the romance between Nangong Shunu and Xiao-Die. I get that the author wants their romance to be between two women with a traumatizing past with men, but I felt rather uncomfortable over the fact that Nangong Shunu fell in love with Xiao-Die's innocence and infantile purity, engaged in a s*xual relationship with her while she was still mentally incapacitated, and yet it was never brought up either by the characters or the narrative.

See I'm pretty blasé with romance tropes in fiction. Explorations of unhealthy, imbalanced, or non-consensual relationships is fine and safe in fiction and I really like them when it's done well. It doesn't have to be put under irl moral scrutiny all the time. With that said, maybe I do have a bottom line, and it's when one half of the pair is mentally in a child-like state. Xiao-Die's condition is temporary and she does recover her adult mentality later on, but it bugs me that it was never a point of conflict for the characters or the story, and that the main conflict of this pairing was only that Nangong Shunu was the daughter of the enemy. I think I would've been fine with it had Xiao-Die been given time to develop outside of Nangong Shunu's protection after her recovery, but even the stabbing incident was a total accident, and was even more somewhat a calculated move on Nangong Shunu's side. I would say that the Shunu-Die romance somehow stunted character growth/potential for both of them.

between Qi Yan finding her sister up until Nangong Jingnu's ascension,

Why was Qi Yan said to be the prince of the grasslands and have the wolf tattoo of a male descendant? I can understand hiding as a man for revenge since it will give her more influence but why was she raised as one? If I didn't misunderstand the author said that she even had a younger brother, so I'm not sure why she had to hide.

For example, we get a cool side romance with Xiao-Die and Nangong Shunu, but we never find out how their story ends or check in on them during the finale. We know that NGSN's mother disapproves of their relationship, but it's not really resolved in any way, just brought up. And surely XD deserves to know that her sister is alive at the end?!

Qian Tong, for instance―we get this great setup with a servant who's incredibly loyal to Qi Yan and a cute scene of him fussing over her health, but there are so many opportunities for him to be around in a scene, talk to her, actually bond with her that just aren't taken until he needs to roll back around for more plot. Qi Yan adopts a new horse to replace the one she lost at the very beginning of the story, bonds with her, and then gives her away to Qian Tong to keep her safe, and likewise the horse is just never seen again. Bayin chooses to break things off with Qi Yan but feels conflicted about it, Jinwushu has inherited his grudge against the Wei kingdom but still wants to see his "father"... neither ever get mentioned again, and we only hear about the kingdoms being united sometime in the distant future, which makes all this division between the two virtually irrelevant.

And what happened to Jiya and her son? What happened to the main f*cking antagonist whose influence Qi Yan had been fighting against the entire story? The former princess just peaces out to the north of the Luo and never bothers anyone again? Are you kidding me?

there is a very weird plotline about this beautiful man called Liu Yuan, who tries to get Qi Yan to shield him because he's caught the attention of the gross, lecherous sixth prince. Qi Yan and Nangong Jingnu respond by discussing how he's such a terrible inconvenience to them, and take the attitude that he's got a chip on his shoulder about being good-looking even though he says it's caused him to be nearly assaulted and bullied a ton, which we even see some of! They even treat it like he's doing something wrong because he doesn't want to be r*ped and is desperate to avoid it. And then Qi Yan straight up delivers him to the man who wants to r*pe him, while we get a fairly graphic description of how he's delivered naked and unconscious in a sack, and the guards who deliver him to the prince mock and grope him while he's passed out. This is never resolved, and we don't even get to see him conscious again after he's r*ped. We never hear about what happened to him after that, at all, and both the narrative and Qi Yan seem to instantly forget about him. It might have worked if it felt like it was intended to show how low Qi Yan is willing to go for her goals, but instead it feels like the story thought this was completely fine.

The main villain - princess of the previous dynasty - is never mentioned again after she partnered with Jiya to start the war with northern Luo. However she tried to kill the MC and plotted so much against them over and over, yet we have no idea what happens to her. Does she continue to scheme? Did she get defeated? She just stopped being mentioned out of nowhere. Seems like a major flaw from the author, I highly doubt she just gave up and left because it would be highly inconsistent with her character settings throughout the whole novel.

also her 8th brother, Nangong Bao - he was never mentioned in terms of the ending, whether he ever got caught or not. There is an author note alluding to the fact that these are Nangong Fu’s problems, however we don’t really get any closure on this.

At least we get a tiny glimpse into Bayin and Jingwushu’s lives and those of the Chengli tribe.

the faked death towards the end with the pill