No death with r*pe or excessive torture. Bad guy attempts to poison others, dies by own poison. Bad guy tries to escape but is stabbed by his confidante instead. Bad guy tries to lie his way out, but the truth prevails. They caused their own downfall.

ML is not the killer.

FL was depressed in the first life because she was gradually poisoned by a rare herb that causes depression, insomnia, nightmares and infertility. She was actually poisoned by Old Lady Gu, ML's grandmother who hates the ML and FL. Even after FL divorces the ML, ML is poisoned by Old Lady Gu and his own brother Huo Chengzhang. As ML lay dying, FL's cousin Cui Yunqi teams up with Huo Chengzhang to mu*der the FL too. ML was ready to make the FL Empress Dowager to help govern the country when he dies to counterbalance HCZ but HCZ refuses and kills them both.

Old Lady Gu is an opportunist. She hates the ML because gasp! He's adopted! Yeah I kinda figured that it had to be the reason because this old woman seriously hates them so much. This old lady wants ML to rise up the ranks to bring their family up and then wants him to die so that the legitimate Huo heir can then claim all the glory. This mindset of hers has been passed to Huo Chengzhang who was pampered by her. Huo Chengzhang is also massively jealous of ML and thinks that if ML has kids, he could not legitimately take the throne so he decides to poison ML. He takes no chances and kills the FL using ML's soldier which is why FL thought ML was the one who wanted her to die.

There's so many other people who tries to kill FL and ML too! Like an evil cult with spies everywhere, other jealous generals, traitors... Which is why the plot is actually very intricate! For example, the evil cult hates ML because ML's father was the one who caused their end and killed many of them. So this evil cult wants to cause chaos and they purposedly make poisonous lamps and sells them. ML's grandmother coincidentally encounters them and buys the lamp that cause ML and FL's depression and weakness. Evil cult spy also gets entangled with FL's cousin and is manipulated to find ways to get other people to kill FL and ML. The villains don't rush to kill them directly, its always through other people or ways that makes it very complicated. So everything is finally revealed at the end.

After the Murong clan met their end, I don't think there was any mention of that cousin anymore. I wanted to know how she coped after the death of her two kids.