Li Ge goes to Zi Qing immediately after he gets to his house and finds her lying on her bed, sick. He asks his eunuch to check her condition, and the eunuch confirms that she does have tuberculosis. 

While he is observing her, our female lead then asks him about the dagger attached to his waist, and he tells her that it is a keepsake from his mother. He adds that if she wants to look at it tomorrow, she has to marry into his family.

Later on, Li Ge has a discussion with his eunuch and personal guard. The eunuch tells him that even though our female lead had absorbed the poison, it seems her body automatically neutralized it, so she must be a special person.

He escorts her to her family’s house to receive the decree of marriage. While they are there, his brother, his sister-in-law, her younger sister, and her whole family are all watching, waiting for her to die.

Our male lead and his brother have a little argument, and then the brother leaves to report everything that happened to his mother. His mother tells him that he was rash in leaving the place, but since that’s already done, what they need to do now is just wait for our female lead to die so they can put their plan in motion.

This is when we learn that the second prince’s mother’s plan is to kill our female lead and then blame her step-sisters. Once both daughters are disposed of, the chancellor won’t have any way of marrying into the royal family or into the mansion of the fourth prince.

Our female lead pulls out all the stops to make sure that everyone genuinely thinks she’s ill, and she’s able to keep up the ruse until the Imperial edict arrives. She’s about to receive it when our male lead’s sister-in-law tries to stop her.

The minute the edict is placed in her hand, she stops pretending, and everyone is shocked at what happened. But the prince isn’t even fazed because he already knew she had been faking it. I have to give it to her—this was excellent planning on her part because she was able to make all her opposition relax, thinking they had already won.

Back at the palace, the king is freaking out because his plan didn’t work out. Of course, the object of his anger is the second prince’s mother, the queen. He then asks the queen what he can do to remedy the situation, and she tells him that he should revoke the marriage edict. 

But he says this won’t be possible because, firstly, his word is gold, and revoking it would damage his pride, and secondly, a king from a neighboring country, Qiling, is visiting, and that king loves our male lead.

He finishes quarreling with the queen by telling her to pay more attention to a particular case against the family of our female lead’s deceased fiancé. In doing this, the king has decided to use the queen as his own sword, intending to gradually diminish the power of the chancellor by wrecking his family.

For the second time, the people of the mysterious island are brought up, and this is when our male lead receives some information from his eunuch, who tells him something about a mutated race of people who had attacked the continent sometime in the past. Somehow, they are able to link these peculiar traits to a king of another neighboring city who has been hard at work looking for islanders who are immune to poison.

Later that day, the prince goes to Zi Qing’s room to consummate their marriage. She tells him that she wants the dagger first, but he says that will come after the marriage is consummated.

They are about to get into a little argument when his subordinate tells him there is an urgent report, so he leaves. Our female lead, though, is too anxious to find out more about the dagger, so she decides to look for it in his room. She is still searching for it when he comes back in, so she hides under the bed.

The interesting thing about this episode is that we can definitely see our male and female leads’ relationship improving. They are slowly approaching—if not friendship—then at least enthusiastic collaboration, since it seems they want the same thing.

But his suspicions are definitely piling up day by day, and I love this because it’s pushing the plot forward. I was particularly intrigued by that little tidbit about the mutated islanders being used as mercenaries for a neighboring king.

There’s definitely a lot that is still going to happen, and I can see the potential in everything—from the politics to the romance between our two leads. I am definitely invested in their story already.

Have you been watching this drama? Let me know in the comments if this is something you have on your watchlist or plan to watch sometime in the future. We can chat about it!