I read Chapter 21 to 30 in a blaze (less than an hour, what the heck).
So Zhou's sudden "skill" in swords was actually magic. Interesting, I totally didn't see the connection between the snakes and black/white vision. Also liked the big bad dragon and how even him is afraid of the Bear.
I'm gonna be honest and say that contrary to everyone else apparently, I didn't enjoy Huang because there was no challenges for him to bypass, no moral choices to make or even a hard battle, while Zhou had all that. Huang's biggest problem was "do I marry this pretty girl or not?".
Well, that changed when he got his own kid and is now being threatened, as he got some tension in his life and his chapters are now much more interesting.
Speaking of his marriage, I now have this wild theory about Jiao:
Spoiler for Hiden:
That she is a Jiin-Wei herself.
Wait, what? First, let's consider the culture of the ancient China that served as inspiration: extremely rigid and hierarchy based. So Jiao's behavior, like actively chasing her man is abnormally out of place and pretty much she encourages and pushes him to marry her.
Also, how easily he got the permission to marry, despite everyone saying it was forbidden and an anomaly.
At chapter 22, she says she heard about a lot of married Jiin-Wei with children. Yet at chapter 28 we see that Huang passed months in the secret archives of the order searching for this and concluded married Jiin-Wei were a total anomaly, even if they were the duke's bodyguard and only one who fathered a child - and outside of marriage.
So even if she says it was from stories, it's curious she, who I think was a servant girl, knows more about his order than he himself who is pretty much a high officer with access to a secret archive. Also, if a Jiin-Wei can have permission to marry, there's nothing that says they can't be ordered to marry someone, is there?
He didn't even need to court her or anything, felt like she was obsessed with him for no reason, it was just too easy. Easy come, easy goes, right? And how the Emperor seems to know something about Huang, and who is better to give that info?
This is very wild, of course, it could just be records got destroyed and that one specifically preserved to be found by Jiin-Wei with similar thoughts but stories survived down the ages, but if this ends up happening later on it the other books it would blow my mind.
And last, what the heck with the blurb of book 2, G.R.? I just opened Goodreads, someone put book 2 on "Want to Read" and now I know the duke dies, a traitor is slain (Marbu probably) and the city of Yaart is destroyed. *Rages*