Hollybae5

Wen Kexing from Word of Honor! The shameless flirt 😄

No, the show was always marketed (as much as they cpuld with censorship) as supernatural/horror and not a psychological mystery. You missed the part where Dawei sent an NPC to Jiushi in the game saying he programmed something in the game which when reaches the 12th door will reprogram everything and change the script. That program is Ruan Lanzhu in the form of an NPC. This show is not supposed to be a realistic show. Again, this has been marketed as a fantasy (see the tags). You assume Qianli knows him from the gaming room but that was not said in the show , they just said they don't know who Jiushi is but Qianli says he feels familiar. They didn't say we have seen him here before.

The hood on adult Dawei is for the audience. Ling Jiushi never said he doesn't remember his friend's face. And he even talked with their mutual friend correctly guessing he is back from abroad.

It is your interpretation that you want to see it realistically because you dont like fantasy bit fanstasy/scifi/horror shows do exist and I don't think it's logical to apply real life rules to such shows but again that's your personal interpretation.

He chose Economics after he went abroad. He was still studying programming while in China. The Spirealm was said to be a project of a student which very well could've been his. You have to remember after Ruan Lanzhu purified the game everything got re-programmed. Nothing would be the same again because all previous data got deleted which had a butterfly effect in the real world. Qianli in the last episode said he felt Lin Jiushi was familar but didn't know him. That's because their memories of the game got deleted along with the purification. But since him and LJS were super close in the game, even after losing his game memories he felt familiarity.

Also, this is supposed to be a supernatural fanstasy story, nothing about this is supposed to be realistic or real life like otherwise it would have been a psychological mystery.

Rewatching and all I can say Ruan Lanzhu might have fell first but LingLing fell harder. His changes as the episodes progressed is worth watching. He went from I want to help people to no one else matters but Lanzhu.

Ps- if anyone is looking for another bromance to watch please watch running like a shooting star. It's a sports drama and not fantasy/sci fi/ supernatural like Spirealm but one of the MLs shameless flirting reminds me of Wen Kexing 😆

This is the most logical take imo. China usually refrains from showing spirits, ghosts and other stuff so they changed it to game realm from spirit realm. And this is a classic transmigration story often found in Chinese novels. The game was real, he just got transmigrated to it and finally the game got re-programmed and every data got deleted. This story was never about coma or dreams imo. They made some changes without completely changing the plot which is smart. He had an accident, transmigrated into the game and woke up after a few minutes while still on the road. The coma part came later. Gao Dawei was always Lin Jiushi's friend and it was never disputed he wasn't. LJS even remembered their mutual friend in college and that friend went abroad. But because of the game purification Gao Dawei was no longer a programmer.
This is supposed to be a supernatural fanstasy series anyway not a psychological, realistic show.

Luckily the show is starting to blow up now internationally afaik. They did an amazing job and need more recognition. And I am still bitter about JITD and Immortality because I have been waiting ages for those.

Exactly! Also in the last EP Qianli mentioned he feels familiar with LJS but had no idea who he was. When he woke up at the accident site he recognised Xiong Qi so Xiong Qi was also surprised saying he doesn't know who LJS is. So it means it wasn't a dream otherwise he wouldn't have known.

I am pretty sure it's not a dream. People are just misinterpreting some scenes and taking them as face value imo

Totally agree with this. In my opinion, this is a very tight plot from beginning to end. This also kinda lines up imo with the idea that RLZ could actually be the 12th door god who was probably locked out of his door by Gao Dawei and assigned to LJS and be an NPC in the game world. Once LJS got transmigrated his purification task activated. Only if RLZ and LJS work togther and go through other doors, RLZ can access his 12th door again and begin purification.

Yes and no matter how old LJS get and even if he nears his death due to old age, he will always be that young and passionate guy in the virtual world and can accompany RLZ. Who knows he might even create his own NPC to stay in the virtual world even if he is not there anymore in future. The show ended with the idea that the possibilities are now endless due to advancements. At least that's what I thought.

I think many people got confused in the ending and they were too sad. And for us it might be a not so happy ending, for LJS this ending is best because near his life's end in the real world, he gets to be with RLZ again even if it's in a virtual world.

I read some people say it's a dream but I think they are missing out some important bits in the last episode which affirms the transmigration and parallel worlds theory. But again, that probably makes this so interesting.

Yes it is bittersweet. Given RLZ was a NPC and China's censorship, this the most appropriate ending to the series. It is tragic in a sense but it also shows that Lingling really loved him and RLZ was everything for LingLing. He spent his best years looking for a way to see RLZ again and like LingLing said to RLZ in a episode, "I want to be in whatever world you are in". So Lingling was true to his words and went to the virtual world to be with RLZ.

When he played the beta version it already started to affect him and he saw the door in the street which is the entrance to the game kinda. After the accident he entered the game world which is the parallel world. Within the game world, he entered the doors. So he thought he was in the real world but he was just lying on the street for those 15 or so minutes and was actually in the game world which was parallel to the real world. Hope that made sense. 😅

Yea I think there are two worlds apart from the real world. The game world where LJS and RLZ lived together with others and the world inside the doors!

Honestly I thought it was obvious that the last episode was just the consequences of game purification and not a dream. I think maybe people are interpreting it differently because of the accident scene but LJS did play the game BEFORE his accident so it wasn't a dream imo just that his subconcious was transported in the game world and his brain shut down. Also, it takes 15 mins. to pass the doors in the game world so the whole game happened in 15 minutes from the time of accident till he woke up on the road so basically he was infact in the game while he was out on the road. The whole game played in 15 minutes approx in the real world. So few days in the doors = 15 mins in game world, a year or so in the game world = 15 mins in the real world 😅

Definitely, LJS has a hairstyle change. AFAIK, in China, women used to change hairstyles after marriage to signify the change. It has been a long standing tradition of Chinese BL dramas to have their shous change hairstyles too after a shift in relationship 😆😆

I see it as this - LJS was really in the game, but once it was purified it deleted all data. LJS knew the names of these people who didn't know him. Even Qianli mentioned in the last episode that LJS feels familiar but doesn't know who he is. These were real players who had virtual identities in the game. Everything got deleted and so did their memories. The game basically affected their subconscious and took it to a parallel world so when the game got purified, it deleted its traces from their subconscious too.

RLZ was always an NPC he is not even a real person in the real world. But he felt human because of LJS. What LJS got was a beta game but after purification it became a normal game that no one wanted to play. It was probably Gao Dawei's college project (he did study comp. science before with Jiushi in China but changed his degree abroad) but after purification due to lack of interest he scrapped it and changed his field to economics.

The events were consequences of the game purification. It wasn't a dream but rather LJS living in a parallel world created by the game. He was the last one to get out of it and the only one who passed through door 11 so he remembers it but other players don't. In the end, RLZ made the ultimate sacrifice to save the other players from being stuck in the game world. He was created for this but it was still a big sacrifice. He had to completely disappear so real players could be safe and back in the real world as if nothing has happened.

At some point it didn't feel censored anymore. It was so very obvious that Lingling and Lanzhu were in love and in a relationship. No wonder it was taken down so quickly and I think it ended the way it did because no way a "censored" drama from China would end with the leads together - they did the same with the Untamed, Guardian, Killer & Healer. This is the best ending for them in a series where LL and LZ are together again in the virtual world. LL definitely felt he didn't belong in the real world so for him being in the virtual world with LZ is the best end. He belonged with LZ and he knew it so he waited 50 years to bring him back.

Yea it did seem like she had a one sided school girl like crush on ZR and followed him around. But I guess they decided to keep some of it to keep the essence of the character from the novel in the drama but not fully develop it.

He was ready to risk his hands which are soo important for a surgeon. ZR didn't see anything else..