Deirdre19

I think it is because they have taken the whole fatal attraction bit out of the drama version.
In the novel Lu Yan is a very cold and arrogant person, who has no interest in women at all and manages to drive all of his mother’s marriage candidates away with his poison tongue. Very charming!
By chance he meets this little girl when she has trouble with a moneylender and he starts dreaming of kissing her, touching her skin, etc. It is something so out of character that he even investigates her for poisoning him.
LunYan is very confused (and intrigued) by these dreams because they show a side of him that he didn’t even know he had. Then he sees himself die at the age of 27, miserable and alone and hears people suggest that he died of a broken heart because she has left him and married another guy. Naturally he would like to avoid such a fate in this life so he tries to find out where he went wrong.
Later, the dreams also become useful tools to unravel the great conspiracy (that goes much further than the collapse of the canal). As he knows what will happen he can avoid some of the pitfalls and be prepared.

I liked the little background story that they invented for Shen Ran and Zhou Su’an, however her trying to undress to thank him for his help seemed a bit out of character.
As charming and as protective as he may seem, I cannot say that I trust the drama version of Lord Zhou.
The story between Shen Ran and her husband has been somewhat changed from the novel and it looks to me less coherent (or maybe it’s just because I know the other version). The reason Li Di’s mother treats He Wenru so kindly isn’t just because she is a bad person with an inferiority complex towards Shen Ran, but because He Wenru saved her life when she had an accident. J).
The acting within the acting was quite amusing. Could we get Wei Xin get a spin-off where he can behave outrageously for 24 episodes? 😂
Sadly he got short changed in the drama version, because in the novel it was the emperor himself who sent Lu Yan on this business trip to investigate corruption, all expenses paid. Here his poor assistant had to roll his eyes so much at every expense that I feared getting a headache just watching him.
I’m very much looking forward to the conclusion of this case.

What ido you find unclear about the dream sequences? Just why he is having these dreams or also the content?

I liked the little background story that they invented for Shen Ran and Zhou Su’an, however her trying to undress to thank him for his help seemed a bit out of character.
As charming and as protective as he may seem, I cannot say that I trust the drama version of Lord Zhou.
The story between Shen Ran and her husband has been somewhat changed from the novel and it looks to me less coherent (or maybe it’s just because I know the other version). The reason Li Di’s mother treats He Wenru so kindly isn’t just because she is a bad person with an inferiority complex towards Shen Ran, but because He Wenru saved her life when she had an accident. J).
The acting within the acting was quite amusing. Could we get Wei Xin get a spin-off where he can behave outrageously for 24 episodes? 😂
Sadly he got short changed in the drama version, because in the novel it was the emperor himself who sent Lu Yan on this business trip to investigate corruption, all expenses paid. Here his poor assistant had to roll his eyes so much at every expense that I feared getting a headache just watching him.
I’m very much looking forward to the conclusion of this case.

Episodes 7-8 were fun…

Actually, in the novel it was the other way around. He first met Shen Ran (on purpose, following the instructions of the people behind him) then Shen Wenqi I took him under his wing because he wanted the husband of his precious daughter to have a decent career.

Well, as outrageous as it may seem from a modern point of view, in this age and setting the mother-in-law would be perfectly entitled to tell her daughter-in-law what to do. The husband would also be able to get a concubine, especially if the wife hasn’t given him any children after four years of marriage. Even more so if he can show that the fault for this childlessness doesn’t lie with him (ie by getting a concubine pregnant).
The only real problem in Li Di’s case is that he married He Wenru as a main wife before he married Shen Ran, also as a main wife. Legally he can only have one main wife and if this comes out, he could lose his position as an official and get punished.

This is so funny 😂😂😂
https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:5007198963564614?from=old_pc_videoshow

🤣🤣🤣🤣

I’m not sure if they have included this in the drama version, but in the novel Li Di holds a secret concerning Shen Ryan’s father. That’s why she cannot leave him.

Yes, she is a beauty to my taste! The FL not so much, but at least her acting is much better than I had expected, so when they tell me she is Chang’an’s greatest beauty I just go with the flow…

Yeah, telling her was definitely a mistake! 😂😂😂 Since in the drama version they cannot show how she seduces him to wrap him around her little finger this is a nice substitution.

Yes, I do, too. I think he makes a good detective.

Dame Diana Rigg only passed away a few years ago. She’s been around as recent as GOT where she had one of her last roles. If you had to google her it says a lot 😂
Yes, Viggo Mortensen, the autocorrect isn’t my friend. I know because there was quite a bit of fuss about people publicly telling him to Botox his face and he didn’t. If you look at his face today it’s quite obvious …
I think there is a difference between people getting there nose or some other feature changed at the beginning of their career and those who plastify their face to the point of being unable to move it. The latter impedes their job as actors, the former doesn’t.

The big conspiracy makes up a good deal of the novel. It would be great if they kept this part in the drama rather than just concentrating on the romance.

That sounds about accurate based on what we have seen so far.

Ooooh, you’re getting me exited. What a glorious Macbeth he would make!!

This drama has a much healthier attitude towards the subject than all those dreadful rapist-to-lover stories that are currently so fashionable in web novels and to some extend also in C-dramas.
Maybe the producers wanted to make a point (this bit isn’t from the novel).

Yes, that bit was in the novel. I’m glad they kept that in. Only in the novel she was much cleverer and went to several shops to buy parts of the herbal formula, but she still got busted in the end.

Ah, I like his evil, angry face the best. His expression in ep. 5 when the palace eunuch told him to show no mercy, that evil ficker in his eyes was absolutely priceless!