SAlice

Well actually LJX is way more powerful than LSY at the moment, so ML can't openly win against him. But that's more reason for LYN to tell him the entire story, so that they can prepare a plan in advance, they can only win against LJX if they use their wits.
The situation will obviously change when Duke Ying will claim LYN as his daughter. By then not only LJX won't have an advantage in terms of status, but as we learned in today's episodes he also own the Duke his sister's life or someting along those lines, so he will think twice before harming his only daughter.
I think LJX got rid of the Song family to replace SYS as Wang Yuan's right-hand man. Avenging MeiMei could have been the cherry on top, but not the ultimate reason behind it.

Totally, he has already appraised his strategic skills, and approves of him, even if still wary. And he has yet to see his martial art skills. He will be his ideal SIL. XD

That is why I said that she is ashamed, clearly she doesn't want LSY to see her in a different light.
But LJX happens to be a "slightly" dangerous man, and she's playing with fire here. That's why she should have already told LSY the truth, she is taking huge risks.
She trusts that she will always be able somehow to escape LJX, but that is really naive. She has already noticed how obsessed with her he is, that's why they need to discuss this matter, so he can make a plan before LJX starts to make a serious move.

You are right about Ci Sha, as much as I dislike LJX, I am really enjoying Ci Sha's portrayal of him.
When the evil guys are overdone it makes it really difficult for me to keep watching a drama.
I still have to finish the Double for example. And one of the reasons is that I find both Jiang Li's ex husband and the princess overly evil, and overly insane, that they end up being totally ridiculous and unrealistic in my eyes.

He has no regards for her feelings, safety, and reputation.
In a time where a woman's reputation was paramount.
He has already crossed several lines, disrespecting her and her family as well, he's a bully.
He wants her, and that's it, nothing else matters. And he thinks she has some kind of an obligation to like him in his distorted mind, because she used to like him before.
But he was actively deceiving her about his true colors at the time, if she had known everything he had done she would have never liked him in the first place.
And tbh from what the readers of the novel have written here, I don't have the slightest wish to read it. It seems that all characters are even worse in there.

LYN was very willfull and arrogant as a child, and she didn't seem that much different even during the time she spent with LJX . She can act in a very determined and reckless way when she thinks she's in the right. Moreover because of her father's behaviour I think she has an inherent distrust in men.
Even if she has matured a lot after and because of what happened with LJX, she seems to be still traumatized and ashamed about it.
But I agree that she's being too stubborn, she should have told LSY the truth already.

I was also thinking that she is worse than concubine Qiao. She is capable of anything, she murdered Madam Gu, she was about to murder the lady who resembles her, and now she plans to murder Lin Mao.
Not to mention the way she treats her second daughter.

One Spring Night is also one of my all time favorite drama, I watched it more than once. And I also only recently found out that there is a chinese remake, but I'm really scared to watch it, because of how much I love the original.

He can't rebute because he knows that he is indeed partly responsible for the cliff accident. And he knows that MeiMei was an innocent girl who believed him to be a good man. If he tells her "I only lent SZ my men to kill an innocent woman, but I didn't know it was you she wanted to kill" would that really make her change her mind about him? lol
He is doomed, but he wants her because she made him feel good about himself. At least that is how I perceive his "love" for her.
She will never come to love him again, now that she has come to know his true personality.
I think people who have sML syndrome with this character are either fan of the actor Ci Sha, or fan of the novel version of LJX. Because honestly this is an evil, ruthless, overbearing, toxic man, and I can't really get his appeal.
Kudos to Ci Sha however because he's doing an amazing job, it's not easy to portray this kind of character without overdoing it.

Ep 9

Everything we have seen of him this far in the drama tells us that he's not a good person, and he is obsessive (even in his hunting down LSY) and ruthless. And that scene with the candles and the dolls was really creepy.
He is a bad man, but believes to be in the right, so when he met an innocent girl who came to love him and thinks he's a good man he became obsessed with her. She validates him in the way he wants to see himself (sorry I'm not a native english speaker, I hope you can understand what I mean).

About him not asking her why she believes he is the one behind her death, she is telling him that she heard that from her maid, so it would be useless.
Plus he is in shock, denial, and has a guilty conscience. From the flashbacks it seems that he was aware that SZ had borrowed his men to deal with a woman, and he was totally fine with it, until he learns who the woman is.
So he is indeed indirectly responsible for what happened to her.

She can't, and will never admit to him that she was indeed the girl from that time, otherwise she will be forced in a marriage with him.
If you remember in the literary banquet ep even if the girls were only playing instruments they were still separated from the male guests with a screen, so that they can't see their features clearly. And even her father reminds LJX that he has crossed a line, because men and women should be separated.
When she spent time alone with LJX she behaved very shamelessly and recklessly for the times.
That is why she doesn't want anyone to know about it.
Given his obsession with her, if she were to admit the truth he would definetely push a marriage, and she won't have any way to escape it.
From his point of view her voice sounds like MeiMei's, and she shares some skills with her too, but he never saw her face, and he admitted to Chen Lang (or the other guy, I don't remember) that she resmebles Mei, but is also different from her.
From the flashbacks we can see that her personality has changed quite a bit. I think that the cliff accident is what made her change and mature.
Since she comes from a family of esteemed scholars he can't openly attack her, so he's trying to make her confess first.
Also when he insists that it's impossible that MeiMei died because of him, it is because he can't accept that she is no more, and that it was ultimately his fault, he's in denial.
After she fell off the cliff she heard him say that he didn't care about the woman who fell off the cliff, that some woman's life is not important to him. That is why she believed he attempted to her life, and was completely disillusioned about him.
Add to that his current behaviour, which she is witnessing with her own eyes, she now considers him despicable, and doesn't want to be tied to him in any way.
She's trying to play a game of chess with him so she can escpape from his clutch, she knows she should ask for help from LSY, but she was traumatized by those events and she is ashamed of her past foolishness in regards to LJX, and doesn't want to reveal the truth even to LSY.

I think it will go completely different from the novel. I assume from what you wrote that you've read it. I haven't read it, but from all you readers have written she reunited with his father when she was around 11/12, right? Obviously she was way too young to develop romantic feelings for him, thus the need to separate them. Even if she is still too young when they marry from our 21st century point of view, at least she has grown a bit and they have been separated for a few years.
Here she is already 16/17, and they are only a few years apart, so there is no need to separate them for a long while.
They are walking a fine line with this script, but up to this point they have done it with grace.
He admits that he loves her, but has resigned himself to never marry, because he wants to protect her from the truth which will ruin her. He is already a miles better than any other ML in these historical dramas, they usually become very selfish and disregard the FL's feelings and safety just to get them.
And she has already shown signs that LSY has become the most important person in her life. Right now she thinks of him as a family member, but the way she gets desperate or run to the rescue when she thinks his life is in danger is telling us that her feelings for him are very deep. And her curiosity about his potential partner shows her concern about it, even she is not aware of it herself.
Still the reveal should happen soon, otherwise they will ruin everything good they have achieved till now.
She will need a few episodes to process her feelings once she finds out that they are not blood related.

When she said to LSY that he seems fierce I was giggling inside XD. And he seems to be super smart and upright. I already like him

Do you think that in the letter he left her in ep 24 he revealed her birth secret? He thought he was going to die, so shouldn't he give her a heads up, so that she can take counter measures if anybody ever discovers the truth?
Plus the new maids concubine Qiao sees at the farm were shown for some reason. Will they be the ones to reveal the truth to her?

Yes, it seems to be him. From what people who read the novel said he is a very powerful man, a duke and a general.

I just noticed that the woman who made LYN fall off the cliff is called Song Ziyun.
The man who is in cahoots with Wang Yuan, and who tried to bribe Chen Jiuheng (LSY's master) is called Song Yingshan. So are the two related, maybe daughter/niece and father/uncle?
This means that LJX was working for them even before he was blinded. And that he met LYN around the time they framed Chen Jiuheng. If I recall correctly they said at some point that he was framed 3 years before the current timeline. And LYN couldn't have possibly been younger than 13 at the time she met LJX.
If we add to it that he was totally disregarding the life of the woman who fell off the cliff before knowing it was his MeiMei, LYN fell for a man who never truly existed. Even if she comes to know that he didn't mean any harm to her, she would never come to love him again. Not to mention everything he has done to both her and LSY.

I still have hope because of the opening credit, but before we reach that point we will hate him even more lol.
In one of the trailers LYN calls him father , and he turns around all angry and replies "who is your father?!", I assume that will happen when he learns the truth about her birth.
And I think he will be against their marriage too. There was another scene where he is yelling at LSY, and then you see LSY kneeling in tears. There were no subtitles so I don't know the contents of their exchange.

Me too, I was eager to see her having a loving dad.
Obviously I want her to know that LSY isn't her brother asap, but I was really waiting for her to finally enjoy the love of a parent.
I wanted the same for LSY too, but now he has Lin Hairu, and Grandma is also growing fond of him.
And I also want the dad to start appreciating and developing an affection for his neglected son in spite of himself, so that he can forever regret and be in much pain about what he did to him all these years.

No triangle at all XD
FL had a crush on sML years prior while living afar from her family. But someone close to him attempted to kill her, and she was made to believe that it was under sML's order. Therefore now she despises and fears him, she hasn't any feelings for him anymore.
And at the moment she doesn't have any romantic feelings for the ML either.
FL and ML don't share a drop of blood, and they grew up separately for over 10 years, so much so that they didn't even recognize each other when they reunited at the beginning of the drama. However at this point in the story she still believes him her half-sibling, therefore she hasn't developed any romantic feelings for him yet.