Originally Posted by
Sarafina
I'm 8 episodes into the series now and am very disappointed. Wasn't this series based off an extremely popular novel series? I heard really positive things about both the novel and the author and how the story is full of historical/cultural references. Unfortunately, this tv series is a mess. Nothing gets explained and the characters do the most ridiculous things to advance the story. It's as if they expected people to have read the novel and be able to fill in the blanks themselves. Either that or the series got overly edited. Two of the characters were completely useless and literally did nothing but sit around outside the tomb with headsets on providing the occasional horrified commentary to those inside.
For example, an explanation explaining the feud between the northern and southern clans of tomb robbers would be nice. They never bothered to explain the differences between them. I ended up reading elsewhere that apparently:
1) The northern clans follow stricter rules regarding tomb robbing. For example, they only rob in times of desperation and need. They follow protocols such as lighting a candle when they enter a tomb. If the candle blows out, they'll assume that the spirits of the tomb do not want them inside. If the candle doesn't blow out, they'll enter the tomb and only retrieve 3-5 items of interest and leave so that those who happen across the tomb in the future may also find things that they need.
2) The southern clans do not follow any rules and consider the northern clans hypocrites. Tomb robbing is tomb robbing. There shouldn't be any moral strings attached when all they want to do is to loot the place. The northern clans consider the southern clans crude and uncivilized.
Details like those would have added to the story.
Two more episodes to finish the series and am debating if I should move on to The Mystic Nine with William Chan or Candle in the Tomb with Jin Dong. I wonder why they chose to make The Lost Tomb into multiple seasons with 10 episodes each instead of into 1 complete series with 40-48 episodes.
And looking at the cast list for The Mystic Nine, should I assume that Li Yifeng's character Wu Xie is a descendant of Wu Laogo, the fifth master of the mystic nine clan? And Yang Yang's character Zhang Kylin is a descendant of Zhang Qishan, leader of the mystic nine clan?