Ni Ni and Bai Yu helm the deck in action adventure story as they steer a ragtag team into a raging world of secrets lurking on the other side of the legendary Yumen Pass which connects to the Silk Road. It's sand (lots of it), sorcery and sleight of hand as Ye Liuxi (Ni Ni) and Chang Dong (Bai Yu) navigate an alien environment with pals Fatty, Ding Liu and Gao Shen to solve the 2-year-old mystery of the Camelia expedition. At the start of this tale Chang Dong is haunted by the deaths of his fiancee and 17 others who died in a freak sandstorm while he's the sole survivor. Along comes a mysterious woman calling herself Ye Liuxi who is keen to find out who she is and why she's not dead despite being hung out to dry in the desert. Tagging along is Fei "Fatty" Tang who wants in on the action because his antique business back home isn't doing all that well. He's looking for that big score. Ding Liu jumps on the bandwagon on the behest of her godfather a mob boss and Gao Shen is her bodyguard.

My first advice is to watch this knowing as little as possible. My second to all who dare venture in to persevere through the first 10 episodes because there is a treasure trove waiting on the other side of all that sandscape. More or less. To my mind a fair chunk of the first 10 episodes are an indulgent waste of television oxygen but it does provide some useful clues that lead to some "aha" moments later. I imagine that this is why the show is unlikely to have broad appeal. .

Aside from the interactions between the leads, the plot is perhaps the best thing about the show. From what I've heard, the story gains its inspiration from the popular Tomb Notes series with more than a few nods here and there to its predecessor. The world building is creative with quite an extensive lore to wade through. The leads and their expanding entourage get the lion's share of development while the show's primary antagonist seem like a cookie cutter entitled second female lead than a truly menacing adversary. I have more than a few issues with how she's written and the amount of power conferred on her in the script. Not to mention that Ni Ni's experience and charisma overshadows that of her drama nemesis.

Further on the negative side the show suffers the same types of problems that most C dramas do. While the secondary romances are quite appealing they don't add anything to the big story. The show also has a framing device of a sort that seems oddly misplaced unless it's meant to keep the censorship axe at bay. Frankly it doesn't otherwise add much to the narrative. Time could have been much better spent on the resolution which in typical C drama fashion wraps up in haste. This speaks to the start-stop-filler-go pacing. Moreover the showrunners don't really know how to properly adapt the source material to take full advantage of the visual medium. This is my continuing problem with C dramas and the way they handle exposition and foreshadowing. That's why I'm a little ambivalent about the main romance despite the fantastic chemistry between the leads.

All in all it's a decent watch with some missed opportunities especially with regards to the final act where so much is crammed into the last few episodes that aspects of the resolution comes across unearned.