If you’re lost on any of the characters, I did a quick rundown of them at the top of episode 1 that you can consult.
Recap
Jiu sneaks out of the estate and goes to Ma’s to check on his siblings. His sister is really sick and Ma wants Father of the Year award. Jiu reports to Ma that he has no idea about Tian’s secret, but he has a cicada. On his way out, Jiu’s brother warns him that someone is trying to hurt Tian. Jiu looks guilty.
At night, Jia goes out with her face covered to get the strong cicada. Jiu sees her and they fight. She gets cut and he gets dirt in the face again. She escapes.
Jiu is afraid she’s after Tian, so he frantically climbs into Tian’s room and hugs him when he sees he’s safe. Tian is delighted Jiu isn’t still mad. Neither of them worries about the intruder.
Li and Jia worry about Jiu, so Li adds watching him to poor Jia’s workload. Jia has the cicada to start making the drug for Tian. The next day Jia and Jiu come across one another and Jiu sees that she’s still bleeding. She warns him not to interfere.
Yang helps Pin sell her land with some less-than-honest tactics to drive up the price.
Tian is teaching Jiu again, which requires smiling and touching. Song shows up just to spoil the mood. Song asks Li about Jiu and is surprised she doesn’t know more about him.
Song has a nightmare where a dying Zhang turns into Tian. He wakes up still clueless about Tian’s secret. Later, he asks Tian about Jiu but isn’t satisfied by what he learns. Then, he finds a diagram for a plot of land in Tian’s stuff.
Jia’s cicada is about ready to sprout mushrooms, and Ma notices that his cicada has come back to life too.
Song learns that Jiu lived in Ma’s territory, and goes to Xiaotong for help getting more info.
While both Nuan and Yang spy from outside, Pin and her Dad visit to break the engagement. Li still tries to force Pin to marry Tian. Chan shows up, then Yang comes to stop her, then Li goes after Yang, then Tian tries to stop her. Even Jia and Nuan start fighting. Who wouldn’t want to marry into this family?
Song yells at everyone to stop and tells Pin’s Dad they’ll talk later.
Song and Li are furious that Tian helped Pin sell her land so she could break the engagement. Yang runs in to help take the blame and Li goes after him too. All the fighting makes Song nearly collapse. He says they’ll cancel everything, but Li wants to talk to Pin first.
Yang and Tian talk after, and Tian wants Yang to take his position. He brings up Zhang and finally shares his secret. Yang tells Tian he doesn’t understand… how loving a man makes him different. Yang teases and comforts his brother.
Jia’s cicada has mushrooms growing out of it and so does Ma’s. He orders his subordinate to take it to someone to find out what it is.
After Song and Bua leave to go to temple, the workers are told to dig up a random field. Then, Yang, Chan, and Nuan are locked in a room. Everyone is out of the way.
Pin and her father show up to talk with Li and Tian. Jia brings out… Tea! This time it really is poisoned, to knock out Pin’s Dad and get Tian and Pin to have sex.
Everyone brings a cup to their lips as Yang keeps trying to break out and Jiu works in the fields.
Thoughts
After two fake-outs, we finally have poisoned tea!
The show builds up Li as a scary, threatening, powerful person really well and I like that her actions are always presented in a negative way. Though she tells Tian she’s doing it for him, the show doesn’t ask us to sympathize with her. Her motive maybe love, but she gets and deserves the villain music as she carries out her horrible plans.
Yang is the real hero, who accepts and loves his brother and does everything he can to help him. Really help him. When he yelled at his parents that he didn’t want to see Tian forced into anything was almost as good as when he held a crying Tian and teased him into smiling with an un-PC joke. The show knows this too.
Poor Jiu. Dirt in the face is his weakness. But also, his entire situation is so desperate. Leaving his siblings with Ma is a terrible idea, he’s just so poor and Ma has his hooks in him. Despite that, based on his reaction when he thought Tian was in danger, we know Jiu will never let Tian get physically hurt. That’s really the only power Jiu really has, he’s good at fighting. Of course he wants his siblings to learn to read and write and have better chances than him.
Tian sure didn’t pay much attention to Jiu’s worries about an intruder. He was just too happy to get a hug to pay any attention.
Yang and Pin are very well matched, they’re both willing to commit minor crimes in order to get the money Pin needs.
Zhang is like a ghost that haunts this story and also haunts Song. The tragedy of how he was treated and how his life ended makes Tian’s situation so much scarier and more precarious. And I think Song’s subconscious knows Tian’s secret already, hence that dream. But Song is too used to living in his own reality and isn’t listening.