for some years now i've been feeling quite burnt out from modern xianxia/wuxia (not enough to stop watching lol), one of the main reasons being that so many shows seemed to be following a set of exhausting tropes. main character has mysterious origins and tuns out to be reincarnated/reborn/memory sealed ultimate goddess/princess/savior/demon/apocalypse bringer, her love interest is a super powered ultimate high god/war god/crown prince/demon lord. if the stakes are not high from the outset, they become THE HIGHEST WORLD IS ENDING STAKES EVER, the ultimate battle of good and evil, dark and light (which is also a concerningly judeo-christian western value found in western fantasy (lotr, harry potter, star wars) but maybe there is chinese precedent for this and i just dont know enough but idk), the entire world Will Be Destroyed unless one of the main characters sacrifices their life!!!! sometimes they even go back and forth sacrificing their lives for each other/the world REPEATEDLY!!!!! then one character dies and the other waits for them to come back/regenerate/reincarnate and then they DO for one last brief appearance/reunion in the last two minutes!!! because no one dies and actually suffers the consequences of self sacrifice!!! nothing matters!! what is the meaning of self sacrifice when they are gods and deities and will just come back???? the stakes are so high and yet there are no real stakes!!!! instead everyone is just rewarded over and over with a happy ending for sacrificing themselves!!! its EXHAUSTING!!!!!!! it's like writers don't know how to get people invested and care about stories anymore unless the stake is their LIFE or the WORLD!!! and more often than not the 'world' is such an abstract concept where they don't even truly express why this world is precious, valuable or worth saving. i've been calling this the the marvel cinematic hell zone because the stakes are SO high that the story loses humanity, relatability and empathy from the audience (me at least) and just becomes meaningless.

what made huxin so special in the beginning was that it was very clearly NOT this. it was SO refreshing, a true breath of fresh air that felt nostalgic of older wuxia in so many ways. the stakes were simple and lower, it was about adventures and fights and collecting all the body parts and gaining powers! fighting injustice! the main characters were special not because of their birthright or their destiny, but because they were just skilled fighters or spirits. yanhui is a normal girl part of a normal sect and even though tianyao is powerful, he's also just a yao dragon. like thank you for giving us HUMANITY!! RELATABILITY!!!! charm and sweetness they had it all!!!!! i truly LOVED this show in the beginning and binged it so quickly, it felt like i was watching my fav childhood wuxias, but still new and fresh! zhou ye and hou minghao are perfect as the main leads, they're both so cute and have great chemistry and charisma! the villains were hateable and HUMAN! the taoists and suying were lead by human constructs and emotions- racism and prejudice, obsession, desire for power and control! NOT an indescribable incomprehensible innate EVIL. the lower stakes adventures, the themes of oppression and inequality, the relatable heroes and villains, and the character and relationship development too all made this show an amazing standout that allowed me to truly care about the story and characters.

sadly, and inevitably, this did not last, and the show eventually became everything it wasn't, everything that i hate abt modern xianxias and wuxias. it lost everything that set it apart from the others. listen, unlike many other viewers, i was okay w many things, i was ok w tianyao stabbing yanhui, i was ok w them having communication issues, i was ok w their relationship being set back and tested, and them having to work and expend time and energy to gain yanhui's trust again. that was all fine and i thought it made sense for both of their characters and i don't think it was terrible writing. what i am NOT okay with was the new ULTIMATE EVIL DARK LORD with the WORST NOSE CONTOUR I'VE SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!!!!! why the terrible drag make up???? WHY???? why did he have to show up and ruin literally everything??? why can't the villains just be the taoists?? why can't the stakes just be that tianyao needs to retrieve his body parts and get revenge and yanhui wants to survive?? that was a wonderful story i was enjoying that story!!!!! now it's no longer a fight against systemic oppression, a battle to settle personal vengeances!! now it's saving the world from apocalypse... AGAIN....!!! the taoists aren't just shitty actually they are being POSSESSED and MANIPULATED by the evil dark lord!!!!!! actually every single thing that has happened from the beginning wasn't driven by human motivations, greed and cruelty, but by the EVIL INCOMPREHENSIBLE DARK THING!! pulling the strings from the beginning for the big dark master plan of apocalypse!!!!!!!!!!!!! like come on!!!!!! can we not?????? can we please not do this it is literally ruining all of the villains and shifu!!!!!!! shifu whips and tortures yanhui not because he is a shitty but complex man who values adherance to taoist sect traditions and orthodoxy over his own daughter, but because he's a goddamn idiot who got TRICKED by the evil darkness into thinking it was yanhui's life or the WORLD. like this kind of writing RUINS characters! they damn near got suying too by saying the idea to manipulate and kill tianyao was evil dark lords idea instead of her own. at least she stayed terrible and obsessed w lu musheng till the end but still!!! don't even get me started on lingfei!!! truly abysmal writing for the story and characters, a great way to get me to stop caring because nothing matters anymore, everything is about the great evil big bad who also has no character writing and is just a psycho and manifestation of everything bad in the world. i didn't even care about yanhui and tianyao and their relationship anymore and i had loved them so much in the beginning. everything and everyone just loses their charm, bai xiaosheng is destroyed once they turn him into a love rival, and then the show just completely forgets about his existence for the latter half. i never cared for the side characters but they get even more grating. at a certain point i was just finishing it to finish it.

all too often we have main characters in cdrama who give up EVERYTHING and sacrifice themselves for the greater good, for the world, for their lover, etc. etc. and for once we got a main character who didn't do that. who believed in self preservation, and was still a good person. yanhui was a normal human being who valued her life like normal humans, who wanted to live and wasn't willing to give up EVERYTHING for other people. that isn't a bad thing lmao, human beings should not be taught self sacrifice as the ultimate marker for goodness and moral purity. in fact it's really unhealthy to live your life for other people. so it was extremely disappointing to have her character go down that road like all the rest... like does anyone have anything new to say???

all in all.... the beginning was a 10/10 and the ending was a 0/10 generic boring meaningless pointless garbage.... final score
5/10.