Pursuit of Jade is really showing some messy seams in these episodes and while I'm still enjoying it, I think it's going to end up as a fun watch but not a drama that stands up against much scrutiny. The deviations from the novel plot are becoming very messy. They removed almost all the foreshadowing about Fan Changyu's real identity (the playing traitor game is super early in the novel) and have sidelined Xie Zheng's revenge for so long that it seems to come from nowhere.
They also aren't letting Xie Zheng have any epic screen time in battle and like, writers, I do love the feminism, but you can't have an Epic Battle Couple if only one of them is epic! We need to know that the male lead is at least equal to the female lead to make this work. He's supposed to be better because of the lifetime of education and war experience, but he's not doing anything!
I feel like we're going to be bringing out the half drawn horse meme...
And again, still having fun, but now with the caveat of not trying to think too hard.
