When last we left our Handsome Stranger and the Pig Butcher, Yan Zheng threatened Li’s life with a teacup.
Then he shares some wisdom
A man does not scale another’s wall. A minister does not bend with shifting winds. I think this means Li shouldn’t butt into Yan Zheng’s business, because he’s a man of conviction. I think.
Anyway, Ning shows up, and the men stop threatening to kill each other.
Out in the forest, Yan Zheng meets with two men who tell him Wei Xuan’s war efforts are not going well. Yan Zheng is more worried about the grain. He will not repeat the mistake made 16 years ago.
He’s going to let Wei Xuan do his thing, probably fail, and use that to his advantage. He wants everyone still thinking he’s dead.
Bandits attack Changyu and Qian on their way home. Changyu fights them while Qian tries to help. She thinks they’re after her.
Nope, it’s Changyu’s pork competitor. He claims someone hired him, then sprays something in Changyu’s face. Before he can attack again, Yan Zheng takes him down and dramatically throws a cloak over Changyu’s shoulders.
Changyu passes out in his arms.
Back at home, Qian and the Zhaos yell at Pork Guy while Yan Zheng tends to Changyu.
Once he’s done with that, he STABS THE MAN IN THE SHOULDER
Then he punches Pork Guy in the face until he confesses that he was going to sell Changyu to the mountains. I presume this means human trafficking. Yan Zheng will now murder him.
Li bursts in to stop him, but it’s Changyu softly calling his name that actually prevents the murder. While the others stare in horror, Yan Zheng calmly returns to her side.
Later, she tells him that if he’d gone to prison for killing someone for her, it would hurt worse than the attack. This makes him hug her and cry. She makes him promise not to risk himself, and she’s crying too.
Next, we learn Qian has locked her son up in a secret room. The room is big, and it’s for his protection. Still.
Now for the confusing story of Sun and the Grand Princess and Go
One of the young scholars we met ages ago is the Grand Princess in disguise. She has a massive crush on Headmaster Sun. He knows she’s the Grand Princess and notifies the Consort Dowager.
While she’s still in disguise, they play Go together. They each reveal they’ve had an unseen Go opponent, playing via an outdoor board. Amazing coincidence.
Their current game of Go is interrupted when people show up to make the Grand Princess return to being the Grand Princess. At some point (I do not understand this editing), she was told her unseen Go opponent was the Abbott, who gave her a bracelet.
But right before she has to leave for the capital, she realizes it was Sun. She runs to him, telling him she came to Luyuan to meet someone. He ignores this obvious hint, maintaining a polite, physical distance.
As a parting gift, he gives her some Go documents he transcribed at her request. She cries and dramatically throws them in the air.
Later, she sends him the bracelet that the Abbott gave her, confirming she was his unseen opponent. He feels utterly defeated.
Back at the palace, they know she liked Sun, but he’s not a suitable match. The suitable match is Li.
Li is not excited by this potential political marriage
Because it will not benefit the people! But he’s been summoned to meet her and cannot refuse.
Li is gone, but the falcon is back! Ning is thrilled. Yan Zheng secretly retrieves his message and reads it. It’s… poetry?
His guys in the forest tell him that Sun’s “diversion” got Li back to the capital. Poor Grand Princess, I guess Sun used her. Also, bandits are stealing grain!
At the restaurant, Qian meets an important, gray-haired guest who gets big sound effects. Qi deals in grain, and uses her handing him a drink as an excuse to stroke her hand.
After she leaves, Qi wants any man who has ever touched Qian to have his hand cut off. He’s been looking for her for 6 years. Also, he coughs. Usually not a good sign.
Next, Qian gets to deal with Ex-Fiancé’s Mom. Despite Changyu being right there, Ex-Fiance’s Mom says horrible things about her to her rich lady friends. Qian shows up at the table to tell the true story and talk about Changyu’s awesome pork.
Once she leaves, horrible Ex-Fiance’s Mom gossips about Qian having a child out of wedlock.
Qi is Not Happy to hear this
So he has Ex-Fiance’s Mom attacked on her way home. With a sword to her neck, she’s told to shut up already, or she won’t get off so lightly next time.
Oblivious to all of this, Qian wants Changyu to add an emblem to her pork. Changyu knows someone with excellent calligraphy skills: her husband!
This makes the pork, well, Yan Zheng, even more popular. Young women line up to watch him write. Also, one man who wants the emblem and not the pork.
Meanwhile, Qian has to smash a wine jug over the head of a drunk, aggressive, married customer. He still comes after her with a knife. Qi stops it with his bare hand, then stabs the knife back into the guy’s hand
The intense look Qi gives Qian maybe jogs her memory. He looks similar to some masked man in her past. But his voice is different. And he doesn’t have a scar.
Ning befriends Qian’s imprisoned son
Though Bao is supposed to stay hidden away, they go running around the restaurant in a game of hide and seek. But when Qi comes into the room to talk with someone investigating Qian, they both hide in a wooden chest.
Qian might have been pregnant while at Qi’s residence. He wants it confirmed NOW.
Then he hears a noise and looks towards the kids’ hiding place!
When Qian learns the kids are missing, she freaks out. She’s certain that Qi took them. But Yan Zheng finds them sleeping inside the chest. The noise Qi heard was someone knocking over a lampstand.
Qian yells at her son and hits his hand until he’s crying, but agrees to let Ning visit and play with him.
Time for more grain talk!
Only one of their two provinces in the North can grow grain. Plus, someone bought all the good grain right before the war started.
Yan Zheng learns that the person who bought this grain is the guy hanging out with Qi.
Qian tries to avoid Qi by saying she’s sick, but he’s too menacing. He forcibly takes her wrist and checks her pulse, noticing that it speeds up. He thinks she doesn’t like him. She denies this, but he grabs her and won’t let her leave, trying to force medication on her.
She tells him other men want to care for her, too, and he wants to know who. He’s getting more aggressive when they’re interrupted.
Later, Changyu is surprised to see the restaurant is closed, supposedly because Qi rented it out. She jumps over the wall to check on Qian, who is having a nightmare about Qi, with a mask and without.
Even though Qi offered Qian an absurd sum of money, she didn’t rent the place to him. Instead, she closed it to keep him away. She thinks there’s something more complicated than just him liking her going on.
If he really wants Qian, she wants to… use Changyu’s being married to convince him that he has no chance with Qian. Huh?
I’m definitely not tracking what this plan will be
Parts of these episodes felt clunkier than the writing so far. The whole Sun/Grand Princess stuff felt like a bigger story that got cut way down, and the timeline really confused me.
But I get it. They’ve fallen for each other, but he’s too cowardly/not the right person/something to pursue it. He gets her away from him by using her to get Li away from Yan Zheng.
I have no idea what to think of Qi. He’s wonderfully toxic, and bonus points for silver hair. The manhandling of her wasn’t good, but in general, he seems more set on murdering everyone around her than hurting her. Did he hire Pork Guy to attack Changyu and Qian? I feel like he wouldn’t put Qian in danger that way.
Also, what happened to Mr Jin? Changyu said she’d hire him, and we’ve never seen him again.
We’ve definitely hit the story’s quarter mark, and it’s rapidly expanding with new characters and deeper backstories. This is good, and I like it, but I missed spending time with our main couple. Yan Zheng did calligraphy and little else in episode 12.
But at least he finally got a chance to repay Changyu for saving his life, multiple times, with the most epic, husband-stabbing-the-bad-guy scene ever. That trope never gets old for me. More please!
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