Pros:
- the acting in this drama is one of the most skilled acting I've seen. Every actor was convincing and I felt all their emotions when watching.
- the visuals of the cast! They all looked majestic.
- the romance was good! the lead couple had good chemistry <3 SF is a very loyal ML. He nearly went BL at the end for XJ lol
- the flying snake carried the show. He is such a likable and funny character, I would have dropped the drama if he didn't appear in episode 31-ish. I would 100% watch a spin off about him! He was such a cute companion to Xuan Ji.
- the last 10 episodes had me on the edge of my seat and I couldn't help but binge. It was worth skipping masses just to get to the last 10 eps, trust me.
- the ending was satisfying and cute. I was hoping we could at least see SF's reaction to XJ getting pregnant because they had suffered so much but I'm satisfied with what we got. It's the typical wuxia happy ending where the main couple lives out their happy life in the mortal realm so no complaints.
- a good wuxia, if that's what you're looking for. Watching the main couple use their powers to fight the enemy together was lovely. I enjoyed that XJ was also immensely protective over SF.
- the opening song!! Couldn't ever hit skip :)

Cons:
- SF had a terrible case of a martyr complex. Once or twice, fine. Anything to get the story going, but he literally sacrificed himself for XJ every opportunity he could? It got repetitive and warranted the extreme skip button. It was noble idiocy and it felt like the story had nowhere to go by the middle so the writer kept adding in chances for SF to keep sercrets to himself and cause rift after rift with XJ. Again, I understand that this is typical of wuxias but LaR took it to another level with miscommunication. I was really ready to drop it half way through because of how much he suffered for XJ to no avail- it ruined the good chemistry.
- Why on earth did SF even love XJ so deeply? Maybe I skipped too much but I feel like they never touched enough into it. Yes, he spent time with her in heaven but why did he like her so much when he was a phoenix? It wasn't clear. I guess it's just one of those things you gotta accept at the beginnimg as a fact. I felt like this affected my ability to like the main couple at first, there was no foundation to their relationship and you realise there was no proper build up when it's revealed that SF was the phoenix in heaven with her.
- Dragged on. Skip button was a gift.
- Wasn't interested in Ling Long's story (they styled ZYX so bad). I didn't feel like it added much to the plot.
- XJ was dumb even when she recovered her senses. The last 10 episodes were only good because she finally trusted SF (took her bloody long enough) so I'm inclined to think this drama could have been a lot better if she stopped being stubborn and SF stopped thinking he was always doing what's best for her without communicating.
- Overrated. With the 8.8 MDL rating and the way people have been raging about this drama for nearly a year now, I was expecting it to be one of the best I've watched. Not by far. It was good, but not as good as people made it out to be. Go in with low expectations is my advice. The drama only pulled it off at the end bc they pulled together a perf cast. Any other cast, it would have been a trainwreck...

Overall, 8/10. Worth a watch, satisfied my love of wuxias, but be prepared to skip skip skip!