The setting of Duanshan City feels really lived-in. A medium-sized city built against the Helian Mountains, famous for its ironware, with a population of about 100,000. The description of how everyone gets up early to work before the midday heat, the stone slab roads, the merchant houses, the coal shops — it's all very grounded. I can almost smell the forge and hear the clanking. The fact that the city exists because of refined iron ore from the mountains makes the whole economy believable. The author spends just enough time on the setting without info-dumping. When Hua Kong walks through the city delivering goods, you get a sense of the place as a living, breathing community.
Fan Wencong is the perfect skeptic to bounce off of. His "pretending to be a god or ghost" speech was exactly what a hardened cop would say. Watching him get completely shut down when she casually mentions his divorce, his step-family, and his father’s death was the peak "power display" moment.