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What a Brilliant Plot and Performance, I Wish it was Longer!
Jinyiwei officer Pu Ying, who is sent to Liangzhou from the capital to investigate the death of the whole 27 members of Zhang Escort company, found himself infuriated when none of the military officers from Liangzhou district came to see him, and instead sent a mere coroner to attend to him while on-site. While checking the horse feed that the coroner said to be laced with poison that made Zhang Escort members kill each other, Pu Ying unexpectedly became poisoned and goes off on an attacking rampage. Just as he is about to break through the room that the coroner and Liangzhou soldiers managed to contain him in, Zhang Luyao, the surviving member of Zhang who had returned from foreign land upon hearing about the deaths of her family, arrives and cures him from the hallucinations. A poison expert immune from poisons, Zhang Luyao starts to unravel the plot behind her family’s deaths, which led them to the hunt for 300,000 taels of gold from the previous dynasty’s official by various parties, legal and illegal ones.
I came here not expecting anything because I have seen enough desert adventure shows with bad and uninteresting plot, but i have decided to endure this if this show is one of them, just because of Xin Zhilei and Gao Weiguang. I badly wanted to see them together again after Candle in the Tomb: The Wrath of Time. Although they were not essentially a couple here, I couldnt really ask for more because this is truly one of 2026’s wuxia masterpiece. No. I actually wanted to ask for more, like more episodes! Such masterpiece only had 13 episodes while other crappy shows have enough budget for 30-40 episodes of draggy plot, good lord. I havent had enough of those action parts when it ended.
This series throws in the struggle between righteousness and loyalty in a very dark way. Characters that supposed to have clear conscience like Yu Hou and Xiao Fang get beaten with greed and blind loyalty while the character we expected to give in to those, namely Pu Ying, turned out to survive not because he has clear conscience, but because his pride is his driving force. Pu Ying is definitely not the kind of ML that I would root for, he is annoying with his constant rattling “I am Jinyiwei of 7th rank from the Imperial Court! How dare you don’t listen to me?”, his martial ability isnt all that impressive - heck almost every other characters even the insignificant ones are better fighters than him, and his only ticket to survival is actually his authority token, because people there are just too afraid to attract the court’s attention with a dead investigator in their backyard. But he did solve the case with his resilience albeit with tremendous help and deductions by Zhang Luyao and he eventually kept his word to her, going out of his way of returning directly to the capital to bring her to Wusuhai. Gotta admire this character for that. The blind loyalty is too frustrating to watch though, there were so many times that I feel like smacking some senses into the characters.
Although Pu Ying seemed to be the ML here, his character is greatly overshadowed by stronger roles like Yu Hou, Xiao Fang and even the villain Tie Futu.
The choreograph here reminds me of the oldschool wuxia shows of the late 90s and early 2000s, but with better CGI, smoother wireworks and engaging fast-paced plot. The most ostentatious moves gotta be Bancha’s. Not because i love the actor, but because the character really got suave moves that catches the eyes, like whoever would have thought of shooting packs of salt from a bow to knock the enemies down? Yeah only Bancha could do that. His nonchalant personality made him even more intriguing than ever. Although I imagined the final fight couldve been much more epic had it been done three-way between Bancha, Tang Zheng and the weird Guqin couple. These three indeed had the most wuxia-like martial art that is propelled by great internal power, like the wuxia series I’ve seen in my younger years, the kind of moves that isnt fantasy-looking like those we see on xianxias. Basically every action scenes here is very satisfying to watch, even those of brute force without neili infusion.
By the way, I really missed Gao’s gritty and messy look, he looks more manly this way instead of the pristine, flawless appearance that I mostly saw him in. If only it had more episodes i wouldve enjoyed a feast of Gritty Gao scenes, especially his fights.
I wouldve liked a deeper background on Zhang Luyao and Tang Zheng though, a 30-40ep series wouldve given us that. But yeah, longer episodes means more risk of plotholes, i guess there’s also cons in that. Although many lost their lives here, the ending is actually perfect. I think the final Wusuhai view with the shiny sand dune had been breathtaking. That little trick with the sand and the goldbars is mindblowing. What a brilliant screenwrite-up.
I came here not expecting anything because I have seen enough desert adventure shows with bad and uninteresting plot, but i have decided to endure this if this show is one of them, just because of Xin Zhilei and Gao Weiguang. I badly wanted to see them together again after Candle in the Tomb: The Wrath of Time. Although they were not essentially a couple here, I couldnt really ask for more because this is truly one of 2026’s wuxia masterpiece. No. I actually wanted to ask for more, like more episodes! Such masterpiece only had 13 episodes while other crappy shows have enough budget for 30-40 episodes of draggy plot, good lord. I havent had enough of those action parts when it ended.
This series throws in the struggle between righteousness and loyalty in a very dark way. Characters that supposed to have clear conscience like Yu Hou and Xiao Fang get beaten with greed and blind loyalty while the character we expected to give in to those, namely Pu Ying, turned out to survive not because he has clear conscience, but because his pride is his driving force. Pu Ying is definitely not the kind of ML that I would root for, he is annoying with his constant rattling “I am Jinyiwei of 7th rank from the Imperial Court! How dare you don’t listen to me?”, his martial ability isnt all that impressive - heck almost every other characters even the insignificant ones are better fighters than him, and his only ticket to survival is actually his authority token, because people there are just too afraid to attract the court’s attention with a dead investigator in their backyard. But he did solve the case with his resilience albeit with tremendous help and deductions by Zhang Luyao and he eventually kept his word to her, going out of his way of returning directly to the capital to bring her to Wusuhai. Gotta admire this character for that. The blind loyalty is too frustrating to watch though, there were so many times that I feel like smacking some senses into the characters.
Although Pu Ying seemed to be the ML here, his character is greatly overshadowed by stronger roles like Yu Hou, Xiao Fang and even the villain Tie Futu.
The choreograph here reminds me of the oldschool wuxia shows of the late 90s and early 2000s, but with better CGI, smoother wireworks and engaging fast-paced plot. The most ostentatious moves gotta be Bancha’s. Not because i love the actor, but because the character really got suave moves that catches the eyes, like whoever would have thought of shooting packs of salt from a bow to knock the enemies down? Yeah only Bancha could do that. His nonchalant personality made him even more intriguing than ever. Although I imagined the final fight couldve been much more epic had it been done three-way between Bancha, Tang Zheng and the weird Guqin couple. These three indeed had the most wuxia-like martial art that is propelled by great internal power, like the wuxia series I’ve seen in my younger years, the kind of moves that isnt fantasy-looking like those we see on xianxias. Basically every action scenes here is very satisfying to watch, even those of brute force without neili infusion.
By the way, I really missed Gao’s gritty and messy look, he looks more manly this way instead of the pristine, flawless appearance that I mostly saw him in. If only it had more episodes i wouldve enjoyed a feast of Gritty Gao scenes, especially his fights.
I wouldve liked a deeper background on Zhang Luyao and Tang Zheng though, a 30-40ep series wouldve given us that. But yeah, longer episodes means more risk of plotholes, i guess there’s also cons in that. Although many lost their lives here, the ending is actually perfect. I think the final Wusuhai view with the shiny sand dune had been breathtaking. That little trick with the sand and the goldbars is mindblowing. What a brilliant screenwrite-up.
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