ShortCircuit

I know he's not with the sword in the mirror, LOL, I was joking.

Yang Ling doesn't have a family in the real world, and he's too old now for being impressed with father figures. Wei Yuan might've been that for him, BUT he did stay quiet during Mr. Zheng's tribulations, so XQA didn't come to him for help after all. I think maybe the Supervisor could require some respect from our cheeky hero, but only because XQA is afraid of him, LOL. Even so, there is practically nobody he'd kneel for, according to the Soul Mirror they tested him with in the beginning :D

The Imperial Sword is in XQA's "mirror", LOL, he put it away and there it stayed. Maybe it's making friends with Shen Shu :D

Giving the Royal Luck to the Sorcerer means XQA dies because of it, and they already talked about it. He can't just give it to him... unless he chooses to die. I don't see him choosing that, not for that man, LOL.

I don't think they allow them to use VAs anymore, as long as they're not swamped with work and can't make it to the re-recording studios.

I am pretty happy with the new rule, though I am sorry for the VAs (there are still lots of donghua and audio dramas, so they might not be too troubled, here's hoping). I got to hear LYX's own voice in his new dramas (and loved it, he has a very good voice), and WHD's also is a good voice (can't say much about his Mandarin, LOL). Hou Ming Hao also sounds amazing, and so many others!!

And then there are the not-so-great surprises, LOL, with some of the actresses' voices that I do not really like, but one can't have everything.

It was surprising just to see the filming - it seriously sounds like they used this take, and not re-dubbed it. Usually cdramas don't do sound stages at all. Maybe they got lucky and filmed somewhere really quiet.

Chinese people address each other according to age, even when they're strangers. Any kid will call an older kid or teen or young adult "da ge" (big brother) or "Jie Jie" (sister), and so on. Someone who is an adult but not visibly extremely old might be called "uncle". If they're old indeed, they're "grandpa" or "grandma".

That is to say, she doesn't recognise him, she's just being polite.

XQA's dad is not a good person, no matter what he says. He did the spell to cause everyone to forget the slaughter, Zhou Li (the lecherous son of that minister) is his right-hand man, he did steal the Royal Luck (for dynastic reasons, LOL), and he put the Kui tribe up to attacking and destabilising the border cities for his own purpose. His Witcher Sect isn't up to any good.

... The Supervisor might have some secret long-term plans of his own. XQA is pretty much on his own for now.

1. Yes.
2. He spent a lot of energy and is now dormant.
3. Don't know yet.
4. They were in love and wanted to get married but her family rejected him for being a commoner. He obviously is still in love with her so the Emperor can use her to threaten him into not acting.
5. The Loong belongs to the Royal House. Novel readers say XQA is part of a secondary Imperial line that was replaced by the Emperor's line and that makes him royalty.
6. The Supervisor (Princess HuaiQing's Master.)

I'm going to watch this for the comedy, I'm too busy laughing to follow the medical details that are probably way too far-fetched but who cares, LOL.

The first almost 4 minutes of intro (and a quarter of the budget probably) almost made me stop watching, LOL, it took so long to get there for... a bag of antibiotics? WTF LOL. Anyway, the support cast is hilarious and Jeong JaeKwang is here too (I really liked him in Connection) so here we go.

(I should be studying though, but I just can't.)

OMG LOL. It's not the calm before the storm. It's the storm itself, its father from Hell, its mom from the underworld, all its relatives from wherever devils gather, and then some friends they brought along, LOL.

The present time is a lot more calm, all things considered :D

Yes, 1-2, then 33-50 is the present timeline, and 3-33 is the past. The past tells you how the first few minutes of the first episode came to happen and gives you all the background on the most important characters who will come again in the present, and all the important characters who already departed. But it's been written like that to make it easier for people to follow the story, so IMHO it was a good choice (the novel has a lot of shorter flashbacks telling the past, and one could get a bit lost in there, LOL).

They don't have the same mother, though. And her mother seems a bit afraid the Emperor would change his mind and depose her son as CP (he too seems way too afraid of his father).

I haven't read the novel (or not yet), but there are a few more princes there than are present - like PingYang's father, Prince Yu for example, who I don't remember who he was (we only saw her mother, in the act that dealt with her disappeareance and started the change in Lin'An).

It's all in the TL, TBH. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes it's a bit hit-or-miss, this time they tried to be traditional at first then got a bit confused with Zhenbei and all, and so they decided to westernise it a bit so that the int'l audience didn't start wondering about these so many princes royal or grand or whatnot, LOL.

I wasn't paying attention to Huaiqing's title, TBH, Yes, usually the Grand Prince(sses) are the Emperor's siblings or older relatives like uncles and such. But he might've given her a title that reflects her status and that got TLed as Grand Princess (she's the eldest, Lin'An is second).

They basically flew back to the capital ASAP after the massacre was revealed, LOL. Most of Wei Yuan's people were on the same boat as XQA, and nobody in the city itself (I mean Chuzhou) was willing to let people know what they had done. All remaining in the city were the military who slaughtered the people.

As for the Supervisor... I think he knew when it happened, because he's paying attention to the Sorcerer. He might have planned for it, though - and waited to see what would XQA do. After all, he is the one who came to the "real" world and picked XQA to come to the Dafeng and act as a tie-breaker.

Chuzou was also under a mystify spell. The Sorcerer (XQA's dad) was in an "understanding" (not going to call it conspiracy, LOL) with both the Emperor and Zhenbei. He promised them a method to create Zhenbei as a 2nd Rank fighter, gave the mystify spell to cover the slaughter (nobody can do it, it's his speciality), and mainly did whatever he wanted when he wanted it. Why - it remains to be seen. I don't think stealing the Dafeng Royal Luck and hiding it in baby XQA could be something done rationally, since he wouldn't even know what kind of a person his son would grow into. As far as he knew, XQA might've become an extremely lucky idiot or something.

Anyway, the slaughter is mystified so nobody can tell the spies or anyone else so that the higher-ups can do anything about it. It couldn't be perfect because 1. the Sorcerer has other intentions and 2. at least the Emperor and Zhenbei needed to remember it. So there were a few people who got out and still remembered it, so that eventually it led to an official investigation.

The Supervisor and Wei Yuan are sadly pretty old and used to strategise and wait until the most perfect moment to act. XQA could care less about strategising, particularly when such an atrocious act was followed by casting the blame on the victims and killing them so brutally just to shut them up. So XQA decided to throw everything to the winds and just go administer justice in the most direct way.

...I am not sure they did not actually know how XQA would react, TBH. Maybe they just waited to see a watershed moment - he'd either choose action (which he does) or planning, which would tell them something more about his mindset and personality. Or maybe they were stuck and saw no clear way to act themselves, so they entrusted it all to XQA and his luck to solve it out.

Married or not, she's an actress, and her character is the one to watch, not her personal life. But TBH, I guess the chemistry didn't work as well because of the age difference. And partly because they were supposed to not really be that compatible - I mean, she's a business-oriented plastic surgeon of the XXIst century and he's a warrior... and not just any warrior - he's playing Choi Yeong, who is a revered general of the past (he has his tomb still in place now, and there's even a legend about grass not growing on it because of how he was betrayed to his death). They couldn't take too many liberties (THEN) with well-known historical figures. And so that may count into it for a bit.

(Now obviously they do whatever they want with historical figures, IF the public accepts it - there was that scandal over JCW's king character having sex with his harem in Queen Woo, that shocked a lot of people... And then, some dramas get completely cut if they pass the level of acceptance - like Joseon Exorcist, that made King Taejong start slaughtering innocents...)

Because to them, it is. That's how it started. But for Yang Ling it was way more than that.

Faith was good enough - not the best, but the cast was good, the music was great, the effects did well, and I like it myself. But it went way over budget (most of the original cast withdrew for reasons - some had to go to the army and couldn't postpone, others had management conflicts and so on, and a lot of money had been already spent on them and filming had already began), the script had to change majorly because of lack of money and it never recovered the costs, and the cast and crew went unpaid because of that. The main director and producer commited suicide over it and being investigated by the police for fraud. So it wasn't a simple controversy.

A big part of the consequences though was that a lot of drama production teams just started making the whole drama before it aired (before, most if not all dramas were filming during airing, and changes to the script were normal, according to the public's reaction.)

The mystify spell erased all traces of XQA (not perfectly, but it was never perfect anyway, and it's breakable). Later on, Wei Yuan went to fight the Witcher Sect and did die, but XQA made a deal with the Sorcerer (his father) to give back WY's body, that XQA sent to the Bureau together with a little spell book about restoring souls. In exchange for that, XQA has to go to the Sorcerer, which he does in the end.

The Emperor forgot all about XQA, just as everybody else, so none of his friends of relatives will face his revenge for the death of his (the Emperor's) brother.

The Crown Prince didn't take over... and I kind of think he won't ever. I wouldn't be surprised if Huaiqing ends up an Empress in the Dafeng.

I bet they're playing in Supervisor's huge sky platform :D

As for the colleagues - they're ordinary humans, and Supervisor didn't need to take them in the Dafeng either, so a simple illusion should do the trick.

It works with just one season, TBH, though I'd obviously like to see more. The deed is done - the wrong is made right or at least punished, the hero - while forgotten - has done his part. (And he's not even truly forgotten, people do almost remember him or at least know there's someone missing.)

It's kind of symbolic, too - one shouldn't expect a reward for doing the right thing, or allow fear of consequences to stop them from doing it. We all care about ourselves, true... but from time to time, people do sacrifice their own safety, needs, wellbeing and yes, relationships, for the sake of others. That's what being a hero means. IMHO, that's what the drama tries to tell you.

It looks like at least a few scenes (particularly from the final ep) were filmed on a sound stage, the dialogue sounds just like in the final cut. I like that (it keeps the raw emotion of the actors in the heat of the moment.)

It's lost in translation, mostly. He is Zhenbei WANG (which normally translates as "King" (Emperor is "Huangdi"), but since there is an Emperor, his title now translates - or should have - as "Royal Prince". And then the relationship isn't such a surprise (there were people who had other titles, but the way they're written and read do point out the relationship to the throne.)

As for point 2, how could they even begin to be cautious when 380000 people were slaughtered by the very person who was supposed to protect them and was sent there with the specific task to do just that?! They themselves didn't kill Zhenbei, Xu Qi'An did, and XQA is from an era where royal status means exactly nothing (they actually did keep the last emperor alive for quite a long time, and he had to live just as simple - or hard - as his former subjects.) They DID go back (with the body), and STILL had to ask the Emperor for a censure of his brother (or he'd be buried with all honours and his deeds put on others, as it happened in the end, actually).

I mean... we can be blasé and say - but in historical dramas people always cover their asses first and never ever contradict the Emperor. But we're human. If we were exposed to such an atrocity, we might as well decide to do something about it. XQA did it more hands-on than the rest, but they too were shocked into action.

This drama will not have a sad ending. I spoiled myself to the novel's ending, he becomes an actual Martial God (as in, an immortal). It's a long way til then - but the ending with his 2nd Rank Sorcerer dad and their "Luke, I am your father" moment :D spells of good things to come (if they do make a S2, which I kind of really think they will).

As for them forgetting him - think about it like this. If they ALL hadn't forgotten him, his family would be killed by the Emperor, his friends too, Wei Yuan would've been at least thrown out but most likely also killed, everybody would have suffered - he's not really that important yet to just take on the Emperor. But now, from the shadows, he has all the time to grow as a fighter and do small things that might not seem important but are (like returning WY's body to the Bureau WITH an "alchemy" book that might just help them piece back his soul and maybe bring him back to life). We'll see.

The mystify spell isn't even perfectly applied - they DID remember XQA's dad, even if they didn't remember him being a Sorcerer and where he went, the Chuzhou mystify spell DID break, Lin'An could remember him enough to almost see his face etc - there's a pretty 100% chance once the spell is broken they'll instantly remember him. And then all hell's going to break loose, LOL.

Prepare for a long time jump. They'll be back to the present timeline at ep33 - don't skip the flashback, it's (IMHO) the best.