Romance in the drama is very illogical. The FL has no reason to like the ML after everything he did to her. If I was the FL, I would have whipped him silly.
na, 3rd person is the emperor and ZZX didn't want ZH to assassinate the emperor
your reason of why the emperor is not the 3rd person is weak. Logically, there's no other person the 3rd person could be unless it's someone we haven't been introduced to, yet which is unlikely.
I know a lot of people think the 3rd person might be the emperor - but that dude barely runs the government. Idk…
it is definitely the emperor. we don't know too much about him, but he definitely knows about the seal's power. I'vd guess his motive for the seal is to use it to conquer more land.