The following is a semi recap plus review plus opinion on the specific episodes, emphasising more on the review than the recap. Spoilers alert and highly opinionated. Read at your peril.
If shifu lets Sha Jie Jie go, I will accept any punishment shifu have for me and I promise.. I will break all ties with Sha Jie Jie - HQG
And as promises go, it is like eating cabbage. Or what vege it is that they say? Anyway, empty promises.
On the Shushan twins which really has zero relevance to our main story and feels so out of place, it feels like a waste of time if not for some good acting moments and cool moments with the Ming Sheng sword. In short as all know by now and should have known back when SQM was battling with our handsome immortal, evil twin did not die as claimed by the supposed good twin. We are shown good twin actually learns he has an evil younger twin who due to some family curse that we do not know the background nor will we ever get to know, older twin will not get hurt no matter what because the younger twin will bear the consequences. Like falling down, getting stabbed and of course older twin once caused a fire and got burnt but escaped unhurt whilst younger twin bears the scars of the burn until he met SQM who healed him of the wounds and become handsome again except for that scar below his chin. So basically evil twin hates good twin who knows nothing of this brother of his and the only way to successfully break the curse and to kill the good twin so evil twin need not suffer the consequences is to use the Ming Sheng sword and kill that twin. Good twin voluntarily get imprisoned so that he and evil twin can exchange identities and so that evil twin can get a chance at better life. Shifu knows, because shifu knows everything and so shifu lets evil twin now disguised as good twin to get his hands on ming sheng sword. Meanwhile HQG escaped from her not forced but kinda like prison from Isengaard... I mean that cave like fortress of SQM which has very bad CGI as backdrop and obviously inspired by Saruman's throne room .. where was I? She investigated and she knows that evil twin is not dead. She tells her shifu and sees her shifu giving evil twin the ming sheng sword and asks is it wise to do so (HQG, never ever doubt your shifu, ever!!) and her shifu simply replies all are within his plans. Indeed, evil twin wants to kill good twin and good twin just lets him when awesome shifu appears and lasered away the sword which is very beautiful to look at as it is glowing red and after a long exchange of right wrong don't kill my brother speech, BZH again shows to us why he is a benevolent guy. I mean
a. he should have killed HQG, he didn't
b. he could have killed SQM, he didn't
c. he would have killed evil twin but decided to let good twin takeover and teach evil twin the good ways
Evil twin of course by that time was consumed with hatred and knows zero about anything good and refuses to be led towards the righteous path and took the sword and stabbed himself. And there ends the life of the evil twin and the curse of the family which right now I am still wondering what the heck is the curse about and who cursed them.
But does it matter? Of course not. Because in the end this story has no relevance. It felt like it came out of nowhere and so it will go away without much fanfare. Except we get to see awesome shifu at action, awesome shifu being too nice for his own good and awesome ming sheng sword.
That's first act.
Second act is SQM who was so worried that HQG will never ever ever speak to him again. His bushy eyebrow right hand man whose name escapes me right now...Shan Chunqiu issit? Anyway SCQ for short (will amend if incorrect) wants evil twin (before he died) to get him some poison formula where one drink and the person will forget the past and he wants SQM to forget about his dead sister Liu Xia whose memory is stopping SQM from collecting the magical deity items and be absolutely and fabulously evil. Well SQM drank the desert thinking HQG made it (HQG already left by that time) and one sip he knew but too late.
At this point I was wondering when did evil twin got his hands on that poison manual? This is plot jump 1.
Anyway, SQM fainted and his faithful assistant whose intention is good but the way he did it was sneaky hoped for the best in a rather homoerotic scene, I mean surely there must be some love there? Anyway SQM woke up and guess what? For a while he forgot about Liu Xia which made SCQ happy and then he remembered HQG which kinda made things difficult and he went to Shushan.
Meanwhile, HQG was kneeling, hoping to beg her shifu for forgiveness for something and I think about SQM but this is plot jump 2. Because before that when she and shifu was solving the twins case, shifu never had any indication of ever punishing HQG at all. It felt like that came out of nowhere.
Anyway SQM arrived at Shushan and thought HQG was Liu Xia and BZH as Liu Xia's lover, Zhu Ran (I think). Weirdly, in a disconnected scene where all of a sudden BZH issued HQG an ultimatum' break all ties with SQM or be banished. SQM was pissed off and said why, why BZH must make HQG choose.. why Liu Xia is forced to make such a choice? And fight ensured, like star wars stuff, nothing amazing, anyway BZH trapped SQM in some glowing sphere. Funny thing is SQM talked as if the sphere obstructs his outside view and HQG talked as if she can't see inside. Anyway HQG begged her shifu to let SQM go but BZH felt that SQM was already dangerous when he was in control of his senses, now that he lost his senses, BZH may have to kill him. Meanwhile Ni Mantian's dad, Mr Ni rushed back and wanted BZH to kill SQM now but BZH being BZH said he won't, because doing so breaks the code of ethics and made them no different than SQM who by the way also won't kill in such a dirty sneaky way. BZH plans to have a major man to man fight later with SQM when SQM got his senses back. HQG sneaked to see SQM and decided to release SQM which BZH saw and that was when she made that promise that I chose as the quote of the day. BZH isn't pleased but somehow, again he lets them go.
SQM was returned home with a terrible headache and very confused which made his assistants more concerned and they vowed not to kill her in front of SQM and so she went back to Shushan and saw her shifu pretend to read a book when he was waiting for her. She apologised, ready for her punishment and her shifu reminded her not everything is as simple as they look and not everything is black or white. There is a reason why everyone views SQM as a demon and a highly dangerous one and he reminds her that SQM may be nice to her, that was because he chose to be nice to her, one day he may not be nice to her anymore, he can be as dangerous as he is fickle.
That's the end of Act 2.
Act 3 is an interesting one.
We know Mt Tai Bai's sect leader, Fei Yan died a horrible death. BZH asked evil twin did he do it, and evil twin said no. SQM as SCQ did he do it and SCQ said no. BZH also feels it isn't SQM and his gang since there is no reason for them to kill that way. So who did it? BZH thought it was an internal strife thing within Shushan until another sect rep came to see him quietly and said their sect leader was also murdered where the bones and flesh were taken, all was left was the skin, same like Fei Yan. Now that intrigued BZH and he promised to see the body or skin at that sect later when he passed by. And so he told HQG he plans to stop there to investigate. Meanwhile HQG wanted to give good twin the sect leader position but he insisted he is not ready yet. Moreover everyone likes HQG. Hey I don't see anyone coming to her defense when she was accused of cavorting with evil sect by that evil twin. Anyway that is dangerous. Why? We have a serial killer who likes killing sect leaders and guess who is next? HQG since she is also a sect leader.
Shifu to the rescue, again!
Shifu, you need to be harsh for once. You need to kill someone or banish someone for once!!
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