AleksandraSucur

exactly. 👏

we can form a club of "Rong sisters envious of their privileged sisters living in Australia, NZ, Japan, Phillippines..." 😂

Tea bone is a special gift, believed to be innate to a special person of Rong family destined to run the tea business and the family.
The "gift" consists in detailed knowledge of all things regarding tea cultivation, tea tree health, soil, roasting, tea business etc. In reality, it's an acquired knowledge but the Rong family has its reasons to make it a belief and legend to which in particular tea plantation workers are very attached.

It may not make sense but the murders committed by siblings, usually for inheritance, happen every day in the world. Beside, this drama has elements of a palace intrigue drama (the scriptwriter is also the author of Yunxi Palace), such crimes are very common in this genre. We may think of them as exaggerated, but the real history was even crueler. In Ottoman empire it was totally legal for one prince to kill all his siblings of whatever age together with their mothers at the moment of death of their father.

Yunxi is a He's ally. She discovered (actually unruly sis discovered and then told Yunxi) the shoe print belonged to Wanwan. They feared Wanwan saw He freak murdered Yang bull (actually, his target was Shanbao who was supposed to consumate her wedding night there with Yang) and decided to get rid of the possible witness.
For Yunxi, there is a benefit to help He. He is the only person who hates RSB enough and is a psycho enough to kill her. In that case, she'll be in charge. Although He failed to kill RSB (bc she wasn't in the room with Yang), she still benefits from the chaos, bc a chaos shows how uncapable RSB is in keeping the things in family in order.

you can only be scared to get addicted and suffering like we do.
I woke up at 5 a.m. this (Sunday!) morning to watch the latest ep. That's the level of addiction this drama creates, lol

yes, I think that too. When they found about the footprint, hey've thought she saw He freak the night of the murder.

The two are parallel powers, one is in power of the household, the other is a breadwinner, in charge of business. I still can't believe people couldn't see what was so obvious throughout this drama, that the old lady - instead of supporting RSB's authority and asking for respect towards her from other granddaughters - directly or indirectly, yet constantly, undermined that respect and that authority. She was "strenghtening her" my a*s. In the best case, she is just a bad educator-enforcer of the respect of rules and roles. Don't want even to think what she is in the worst case.

you've explained it exactly in the same way. 👍

Regarding the maid, yes, that's a possibility.
Regarding the Wanwan's murder... it could be He freak and Yunxi are thinking Wanwan saw who murdered the Yang bull, leaving her shoe print on the floor. Remember how Yunxi told He freak she has an idea how to get rid of the "Rong girl"? The Rong girl she was referring to could be Wanwan, not RSB.
Right now, the highest probability is that the Yang's killer was He freak, but his target was RSB, who was supposed to be in the bedchamber consuming with Yang their wedding night. His hatred is a plausible motivation to kill her and her freshly wed husband.
And even if Wanwan didn't see who murdered Yang, killing her will add (emotional) burden to RSB and show how uncapable she is in keeping the houshold in order. For Yunxi is enough

I am impatient to see how it was "backstaged", too, bc He freak trully drowned the poor sis and Yunxi trully helped him to commit that crime, independently of its outcome.
And the other hypocrite sis who cried and talked in front of the corpse... gosh, she was present when Yunxi was blackmailing the maid. Vipers. Unredeemable vipers.

I suppose he was a sort of plantation manager there. The important part in the opening dialogues is that he "was chosen by her grandma for her". He wasn't her lover.
The entire scene served to introduce us to Shanbao, who is in charge of the family tea business, and to her Rong family in which women are in power and in charge of business.
As for the novel - only the tea expertise is taken from it, everything else is totally different, so we treat it as original script

It's a cold case he is reinvestigating, connected with a suicide of a person named Wei, imprisoned for the murder of his wife. After the reexamination of the rests, it was discovered the bones belonged to a male, which meant the wife was missing. That wife is from Yang's family, she was a friend of RSB's mom, and is hidden by RSB in the manor as Wanwan's nanny, Mrs Liang.
Given the impossibility to invite such a powerful family as Rong to the court, imperial inspector Lu was presumably looking for an opportunity to infiltrate the houshold undercover in search of Mrs Yang.

yup, mine too
We may form a club for this precise trope, lol

The girl in charge of plantation mentioned it was old lady Rong who has chosen that Wang (probably a plantation manager) for RSB. We don't know what exactly he has done to be kicked out, all we know he had "low morals" (as RSB said)

I woke up this morning (Sunday morning!) at 5 a.m. just to watch ep 13. lol

I've dropped the other one at ep 22, thinking of dropping it for several consecutive days.
While Glory... I woke up today, a Sunday morning, at 5 a.m. just to watch ep 13.

I love how Ms Shen always acts as Shanbao's lawyer and legal rep/defensor.

We still don't know bc we still don't know why the entire mid-generation (between grandma and her granddaughters) is missing in this drama.
I am suspicious of her since the first scene of ep 1, hearing it was the old lady who have chosen that Wang guy for the FL.

Yunxi is unredeemable. Plotting a murder of her mentally vulnerable cousin together with the n°1 enemy of her family (who probably murdered Yang bull as well, having Shanbao as a main target), framing innocent people and servants in order to create chaos and demonstrate FL's incapability to run the family is beyond redemption.
And I'll say it again: the fault is with the person who is in charge of their education and respect of the rules and hierarchy of roles - old Lady Rong. Her decisions harm or unnecessary burden the FL and the tea business she runs, both directly (lets' remember she chose that Wang guy for the FL from the ep 1, and she pushes her to marry the monk with hair instead of respecting the rule of her freedom to marry a person of her choice) and indirectly, by indulging and spoiling other granddaughters and inciting in them feelings of rivalry and jealousy towards the FL, ie. towards the only hardworking breadwinner in the family.