This was amazing! I was drawn in from the very first episode and I just couldn’t. stop. watching! I burned through this drama in just a few days, that rarely happens to me. But it was so compelling, the stories, the acting, the cinematography, the music… It was the full package!

My favorite part was definitely the deep friendship and trust that developed between Shen Yi & Du Cheng. Du Cheng started as Shen Yi’s, well, enemy is a strong word but definitely as someone who did not like Shen Yi all that much. And by the end, he laid down his life and his future in Shen Yi’s hands with absolute, unhesitant trust. It was truly a thing of beauty.

Also, what I loved was that both Shen Yi & Du Cheng were very, but very smart people, each in his own right. That Du Cheng wasn’t just Shen Yi’s plus one, his caretaker, the way these dramas about gifted individuals sometimes go.

Interesting, at least for me, was that one of the tensest moments of the whole drama was the speed chess game between Shen Yi and the main bad guy, that cat and mouse game where you didn’t know who was the cat and who the mouse. It reminded me so much of the amazing poker game scene between Bond and Le Chiffre in Casino Royale!

And then the ending! The set-up for something more! I really truly hope that there actually will be S2, that it won’t fall under the table like the sequels to SCI or When a Snail Falls in Love. That would irk me!

Overall, a fantastic, amazing, captivating drama!