Gu Chusheng’s jealousy sees him walk into the drinks place to confront Wei Yun about his presence, suggesting the inappropriateness of him being with Chu Yu at the place so late at night. Wei Yun shoots back that he’s just there to take her back home before questioning his presence at the place when he should be focused on investigating the assassin at the Court of Judicial Review—which Gu Chusheng assures he’ll report the findings of to His Majesty once he discovers the truth.
Gu Chusheng speaks about how the place used to be something she shared with him. There was a proud tone initially, meant to cause some jealousy in Wei Yun, before it dropped to a nostalgic one to refer to the relationship they had.
Wei Yun becomes resigned to the fact that Gu Chusheng and Chu Yu had a past together, whereas it was just a one-sided relationship with him. But the past is not the present. Wei Yun counters with bringing up the fact Gu Chusheng has a wife by asking whether he was upset before he and his wife had a fight. He uses this to suggest Gu Chusheng return home to deal with it (instead of standing there bothering him) and end their interaction.
Gu Chusheng’s not done. He was there to dissuade Wei Yun from pursuing Chu Yu and bluntly reminds him of the fact that Chu Yu is Wei Yun’s wife. He questions Wei Yun about whether he cares about this fact. He accuses Wei Yun of confining her despite Wei Jun already having died.
Wei Yun, firstly, makes sure Gu Chusheng knows his family does care about Chu Yu, telling him that she was one of them the moment she walked through the gates of his family’s home. He then fires back with the fact Gu Chusheng’s married and wonders whether he was thinking of divorcing his wife for Chu Yu. He then moves to argue that they both know that the marriage between Chu Yu and Wei Jun was just a cover. Chu Yu didn’t marry Wei Jun because she loved him and couldn’t see why Chu Yu couldn’t be his wife.
Wei Yun’s words had Gu Chusheng raise his voice, angry at Wei Yun for having such a thought. He seemed to have forgotten that Wei Yun wasn’t disregarding Chu Yu’s marriage to his brother and stubbornly going after Chu Yu now that Wei Jun’s no longer alive, but that the marriage was never real, nor were there any feelings between them.
That had Gu Chusheng silent, unable to counter this fact. Chu Yu had walked over then as well. Her choice to stand on Wei Yun’s side and accept his support when they both reached out to help was seen as yet another defeat against Wei Yun. His final defeat came when it was Chu Yu who had suggested Wei Yun return to their home.
As Wei Yun left with Chu Yu, Gu Chusheng sadly laughs to himself. The sight of the wine (that was revealed to be called Rose Dew) was a drink he had with Chu Yu in the past. She had once said that because the rose flower represented lasting forever and they had Rose Dew together, it meant they’d always be together. But now, not only were they no longer together, Chu Yu had ordered the drink to have with Wei Yun.
Chu Yu’s mind is still on the battle that led to her father’s death and her brother suffering debilitating injuries when she and Wei Yun return home. She rambles on dejectedly about how he could have been a great hero fighting on the battlefield. Unwilling to think of her brother as not being a hero, she corrects it. She declares with a raised thumbs-up that he is still a hero, causing her to stumble backwards. Wei Yun reflexively moves to grip her arm to steady her. Despite being drunk, Chu Yu is sober enough to refuse Wei Yun’s help because—as she had claimed earlier—she never gets drunk.
So, as Wei Yun had Wei Qiu (who had greeted them at the courtyard) go get Wanyue to bring Chu Yu back to her room, he continued to watch Chu Yu persist in walking on her own and Wei Yun quietly at her side, trying to stabilise her with a light grip on her arm.
With the Chinese flowering crabapple near, Chu Yu refuses Wei Yun’s support again and goes off to hug the trunk of the tree. Wei Yun keeps watch. The gentle gaze of Wei Yun seemed to capture Chu Yu, as her gaze lingered on him for a brief moment before she switched her gaze to the crabapple blossoms, noting how beautiful they were.
Chu Yu plucks a branch of blossoms and starts performing a dance. Around and around she spun as the crabapple blossoms rained down. It has Wei Yun mesmerised and softly mutter how beautiful her dance was.
Chu Yu comes to a stop, and the branch of blossoms transforms into a sword. She wants to see whether Wei Yun’s fighting skills have improved and invites him to spar with her. Clumsily stumbling towards him, her branch of crabapple blossoms collides with Wei Yun’s chest. The branch of crabapple blossoms returns to being just a branch of flowers, which she now presents to Wei Yun.
“Flowers for you,” Chu Yu says. As Wei Yun accepts them with a look of surprise on his face, Chu Yu confuses Wei Yun with her next words: “You’re more charming than the flowers.”
At first, Wei Yun smiles hearing these words from her, but the next second, his brows knit together into a frown. He’s thinking that maybe these words weren’t for him but for Wei Jun.
He moves to cover her eyes with a hand and asks her who it is she sees in her mind, perhaps in her heart, rather than who she sees standing before her at that current moment.
Chu Yu removes his hand and begins to answer with “Wei”, but that’s as far as she goes, as she suddenly vomits onto his shoulder.
When Wei Yun returns to his room, he reveals his intention of liking Chu Yu without the expectation of having his feelings reciprocated. As he placed the branch of the crabapple blossoms in a vase, treasuring the gift from Chu Yu, he revealed a selfless kind of love, where he’ll be there for her—be her safe haven—so she doesn’t have to face things alone. He wants to provide a place where she can bloom freely.
He’s not ignoring the fact that public opinion won’t be kind. Wei Yun going after his oldest brother’s supposed wife is unthinkable. He tells Wei Qiu (who was concerned) that he knows his limits. Wei Qiu was concerned about Wei Yun, but it’s likely that when Wei Yun said this, he was primarily thinking about not bringing trouble that could end up hurting Chu Yu because of his feelings.
Chu Yu is showing signs of being a bit interested in Wei Yun. The next morning, Chu Yu learns from Wanyue that Jiang Chun’s gone and held a small banquet to invite a group of ladies for Wei Yun to choose from as a potential candidate for marriage. Chu Yu shows up despite not needing to and claims she’s there to enjoy the fun. However, there’s no amusement in her expression when she takes her seat. Her gaze is kept ahead, coming off as uninterested (but could actually be quite interested internally).
One of the ladies—Miss Zheng—takes the initiative to approach Wei Yun to have him try her homemade pastries. (She’s taken an interest in Wei Yun ever since the auction banquet that was held at Qinxi Valley in Episode 14.) Wei Yun stares at it, not wanting to accept the pastry. Instead, he passes the decision onto Chu Yu.
Chu Yu encourages Wei Yun to take it, expressing that she didn’t see any reason for refusing. To show further support, she throws in a compliment towards Miss Zheng on her beauty.
The scene all comes off as a test of one’s feelings and an act to show no interest—Wei Yun being the one doing the testing while Chu Yu is the one doing the act of showing indifference towards Wei Yun.
Miss Zheng seems to read it as needing to get past Chu Yu before she’s able to have Wei Yun consider her. So, she turns to Chu Yu and offers her the pastry. Chu Yu accepts a pastry and holds onto it. She doesn’t eat it, giving it to her maid at the end of their exchange.
With Chu Yu not refusing a pastry, Wei Yun is forced to take one himself. He’s watched by Chu Yu, her eyes tracking the action that she decided for him. After seeing this, Chu Yu returns to stare blankly ahead, back to an act of a different kind of indifference.
Unable to get help from Chu Yu, Wei Yun knocks himself down by telling the ladies he’s not a good choice for a husband. He reminds them of the reality of marrying someone like him. He’s a general of Great Sui, which means he needs to always be ready to die on the battlefield and could die anytime, like his father and brothers.
It sees Chu Yu tell him off for thinking about himself in such a way. Jiang Chun jumps in and agrees, discouraging Wei Yun from thinking like this. Even though Wei Yun’s goal was to get out of this situation of picking a potential wife, it was not just a hypothetical situation but a situation that’s very real and a situation that seriously concerns the ladies. They didn’t want to become a widow so young.
To make his point and put an end to the banquet, Wei Yun turns to Jiang Chun to have her see the fact of the matter. He tells her that she should know exactly how it feels since she’s been through it.
Jiang Chun doesn’t give up on getting Wei Yun on the path of marriage, though. After the guests leave, she asks Chu Yu if any of the ladies caught her liking. As this matter concerned Wei Yun, her answer is that whether he likes them is what matters.
Jiang Chun’s interest in what Chu Yu thought about the ladies at the banquet is not simply to get her opinion on who appealed to her. She appears to have picked up something between Chu Yu and Wei Yun. When Wei Yun had passed the decision on whether Wei Yun should take a pastry, Jiang Chun was looking between the two and appeared to be wondering what was going on between them. After the guests left, Wei Yun’s gaze was on Chu Yu the whole time, which Jiang Chun had noticed.
After hearing Chu Yu’s response, she followed with a question about whether Chu Yu was okay with looking at finding a suitable partner for Wei Yun. Jiang Chun seemed to be looking for how she regarded Wei Yun.
With Chu Yu telling her that she’s fine with things, Jiang Chun has Chu Yu keep an eye out for suitable candidates for Wei Yun. It sees Wei Yun attempt to make his earlier point before and tells her this matter of marriage cannot be rushed. Jiang Chun rejects his point this time, countering that not everyone will be as fearful as he thinks. That is, there will be someone who will marry him despite the reality that he’s a general and can die on the battlefield.
Jiang Chun moves to use Chu Yu and her love for Wei Jun as her example of someone who’s willing, not knowing that this example isn’t the best example. She had called Chu Yu’s love deep and rare.
Wei Yun doesn’t refute it, agreeing that such a woman was indeed hard to find. It alludes to the lie about Chu Yu loving Wei Jun, but the dejected tone in his voice suggests he’s probably thinking about his feelings for Chu Yu and how she’s one in a thousand ladies who caught his heart, who he can’t show feelings for freely and openly.
This tone isn’t missed by Jiang Chun. She turns to face him. She’s likely sensed Wei Yun has someone he likes, and it could be Chu Yu. Wei Yun’s assurance that he has his own plans regarding his own marriage has Jiang Chun ask whether he’s confirming he has someone he likes. As she asked this, Wei Yun’s gaze had briefly looked at Chu Yu, which caused Jiang Chun’s gaze to track to the side where Chu Yu sat.
After a short moment of silence, Wei Yun brought himself back to his senses and denied liking anyone. “She was overthinking things,” he tells her. Hearing this, Jiang Chun reminds him of his duty as the Marquis of Zhenguo, the backbone of their family. He needs to think about marriage so he can rebuild and carry on the lineage of the Wei family.
Towards the end of the episode, a day after the banquet, Wei Yun gives Chu Yu a hint to the fact that she’s the one he likes, but she doesn’t pick up on his meaning—or maybe she’s refusing to pick up on his meaning and is attempting to deny what appears to be an attraction towards him.
The day after the banquet, Wei Yun asks Chu Yu why she made him take the pastry Miss Zheng made. Chu Yu’s response? “Would you refuse it if I told you to? When have you been so obedient to me?”
Chu Yu’s response can be taken as her simply stating facts about the relationship between them. They did buttheads—“did” being the operative word. Since Chu Yu revealed her motives, they haven’t been on opposing sides, so Chu Yu’s response comes off as if she’s subconsciously interested in hearing whether Wei Yun would refuse Miss Zheng because of her.
When Wei Yun implies that he would have refused Miss Zheng’s pastry had she told him to, Chu Yu appears to move on to seeing whether his focus on the matter is because he’s angry she didn’t help him out of the situation or that it’s because of her—at least this is one way we’re seeing it:
“I understand now. You just don’t like those young ladies, so you kept giving me looks, hoping I’d help you solve this,” she says. “You’re so angry because I didn’t catch your drift, right?”
Another way we can interpret Chu Yu’s response is she senses Wei Yun’s feelings and is trying to reject them. She could also be trying to deny feelings within herself.
Believing in her own understanding of the situation, she moves to try to make it up to him, not responding to Wei Yun, who had expressed his disbelief in the way she had interpreted the situation.
“How about this? Tell me what kind of young lady you like, and I’ll help you.”
Wei Yun doubts her sincerity. His gaze was on her the whole time, watching her reaction quite closely. As she offered the help, her eyes were swinging around, not daring to look directly at him when she made the offer.
She didn’t honestly want to help him, which made Wei Yun decide he’d try her with how she’d respond if he were to encroach on her personal space. He first asks her whether she really wanted to help her, as if warning her that her answer would mean taking responsibility for that offer.
Hearing her persist with her offer—again in her half-hearted and unconvincing way—he starts to slowly take steps towards her, causing Chu Yu to take matching steps back as she starts being affected by his proximity to her.
Leaning in, Wei Yun asks, “Do I need to tell you who I like?” His gaze straight at hers, he challenges her to read his heart.
The distance Wei Yun left between him and Chu Yu was a dangerous one. It was vulnerable to discovering one’s thoughts and feelings—not just Wei Yun’s, but Chu Yu’s. For a bit of time, she stood, not moving and appearing to ponder the answer to his question. Seemingly catching on, she turns away as if troubled by the discovery the kind of woman he likes is her. But as she denies needing him to tell her who he likes because the matter has nothing to do with her, a frown crosses her expression, as if confused by her own internal response to him.
Chu Yu appears to have an attraction towards Wei Yun. However, it might be at a subconscious level at this point. The scene comes off so much like she had wanted to find out whether Wei Yun would refuse Miss Zheng for her. When he said he would, she appeared to retreat and reject Wei Yun’s feelings as she explained it away as him being angry with her for not helping him avoid marriage.
Having said that, it could be that she wasn’t convinced that she could be a reason he would refuse Miss Zheng and subconsciously wanted to confirm it. She used the excuse of wanting to help him find the kind of woman he likes and suggested he tell her what type that is in order to see if she matched, which saw her consciously sense Wei Yun’s feelings and maybe a bit of her own, too.
That gaze from Wei Yun sure is a dangerous one. He didn’t just look at her right into her eyes to let her discover his feelings for her, but his eyes also moved left and right as if he were searching for signs Chu Yu was clicking on. Perhaps he was also trying to look into her gaze to find out what she thought of him. Perhaps he had sensed Chu Yu could possibly reciprocate and was looking for her to understand her own feelings. The way he moved back and tilted his head to watch her from the side feels so much like he’s asking in his mind, “Are you sure who I like is of no concern to you?”
Tuantuan makes a move to express her feelings for Chu Linyang. During another acupuncture session, Tuantuan accidentally causes a bit of pain whilst lost in her thoughts about the upcoming coming-of-age birthday in a month’s time. Drawing near is also her marriage to Crown Prince Li Huan, which Emperor Chunde is said to have started preparing for, and something she wants to avoid.
Tuantuan tells Chu Linyang how she would love to have the same courage as Chu Yu when she stood high on the rooftop in front of everyone and declared her desire to marry Wei Jun—supposedly the man she liked. Chu Linyang doesn’t correct her about the truth of the situation. He only suggests it’s not as it appears, telling her that Chu Yu has her own troubles and Chu Yu shouldn’t be envied.
It’s not so much envy but the beginning of an attempt to confess her own feelings for Chu Linyang in an indirect way. She confesses that her reason for wanting to treat him wasn’t so much because she wanted to thank Chu Yu for her help with Li Huan but because of the above reason. She makes it sound like a kind of transaction. She treats and cures him. He pays her back by marrying her. But it’s quite obvious it’s a cover for her actual wants. Just before, she expressed wanting to be like Chu Yu and marry the man she likes, making it clear that she’d only be willing to marry if she liked someone. Since she’s proposing to marry Chu Linyang, then it means she likes him.
The proposal looks to have frightened Chu Linyang off. He rejects Tuantuan’s request, telling her that he’s unable to agree to such a way of repaying her. His rejection doesn’t seem to be because he doesn’t understand her feelings but because he doesn’t appear to feel the same way at this point.
When Tuantuan becomes a bit more direct and asks whether he’s rejecting her because he doesn’t like her, he responds that he regards her in the same way as he regards Chu Yu and Chu Jin. In short, Tuantuan is like a sister to him.
Pain is seen on his face as he says all of this to her. It’s clear he doesn’t want to be this harsh, but there’s an obvious intention to push her away and crush any hope she might hold on to between them.
He then reverts to addressing Tuantuan as “Miss Song” and refuses to return to addressing her as Tuantuan when she asks whether he could continue to address her in the familiar way he had been before this scene between them. He then requests she head back home.
Tuantuan’s hit a roadblock with Chu Linyang, but Song Wenchang is making quite a bit of progress with Chu Jin. She’s accepted the invite to join him in a game of pitch pot back at Qinxi Valley (Episode 14). After spending a bit of time playing pitchpot, Chu Jin agrees to go on to trying horse riding.
Chu Jin had enjoyed Song Wenchang’s company so much that despite returning with a sore backside, she looks to be interested in making a husband out of him. As well as having a top-notch family background, top-notch looks and character, she liked the fact that he didn’t have great ambitions, which means he could be tamed to be obedient to her.
Finally, ending the episode, Yao Jue is hit and held by the neck for helping Wei Yun. Yao Yong had let her off with letting Wei Yun go, but going into his study without permission? That was going too far.
Yao Jue denies going in there, claiming she’s been in the courtyard every day and not seen a single person, let alone go into his study. Yao Yong lets go of her neck and pushes her to the floor. He looked to be about to start kicking her, but fortunately, Yao Yong was interrupted by an announcement that Wei Yun and Chu Yun had dropped by with Yao Jue’s little boy, Wei Lingmo.
Wei Lingmo had been missing his mother and had been asking to see her. The boy was told that Chu Yu had written to have her come visit, but the visit didn’t happen. (This looks to be referring to the time when Yao Jue was told to cut off ties with the Wei family, or else she and her son could one day see themselves die under Yao Yong’s hands.) Seeing as Lingmo was missing his mother so much, Chu Yu told him they can visit her since she can’t visit them.
Yao Yong tries to prevent them from seeing Yao Jue, claiming she’s caught a cold. However, he was forced to take Lingmo to see his mother through the door after the young boy begged him in order to keep up his cordial act in front of guests.
