[Quick Storyline Recap+Review] The Mystic Nine with Zhao Liying, William Chan and Lay Ep. 1-12 (+13&14)

Yeah! It is The Mystic Nine time (or Old Nine Gates as I still like to call it like that)! I know you guys were waiting for me to release this post (haha, please don’t break my dream), so here it is! I am sorry I am late, I actually compiled these pictures and gifs for two weeks now, it is just that I was so busy I didn’t have time to start off writing this post. Anyway, enjoy a post about me fangirling over Zhao Liying (and William Chan and Lay)!

Disclaimer: You will smile a lot because I put a lot of awesome gifs!! 😀 Happy Saturday/Sunday!

Edit: In this post, I did a quick recap/highlight moments for the first twelve episodes (each of 45min) and the two trailers for episode 13 and 14 (each are about 3min). So I guess, spoilers alert!!!

This drama is a lot of fun for me because I am a fan of all three leads! For me, I can just watch them sleep in front of a camera for hours and I will be satisfied. 😛 Joke aside, I just mean that I didn’t have really high reviewing standards for this drama and I just watched for the full eye candy experience. I am hence extremly satisfied as a viewer.

Drama information:

• Total of 48 episodes
• Chinese name: 老九门
• Release schedule:
  • Dragon TV (small screen broadcast): Two episodes per day on Monday and Tuesday
  • IQIYI (online release):
    • Monday, Tuesday: 4 episodes per day for VIP members. (?)
    • Monday, Tuesday: 2 episodes per day for non VIP members.
• Find the episodes as they get released on iQiYi: here
• You can watch with eng sub on viki: here; I also think there is a Lay fansub team that will sub for his parts only. 🙂
• You can download or stream the episodes on Avirtualvoyage: here
• Dramawiki link.

Drama highlight moments!

We first have big boss William Chan aka Zhang Qishan aka Buddha (seriously, that is his nickname). I will just call him Fu Ye.. 😛

One evening, a train with no driver arrives in Changsha, China. Inside is full of (Japanese?) suspicious corpses as they died of a mysterious illness. Fu Ye arrives to investigate with his team and, to prevent any Japanese spy attacks, he decides to call his friends (The Mystic Nine) to help him out. He first call out his gullible and future teller, number eight aka Ba Ye. They start raiding tombs to solve mysteries. Honestly, it is basically a lot of screen time to let William Chan look good 😛 Once again, not complaining!

The scene where Fu Ye saved Ba Ye in a flashback.

Later, he decides to go see his good friend Er Yue Hong (Lay) aka Er Ye. Er Yue Hong is a well known opera singer.

There, they meet a bad guy which means… Fu Ye to the rescue! I love that smile Fu Ye gave to Er Ye.

Afterward, Fu Ye and Er Ye talk about working together. Er Ye refuses and seems to be preoccupied by something (his ancestors are apparently related to this case). They have a cute fighting scene. I say cute because it was all in slow motion and it is barely their arms touching each other.

We are next introduce to the sick wife of Er Ye, Ya Tou. She is a nice and elegant lady, but very weak physically. She was friend with him since childhood. In a flashback, Er Ye saves her at a maid/slave auction.

Back in modern time, they are super loving toward each other.

Er Ye also have a disciple who is actually rotten to the chore. That say disciple is in love with his master’s wife Ya Tou and wants to find a medicine for her at all cost, even if it means becoming the spy of the Japanese people. This gets Er Ye mad often.

The other member of the The Mystic Nine team we got introduced to is the smart (4th or 5th, I forgot) Ye. He is a smart and handsome gentleman.

Now, Fu Ye and Ba Ye decides to go on a trip together to find the medicine to Ya Tou’s illness. For this mission, they must go to Yi Xinyue (Zhao Liying)’s family business to get it through an auction. However, the rule is that.. whoever gets the medicine must marry the lady (aka beautiful Xinyue!) Ha! Hence, Fu Ye disguise himself as her fiance.

We hence have Xinyue first trying to deny the wedding arrangement and plotting against him at the train station.

However, as soon as she sees Fu Ye, her mindset changes: he is so handsome she is 100% willing to marry him! Me too girl, I would love to have him as my fiance ❤

Anyway, she reprimends her own maids for even thinking of kidnapping him and make him suffer (that was HER original plan keke).

She decides to test him by disguising herself as his taxi driver.

Later, she also let him enter in her room and they have a cute encounter. She realizes he is not her fiance, but still let her go.

When her true fiance arrives at the auction, the two men fight together. Xinyue decides to (obviously) support Fu Ye. He wins the medicine as well as the hand of the lady.

Hence, Xinyue decides to leave with them. When they meet Er Ye again, Xinyue cutely introduces herself as his wife which surprises Fu Ye’s friend.

Later, when they are at his house, Xinyue makes the maids call her House Lady (aka wife of Fu Ye). She even dared to touch/slap his cheeks (in a friendly way of course), which left our all mighty Fu Ye in disbelief. However, as he looks at Xinyue leave the room, he smiles happily! Awww, he found himself a wife *moved*

Quick thoughts:

This drama is very satisfying for my inside fangirl. But it is not without flaws. We are twelve episodes in, but I feel like we barely had enough content for say four episodes. The focus is very heavy on our leads and on how to make them look good.Hence, we have a lot of useless scenes that doesn’t make the story move very fast, but that are needed to become the summer hit we were waiting for! Another thing is that, although I think the casting was done really well, it feels like everyone is younger than our two male leads. Especially Lay who looks especially young, but is already a Shi Fu (aka master).

As for the drama’s directing, I think the action scenes are amazingly well done. The decor and the costumes are also great and each scenes are beautiful to the eye. This is a huge improvement from last year’s Lost Tomb and the characters are so diverse it is a lot of fun to watch.

— ❤ —

Last but not least, BTS with William Chan. He is taking his big boss role way too seriously!