There was so much hype for this and for Joy of Life, but unfortunately, both of these shows Zhang Ruo Yun gives the impression of basically acting the same character in the same story-- i.e., an invincible protagonist who pretends to be weak, conquering a world where everyone is stupid and no one knows what's going on except for him. And that includes the audience, because the plot straight up doesn't make sense.

Why should a young powerful prince leave home and pretend to be a beggar without fighting skills for 3 years just to evade an arranged marriage, then come back... without really having evaded it, or indeed any of his bloodthirsty political enemies?
Why does a top martial artist who enjoys roast chicken, coincidentally the man who rescued the Prince's life a decade ago, live underwater in the middle of a lake?
Why should the prince's father, coincidentally the most powerful man in the military, pretend to be stupid and spend all of his effort trying to outplot his own son by e.g. installing martial artists in his harem?
Why should a princess, coincidentally the last of an almost extinguished noble line, put aside learning real life skills in order to alternate trying to assassinate the MC and working as a maid for him?

After asking questions like this every single episode, and never getting any answers, we start to suspect... that the answer to all of our questions is simply, 'because this way it the protagonist gives off an air of mystery as he shows his superiority during epic feats of deus ex machina'.

It's fine to have a show that builds mysteries within mysteries, enigmas within enigmas. But if mystery is all there is, then there's no substance, no core. It's like the author tried to think of the most badass character settings possible, and had some inspirational scenes in their mind, but got tired before they could actually write the story. For one, we never find out what exactly what Xu Fengnian and Xu Xiao really did wrong to motivate all these assassinations that are the core driving force of the plot -- except for holding too much military power.

The icing on the cake is 'strong women leads' like Jiang Ni and Nangong Pu She who are meant to look beautiful and cool respectively, but basically have no brains and follow the protagonist around. It doesn't help that the acting for these female leads is basically the weakest in the show.