I would check out Nini, I’ve seen Bailu as she has acted with Xu Kai, typical chinese acting, Shanggu and Houchi need to be someone complex and naive at the same time, Bai Lu don’t have law in her acting skill she just throw it and pray that it works, that’s not acting skill. I skip over many of her parts in both dramas they starred together because of how inconsistent the way she portrayed her character, I mean yeah she can cry pretty and laugh evil, demure when asked to be, but she acted out those for the sake of following the script, I saw zero relation in the continuous scenes leading up or continuing after that for example the end of the legends, just because the script says she is now a nicer person, doesn’t mean she have to abandoned her earlier strong character but she acted like an obedient house wife so I doubt she can carry Shanggu the way Zhou Dongyu did. Zhou Dongyu knows from the beginning how her character transitions from Shanggu to Houchi would be and she took care of it delicately, making audience who pay attention and not just looking at pretty crying, her cries brought over from the past incidents and makes the scene more impactful despite some loopholes in the script and directing, the actors managed to uphold their drama and I applaud them.