Bai Lu's performance as Ye Li in this episode was amazing. She does such a great job of channeling a teenage girl going through this horrible, horrible trauma. It's heartbreaking to watch yet mesmerizing as well.
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that befell the Li Shan Academy. We now know how they died. The next things to learn is how she lived and coped and finally, hopefully we can move on to some sort of healing for her. Jeezus this was emotional and sad.
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of just what Ye Li's life was like for all those years. As the reveal slowly gets laid out, the image of her having to endure year after year of solitude there is painted with horrifying clarity. Glad that the writers have let Mo Xiu Yao return to being an intelligent, empathic person and his determination to stay with Ye Li and truly learn what has happened to her is a good thing. So cool that he will experience her daily life at the Academy now. But when will they reveal just what exactly happened to everyone? And what is it about the monkeys on the bridge? Aside: Some viewers have been quick to accuse the Empress Dowager of some sort of massacre but that doesn't seem right. She was a Lishan student herself in the past and was genuinely shocked to learn of Ye Li's mother's death. She had thought she was alive on the mountain. Which wouldn't make sense if she had ordered some sort of massacre. It also wouldn't have made sense for her to have issued the marriage decree of Ye Li and Prince Ding. So I don't think she did such a thing.
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Let's be clear: This whole 'divorce' event was painfully contrived by the writers by using blatant plot-induced stupidity and that is still annoying as heck. That said, the acting performances by Cheng Lei and Bai Lu within this are really good. Especially Bai Lu. The scene of her breaking down and crying was just heart rending. Seeing her once again surrounding herself with her imaginary companions in order to fend off the overwhelming wave of loneliness crashing down on her was just awful and yet brilliantly portrayed.
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If one thing has been crystal clear throughout this series is that the Marquis is relentless with his distorted gaslighting and bending of the truth to always be in his favor no matter what all other facts might say. He does this in every court appearance and even in private conversations with everyone from his personal family, to other officials and to the Empress Dowager herself. Any words coming from his mouth may contain truth but should never, EVER be taken at face value. And Prince Ding should know this better than anyone. So for him to give immediate credence to the version of the truth that the Marquis gave him - esp. under these circumstances - makes the Prince look bizarrely stupid all of a sudden. And he's so quick to break his vow to always be wither her - a vow he made more than once. This incredible weakness of character is just so at odds with who Prince Ding was built-up to be to this point that it's just so disappointing. Now I guess we have to grit our teeth and endure this annoying, "misunderstanding trope", for an episode or two? How long will they drag this out?
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The level of cluelessness and lack of ability to see the obvious evil in the nature of both Su Zui Die and Prince Li in Han Ming Yue (Han Ming Xie's older brother) is astonishing. What an utter fool.
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This episode has SO much happening in it - both good and bad (mostly bad) - but is so well paced and executed. Great episode.
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We all know that Prince Li has faked his death and will pop up at a later time to commit some disgusting evil. So don't get too comfortable. But at least he won't be around acting like a creep for a while at least. And Ye Ying gets some respite from his mental abuse for a while. Maybe she can use this time for self-reflection?
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with the plot focused the lead couple's relationship and mutual healing. As the Prince Ding (and their relationship) reaps the benefit of Ye LI's treatment of his legs, he starts to learn more about and takes steps to help her with her extreme, trauma-induced loneliness. Though we are still left mystified as to just what exactly happened during Ye Li's time up on the mountain that has clearly left her traumatized.
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Several commenters were confused by the Step Mother Wang seemingly being possessed as well when she took the zither from the maid. Folks need to remember that Ye Li's man, Li Feibao caught Step-Mom with her scholar boyfriend and used that leverage to ask Step Mom for a 'favor'. So she is clearly in on it and working with Ye Li at this point as part of the scam to break the idiot father down mentally.
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Ye Li told Li Feibao that Master Zhou saved her from the snakes. But she tells Yiu Xiao that she handled them herself. My suspicion is that the latter is the actual truth but that she channeled skills she learned from Master Zhou to do so. Similarly, I think she channels skills from all her various teachers as she goes about doing her various things - including healing ML's legs. And for some events her PTSD-induced disassociation has her delusional thinking that the teacher actually showed up?
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After the prior episode leaning into so many cheap plot tropes, this episode at least did a good job of tying up some of them and moving things back onto the main plot.
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On one hand, this episode did have some nice moments including by far the most 'action' we've had in quite a while. And the very start carried over some nice 'coupleness' from the end of the prior episode. But otherwise this episode was just a mash-up of stereotypical drama tropes. We get, smashed together in fairly short order: (1) A quiet journey through the woods interrupted by bandits/assassins attacking. (2) We get a chase that ends in a carriage tipping over. (3) We get our heroin falling over a cliff (yes, she survives, of course). (4) We get the assassin hired to kill her ... recognizing her as someone who saved her years ago! (5) the creepy psycho unrequited love a**hole is re-inserted into the plot and (6) she's suddenly blind and so isn't aware of said psycho being near her. That 6 classic cheap drama tropes all crammed into this episode, Come on, writers! Let this just be a case of quickly getting them out of your system and over with! Please don't end up relying on cheap stereotypical plot tropes going forward!
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Nice episode that focused on their relationship as a couple, with both some tension as well as growing closeness. The moment at her mother's grave was touching.
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This episode formally establishes the pathetic Prince Li as an obsessed, pathetic, unrequited love interest who makes an utter fool of himself trying to entrap and pursue Ye Li. Fortunately Ye Li flat out rejects him but just the very existence of this trope is always a disappointment because it just feels like a lazy crutch for writers to fill episodes with the same stereotypical events and scenes that we get in so many c-dramas. Plus, the rendering of this trope is just poorly done. The idea that Prince Li has any sort of fully-formed romantic interest in Ye Li is just weak because she was a child way back when she left the capital to go to the mountains and he hasn't seen her in over 8 years. And the bit where he accuses her of killing Lu Chang on behalf of him (Prince Li) , saying he knew it was her because he, "knows her methods" is just really bad writing and makes no logical sense. How on earth would Prince Li, "know her methods" since she was a child back when he last knew her and her current methods would almost certainly have been formed during her training at the Li Academy during the years she was away. This is a pretty dumb plot hole. It was an also just weirdly dumb for her to outright admit she killed Lu, though not for Prince Li. The whole scene was just a car wreck after so much good writing in this show up until now. I really hope they don't wast tons of screen time on this stupid subplot as I went from absolutely loving this show to suddenly having a lot of doubts.
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