Pursuit of Jade Review: Love, Trauma, Choice — and an Ending That Raises Rather a Lot of Questions

Pursuit of Jade is one of those dramas that initially appears considerably simpler than it actually is. Fan Changyu is a butcher’s daughter trying to keep her family business afloat and protect her younger sister. Xie Zheng is a disgraced nobleman hiding under another identity while investigating the political catastrophe that destroyed his family seventeen years earlier. Circumstances throw them together, practicality produces a marriage of convenience, affection sneaks in while nobody is looking, and before long we have battlefields, conspiracies, hidden identities, murdered families and people making terrible decisions in exceptionally attractive robes.

Standard operating procedure, really.

But somewhere along the way, Pursuit of Jade becomes something more interesting than a romance wrapped around a revenge plot, because almost every major character has been shaped by the same poisoned political history. Some become stronger or kinder, while others become controlling, cowardly or increasingly corrupted by the compromises they make. Some commit one terrible act and then spend the next seventeen years committing increasingly terrible ones in order to avoid admitting that the first was wrong.

The drama keeps returning to one underlying question: what do you do with what was done to you? That is where Pursuit of Jade is at its strongest. Unfortunately, after spending forty episodes demonstrating that experiences have consequences and that people are shaped by what happens to them, the drama concludes with a cheerful little alternative universe in which none of those formative events occurred but everybody still seems to end up more or less where the writers want them, including one woman who should have absolutely no reason to own that restaurant.

But we’ll get to that.

Major spoilers from this point onwards. Episode 40-sized spoilers. You have been warned.

Fan Changyu: From Butcher’s Knife to General’s Blade

Fan Changyu works so well as a heroine because she never feels as though she exists merely to become Xie Zheng’s love interest. She has a life before him, responsibilities before him, skills before him and, importantly, people who depend on her before he ever wanders into the picture. Her parents are dead, her younger sister Changning needs protecting, there is a butcher’s shop to run and money to earn. Changyu’s first concern is survival, and she is very good at it.

Her strength is not treated as a charming little quirk that disappears once she puts on prettier clothes. Years of butchery have genuinely made her physically powerful, and the repetitive movements of cutting meat eventually form the basis of her distinctive fighting style. That is enormously satisfying, because she does not suddenly acquire advanced combat abilities simply because the script realises its heroine needs to survive a battlefield. She has effectively been training for years, and the pigs simply failed to appreciate their contribution to military development.

When she later receives proper martial training, those existing skills are refined rather than replaced. Even as a general, she still carries the butcher she used to be, and this matters because so much of Pursuit of Jade is concerned with identity. Changyu’s eventual status does not erase her origins, nor does Xie Zheng create her. He discovers her.

Xie Zheng and Changyu: Love Without Ownership

Xie Zheng arrives with considerably more conventional C-drama hero credentials: dead family, hidden identity, political conspiracy, revenge mission and excellent cheekbones. The poor man never stood a chance. What makes his relationship with Changyu work, though, is not simply chemistry. It is the fact that their romance develops into one of the drama’s clearest arguments about agency.

Xie Zheng’s instinct is to protect through secrecy. He has spent years in a world where information is dangerous, trust can be fatal and survival often requires controlling what other people know. Unsurprisingly, he carries that habit into his personal relationships. Changyu is spectacularly unsuited to being managed. She makes her own decisions, protects her own people and has responsibilities that do not vanish simply because a marquis has developed feelings.

So one of Xie Zheng’s most important developments is learning that loving Changyu does not give him authority over Changyu. He can protect her, advise her and worry himself into an early grave, but he cannot decide who she is allowed to be. That becomes particularly important because Pursuit of Jade surrounds Changyu with other men whose responses to strong women are very different. And there are quite a few of them.

The Aphrodisiac Scene: Recognition Is Not Quite Consent

There is, however, one scene in Xie Zheng and Changyu’s relationship that made me distinctly uncomfortable. In Episode 38, Xie Zheng is deliberately dosed with a powerful aphrodisiac as part of an attempt to compromise and discredit him. He understands what has happened, injures himself in an effort to remain lucid and manages to escape the original trap, but by the time Changyu finds him the drug is very obviously still affecting him.

What follows is filmed as an intensely romantic scene. Xie Zheng becomes considerably more physically affectionate towards Changyu than usual, and the drama clearly wants us to enjoy the release of all that carefully suppressed sexual tension. And, mostly, I did. But there was a small consent alarm ringing rather insistently in the back of my head.

The moment that saves the scene to some extent comes when Changyu stops and asks him, “Who am I?” Xie Zheng answers correctly. That matters, because Changyu is clearly trying to establish that he knows the woman in front of him is her, rather than responding indiscriminately to the effects of the drug. It is a meaningful check. I am not convinced it is quite enough.

Being able to identify someone is not necessarily the same thing as being sufficiently unimpaired to consent to sex. Xie Zheng has been drugged against his will specifically with a substance intended to override his normal sexual restraint. His behaviour is being chemically altered, while Changyu is the sober person in the room.

Reverse the sexes and the discomfort becomes much harder to ignore. If Changyu had been drugged with an aphrodisiac, become sexually aggressive towards Xie Zheng and he had knowingly taken advantage of her condition, I suspect very few viewers would regard “but she recognised him” as settling the matter. We would immediately be asking whether she was actually capable of giving meaningful consent. Xie Zheng deserves the same consideration.

That does not mean I think the scene turns Changyu into a sexual predator, nor do I think that is remotely what the writers intended. In fact, having her stop and establish that Xie Zheng recognises her shows that the writers themselves were conscious of the consent problem and were trying to provide reassurance that he retained some awareness and control. I simply think they chose too low a threshold.

The scene would have sat much more comfortably with me if Xie Zheng’s answer had led Changyu to help him through the effects of the drug, with their eventual sexual relationship taking place once he was completely sober and able to make the decision without chemical assistance.

It is particularly noticeable because Pursuit of Jade otherwise spends so much time exploring the difference between love and entitlement. Qi Min’s entire tragedy rests on his failure to understand that loving Qianqian does not give him the right to override her choices. Xie Zheng and Changyu are supposed to represent the healthier alternative, and that makes consent worth getting right in both directions. Men do not lose the right to sexual autonomy simply because the person taking advantage of their impairment is a woman they happen to love.

Everybody Loves Changyu

At some point it becomes impossible not to notice that Fan Changyu has developed her own gravitational field. Men encounter her and then begin orbiting, some romantically, some loyally and some because she has beaten them into reconsidering their life choices. Changyu herself appears largely oblivious to this phenomenon. She is not written as a seductive femme fatale and does not consciously collect admirers. She mostly goes around being decent, feeding people, protecting children, lifting things nobody expects her to lift and occasionally hitting somebody with something extremely heavy. Apparently this is enough.

What makes the pattern work is that the men are not all attracted to exactly the same version of her. Some respond to her goodness, some to her courage, some to her refusal to be intimidated and some to the fact that she treats people without rank or status as though they matter. Their different reactions say as much about them as they do about Changyu.

Li Huai’an: Admiration Without Entitlement

Li Huai’an, grandson of the current Grand Tutor, is perhaps the most straightforwardly decent of Changyu’s alternative admirers. His feelings for her never become a demand. He likes her, respects her and, when it becomes clear where her heart lies, does not decide that she merely requires further persuasion, abduction or strategic warfare.

For this particular drama, that deserves a commemorative plaque.

More importantly, Li Huai’an becomes interesting well beyond his romantic interest. He eventually discovers that his grandfather has been deceiving him and is involved in profoundly disloyal political manoeuvring, which puts him in a genuine moral bind. His grandfather is the patriarch of his family, so filial loyalty matters enormously. Yet Li Huai’an is fundamentally a decent man, and he cannot pretend that treason becomes morally acceptable simply because one’s grandfather is organising it.

So he opposes him. From one perspective, that is spectacularly unfilial; from another, it is exactly what moral courage requires. Traditional filial duty was never quite as simple as blindly obeying one’s elders. There is also a duty to remonstrate when an elder behaves wrongly, and Li Huai’an does precisely that.

He then goes further. He does not simply expose his grandfather and stroll away whistling while the rest of his family suffers the consequences. He accepts the loss of wealth and status, willingly shares his family’s reduced circumstances and attempts to make reparations rather than separating himself from the disgrace. That makes him another important answer to the drama’s central question: he inherits wrongdoing, but chooses not to inherit the wrongdoing itself.

Sui Yuanqing: Apparently Hostage-Taking Is Flirting Now

Then there is Sui Yuanqing, heir apparent to the Prince of Changxin. Yuanqing’s attraction to Changyu begins under circumstances most people would consider romantically discouraging: she takes him hostage. A normal person might interpret this as a fairly clear sign that the woman probably does not fancy him. Yuanqing instead appears to conclude that she is interesting and requires further investigation.

From that point onwards, much of his relationship with Changyu consists of trying to capture her, persuade her, defeat her, win her over or somehow place her in circumstances where she will finally realise what an excellent proposition he is. Changyu remains frustratingly committed to not doing that, which naturally only makes him more interested.

Yuanqing is violent and capable of terrible acts, so he should not be softened into a harmless cheeky rogue. But he also is not Qi Min Mark II. His attraction to Changyu seems to arise partly because she is one of the first people he cannot simply dominate. She is unimpressed by his title, she is not frightened enough, she keeps getting the better of him and, disastrously for everyone involved, he appears to find that irresistible.

His version of attraction is therefore less I cannot live without you and more you have defeated me and now I appear to have feelings about it. He expresses affection with approximately the romantic subtlety of a cavalry charge.

Yet Yuanqing is capable of genuine love and loyalty. He is deeply attached to his father and, more significantly, genuinely loves the man he believes to be his elder brother. Qi Min has been raised in the household as Sui Yuanhuai, effectively occupying the place of Yuanqing’s older brother. Yuanqing trusts him, defends him and loves him, which makes Qi Min’s eventual betrayal devastating.

Even after learning that the man he thought was his brother has lied to him and destroyed parts of his family, Yuanqing struggles to turn that affection off, and Qi Min exploits exactly that hesitation. One of Yuanqing’s better qualities — loyalty — becomes the thing that leaves him vulnerable. That is tragedy rather than simple villain punishment.

His treatment of the bandit chief’s sister is much colder. He knows she loves him and manipulates that devotion when it suits him. By modern standards, ghastly. Within the political and social world of the drama, however, strategic marriage, concubinage and the use of personal attachment are hardly unique to Yuanqing. His behaviour is cruel, but it does not automatically make him uniquely monstrous.

By the end, even he makes a choice that works against the person his upbringing has taught him to be. It comes far too late to redeem everything, certainly, but not too late to matter.

Changyu’s Merry Men

Then there is Changyu’s increasingly loyal collection of former local thugs. They begin as exactly the sort of men one would expect to cause trouble in a small town and end up as something remarkably close to her personal retinue. They follow her, fight for her, trust her and become deeply loyal to her.

That tells us something important about Changyu’s leadership. She does not initially acquire followers because of rank, because she has none. She does not acquire them through family prestige, because she does not even know she has any. She acquires loyalty because she treats people as though they matter. Men who might be disposable under somebody else’s command become people under hers, and again and again Changyu inspires attachment because she gives it first. Which may explain why so many men become moths to her candle.

Frankly, it is probably just as well Yu Qianqian met Qi Min first. Given Changyu’s record, if Qi Min had encountered her before becoming fixated on Qianqian, Changyu might have ended up with one more dangerously devoted man fluttering around the perimeter. She already had quite enough.

Qi Min and Yu Qianqian: The Dark Mirror

The Qi Min and Yu Qianqian storyline may be one of the best things in Pursuit of Jade. Not because it is romantic, at least not in the sense that I ever wanted Qianqian to surrender to persistence and reward Qi Min with a happy ending. Absolutely not. A woman is not an emotional-support animal awarded to a traumatised man because he has finally produced a sufficiently upsetting childhood flashback.

Qi Min is much more interesting than a conventional obsessive villain. His upbringing was horrific, his childhood was filled with violence, instability and profound trauma, and his identity itself is complicated. He has been raised as another family’s son while carrying a history and bloodline that are not what the people around him believe. All of that explains a great deal about the man he becomes. It does not excuse him.

That distinction matters because Qi Min genuinely loves Qianqian, but he also completely fails to understand what loving another person requires. Xie Zheng gradually learns that loving someone means respecting their right to choose. Qi Min, by contrast, operates from the belief that because he loves Qianqian, he cannot allow her to leave him.

That turns Qianqian and Qi Min into a dark reflection of Changyu and Xie Zheng. Both women are independent, both men are powerful and psychologically scarred, and both men fear losing the women they love. Only one eventually understands that love without freedom becomes possession.

Qi Min learns that lesson at the very end, when it is already too late. His final scenes with Qianqian work because the drama does not flatten either character into something convenient. Qianqian can understand him, pity him, recognise what happened to him and possibly even love parts of him, while still refusing to be possessed by him. She can sit beside him while he dies and still be responsible for his death.

Understanding abuse does not create an obligation to tolerate it. That is a considerably more mature conclusion than having Qi Min perform one heroic act and magically earn Qianqian back.

Why Did We Learn All This in Episode 40?

Where the drama weakens the Qi Min/Qianqian storyline is in how long it waits to explain why Qianqian mattered so much to him in the first place. We know he is obsessed with her, we know they have a history and we know he cannot let her go, but the emotional origin of that fixation remains underdeveloped until almost the end.

Then Episode 40 gives us more context and suddenly the relationship becomes considerably easier to understand, which rather raises the question: could we perhaps have had some of this thirty episodes ago?

The richer tragedy appears to be that Qi Min encountered somebody who made him feel safe, accepted or emotionally anchored in a way few people ever had. Instead of understanding that as this person matters enormously to me, however, he turns it into this person is necessary to me, therefore she cannot be allowed to leave. That distinction is the entire tragedy. The drama eventually gets there. It just arrives carrying its suitcase after everyone else has already checked out of the hotel.

And then Qianqian produces another rather startling revelation.

Excuse Me — Qianqian Is a Time-Traveller?

Apparently, yes. Yu Qianqian is from the modern world.

There were clues in her language, her commercial instincts, her way of thinking, her understanding of certain modern techniques and, of course, CPR. Looking backwards, you can identify the breadcrumbs. The difficulty is that none of them necessarily screams TIME TRAVELLER while you are watching, especially CPR.

This is C-drama. I have watched ancient physicians diagnose fatal internal injuries by touching somebody’s wrist for four seconds. Someone performing surprisingly modern resuscitation is not going to make me leap from the sofa shouting, Good God, she caught the morning train from Shenzhen.

And that is frustrating because Qianqian being a modern woman potentially explains a lot: her attitude towards autonomy, her expectations of relationships, her independence, her entrepreneurialism and her refusal to accept Qi Min’s assumption that his love gives him rights over her.

A modern woman finding herself in a historical world — then becoming trapped by a powerful man who considers possession a reasonable substitute for consent — is fascinating. If her origin materially changes how we understand her, I would have preferred to understand it while actually watching her.

So why hide it?

Qi Shu and Gongsun: The Grown-Ups Have Entered the Building

Fortunately, not every romance in Pursuit of Jade involves kidnapping, imprisonment, secret identities or traumatised men discovering boundaries through trial and error. Qi Shu, the Princess Royal, and Gongsun provide something rather different. Their relationship is grounded much more in intellectual compatibility. They respect each other’s minds, enjoy each other’s company and their attraction feels adult, which in this drama is almost suspicious. Gongsun does not appear threatened by Qi Shu’s intelligence or status. If anything, his hesitation comes from taking that difference in status too seriously.

He is attracted to a woman with considerable social and political power without needing to diminish her to make the relationship tolerable. That makes him one of the most emotionally functional men in the drama. Admittedly, the competition is not fierce.

Xie Zheng eventually gets there. Gongsun appears to have arrived with the software pre-installed. Their romance also matters because it gives us yet another model of love: not possession, not conquest and not rescue, but companionship.

There is one complication I would have liked the drama to clarify more cleanly, and that is chronology. Qi Shu is older than the emperor, yet the timeline surrounding everyone’s ages and the events seventeen years earlier is not always particularly tidy. I eventually stopped trying to make every age fit perfectly. There are only so many continuity spreadsheets one should have to construct for recreational television.

Prime Minister Wei: One Crime Leads to Another

Prime Minister Wei is another character who becomes more interesting the more closely you look at him, and more infuriating. Wei Qilin was once his trusted man, yet when the catastrophe seventeen years earlier unfolded, Wei Qilin became a convenient fall guy. Then, when old events threatened to resurface, Wei Yan did not attempt to correct the injustice. He protected it.

Wei Qilin had to remain guilty because acknowledging his innocence would mean acknowledging what Wei Yan himself had done. That may explain one of the strangest aspects of Wei Yan’s behaviour.

When he discovers that his nephew Xie Zheng has married Wei Qilin’s daughter, Changyu, one might expect guilt, recognition, sympathy or at least a moment of Good God, that’s Qilin’s child. Instead his reaction is essentially: Well, that’s inconvenient. Better persecute her too.

There is a psychologically coherent explanation for this. Once Wei Yan has justified sacrificing one innocent man as necessary for political stability, every subsequent crime becomes necessary to protect the first justification. The original wrongdoing becomes self-perpetuating. Wei Qilin must stay guilty, the truth must stay buried, and Changyu becomes dangerous simply by existing.

That is excellent material. I just wish the drama had shown us more clearly how the trusted commander became the ruthless Prime Minister.

Because then the final alternative universe shows us something surprising. Without the original tragedy, Wei Yan is apparently quite nice. Reasonable, even. Capable of healthy family relationships and able to offer political advice without immediately arranging somebody’s death. Where has this bloke been?

Again, I like the idea. Perhaps Wei Yan was not always a monster. Perhaps compromise, fear and power transformed him. But if that is the tragedy, the drama needed to build the bridge. Don’t give me A and Z and tell me the alphabet happened off-screen.

The Emperor Everyone Helped to Make Weak

Emperor Qi Sheng may be the character the drama treats most unfairly. Not because he is secretly a good emperor — he isn’t. He is frightened, weak, selfish and capable of cruelty. But nearly everybody despises him for being weak while simultaneously having spent years ensuring that weakness was exactly what he remained.

He was elevated young and politically vulnerable. Prime Minister Wei held enormous influence, the Grand Tutor represented another political force and even his own family relationships appear to offer relatively little security. His older half-sister certainly does not seem to have much respect for him. So Qi Sheng spends years as an emperor whose authority everybody wants to use but nobody particularly wants him to possess.

Then everybody complains that he does not know how to exercise independent power. Mate. You ordered the boneless chicken. You don’t get to complain about the lack of spine.

The saddest part is that the one person who appears genuinely loyal to him is his eunuch, and when the plan to frame Xie Zheng after the banquet collapses, that loyal man becomes expendable. Qi Sheng lets him take the fall.

Morally, that is dreadful. Psychologically, it makes terrible sense. What lesson has Qi Sheng learned from the powerful men around him? When consequences arrive, find someone weaker to absorb them. Wei Qilin was sacrificed, others were sacrificed, and when Qi Sheng becomes frightened enough he repeats the pattern.

Again, explanation is not absolution, but I wish the drama had extended to him the same curiosity it gives Qi Min. Qi Min is allowed to have become something. Wei Yan is allowed to have become something. Qi Sheng is mostly mocked for what he is.

Yet perhaps nobody had less opportunity to develop into a confident ruler. His entire political education appears to have consisted of appeasing the stronger man, backing down, hiding and surviving. Then, when armed men storm the palace, everybody appears shocked that seventeen years of political infantilisation have not spontaneously produced a heroic emperor. Bit late for the leadership seminar.

His eventual collapse therefore struck me as sad rather than satisfying. The throne is the centre of his identity, and being emperor is also the one thing he was never truly allowed to become.

Love, Loyalty, Possession and Choice

When all these characters are placed beside one another, Pursuit of Jade becomes surprisingly coherent. It is not simply telling us different love stories. It is showing us different ways people respond to attachment, loyalty and damage.

Xie Zheng learns that love requires respecting another person’s agency, while Qi Min loves through possession. Sui Yuanqing confuses attraction with conquest, whereas Li Huai’an demonstrates admiration without entitlement and loyalty without moral blindness. Gongsun offers something much closer to partnership.

Prime Minister Wei turns loyalty into justification for corruption, while Qi Sheng learns to reproduce the same cowardly hierarchies that weakened him. Changyu, sitting at the centre of much of this, seems to draw people towards her because she is fundamentally generous with dignity. She treats people as though they matter. That is why her Merry Men become loyal, why Li Huai’an admires her, why Xie Zheng loves her and perhaps even part of why Yuanqing finds her so bewilderingly compelling. She cannot be reduced to rank, usefulness or possession.

And neither can Qianqian.

That is the link between the two principal women. Both insist on remaining people in worlds where powerful men repeatedly attempt to turn people into pieces on a board.

Trauma Explains. Choice Defines.

Which brings us back to the central theme. Almost everybody in Pursuit of Jade has been hurt. Changyu loses her family circumstances and carries enormous responsibility. Xie Zheng loses his family and identity and becomes obsessed with discovering the truth. Qi Min is profoundly traumatised and turns love into possession. Wei Yan makes a compromise and spends years protecting it. Qi Sheng experiences prolonged powerlessness and eventually abuses what little power he has. Li Huai’an discovers betrayal within his own family and chooses principle over blind loyalty. Sui Yuanqing grows up in a culture of violence and entitlement, reproduces it for much of his life, yet still proves capable of genuine loyalty and a final meaningful choice.

None of them exists outside circumstance, but circumstance is not the same thing as destiny. That is what the drama understands at its best. Trauma explains people. It does not absolve them.

And then, unfortunately, we reach the final post-credit scene.

What If None of It Had Happened?

The alternative timeline asks what would have happened if the catastrophe seventeen years ago had never occurred. It is a lovely idea. Show us who these people might have become, show us different lives, and perhaps show us that some relationships were still meant to happen.

I am completely willing to buy that Changyu and Xie Zheng might still find each other. That is romantic destiny. But then the writers start retaining specific outcomes that depended on the events they have just erased, and causality begins making distressed noises.

Bao’er

If the original sequence of events never happens, Qianqian’s relationship with Qi Min should develop differently. She fled while pregnant, and that flight helped shape the life we later see. Remove those circumstances and there is no guarantee of the pregnancy. Potentially, there is no Bao’er at all.

Which rather complicates Changning’s charming future-empress possibilities. Sorry, Changning. Your intended husband may just have been erased from existence.

Qianqian’s Restaurant

Qianqian becomes a restaurant manager as part of the life she builds after fleeing Qi Min. Remove that history and why is she still in exactly the same place running exactly the same establishment? Perhaps she might still end up there, but the drama gives us no causal path. Apparently destiny now covers commercial property management.

Changyu Herself

And then there is Changyu. Our Changyu becomes a butcher because of tragedy. Butchery develops her physical strength, those movements influence her fighting style, protecting Changning shapes her character and her entire life is transformed by the disaster.

So if that disaster never happens, Changyu should not simply be the same woman with happier parents. She may still be brave, kind and formidable. She may even become a general, and she may still fall in love with Xie Zheng.But she would not be this Changyu.

That is the point of alternative history. Change the cause and you change the person.

Destiny Is Not Inevitability

The ending would have worked far better if it had shown us recognisably different versions of these people who nevertheless gravitated towards one another: a Changyu raised by her parents, an Xie Zheng never consumed by revenge, a Wei Yan who never sacrificed Wei Qilin, a Qi Min whose early life did not twist love into possession, and a Qianqian whose modern independence led her somewhere completely different.

And then perhaps, somehow, they still meet. Not because history insists on recreating every original circumstance, but because something essential in them still recognises something essential in each other.That would have been beautiful.

Instead, the drama too often removes the cause while preserving the effect. Which is not destiny.It is continuity having a small nervous breakdown.

Final Thoughts

Despite my complaints about the finale, I liked Pursuit of Jade enormously. Fan Changyu is a memorable heroine because the drama allows her strength to come from somewhere. Xie Zheng works because his development requires him not merely to love her, but to learn how to love her properly, although the aphrodisiac scene is an uncomfortable reminder that the drama does not always apply its own principles of agency as consistently as it should. Qi Min and Qianqian provide a genuinely compelling counterpoint, showing how easily love becomes destructive when one person mistakes need for ownership.

Li Huai’an demonstrates that filial loyalty need not require moral surrender. Sui Yuanqing gives us a man capable of affection and loyalty who has been raised to express desire through conquest. Qi Shu and Gongsun offer the blessed novelty of two intelligent adults largely behaving like intelligent adults. Prime Minister Wei demonstrates what happens when one terrible compromise becomes the foundation for seventeen years of increasingly indefensible choices.

And Emperor Qi Sheng may deserve far more sympathy than the drama grants him, because everyone condemns the weak ruler they worked so diligently to create. Together, these characters make Pursuit of Jade richer than its basic plot suggests.

Again and again, the drama asks what people become after suffering, and its best answer is that suffering does not decide everything. Choice still matters.

Changyu and Xie Zheng choose, for the most part, not to reproduce the damage done to them. Qi Min understands that only when it is too late. Wei Yan spends seventeen years avoiding the moment when he would have to admit his first choice was wrong. Qi Sheng never quite learns to become anything other than what everybody trained him to be. Li Huai’an rejects wrongdoing without rejecting responsibility, while Sui Yuanqing remains deeply flawed but proves that even badly formed loyalty can still contain something real.

And Qianqian? Apparently she is a time-traveller.Would have been nice to know.

As for the final alternative universe, I understand exactly what the writers wanted to say: these people were destined to find one another. Lovely. I just wish somebody had checked whether all of them would actually exist.

Because if you are going to play with alternative timelines, you really do have to respect causality. Otherwise you end up with a restaurant that has no reason to exist, a future emperor who may never have been conceived, and a floral-crowned warrior whose entire fighting style apparently survived the removal of the pig-butchering career that created it.

Destiny can cover a multitude of sins.But even destiny occasionally needs a continuity editor.