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The Journey of Flower chinese drama review
Completed
The Journey of Flower
0 people found this review helpful
by LottieCooper
15 days ago
58 of 58 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 3.0
Story 1.0
Acting/Cast 4.5
Music 5.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers

I'm siding with the Primordial Force

This is officially the worst Cdrama I've ever watched. So bad I had to suffer my way through to the end to see how it turned out and, let me tell, it's a doozy. Whoever wrote this story needs help. Almost every character is blindly, obsessively in love with someone who will never reciprocate their feelings, but they remain masochistically loyal unto death, basically. Where do I begin?
FL is a pleasant, sweet, and simple minded girl who enters the cold, calculating, cruel and self-righteous world of the sects after her father dies. She follows her father's instructions and seeks out a cultivator who is the leader of the sect on Mt. Shu. She finds him as he is dying, and he hands ownership of the sect over to her, a teenage girl. Okay. His options were limited. She was there and alive which made her the best candidate.
She then travels to a second, more powerful sect, with an idea of becoming a member and finding the man she had developed a crush on just after the death of her father. He helped her out for a few days and then disappeared, but it was enough to make her young heart beat for him and him alone for the rest of the show despite some way better options. He, of course, was an immortal in disguise and the master of the sect she decides to join. During the entry tests for this sect, he literally tries to kill her by destroying the chain bridge she was crossing from one outrageously high cliff to another. Somehow, despite her fear of heights, she climbs to safety and misses her best chance to run for the hills. This was truly a crossroads in her life, that, had she been able to read the room, could have saved her an unfathomable amount of future torture and humiliation. Sect leaders who casually attempt to kill their recruits are not worth learning from.
And so she joins the cult. Here she makes many friends for the first time in her life, and her openness and naivete make her a favorite of many of her peers. She also has a friend outside, Dongfeng, who decided he must marry her after seeing her topless and always seems to show up exactly when she needs help. He's probably the best character in the story, but of course the FL can't bring herself to love anyone that could possibly love her back. He also has a grudge against ML for killing his father and his revenge becomes an issue between him and FL later on.
Despite a rough start in her discipleship, she eventually gains momentum and becomes the only disciple to our disaster of a ML. They live together in his floating courtyard called Loveless. ML severed his emotions as a young immortal and is basically a block of wood that somehow still invites the obsession of not just our FL but also his fellow immortal and raging psychopath, Zi Xun. Her lines are often pedantic but spoken with great feeling. She has no interest in justice or helping the people of earth. She only pouts and bewails ML's lack of affection for her. She also decides to kill FL and makes multiple attempts on her life. She is never held accountable for this in any way. Eventually, her obsession drives her to degenerate and become a demon.
Another peach of a character is Ni Man Tian. FL's peer and the most arrogant, awful, hateful person in this whole mess. She is a bully who never should have been allowed to stay in the sect, but the leadership there are completely blind to the injustices around them. They also bully and terrify and hold their heads high in their own self-righteousness. It's painful to watch.
Undergirding the whole show is the premise that FL is destined to be ML's "calamity." Their magic rocks tell them so. So there is a sense of impending doom always lurking in the background and growing and growing until the watcher wants to scream, "Just get it over with already!"
Eventually they do, but it's not a singular event so much as a spiral of events that includes FL risking all of the earth to save ML who isn't even nice to her. She, with the help of her trusty friends, collect these magical relics that can open a portal into a dimensional prison where the Primordial Force was locked up by a conspiracy of sect leaders a long time ago. Supposedly, this Primordial Force could destroy everything if unleashed. For the world built in this story, that would be a mercy. There is no real righteousness, no justice, no accountability. There are petty fights and endless accusations. There is scheming and bullying and greed and revenge. With a few exceptions. Those who don't harbor ill intentions tend to position themselves as martyrs every chance they get. FL and ML being the biggest examples. Even Dongfeng gives into this in the end and sacrifices himself for FL. In fact, nearly everyone she cares about sacrifices him or herself for her. Including the leader of the demon sect, Sha Qian, a consistently warm and supportive character towards FL who is blamed constantly for things he didn't do. His sect is a mess though and his commanders regularly disregard his orders and invite the hatred of the other sects.
So FL releases the Primordial Force, but he puts his power in her first. ML then sneaks in and seals the power inside of her so that she won't be able to defend herself from the relentless waves of torture and punishment that await her. FL puts on her martyr mantle and is taken for judgment at her sect. She refuses to give the true reason why she stole the relics and instead lies and says she conspired with the demon sect. Once again, they are blamed for something they didn't do. A long and boring story arc begins where FL is tortured relentlessly and cast into some kind of desert netherworld. Dongfeng saves her at the cost of his 5 senses and his life. Sha Qian opens the gate for her to get back to earth and exhausts all his power and withers up and dies.
FL lurks around the edges of her former sect, stealing glances at her beloved Master while looking sad. Her face was badly burned by Ni Man Tian during the torture saga and she wears a weird fabric leaf cluster over the burns. ML occasionally remembers FL fondly but when he finally sees her he speaks cruelly and orders her to be punished. At some point he locks her up and hopes that she will start to care less when the people she loves die. Her friends break her out after a few years and are immediately killed in front of her. She degenerates into a demon at this point, and the Primordial Force is unsealed. She takes over the demon sect for a short time and tries to annoy ML a bit before setting him up to kill her. He happily complies and then has BIG REGRET. As he holds her dead body, finally everyone who is still living feels bad for her.
The last scene is unthinkably cruel. ML resurrects FL by sacrificing his friend and fellow sect leader Mo Yan (who was a POS but human sacrifice is still really bad) WITHOUT HER MEMORIES. They live together in a simple cabin and he carries her around like a big doll puppet that occasionally wakes up and speaks like the old happy FL, the one whose life and dreams and loved ones hadn't yet been destroyed by him. WHO WROTE THIS?! WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS OKAY?!
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