I used the word “enigmatic” to describe Shiguang Dailiren’s second season, and it still fits like a glove.  As fascinating as all this is, there’s a remove to this season where the first powerfully drew you in.  Link Click II is all about guarding its secrets and action set pieces.  It’s very good at those things (the latter within the confines of a very limited budget).  But for me there’s no question something has been lost here.  More than anything this series is (was) great at telling emotionally powerful human stories.  And this season it just, well, isn’t doing that.

To be fair, the family story of Xixi and Tianchen certainly is a classic Link Click tale.  But apart from the two-episode flashback it really hasn’t been the focus of the narrative so much as the dark matter influencing events.  This week, we pretty much got one extended fight sequence interspersed with some intrigue.  Qian is the one orchestrating things, and Xixi’s ability is making his machinations work.  She seems to be in control of both Wang and Cheng Xiaoshi (which is new information about her ability, if that’s indeed what’s happening).  And he’s arranged for her to escape into a half-demolished neighborhood out of sight of China’s eponymous surveillance cameras.

The bug planted in Cheng’s jacket has a tracking device too, which is helpful for a while.  Once Xiao frees Wang (who’s been handcuffed to a light pole) he takes her phone and chases the signal, while she gets ambushed by a bunch of Qian’s thugs (including the ringleader from before).  Meanwhile another one of the muscle guys winds up confronting Xiao, while Wang dances with the zaku a short distance away.  Both of them are pretty formidable in a scrap and eventually come out on top, but Qian shows up and takes Wang down with a steel pipe blow to the head.

Xiao has already lost one disciple, so losing another here (as he apparently is about to) is going to prove a pretty severe karmic blow.  And having another former disciple be the one responsible in both cases certainly isn’t going to help.  As for Cheng, he appears to still be totally under Xixi’s control and the plan is to abscond by boat.  But Lu – who apparently engineered his own escape from his hospital room, though I’m not clear on how – shows up in time to foil the plan.  Will he be able to free Cheng’s mind as well?

All this is very good in a conventional thriller way, but comparatively speaking it leaves me a bit cold.  One further problem is that Cheng and Lu have been much less prominent this season (Lu has been largely absent), and their dynamic was one of the best things about the first.  I’m intellectually invested for sure (very curious about how Tianchen ties into all this), but having a much harder time moving beyond that.  We still have five episodes left, but there are so many unanswered questions it seems likely a good chunk of them will be needed for exposition…