Using my personal rating system of "loved," "liked," "meh," & "nah," this rates a “meh”.

Things I liked:
There’s not really much I can put a finger on here. My favorite genre is xuanhuan so I’m already pretty forgiving when it comes to shows in this category. I thought the world-building was decent. I kind of liked the back story with the original Sea Emperor and the Celestial Emperor and his queen. Na Sheng was cute, but she got a bit annoying after awhile to the point where I wondered what Yan Xi saw in her. (I actually shipped her more with the Crown Prince…?) I like that our SML did not do any crazy stuff to get the FL to stay with him. He was always honest with himself and with her. I liked that there was no crazy jealous SFL—that trope is lazy and overused. I got through it, but I was not particularly enthusiastic about any part of it. I felt the same way about this one as I did “God of Lost Fantasy”—a lot of potential that just was not realized.

Things I disliked:
The beginning was very rushed. If you have a complicated back story, you either take your time to put it together (like Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms) or you just jump right in but have some really judicious flashbacks—they did neither of these things. They just tried to cram into a couple of episodes instead. It got draggy in the middle—there was way too much conversation and not enough action. Most exciting things happened off screen and then you learned about them because they talked about it. I watched the first ten episodes or so and then put it on hold for a really long time, so some of my ‘dislikes’ may actually be stuff I just don’t remember because I wasn’t about to go back and rewatch from the beginning. For example, I never could figure out Yu Huan’s motivations for anything (but maybe that was explained in the first few episodes and I just don’t remember)? It was like they were trying to make him out to be this complicated anti-hero, but he just wasn’t written three-dimensionally enough to make it work. Despite the fact that their relationship was relatively healthy for dramaland, I did not like how the Sea Emperor was always keeping stuff from the FL. She kept asking him to be honest with her and he would always make all these sacrifices she didn’t ask for and never tell her about them. There was some criticisms about the two male leads’ looks. I thought they looked okay. Li Yi Feng is not conventionally handsome to begin with, but he looked just fine. I think they did not pick a very flattering hairstyle for Zheng Ye Cheng. He looks better either with the Qin-style top knot (like they used when he was portraying the original Celestial Emperor) or the ‘tribal’ style with his hair down and lots of braids—as they used in the beginning. But that is just a personal preference on my part.

I did not dislike this one. If xuanyuan is your thing, give it a shot. It’s a decent one to have on the back burner when there is nothing else interesting.