When last we left our Handsome Stranger and the Pig Butcher, Changyu fell down a cliff.
Yan Zheng scrapes her to make her better
This involves pulling her top off and scraping a coin up and down her back while the OST plays. It’s not sexy, but it’s intimate. As Changyu’s spine turns red, she twitches and moves.
Then, she sits up and seems to look at him, then lies against him again. Cured!
Later, she gets a Historical Chinese BG Wipedown (different from the more common Thai BL wipedown). She whimpers for her parents while dreaming of chasing after them. They tell her to go back and look after her sister, and she cries as they leave.
While she sleeps, he takes her hand and asks her to be his wife. No answer is yes. Since she’s unconscious, it’s a yes!
Then he learns Yuanqing was behind everything and was specifically seeking Changyu. He leaves right away to go after him.
Chancellor Wei’s guy is shocked when a messenger tells him Yuanqing is attacking some stronghold because of his MARRIAGE.
Shi San is upset her brother’s dead
She slaps Yuanqing. He decks her. Then he blames Yan Zheng and Changyu, showing her Sun’s family portrait for illustrative purposes. He must have taken it from Changyu’s.
Funny thing is, Shi San has Ning! They grabbed her because of the expensive jade pendant she was wearing, a gift from Bao. They think she’s Yan Zheng’s daughter and can use her to kill Changyu and Yan Zheng. Secretly, Shi San also plans to kill Yuanqing. That’s fair.
Changyu wakes up alone in a strange place. She overhears Yan Zheng’s men talking and thinks they’re the fake soldiers. Even when the older healer lady says she has a kind husband, Changu warns he’s actually a bad guy.
She cleverly fakes out Yan Zheng’s men and gets them both out. On the road, she hears horses and hides the woman while she checks on them.
It’s Li. She yells and waves for him, but he’s quite far away. In her eager desperation, she drops the wristbands from Yan Zheng.
And FALLS OFF ANOTHER CLIFF while getting them back
She grabs hold of a rock, and a mysterious masked man grabs her and pulls her up. Yan Zheng has saved her life again, but she doesn’t know who he is again. And he’s yelling at her about who gave her the wristbands.
She says it’s from a friend, and he wants to know why it’s so important.
Changyu is confused and just wants him to kill her, but Yan Zheng lets her kick snow in his face and run away.
She reaches Li, who takes her back to town to show her that all her friends are dead. Well, not all, Mrs Zhao and a more subdued village chorus still live.
But Ning, as we know, is missing. When Changyu learns this, she faints.
Ning is being terrorized by Yuanqing
Shi San, who may not be a completely terrible person, stops him. She also had asthma as a kid and helps Ning when hers acts up.
Meanwhile, Qi murders servants to make Qing submit to him. It’s not working. Next, he threatens Bao. While the poor kid sobs, she pretends not to care about him. But when Qi pretends to cut Bao’s throat, she breaks. She’ll do what Qi wants.
Qi hugs Bao and Qing, glad to have the family together again. Then he has Bao taken away and tells her he knows where her weakness lies.
Changyu isn’t doing great either. She’s haunted by the villagers’ dead faces and determined to erect all their graves. Li tries to stop her, and Mrs Zhao reminds her that Ning’s body has not been found.
Right! Ning! Changyu is going to go find her. Before setting out, she prays to her parents’ tablets for help finding both her sister and Yan Zheng.
A month later, she’s a superhero
The Beauty Slaughterer! Who doesn’t slaughter beauties but human traffickers, rescuing crying children from various wooden cages. No Ning yet, and she’s tired and misses Yan Zheng.
Unfortunately, in her zeal to rescue children, she attacks a man yelling at his kid for doing something dangerous. The injured father wants Changyu arrested.
Yuanqing brings Shi San and Ning into Baxia, his land. Qi is there. Has he been coughing less lately? Anyway, Qi reports that Yan Zheng has attacked their grain route, even though Qi warned Prince Changxin that this would happen.
Also, Qi is curious about Ning. But we don’t get to hear Yuanqing’s whispered reply.
Sun brings Yan Zheng the package Changyu handed to Mr Zhao
It has candy and the divorce letter, needing only his signature. Yan Zheng is not thrilled. When he learns that Mr Zhao was conscripted, he orders that he be kept from the front line.
Then, a messenger brings him Sun’s family picture and a message that Yan Zheng’s “daughter” is in his hands.
Li visits Changyu in prison. She’s pretending everything is fine. Eventually, both she and the OST lose it, and she cries. She feels useless because she can’t find Ning.
Changyu’s fans have gathered outside the prison to support her. Even the father who had her arrested doesn’t want her there now that he knows she’s the superhero. Once let out, she yells at this Prison Chorus for being Too Nice To Her about losing her sister.
She thinks if she isn’t hard on herself, she won’t learn from her mistakes. Ugh.
To put a stop to this, Li distracts her with her parents’ case files
Earlier, she asked him to look into them. He noticed that they’d been altered at some point. He doesn’t tell her this, and since she can’t read most of the characters, he reads them to her.
It just has the bare facts of them being killed by bandits, no clues to what really happened.
Li’s assistant brings Changyu her stuff, dropping it so Li sees the Divorce Decree. He wants her to stick around, but she wants to look for Ning and Yan Zheng.
Yan Zheng talks war strategy with General He. The plan involves Baxia and flooding, and I’m sure we’ll deal with it more later. More importantly, Yan Zheng wants to rescue his wife’s younger sister.
General He already knows his wife is Changyu, surprising Yan Zheng. He asks General He about Changyu’s father. General He says he’s a former comrade who gave him a letter for Chancellor Wei and told him not to open it. He later died by suicide, but the reasons why are murky, political stuff.
General He won’t tell him Changyu’s father’s real name or position until the Fan sisters are safe. Then he promises to tell Changyu himself.
Later, General He asks some guy to do something terrible, but the show keeps what it is a secret.
Changyu has a new lead on Ning, possibly at a refugee camp in Baxia
At the same time, Li’s Grandfather wants him to go to the frontline and take a military position. He thinks this will help weaken Chancellor Wei’s power. Li maybe has a crush on Changyu and wants to check on her before leaving, but for some reason it’s urgent, so he leaves.
Turns out Qi is an awful dad. He terrorizes Bao, forcing him to repeat the lie Qing taught him, that his father is a great hero. Qi knows Qing trained him to lie.
Then he beats a servant woman to death for a minor mistake in front of Bao. In maybe the darkest moment of this show, Bao watches and sobs, imagining his mother in the servant’s place. Afterward, Qi asks if his father is a great hero, and Bao confirms it over and over again.
Changyu is on her way to Baxia when she helps a man evade some soldiers. Then he tries to kill her AND the soldiers come back.
The head of the soldiers is the man General He asked to do some unknown, terrible thing. They arrest her because the man is a scout working for the other side.
I’m so glad we’re done killing and mourning the people in the village
And compared with the last two episodes, these pulled me along with very few issues.
Changyu’s assumption that Yan Zheng and his people were bad guys is a little frustrating. However, given that she was recently chased off a cliff by Yuanqing and didn’t have much time to think things through, it’s believable to me.
It feels more odd that Yan Zheng isn’t keeping tabs on her. He’s very busy, but wouldn’t he want to know where she is and what she’s doing? Doesn’t he have men whom he can order to watch her?
It’s heart-wrenching to see our leads apart. Especially with Changyu being SO hard on herself and suffering so much alone. But this is the suffering I ask for when I see a cdrama, so I can’t complain. And I have a feeling it’s going to last a bit longer.
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