I picked up this drama because of the hype and because I had heard of the novel and manhua beforehand. I think the high rating comes from people who have read the novel and therefore are attached to the characters in a completely different way compared to me. I tried to like it and understand it. I honestly tried. However, I could not rate this drama any higher. (Please don't kill me.)

Story - The story was very hard to follow as a person who had no knowledge of the plot beforehand. I'm familiar with the concept of cultivation (vaguely), but there were some points I just didn't know, like the "golden core" concept. I had to google quite a fair bit about the plot while watching to understand it as well as explain it to my mother (yes, I watch dramas with my mom). The names in particular were hard to remember because every single person had like 3 names so I really wish there was a chart of the characters out there like there was with Nirvana in Fire.

Anyway, I had no idea what was happening in some points. I didn't really realize that Wuxian gave his core to Jiang Cheng until later which then led to him developing demonic cultivation. I didn't even know what happened when Wuxian fell into the graveyard. The entire first 30 or so episodes is dedicated to a flashback segment which kind of left me bored, but I understood that they needed to hook you. A lot of parts were dragged out. I literally hated that it took 4 episodes for Meng Yao to explain his whole evil plan. So yeah, the plot was a drag. I did appreciate the key moments between Wuxian and Lan Zhan though.

Acting/Cast - I really liked Wang Yibo, Xiao Zhan, and some others. The acting was decent for the most part. The most annoying thing was the way the zombies acted. Every time they were getting ready to attack, they just stopped and yelled out.

Music - I really love the theme song. I streamed it so many times on Spotify already. Yanli's song was a nice addition too. There was this one instrumental that kind of threw me off though because it was very modern(?). It just didn't fit.

Effects - I was actually impressed with some of the effects because they looked a lot better than those of 10 Miles of Peach Blossoms. However, there were still some moments that I just died laughing because of how bad the effects were, especially the dog-dungeon scene.

Overall - For the average drama watcher, I wouldn't recommend this. It's too confusing and long without proper context. If you're a fan of the novel, go ahead. Most fans enjoyed it so I don't see why you wouldn't.