gmat6594

Are you full up on mini- dramas?
Strong FL
Dream in the Mirror (2024)
Moonlit Order (2025)
Kinda strong FLs
The Mirage (Where Illusion Meets Truth.) (2025)

In the last episode, after the main CP ride off to subdue the Northern Jue, we are shown an alternate time line betrayal never happened. 17 years ago.

Rest assured.

I think that storywise, it is to add in the contrasts between rustic butcher girl Fan Changyu and the urban educated Yan Zheng.

It's spiritual addition to the steel. To use your own blood is the highest sacrifice. Using blood when forging steel has a basis in old history and has been thought to add carbon to the steel. Animal blood usually. Blood is also used in quenching.
Google using blood to help forge steel weapons

Shades of Hitchcock. lol

Of the two young couples, Shi Dian Dian and Xu Tian are the main. But the second couple, Wen Xiaoyao and Zhou Tong have a more natural romance. Both couples meet in a blind date. Shi Dian Dian thought that Xu Tian had a second date because he liked her, but he really wanted to ask her for a favor. She is kind of determined (she first off tells him her life plan) and that scared him away. The path for them to end up together is rather bumpy.
If you want, I can tell you why after ep. 18 it became gripping for me.

The ML had a dream that he was in the Tang dynasty and the FL and apparently her family entered his dream. The family woke up after the fire,as if from a dream and like a dream forgot everything. But certain skills learned the dream were retained, subconsciously. .The ML lived the rest of his life alone but the FL was a silent observer and both suffered loneliness. The ending was to conform to regulations about not showing dramas changing the past. The ML discovered after the fire that Shen Family never existed, but he tried to recreate their restaurant and his manor so that in the future, the Shen Family would visit the manor to change their luck.

I think of He Yan as a younger sister type and Li Shuang as an older sister type. There are many types of generals. General Patton wasn't like the George C. Scott version and Bill Mauldin describes Patton's voice as a high pitch growl. Song Yi has that kind of voice.

Thank you, I was commenting on the sentence, "Kill them all." He said that the ML and FL knew too much. The same could be said to a lesser extent for Wuren disciplinary officer Palace Investigation Bureau and Prosecutor Gu who either investigated or accompanied one or the other. The other friends like the Physician are loose ends. I have no doubt that Peiyi and Huajin together could predict the Crown Prince's action and survive, but their friends might not.

Alas, no. He goes off on his own journey and she actually liked her brother but didn't know who he was until the end.

Are all of the people shown at the end also gonna be killed? He said kill them all.

Yes, it is. The smile on her face at the end.

kisskh

To add to the very good responses to your comment by Eszter and Tsukiko, Technician Pei couldn't be allowed by the censors to benefit from fruits of the poisonous tree. So she had to die and make us regret her story.
Plus in her letter to Peiyi, she left a record of her reflections and analyses of classical prescriptions to be forwarded Physician Liu at the Imperial Medical Office and she said that she was tired (of the constant prejudice because of her gender, I expect)

Prosecutor Gu was the ML in Butterflied Love (2023) He was pretty gentle towards the FL. Both the FL (Rain Lu) and the 2FL (Bao Zhu) were mostly feminine.
Not a costume drama and not a cdrama but in the Korean movie Be With You (2018) the ML So Ji Sub is a big guy that is surprisingly gentle towards the love of his life. A father and son struggle in the shambles of their home while the son clings desperately to the promise made by his late mother to return during the next rainy season. A remake of the Japanese Be With You (2004) Bothe adapted from the novel "Ima, Ai ni Yukimasu" (いま、会いにゆきます) by Takuji Ichikawa (市川 拓司) There is also a Chinese adaptation. Gift From a Cloud (2025) But the flavor is different. Watch the Korean version first.

Baike Baidu list the FL as 林霖 Lin Lin. She is not listed on MDL.
This is her page on Baike Baidu.
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%9E%97%E9%9C%96/66727705?lemmaFrom=lemma_starMap&fromModule=lemma_starMap&starNodeId=66051d8812a74cd29bdc9a71&lemmaIdFrom=65261586

I guess that if they had filmed her emerging from the tunnels into his trap and then being killed that it was part of the six episodes worth of time that was cut.
I think the clean up that the mysterious person ordered may claim one or maybe two of the gang. I wonder if it was the ML's father or the Emperor that was the hidden man?

Ep. 19 and ep. 18. Was anyone struck with similarity of Master Wu's corpse hanging from the bar and his bloody crotch with the was Ms Liu was hanging from a bar giving birth?

When he killed himself for her, I believe that she then determined to follow him. Perhaps there was no point for her in staying alone in the Palace. That was a sachet that she gave him that she clutched?
I thought that it may have been what he sacrificed to become a eunuch. Makes her grief more emotional.