I too, same as many, was very upset with the bad writing of the ending. I couldn't believe that the story that we have seen until episode 40 was all fake and suddenly replaced by some amateurish, rushed bad writing. Hence, I went to weibo, hoping that I could find something regarding these issues. I read through a few of the posts, hoping i could shed some light the this, if not, could be a wonderful drama, here.
I would like to say that by no means these are good excuses for the bad ending presented to us, but circumstances caused it to be.
[these are from comments of Zhong Fu Xiang (actor of Zhu tai ye) He communicated with the producer, Zhang Zi Qing and got some information from her
1) The state administration of press of China has rules stating that no revolts are allowed to succeed, hence Dongfang who started the revolt has to die.
2) They also disallow female cross-dressing, hence causing Mo RuoFei has to be revealed(change?) her identity as a female, which caused a lot of chain reactions.

And also, the script was initially fully written beforehand, however, due to those changes (and possibly many more that we do not know), it has to be changed to writing while the shoot is going on. This also caused the actors to get the script only a night before, and the next day they have to shoot, a very tight schedule for the whole production casts and crew.

Again, these are some comments and posts that I saw from the producers and casts' weibo. I do agree that by no means these are excuses for bad ending, but I could totally understand the very tight circumstances that they are in, facing the government, the crew, the casts and us, the fans.

Having seen the behind the scenes that they posted, and also designing and building Mo residences from scratch, I could feel the tiny details and effort everyone put in. I also love the story and the chemistry between all the actors. I have seen a few reviews complaining about not seeing the 2 main leads together for 12(?) episodes? I totally would beg the differ about that being a horrible choice. In fact, because of this, I could see how the lead could function without each other, and also gave us more time to know more about the other casts in the show. I really enjoyed those moments, whether they are together or not. The main 2, Ariel and BinBin shone, not only them but the whole cast. Even the emperor, who has limited movements, is able to convey his ambitious nature and many more through those lines(also saw that parts of his script were changed and he could only get them the night before and still performed very well). All these could only happen thanks to the wonderful casts and production crew. This would still be a show that I would remember as it gave me so much laughter while still having a motive/goal to follow. And mentioning again, all the actors are so adorable!!