nightdews

The old and long-standing building of Yuanlongli is surrounded by many urban legends. Some say it is a ghost building that eats people, others say people vanish in black cloak with no bones left. Things go awry when a pair of father and daughter disappear on the 18th floor of the building in broad daylight, in front of numerous residents of the building. A rumor or an accident, an accident or a well-planned murder? A case spanning throughout three timelines at the cost of numerous innocent lives, what seemed like unconnected accidents were in fact a web of crimes leading into something even bigger and far darker.

The story starts off really well in terms of build-up. Starting it all with the disappearance of two living people right in front of people, slowly changing the superstitious belief into reasonable man made activities. I really enjoyed those little introductions and doubts they kept throwing at the beginning and unveiling the story slowly in each coming episodes. And then the chills down the spine when they started throwing clues at the end of episodes starting from ep 8 and 9!

Tho, I wish they could do a better job with the build up of main characters in primary episodes, I was starting to take them really unserious considering how casually they were predicting the entire incident writing a whole script of events based on few clues, and how malleably they kept on changing their predictions on the crime and criminal and labelling all that with fancy high-end terms. I really couldn't take the theory of investigating after predicting, cause that is what lead to constant closing and opening of this case. I really couldn't excuse all of it to lack of gadgets and technology. So in the beginning Ran Fangxu's collection of theories really did not impress me a single bit.

The story started to get hold of the characters after the second timeline, when they actually started concluding the case based on actual evidence and did not presume things unilaterally. I think that was when I finally started getting even more interested in the story.

The parallel storytelling of the second and third timeline kept me invested. Ran Fangxu slowly discovering issues after a co-incidental discovery and then the unveiling and consequences that followed. But the third timeline again lost its spark, while I was indeed into the unveiling of the mysteries, the way those mysteries were conveniently solved in the third timeline made the entire investigation humanly unrealistic. Everything was just conveniently there, there was a child in the building of yuanlongli who was conveniently a hacker and hence could solve every problem, people conveniently remembered the questions asked and investigations made 15 years ago by Ran Fangxu and were able to solve the case. Ran Fangxu's theories conveniently dropped the right clues at the right time, which solved the case easily in hours. I would have preferred if they put the same efforts in the third timeline that Ran put during his investigations while unveiling the story and discoveries made by Ran, so this part made the entire police team's job in the third timeline feel like plot supporters rather than actual job workers with crucial role.

Anyways, coming to the end, it still does not change the fact that the story had me hooked from the beginning and engaged until the end except a few episodes. Starting from the build-up to the suspense, the emotional engagement, the attachment to the characters' emotions everything was so beautiful and well done. Each character played their little role in the drama in bringing the story together. The plot twists were fun, tho I did manage to reach those predictions but seeing them actually happen was fun.

The one that surprised me the most was definitely Wang Hedi, while I would say he has a big room for improvement, this genre switch was indeed well handled by him.