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TL;DR Version
Orchid and DFQC realize his emotions are returning, bringing good memories of his father and also bad ones that haunt him at night, putting him in a foul mood. He nearly kills Jie Li for stealing a childhood memento and after that decides to execute his brother. Orchid won’t leave him alone and wants to know what really happened between him and his father.

Recap
Orchid is in the forest with the Moon Tribe, noticeably only women and children. Everyone is wearing a flower in their hair so Orchid picks one too, only to learn it’s a flower for widows. Their husbands are all dead from the wars. Orchid repairs the flower back to its stalk and wishes she could heal people that easily too.

When walking through the forest, the tribe sees DFQC and immediately bows to him. Except for one older lady, who is upset about the conflict that went on while DFQC has been away. She remembers DFQC as a kid, hunting with his father in these woods. Her husband and son are dead, and her grandson is sealed in Xuanxu. She wants him to free her grandson since he took him away.

The other villagers beg DFQC not to kill the older woman, and he walks away. Orchid follows, joining him on a cliff past the village. She wants to know why he didn’t explain what happened to them. He says people should have secrets, which was her earlier argument. She envies him for having a father who took him hunting.

DFQC remembers his father being kind, kicking a wicker ball with him, a contrast to the torture we’ve seen earlier. 

Orchid notices his expression change during these memories, but when she asks about his feelings he’s silent. He mentions his envy of her lack of attachments, bringing back their old emotions versus-not-arguments. But when he makes excuses for not killing the older woman, Orchid realizes he does have feelings.

They go to DFQC’s Sea of Heart, where the Love Tree has sprouts. Orchid is excited but DFQC looks overwhelmed.

DFQC dreams about his dad, but now he’s cruel and harsh. He’s been having these dreams every night and is worried his emotions are coming back faster. Orchid tries to give him an orchid to help him sleep, but he rejects it. He’s angry because the feelings she’s revived make it impossible for him to rule. She didn’t want him to be in pain, but he tells her to get out of his sight and she does.

Jie Li is stealing from the treasure room but doesn’t make it past the guards. She’s brought in front of DFQC, who is already bad-tempered. Jie Li tries to use Orchid as an excuse for her theft and it almost works, until he sees a small wooden figure in her bag of stolen goods.

The wooden sculpture brings a memory of a woman who consoled him when he was young and upset with his father. She gave him a partially carved sculpture of Yannv, showed him how to carve at it, and encouraged him to be strong.

Present-day DFQC fingers his ring and decides to kill Jie Li. He knocks Shang Que into a wall when he tries to stop him and is only stopped when Orchid gets in the way. Orchid takes the blame and asks him to kill her. The moment is diffused when a guard reports Xun Feng is shouting from prison, and DFQC leaves to deal with that, telling them to burn the sculpture.

Jie Li calls Orchid the biggest fool, like she did Shang Que several nights ago.

Xun Feng still wants to kill DFQC because of their father. But he does not know where the Evil Spirit comes from and did not mean to harm their people. He blames his own actions on DFQC killing their father, and DFQC says they aren’t family. DFQC orders him publicly killed by lightning in three days. When Shang Que reminds him that’s the anniversary of their father’s death, DFQC doesn’t care.

Jie Li tells Orchid that she learned from Shang Que that the sculpture belonged to a maid who took care of DFQC, but was killed by his father. She also learns DFQC has ordered his brother executed.

Orchid goes to see DFQC, and asks him to spare his brother. She gets more insights into the family dynamics, with DFQC claiming their father only loved Xun Feng. He gets angry, with bright light and ominous noise. He thinks his father treated him this way because his son would one day replace him as ruler. That’s why he tortured him, and now the Love Tree his father destroyed is being resurrected.

Later, Jie Li and Shang Que advise Orchid against probing any further with DFQC’s mood so bad. Orchid thinks that what she knows of the Cangyan Sea and DFQC might be all wrong. There’s more going on than what’s at the surface, and she wants Shang Que to tell her everything about the previous Moon Supreme’s death. 

Thoughts
Talking about this show with a friend the other day, she pointed out how interesting it is that this show makes a point to depict the horrors of war. I’ve only watched a few Chinese historical/fantasy dramas, but I’ve seen how easily hundreds of nameless soldiers can die in these shows without any of the main characters caring. In the forest scene, not only are we shown the effect that this has had on the Cangyan Sea, but we learn that the fearsome DFQC is the one who has kept things from being worse. 

This leads to a genuine conflict that’s not black and white. The fairies don’t want DFQC to resurrect his soldiers for their own safety, but against that is the fact that those soldiers all had families who would like to see them resurrected. There’s an emotional aspect to reviving the soldiers that hadn’t come up previously.

Earlier, Orchid told stories of fairy heroics and Moon Tribe evil, but she’s realizing it’s not that simple too. She’s also getting a front seat for the soap-opera dynamics of the Moon Supreme family. I like that she’s not taking things at face value, but wants to know more about what’s going on. She’s not blindly standing up for him either, she’s taking these extra steps to learn more so she can really help him. 

And if she doesn’t, he might kill Jie Li and his brother. Which is an interesting new complication. We don’t want to see these characters die, but we also don’t want to see DFQC do horrible things and betray himself either. Or would it be even worse to see Orchid’s faith in him get destroyed? The risk isn’t only violence, it’s this deeper emotional risk that comes with it.

It also felt like DFQC and Orchid are talking about their feelings more. Multiple times in this episode one of them wanted to know what was going on in the other’s head, which is a level of intimacy beyond magically-forced kissing and forced-emotional-onslaughts.

I’ve gone on and on already so I’ll stop soon, but Orchid’s dress in this episode may be one of my favorites. The blue colors and hints of constellations. It’s gorgeous.