Alright, for starters, I love Min Guo Dramas. The romance, the danger, hot people in gorgeous period clothing - it's always a win. Except here. I was genuinely surprised to look it up and see that this drama has such good ratings here because... it is bad. Really, really bad. If you like it, I'm happy that you had a good viewing experience because this drama made me legitimately angry on a number of levels because the incompetence was just... staggering. There were moments in this drama that made me go "Oh, this is actually romantic" or "Oh, this is actually interesting", but most of it left me sighing, rolling my eyes, and wondering how I made it that far.

Things I Liked:
- The actors weren't all terrible. They genuinely had some good moments. I have no idea how they convinced some of these veteran actors to be in this drama, but they were good and the leads weren't terrible.
- There were some genuinely good, romantic moments, but not usually between the leads. The side characters had more chemistry in their couples than the ML and FL had in the entire show and I was actually invested in the romantic plots for them.
- Guangyao. He and his friends were what kept me going through this shown, not gonna lie.

Things I Disliked:
- Costumes. They were cheap and looked awful. Period dramas need good, convincing clothing to help set the setting. These looked like they were picked up from a fashion shop and styled to try and look like they were out of the early twentieth century. The hair on all of the girls were obviously all cheap wigs that were styled pretty badly and didn't fit the setting in the slightest. The uniforms were alright and the men's suits are hard to mess up, but everything else was... Yikes.
- The cinematography. Lighting didn't exist in outside shots. There was no color correcting or anything to improve how exterior shots looked at all. It looked like they just used the raw footage and did no editing whatsoever. The editing that was done was something you would see in a university film project. The facial smoothing was so horrible that it made people's jaws invisible, their mouths and eyebrows had to be re-edited onto their faces in a few scenes, it took away laugh lines and other basic features from older actors who should have them and made their faces look really weird, and was all around done in a way that made it look like a literal Snapchat filter would have done a better job. It was incredibly amateur. That isn't even going into the horrible CGI, the badly choreographed action scenes, and the terrible out of period props that got used constantly.
- The setting. It was wasted. I've seen a few reviewers here say that you need to "watch for the plot, not the accuracy" and things of similar nature, but in a period drama, the historical aspect makes up a huge chunk of the plot and background conflict that helps shape the characters. The Min Guo era in China was filled with suffering, death, drama, and war. The drama needs to reflect that or else the background means nothing. Like how the background politics of the Manchu and their states can drive a well written Qing harem drama, the clashes between the revolutionary armies and the backbiting internal strife between the various Republican warlords is supposed to help drive a good Min Guo drama. At that point, just set in in modern times because it literally never mattered. They keep bringing up the revolutionaries and the southern wars, but nothing about that ever really affected the plot at all. Having it set during this era was pointless outside of aesthetics.
- The Plot. It was... bad. It felt very forced pretty much every second that it was moving forward. My biggest gripe was that at no point did Xuanlin or Wangqing ever seem like they were in genuine danger. Xuanlin was always six steps ahead of Xu Bojun to the point where I was sitting there rolling my eyes because it was obvious he had some secret plan. The first few times, it was alright, but the plot was rinse and repeat for all 36 episodes of this same plotline. It erased any tension that these scenarios might have had by using this formula: Xuanlin gets spotted doing something shady, Bojun's spies catch him, they report it to Guangyao, Guangyao busts in and catches the bad guys, but no Xuanlin, Xuanlin gets revealed that he set the whole thing up to get his army what they need or remove some bad actors, Wangqing is somehow tangentially involved in a way where she doesn't have to do anything worthwhile except talk to some dude who immediately gives her what she wants or sees things her way, Bojun gets butthurt because he couldn't catch him, and repeat every three or so episodes.
- The leading romance. Holy heck. The romance between Xuanlin and Wanqing was AWFUL. Xuanlin at no point ever had a meaningful moment with Wanqing outside of their shared parental death bonding moment, and Wanqing fell in love with him pretty quick considering this man KIDNAPPED HER AND THREATENED TO KILL HER. Xuanlin blackmailed her, threatened her and her family, and borderline emotionally abused and manipulated her, and then ten episodes in, they're head over heels? If the build up was slower, it would have been alright, but it wasn't. They rushed it in and forced it earlier than they should have. It's one of the dramas doing this trend I've seen in a few C-Dramas where the ML is a toxic, shitty person and for some reason, the FL has an unrealistic change of heart and gets all "Oh, but he's just hurting, he isn't that bad" and suddenly loves him. It isn't romantic, it's kind of gross.

TL;DR This drama is a hot mess, wasted its setting, and is incredibly amateur in it's writing, editing, and directing, and the actors and VA's suffered for it. 2/10, do not recommend.