch a story starting with smth so stereotypical and boring such as a FL committed to debunking men's disloyalty in love🙄🤦‍♀️ (I'm definitely too old for such a crap) but the approach taken by the story-teller is truly interesting, especially the way characters and their takes/opinions in love-matters are introduced; this style gives out almost Rashomon vibes and it is accentuated by close shot camerawork and theatrical atmosphere, invoking suspence and a guessing game on where the plot will move next and what are the true intentions and feelings of the players involved.
Hope the drama will keep this atmosphere of uncertainty throughout.

Such a beautiful & different drama. Funny and food for thought at the same time. Well done both as a story and as a script. Who wouldn't like to work in such a good social environment as Tengda in which one's own creativity and skills can combine with so so many different creative potentials of other persons? And not only to work, but to live, idle, eat, play, gossip, go on trips... in short, to exist together with all these warm and well-built characters. Bravo!

I've just completed it. The virtual reality game is the weakest part of the entire plot. It isn't clear how the players and NPCs are able to project their moves and behaviour in it, all we've seen is they wear speacial headsets in order to immerse themselves in the reality of the game. The main goal isn't to "solve a murder mistery" (the death of the old mayor) but to make one of the NPCs win the new mayor election, accordingly to the tasks players recieve at the beginning. The scenario of the game gets occasionally upgraded and changed, but the NPCs are always the same. They are mostly ungraduated actors, only the ML, who is always playing that same character, isn't. He is a (co-)owner of the club and acts in the game just to use his real name (Qin Xiaoyi) as to appease his frustration of having been forced to change it after his father's death. Yeah, the author asked for a strong suspension of disbelief on his motivation and many other things connected with the game. Anyways, he doesn't play it every evening and gets regularly changed by a pro actor...

But for how badly this subplot has been developed and weakly connected to the reality of the leads, it doesn't have a significant negative impact on the main plot, the actions in the game feel more like FL's fantasizing on interactions with the cunning person named Qin Xiaoyi and on how to outwit him. The game subplot could have been completely dropped out, but when you see it, it isn't particularly disturbing either... that's probably the reason why people still highly rated (read: slightly overrated) this drama

Their interactions, the scenes in which the leads are together tend to repeat themselves. In communication, in frames, in tones. Not only, her interactions with the antagonist also tend to be always the same (a bit akward, a bit scary, a bit manipulative and so on).
It looked like the plot would move forward with Yan delegation, but after the mausoleum fight, everything returned exactly as it was before.
I have no complaints about the pace, but about the plot. At the moment, it seems stuck, moving around and not forward. It is true the plot deals with transmigration, but we've seen tons of transmigration dramas which are very different from each other. A drama with such a motif must have smth original. In this one, it seemed the plot will focus on "the novel within the novel which already have one transmigrator" and on the "free will" of "paper persons". It is tagged as a rom-com, but for several eps, I haven't seen any comedy while the romance is... hmm. As I can't find the fault with the actors (and neither with the direction), I blame the script for it

The scenes between the leads started to be repetitive and the secret Xiahou Dan hides from the FL now annoys me. It isn't such a big deal he transmigrated long ago: dragging the revelation through this sort of overdramatic "trauma manifestations" is irritating. If it wasn't Cheng Lei to play XHD, I'd probably dropped this story. Not to mention healthy exercises, hot pots, gimme five... and other things that make my eyes rolling and fail to offer any comic relief... with every ep, I like the story less. Hope the plot comes back on track, it isn't funny any more

Yes, I also hate when the arts are contaminated with some sort of political propaganda, feeling it's so unfair and unrespectful towards the arts, creativity & great craft to realise smth which can be understood, loved and respected by other humans. The effort put in this drama by so many people was so great that overcooking it with such messages (which I probably share btw but can't tollerate in the arts) spoilt the full enjoyment.

The voice was useful in early eps, but in the last it was counterproductive. In general, if you have to use the narrator, it means your script doesn't explain well what's going on. It can be tollerated at the beginning, bc. the era was objectively complex to understand for the broad audience, but if you have to use it in the last eps., you are overdoing. The audience is not that stupid, who watched till the end, definitely looked into the historical outlines already, as we all did.

I understand exactly what you mean. 👍

I'd also rate it 10/10 if it didn't contain certain historical distorsions in order to convey political messages, espc. through the voice of the Narrator. The Narrator is usually counterproductive in cinematic arts, and SiP is not the exception. Besides, this "explanation voice" made Hongchu's final "political speech" gloryfing unity and peace even more redundant and unnecessary. The audience is not stupid, we've got it from the first episode why the peace was utmostly necessary in all that distruction and chaos. As well as we've understood why it was so hard to achieve. The story itself also depicted very well the sharp contrast between the prosperous Wuyue and the war and poverty-devastated Central Plains, any rushed "unification" (by hard means of politics, ie. weapons) would mean a depradation of Wuyue, the new dynasty ought to prove to be capable of maintaining peace and bringing the prosperity on its own to obtain consensus for unity from Southeastern people. The script ought to stop there, leaving to the audience to reflect on these things and to compare the story with the history. Salwa is right that several (not all, ofc) historical distorsions were actually unnecessary. It would be better they've avoided them and left the audiences to reconstruct the story and connect the dots accordingly to their understanding and taste

Yes. I constantly google the names as the characters appear in the drama.
Fan Yong, who appears in ep 47 and 48 is the father of Fan Zhongyan, author of the Qingli reforms under Emperor Renzong of Song.
All these people appear for a good reason, as precursors of future events, ideas, policies etc.

I'm at the last ep. and already rewatched certain parts 4 times and will probably rewatch it again in the the future, bc of the superb dialogues and intricated meaning behind it.
Although this drama didn't keep me on the edge of my seat, by rating standards on MDL, imho, it is impossible to rate it below 9,5.
The direction was superb all the time and nothing was chopped during editing as it normally happens in other hystorical epics, during time skips. It is 10/10.
The stellar cast delivered credible characters. If we want to be brutal and blind to the number of people employed, we can downrate their performance to max 9/10, bc. we can be picky on this or that (some "adult" characters were introduced "too early" or things like that)... but realistically, we've never seen, I mean, none of us, so many characters in a drama performing at this level.... It is simply amazing what they've collectively delivered.
The music is 10/10, both intro and outro totally appealling and fit for the story, as well as the descrete bgm.
Rewatching is simply phisiological.
And now the story
No drama can follow the historical records at the letter. Actually, no historical record can follow the real history, what counts is if the Story makes sense or not. This one makes a lot of sense and explains a lot of things, and keeps to focus on one Leitmotive common to the four main leads: their yearning for peace and striving to achieve that peace. For how it may not blindly follow the historical records, it respected that era all the time, including the dialogues which really occurred, helped us, the audience, to understand this complicated time, conveying a powerful message the nude history cannot convey, but a creative art (and the imagination behind) can. It can't be rated below 9.
So, overall, this is 9,5 min, imo.

Wanyin developed a belief that 2D characters can change their characters and develop their own thoughts in changed circumstances.

he was a young teenager

Anyone with a brain in function would dismiss the very idea to force someone to rebel by killing his family and expecting the people would applaude and support you after you've done such an atrocity.