A messy story out of focus

The drama is a downer. I was impressed by Yang Zi in Ashes of Love and had watched several of her dramas since. But not this one. LYF has been promoted so much by Tencent compared with other drama productions done by the company (e.g., the highly acclaimed The Longest Promise that was premiered before LYF without any promotions nor any announcement about the date/time to premiere). Given all the resources from Tencent to invest in LYF that was adapted from a popular novel written by a famous writer, I had very high expectation over this drama. Not only are there intense promos done by the production team prior to and post the premiere, there are also a huge cohort of book fans to hype it up. But after watching 18 episodes, I felt like wasting precious hours off busy work schedule on a draggy and sleep-inducing boring drama. Not everyone had read the book before watching the drama. Therefore the plot should have had some highlighted focus to give ordinary viewers intriguing points to follow. There's not enough suspension in each ep to invite me to look forward to watching next ep. I gave it a shot but ended up fast forwarding each ep A LOT to skip those lackluster and confusing scenes. There're no stunning visuals in the drama as how the novel described the main male leads should be. I'm disconnected to their acting either. The only thing I can rave about is YZ's crying scenes that were convincing and touching. The plot so far is badly scripted, chaotic here and there, and leads you to a rabbit hole. I just don't get this multiple love lines between one heroine and the 3 or 4 ordinary-looking MLs. In particular, that white haired demon sucking blood out of the FL disgusts me a lot. It's so awkward and not convincing.

If the storyline had been better scripted and directed with an interesting plot development at a faster pace, I might have been able to stick to the drama by overlooking other flaws mentioned above. But without reading the original novel, I was completely lost in the first few eps. I stuck to see perhaps interesting arcs emerging and also for YZ's sake until ep 18. Nope!
It's not worth continuing. I quit after that.

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Worth rewatching

Another memorable performance from Xiao Zhan since his breakout drama The Untamed. Xiao Zhan is not disappointing. The story is melancholy beautiful. Xiao Zhan exudes the aura of the hero as a stoic and highly disciplined priest. This is the only C fantasy drama I've never fast forwarded one single scene since The Untamed. In the meanwhile I watched numerous C fantasy dramas but dropped them all with unsatisfactory watching experience. I'm currently rewatching The Longest Promise and still found many details of the storyline refreshing. The production values are pretty good compared with other C dramas in the same Xianxia genre. It's aesthetically pleasing with great CGI, beautiful setting, and beautiful costumes. Very decent acting from all the cast with great script writing and directing. Overall, it's a drama I enjoyed a lot. I think I can rewatch the drama many times.

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