Rachel

Xu Kai is really great in this and I adored Wang Lu (most of the time). Wang Wu, his shifu, is by far the most insufferable FL I've seen in a CDrama and the show likes to play her abusive behavior for laughs 🙄 Some of the humor was so good (I loved all the meta jokes and references to other popular media) and some of it was unbelievably horrendous (abuse played for laughs, contempt for fat people, contempt for people the writers deem "stupid"). And there is just sooooo much abuse apologia and attempts to retroactively defend abuse - ranging from Wang Wu's incessant mistreatment of Wang Lu and her beating him up to the point of breaking his bones being "for his own good" and to "help" him with his cultivation, a sex pest who has sexually assaulted multiple women being referred to as a good guy and befriending our heroes, and a man who murdered his children revealed to having done so to protect his citizens from a demonic entity... yeah, it's maddening.

My favorite character was Ling'er and I absolutely adored her plotline (for the most part) when she left Lingjian Mountain. Her and Boren 🫶. Also my favorite dynamic was Wang Lu and Hai Yunfan, but there is also A LOT of queerbaiting wrt their relationship and they're both shoved into awful romances with women. 😕