do you know if the events of both seasons (the whole series so far basically, minus the flashbacks) happened in the same year, or if there was a time skip at some point?? i used to think the entire story would happen in the fall, but snow started falling in season 2

It’s a little hard to judge from the perspective of the donghua/manhua only, but if we assume the timeline of events is comparable to the real life one, then about a year had passed from Empress Wu’s coronation (October 690) to General Qiu’s death (October 691).

Since the real Empress Wu’s birthday was in winter I don’t think that quite matches with the story’s timeline - and, well, the manhua/donghua don’t owe us historical accuracy - so feel free to take that with a grain of salt.

Additionally, it’s safe to say that first snow in autumn does happen, even in modern-day Luoyang (in 2017, it seems, it happened as early as mid-November?), so the presence of snow doesn’t necessarily equate to fall being over. (Not to mention that I think in this context autumn and winter and snow have more of a symbolic meaning and aren’t necessarily representative of the actual date. The OP, ED and pretty much all other songs in s2 heavily use the change-of-seasons imagery.)