Date: 30/3/2026 

Episode: 40

Post #114
Link: https://weibo.com/8363564217/5282246308137446
Time: 19:12

From now on, let's never be apart again. #ZhuYu#

*picture of Chang Yu hugging Mr and Mrs Zhao*



Post #115
Link: https://weibo.com/8363564217/5282258475813303
Time: 20:00
When I was young, I grew up in Xi Gu Alley. The town wasn’t big, the stone-paved roads had been worn smooth from countless footsteps. By the evening, smoke from every household’s cooking would drift together in the air. My father’s butcher stall was not far from home. Day after day, I watched him slaughter pigs, and I eventually even picked up his skilled craft. At noon, I would often bring meals to the stall for my parents. They would set aside their work, and the four of us would gather around a small table by the stall, sharing hot soup and dishes, chatting and laughing.

The neighbours would always say that the Fan family was bound to have a steady and peaceful life ahead.

In those days, there was no hardship of separation, only my parents by my side, and my younger sister with me. Those simple, everyday moments were the very picture of happiness I held in my heart.

But that type of life, after all, did not last forever.

Back then, I believed my parents had been killed by mountain bandits. Overnight, only Chang Ning and I were left. The neighbours gossiped a lot, but thankfully Uncle Zhao and Aunt Zhao were kindhearted and often looked after us. I did my best to hold our family together, taking Ning Niang with me as we moved forward, step by step.

It was also in that snowy year that I met Xie Zheng. Touching the hairpin in his hand, the one my mother had left me, I brought him home.

He didn’t know that salt had to be used sparingly, but he would stay and make cured meat with me; when the Song family humiliated me in public, he stood in front of me and shielded me from all the malice and humiliation; before we went to court, he taught me the country's laws, helping me reclaim the house deed and protect the house; when bandits broke in, even while injured, he stood in front of Ning Niang and kept her safe; when I worked late into the night at Yi Xiang Tower, he would carry a lantern and wait quietly by the roadside for me.

We went to the Lantern Festival together, ate candied hawthorn and roasted sweet potatoes together, sat around the warm stove laughing and having fun…looking back, those days are still my most precious memories.

Later, Xie Zheng was suddenly taken away, and Ning Niang was kidnapped. I searched through the ruins, day after day. Some of the villagers died and others were scattered. For those whose funerals could be arranged, I saw to them one at a time. I don’t know any grand principles, but I know that as long as I held kindness in my heart, dawn will eventually arrive. And when the day breaks, you keep moving forward. Just as my parents used to say, you still have to eat your meals and sleep well, even if the sky falls, you still have to go on living.

My care for my family, and my attachment to Lin’An, have never been my weakness. They are the backbone of the blade in my hand, the reason I can stand back up every time I fall.

Later on, as the smoke of war rose, I gripped the blade my father left me tightly, and from a butcher girl of Xi Gu Alley, step by step, I became a soldier who could stand on her own on the battlefield. I knew then that what I had to protect was no longer just the people by my side. Only by pushing myself harder could I one day bring peace to this land.

Tough grass does not bow, because its roots run deep. I originally grew up struggling in the mud, but all those hardships, only drove my roots deeper into the earth, making me stronger and more resilient.

And I did it. Step by step, I uncovered those who framed my father and brought chaos to the Imperial court. My father's name was finally cleared, his lifetime of loyalty and honourable courage restored. I did not fail the name “Shan Jun” that my tutor bestowed upon me, and my parents in Heaven, can finally rest in peace.

From Xi Gu Alley to the capital, from a butcher girl to General Huai Hua, I may have come a long way, but in the end, I am still the same Fan Chang Yu.

Nowadays, I occasionally reminisce about the past, thinking of the warmth when my parents were still around, of Aunt Zhao’s bowls of hot noodles, of the way Xie Zheng’s lashes would lower as he wrote New Year couplets, of those people that I could not keep by my side…

But when I turn and see Xie Zheng and Ning Niang laughing heartily under the tree, I feel that everything has turned out all right, and that all my efforts made have found their place.

It is precisely these past hardships and moments of warmth, that make me cherish the present even more. Not just the passing of days through the four seasons, year after year, or the setting sun over the vast river, and the galloping horses. Whether it's protecting the smoke rising from the chimneys of homes or facing the winds and swords of battle together, so long as I have the one I love by my side, for this lifetime, it is enough.

#ZhuYuFinale #ZhuYuFinaleToday #ZhuYu#


*Final Weibo background picture: Chang Yu hugging Xie Zheng, from ep.40 end of Chang Yu's dream sequence going back to the village*