Beautiful Acting and Great Storyline/Concept

Just finished the show and I've got to say this show has one of the most interesting concepts with an incredibly chosen topic. Using the idea of merchants and their battles in the jewellery industry was both refreshing and interesting to watch given its prevalence in Chinese history.

[Concept of Beauty is Sacrifice]
One thing I really enjoyed about the show is its realistic treatment of the toxic and unethical environments that existed both in the past and even now in the present day. Specifically, they didn't try to beat around the bush about how poorly the pearl collectors were treated which is something that a lot of dramas nowadays gloss over. Everyone looks at the shiny headpieces and beautiful clothing when watching ancient Chinese dramas, but this is the first time I was so gruesomely reminded of how incredibly difficult it was back in the day to collect those items. Without the help of machinery, every single piece of gold and jade was collected by hand, often covered with blood by those who couldn't survive the abuse. Whilst admiring the jewels and their beauty, the show also cruelly reminds us about the people who've died getting their hands on them. This choice both shows the research that the writers/directors must've done to keep things accurate, in addition to reminding the viewers that nothing comes for free and that everything beautiful comes with its own sacrifices.

[Actors/Actresses & Main Characters' Romance Plot]
I'm highly biased in this take but I loved the actors/actresses they chose for this show, especially the ML and FL. I've always been a fan of Liu Yuning so I was excited to see him act in another drama, but I was swept off my feet by Zhao Lusi's great acting and the synergy she had with him. To speak on visuals for a second, they look very good together with their concept of "tall evil businessman" and "short and confident newby businesswoman" especially once they start falling in love and you can see Yan Zijin just absolutely cave and stop caring about trying to be intimidating. One thing I really enjoyed is that they didn't try to pull the overdone "I'm too evil big and intimidating to fall for her blegh" character arc with him which is often done for his type of character. Usually, when there's an ML that is shown as being cold and mean, the directors try to force them to go through a period of self-discovery where they realise that they actually have feelings and it's usually really long-winded and not fun to watch. Here, once he realised he liked her, he just knew and didn't need to go through that, filling the show with a lot of cute couple scenes and avoiding unwanted filler where the ML and FL just dance around each other like dying chickens.

[Misunderstanding & Better Without Me Trope]
Despite adoring this show, I do have one main piece of criticism: I absolutely hated the fact that after getting attacked and almost dying, Yan Zijin decided to leave her. Not only that, but they just had to add in the scene of him shooting her with an arrow and her misunderstanding him, thinking he was trying to kill her. This is more of a personal gripe I have with romance plots like this but I feel like the misunderstanding and better without me trope is so overused at this point that it's an automatic hit against the show's watchability when it happens. I understand that they need something to happen to cause drama, but also it didn't make sense to me that they would both go through a life-threatening attack and suddenly the ML thinks that leaving her alone in the middle of the desert that she's never been in is the safest decision. Sure, he left her with a group of nice travellers, but also she somehow instantly travels into the middle of a snowstorm and almost dies from hypothermia? It feels more like a cheap way of trying to cause a rift between them so that the show can slowly fix it to keep the watchers on the edge of their seats rather than adding anything to the storyline. Rather, if they wanted to create some sort of problem between the main couple, I believe it would've been way more interesting to delve deeper into Yan Zijin's darker side and have a conflict that way instead. At the beginning of the show, his character was written to be hated: bullied everyone, cared only about money, used underhanded means to get to his goals etc. Towards the end, he softens up and kinda just gets relegated to house-husband duty and doesn't really do much for the plot anymore except getting stabbed and dying. I didn't mind this choice really (and actually enjoyed it), it's more that if they wanted some sort of drama between the main couple, they could have easily used his want for revenge as the catalyst without needing to follow these two tropes.

Overall, I really enjoyed this show and thought the storyline was both thought-provoking and entrancing to watch. I would definitely rewatch it at some point in the future and just skip the parts where there's there misunderstanding.

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