Raymond Ardin

Have you seen Rebirth of Shopping Addict? I'd imagine that her personality in real life is very similar to her character in that drama. But I like her better when she's fierce and powerful like in Ever Night. That glare... yum.

The curse itself was magic. The cure is the cursed leader and his lover being "buried" together in the same magic coffin. It's not really explained how exactly the curse was created, but it was the result of the first leader mistakenly thinking he was betrayed by his lover, who also happened to be a ginseng spirit just like YX.

Bai Yue is a famous doctor, but almost no one knows that he is also the leader of the mysterious Fenghua Valley, a tomb full of treasures. He is very ill from years of testing poisons on himself. Ye Xi is a 1000-year-old ginseng spirit who just turned into human form. She wanders into Fenghua Valley and learns martial arts from his books. She wanders into a forbidden underground tomb, setting off traps, but he saves her. She protects him from the falling rocks and also cures his poisons by giving him part of her roots, then disappears for six months. When he finally finds her again, she had been deceived, used, and scapegoated by Tang Yang, and eventually killed. Because she's a plant, she can come back to life as long as she's buried in soil. Five years later, she wakes up and meets him again. She has no memories, and much of the rest of the drama will be discovering what happened during those five years.

1) The flashback was to episode 11, when Ye Xi was trying on her wedding dress before her wedding with Tang Huan, and she imagined/hallucinated Bai Yue appearing behind her, which means that he was the one that she really wanted to marry. He wasn't actually there though.
2) Magic. When the curse lifted, the coffin disappeared and those in the coffin got teleported outside.
3) She lived three lives. In her first life, Bai Yue was the first person she met after getting her human form (episode 1). They saved each other in the underground tomb, but she left and got duped by Tang Yang. BY only found her six months later when she had just been killed by TY. It's unclear whether he was in love with her already, but he definitely cared enough to have kept looking for her. In her second life, she saved Cang Qi (hostage prince who became creepy regent) and got involved with Cang Nan (the crown prince), but it seems like she didn't meet BY until he tried to save her from the palace. By this point, he's clearly obsessed with her, but it's not until her third life (the current timeline) that he finally starts to realize/admit that he's in love with her.

I haven't read the novel, but I'm assuming that in the drama they made him so annoying in order to avoid the reverse harem. He's probably a much more likeable character in the original novel.

Off the top of my head, some dramas with a human ML and supernatural FL:
- The Blessed Girl
- Demon Girl
- Rattan
- Wulin Heroes (currently airing)
- Ever Night (this one is really messy and everyone thinks the ML is the evil supernatural being until the reveal in season 2)
- Love and Redemption (dunno if this one counts because it's a xianxia so the line between human and immortal is kinda blurry)

This is the first time I've seen the ML, and to me he looks a lot like a younger version of Jing Chao (quite handsome, but a bit evil/sinister looking). I remember the FL from Side Story of Fox Volant, where she played the FL's martial sister, and she's very cute and endearing in both dramas. I'm not convinced of the acting range/versatility of the leads, but the acting is quite decent within the scope of the characters presented here. She is very pushy and possessive towards the ML, but he has feelings for her too, and is always receptive to her affection, plus she never acts whiny or childish, so it's not nearly as irritating as other dramas with clingy FLs. The writing of the dialogue is average, but the mystery in the main story, while not ground breaking, is interesting, engaging, and suspenseful. You really have no idea who the real bad guys are until the big reveal. All in all, not bad for an investigation drama, and quite good for a short-format drama. Worth a watch.

That makes sense. In any case, immortals can directly come down to the mortal world to live amongst humans (like Flying Snake did) without being reborn as a human. In most other xianxia dramas, gods aren't allowed to use their magical powers on earth or interfere with mortal affairs without receiving lightning punishment, but R&R seems to be an exception.

The Jade Emperor tells Xuan Ji that since she was created rather than born, it's her choice whether to become a demon, deity, or human, and she said that it's great to be human, which implies that that's her choice. But Si Feng is half-demon and half-deity, so when his mortal body dies he will return to the heavenly realm, whereas as a human Xuan Ji will just keep getting reincarnated (with no memories of her previous lives). So doesn't that mean that Si Feng will have to keep going down to the mortal realm to meet her all over again in every single one of her lifetimes?

Question about the ending:

Most of the gowns/dresses and normal clothing in this drama look very nice, but damn, the armour of the soldiers and generals is gaudy AF! It's so godawful, I can't take them seriously. It's like a parody of what a costume is supposed to look like.

I just wanted to yell at the screen. If they all stayed together in the same place until the incense burned out, the killer wouldn't be able to kill so easily. Instead they keep splitting up so someone always dies.

I think I'm going to drop this. I normally love detective dramas, but this is just soooo slow. It's been 11 episodes and they literally solved one case.

Does anyone know why the original cut of this drama had issues with censorship? Because this seems like a very innocuous drama. There are no controversial themes at all, as far as I can tell. I've watched some dark and morally ambiguous dramas that had no problems with censorship, so I don't understand.

As it stands, this drama ended up being more of a lighthearted comedy. The evil father and son from the Fan family are a riot, some of the funniest villains I've ever seen. That, and Bai Lu's quirky and entertaining personality kept me watching through the whole thing.

I agree that the editing was terrible. The most obvious mistake was in episode 17 when they were besieged by the rebel Cai on that mountain, and they left in a scene where she discovered that ants were eating the bricks used to build the temple because they were made of rice flour (ok, first of all, WTF?). Clearly that was supposed to be important in the future, probably to feed the soldiers or something, but all that stuff was cut out, so the ant scene became super random and pointless.

Just finished watching all 18 episodes and I really enjoyed this, even though some parts I didn't fully understand due to lack of subs, and I can't help but feel that the story is too complex and ambitious for the super short format. The acting was kind of average but the story was great. Looking forward to season two.

Yes

There is a lot of romance in the sense that a lot of the characters' actions are motivated by love. But if you are looking for actual kissing and skinship you won't find it here. The FL's character is only 16, played by an actress who was 17 or 18 at the time.

I initially skipped this drama because I just assumed that it was your average fluffy fantasy rom com, judging by the seemingly generic plot and the very young leads. Boy, was I wrong. Not only is it much darker than I anticipated, it's also very interesting and full of unexpected elements. I'm usually not a fan of fantasy and xianxia dramas because they always rehash the same old tired tropes over and over again. But here, almost every aspect of the drama is unique and fresh, so despite its flaws, you can tell that a lot of love and creativity went into making it.

Acting is a mixed bag. The FL does a great job of being super adorable without overdoing the cuteness factor to the point of being annoying like in many other dramas. The older actors, including the FL's father, are excellent as well. Most of the other young actors, though, were just so-so, with the exception of Wu Yuan's character who I really liked.

Pacing is perhaps the biggest weakness of this drama. A lot of it's just too slow, with too much filler and non-crucial conversations. And for better or worse, the motivations behind the main villain's actions are confusing and never fully explained. The ending provides closure to the FL's survival problem, but the larger issues surrounding the chaos in the kingdom remain unresolved.

All in all, it may not be one of the greatest dramas ever, but at least you could never call it predictable!

This is way funnier than Queen of Attack :)

Out of all the short-format dramas that are currently airing, I find this one to have the most interesting story by far.