When last we left our problematic secondary characters, our 2FL thought she’d figured out how to get our 2ML on her side.
But separating the main leads did not make him happy
Her favorability with him drops 50% to -250%. Now she realizes he’s jealous of the attention Mu Yao gives her.
Lin Yu prompts Mu Yao to remember one time she and Sheng went to the festival as kids. They got separated, she got hurt, and Mu Sheng was beaten bloody for not protecting her. I would not want to avenge this family either.
Mu Yao stops the beating and promises Sheng they’ll go to the festival again, just the two of them, and get snacks and play together. She forgot this promise. He has not.
At Lin Yu’s encouragement, Mu Yao wins a lamp to give to Sheng. The only goddess Sheng showed interest in, Mei the goddess of love, is depicted on it. As kids, she’d been trying to win one for him but got lost.
Sheng pretends he doesn’t remember the promise either. She gives him his snack. He’s happy and less murderous now. They decide to compete to be Lantern King.
It’s an impossible goal
Because Lin Yu’s father wants to help her fly a lantern with Fu Yi. They fudge the rules, count her friend’s wins towards hers, and make her the winner.
Lin Yu gets clever and has all four of them go up to release the lantern and be blessed by Mei. Love doesn’t have to be romantic after all. First, Sheng confronts her for orchestrating his sister change in attitude toward him. He’s resentful but she just teases him.
They send the lantern up, and being a native Southern Californian I try not to think about forest fires and enjoy the beauty. Each character wishes for something, and Lin Yu wishes for — I guess world peace? Sheng seems the least angry he’s been as she explains this wish.
He magics the lanterns, but not to set things on fire. They form “平安” which the internet says means “at peace” or “safe”.
The system announces she’s made it to 0%!
But a lantern hits the granary anyway
Lin Yu tries to keep her father away, but he’s determined to be a firefighter. She goes after him and gets in the way. Sheng grabs her and she begs him to save her father and make sure no one finds the granary and silver vault empty. But Sheng turns her so she can see they aren’t empty.
After the fire is out, her father explains that he isn’t a corrupt official. Their wealth was inherited. The vaults were emptied because their contents were given to Empress Dowager Zhao. Lin Yu recognizes the name as an elderly concubine and a minor antagonist in the book. So he wasn’t corrupt, but used and nearly turned into a scapegoat.
Because Lin Yu told him she wanted him to be safe and sound, he used their assets to cover the deficits. She hugs him and cries. She didn’t expect this to be the truth behind the story.
Have I mentioned the guy with the “Invisible Golden Toad”?
He works for the Empress Dowager and in the book, was part of the slaughter of Lin Yu’s family. The “Invisible Golden Toad” is… entirely visible. It escapes the box and sucks up gold and silver, growing huge in the process. It’s very No Face.
It heads into the city and stops in front of a girl with a gold hairpin. Before it can eat her, the little girl holds up a snack and it freezes. Lin Yu realizes it doesn’t like human food, and they pelt it with snacks. To Sheng’s horror, Lin Yu throws his snack from his sister into the frog’s mouth.
It throws up and shrinks down. Fu Yi traps it in his tower.
Lin Yu’s dad explains the frog was used to transport the gold to the empress dowager. How did a giant golden frog move around in secret? Whatevr. The evil guy tries to use forged evidence against Lin Yu’s dad, but Sheng incinerates it. He points out the Empress Dowager would be in trouble for using a demon.
Lin Yu’s Dad tells the guy he quits.
Now that they’re poor, Lin Yu teaches her dad to shop
There’s some odd messaging here. I get that Lin Yu is teaching her father to bargain and be frugal but it makes poverty feel like a fun shopping excursion. Whatever, I’m not watching this show for social commentary.
Lin Yu’s father feels she’s changed. She tells him about a dream she had about a different world, one without demons, where he passed away. This a flashback to her real life. After getting in trouble at school with some bullies, her father came out to the school and got her milk tea as a treat. As he walked towards her, he was hit by a car.
Her story makes her fantasy Dad cry. Lin Yu worries that in his last moments, as he looked at her, her father blamed her for his death. Fantasy dad says that no, he couldn’t bear to leave her.
They’re teary-eyed. She thanks him and asks what he’d do if she became horrible again, and he says he’d still love his daughter.
Sheng heard the whole thing and wants to chat with Lin Yu
She’s eager to get that 0% up to 100% but does not want to share details about her dream.
Instead, they play some form of Weiqi (Go) called Gomoku. She makes a bet where the winner flicks the other’s forehead. She thinks this is flirting.
When she wins over and over again and he keeps getting flicked it does not make him fall for her. The system informs her she’s now at -25%. Unsurprising, she’s not used to flirting, and Sheng isn’t someone who is easily swayed.
He asks for her name in the other world, which is Ling Miao Miao. She tells him to call her that from now on, and we will call her that now too.
She whines at him until he reveals his courtesy name, Zi Qi.
It looks like the team is breaking up
Fu Yi is leaving. He internally apologizes to “A’Yao” for approaching her with false pretenses. An origami crane meets him at the gate and tells him to stay with the siblings. So never mind.
Miao Miao panics because everyone is leaving. In the original story, her family was dead and she was an orphan, but everything changed. She intercepts them on the way out and invites herself along. Mu Yao worries about the dangers, but Fu Yi and Sheng think she should join.
Mu Yao sees the symbolism in flying the lantern together and being blessed by goddess Mei. Lin Yu’s Dad is sad but helps her pack. On her way out, Miao Miao asks Sheng why he helped her. He advises her that sometimes knowing things is dangerous. He sticks an oleander in her hair, then mentions it’s poisonous. Beautiful things are always very malicious.
Miao Miao frantically pulls the flower out of her hair.
Screw poverty!
As our four depart on a ship, Lin Yu’s Dad learns the mountain she advised him to buy is a gold mine. She knew because of something mentioned at the end of the book, and likes that she got to live out her fantasy of being all-knowing and helping her parents.
Sheng is still being threatening. He tells her the magical map burned easily because he helped. Then he manipulated the Heartburn Curse with semantics and wanted to kill her to silence her. This was all to protect his sister. He’s agreed to let her come so he can keep an eye on her and tear off her disguise. He wants to know what she’s really up to.
He leaves her there, looking worried.
That’s how you end an episode
Oh good, I’m glad Sheng’s not softening up already. He can’t kill her anymore because we need a female lead for this drama, but he’s still suspicious and murderous. I don’t blame him, sounds like his adopted family was terrible with the exception of Mu Yao who is thoughtless.
All that stuff about beauty and poison, I feel like that’s going to have to do with goddess Mei. Is this going to come down to Sheng having mommy issues? I still don’t think he’s just Some Guy.
The two different dad death flashbacks still confuse me, but it doesn’t matter anymore
It’s fun to see how the story is being “fixed”. Lin Yu’s corrupt father was turned into something more interesting. The map being so easily burned is something Sheng orchestrated. It’ll be fun to watch how Miao Miao’s knowledge of the book helps and changes.
I’m also enjoying watching a longer series again, where the leads take time to grow feelings for each other. Sheng has had a soft moment or two, he looked at her instead of that lantern, but he’s still deeply suspicious of Miao Miao. She sees no charm in this guy who wants to kill her. I’m looking forward to all the moments where they slowly change.
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