Plot overview

Ten years ago, the martial arts master Li Xiang Yi was gravely injured in his duel with archnemesis Di Fei Sheng. Poisoned, injured, and lost at sea, Li Xiang Yi returns to his Sect, but after seeing the devastation and discovering that he only has 10 years to live, Li Xiang Yi decides to disappear from Jiang Hu and travel the land as a wandering doctor as Li Lian Hua in his moveable tower. The young Fang Duo Bing strives to become a detective under Bai Chuan Yuan and reinstate his idol, Li Xiang Yi’s sect Si Gu Men, to it’s former glory. He encounters Li Lian Hua during several of his early cases and, despite his naiveté and greenness, does his best to try to keep up with Li Lian Hua. 

Li Xiang Yi’s archnemesis, Di Fei Sheng, returns after ten years of recovery, only to find that Li Xiang Yi has disappeared. Di Fei Sheng needs to find a mythical item to regain his full strength. Li Lian Hua is searching for the same thing in hopes of saving himself. The two reunite and must decide if and how to move past their previous grievances.

Initial Thoughts

Cheng Yi returns to period dramas after last year’s long Immortal Samsara and is the clear lead for the drama. This is a pretty fun drama that moves at a brisk pace and Cheng Yi has a great chemistry with his co-stars Zeng Shun Xi and Xiao Shun Rao. It’s been doing pretty well ratings wise on iQiYi but it hasn’t been a massive hit. 

Intriguing Cases – so far, I think the cases are very intriguing. We’ve got everything from affairs, gold bodies, and tomb raiding! These all move really quickly too, like each case is solved basically in one or two episodes so you really have to pay attention! We basically have Li Lian Hua as the skilled doctor and detective who solves the mysteries and Fang Duo Bing as our conduit for asking how Li Lian Hua solves them. When Di Fei Sheng joins the duo to make a trio, it becomes hilarious as Fang Duo Bing doesn’t really know who he is and spends all the time dissing Di Fei Sheng.

Lack of female characters – Look, I understand that this is a heavily male focused drama and I’m usually ok with this but in the first 10 episodes, there currently are only 2 main female characters including the character of Qiao Wan Mian played by Chen Du Ling and Jiao Li Qiao played by Wang He Run. Chen Du Ling / Qiao Wan Mian so far has been relegated to just crying over the disappearance of Li Xiang Yi. I’m hoping there’s more female characters or at least more growth to them in the future episodes. 

Even though it’s a fun drama, I couldn’t help but find myself struggling a little bit after the first couple of episodes. I think it’s probably for a couple of reasons. For Cheng Yi, I feel like he basically has the same hairstyle in all his non-historical period pieces, so while I think his doing fine as Li Lian Hua, I kind of keep getting déjà vu with several of his other characters. And I’m also being VERY nitpicky, maybe it’s just me but I think some of Cheng Yi’s mandarin pronunciation is off? That takes me out a little bit of the drama. Lastly, and I believe this will be resolved as the drama progresses, I’m not seeing much character growth from any of the characters which is kind of irksome once we learn the motivations of each character. Maybe because these cases are moving so quickly that I just need to realize I’ve only watched a quarter of the episodes, but I’m hoping for true character growth from this motley crew because I genuinely enjoy spending time with them.

-Cathy