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Welcome back to episodes 12 and 13! Please be generous with spoiler tags with content beyond ep 13, as well as Blood of Youth content (for friends who have yet to watch it).

🎵 If I were a rich man 🎵

Su Changhe and Su Muyu's possession of the key earns them a free guided tour of Anhe's stash of assets, as held by the Yellow Springs Pawnshop. As Shopkeeper Wang proudly shows off the collection to them, we see Changhe checking out the value of the items and the robustness of the pawnshop's security measures. Muyu keeps a broader perspective - what this collection means for Anhe's relationship with the pawnshop and other organisations in the jianghu.

Their Achilles' heels (of a kind): family and material power

They encounter the Three Officials, who hold a token from the pawnshop, and Shopkeeper Wang reveals the catch: one must have both key and token in order to redeem anything from the collection.

Zhuang Hanyan, is that you?

The Officials also give a glimpse of the next part of the mystery behind Anhe, with a mysterious invitation to meet a man in Tianqi City. Muyu and Changhe cook up a plan.

Context-setting

Muyu enters Tianqi City alone and does a reminiscence tour of places he once visited with his father.

The Three Officials are ambushed on their way to Tianqi City. Surprise - they have names, and the Water Official (my favourite!) wants to reclaim his identity as Su Henshui. Fun fact: 恨 hen can mean resentment, hatred, or regret. Hatred towards the water? Waters of hatred?

Su Changhe returns to Yellow Springs and adopts Hongying the boat person into the Mu family. The Shopkeeper tells him that the Officials gave him a fake token, and that the real token is still in the hands of the Shadow Sect.

Su Zhe gathers intel for Muyu - the Shadow Sect is opposed to Prince Langya, who set up new security devices (e.g. the Four Guardians) that have robbed the Shadow Sect of its power. The true motive of the shenanigans from the start of the show was to eliminate Tang Lianyue, one of the Guardians, and everyone else was just collateral damage 🤷

The real state of affairs

We meet a new antagonist: Zhuo Qing, former Great Eunuch, who also has some kind of accent

Muyu decides to bring forward his meeting with the Shadow Sect. Yi Bo threatens him with the Shadow Sect's long history of control over Anhe, and reveals the heretofore unknown existence of Wanjuan Tower, where the Shadow Sect stores dossiers on Anhe members. He also takes the chance to give Anhe a new task: assassinating Prince Langya.

Muyu responds that a) it's really none of Anhe's business, being a non-jianghu matter; and b) it's not a state affair, but a matter of personal desire. He tries to negotiate with Yi Bo to sever the relationship between Anhe and the Shadow Sect in return for the assassination, but Yi Bo refuses. Before leaving, Muyu threatens that if the Shadow Sect leaks Anhe's details, they will in turn come to Tianqi City and destroy the Sect.

Muyu and Su Zhe discuss their next moves: how to use the planned assassination to take down the Shadow Sect and to destroy Anhe's records in Wanjuan Tower.

Yi Bo tasks the Three Officials with capturing Muyu, so that he can have leverage to bargain with Changhe. Yi Bo acknowledges that the First Prince is likely to cast the Sect aside, so he wants to strike before that happens.

jiao fang si~~

Fun interlude: Su Zhe takes Muyu to a pleasure house to "test" him. Our boy is super uncomfortable (I feel you) and only wants to listen to music. It's a trap, they are separated, and the Officials ambush Muyu in the street.

The final bosses?

We have a fun 3 v 1 fight that turns into a 3 v 4 (that Immortal Brush power looks super cool), but somehow Muyu still ends up captured and in the Shadow Sect prison. Zhuo Qing and the First Prince are rightfully skeptical of this "win".

Some thoughts

Now that we've left Kansas the jianghu, there's less fighting and more thinking & talking, as is the city way.

Su Changhe is supposed to be strategically gifted so IDK why he's going around telling everyone that Su Muyu is his ultimate weakness. Did he really take "the strong can afford to be naive" to heart?

Team work makes the dream work

Muyu and Changhe do make an excellent team. Muyu takes the lead on matters of diplomacy, and Changhe has the sharp edge that makes things happen. Muyu has a natural tendency to inspire affection and loyalty, Changhe has cunning and ambition. It was very self-aware of Changhe to cast Muyu in the role of Patriarch in their original promise - he would be a lot better at supporting Muyu than Muyu at supporting him.

On Changhe: he's got that frightful adolescent blend of naive idealism and razor-sharp cynicism. Both he and Muyu think that this is their last obstacle to creating their new Anhe (we all know that it's not, because there's 27 episodes to go), but Changhe is definitely much less resilient (hopeful) than Muyu, and his idealism won't survive another seemingly insurmountable hurdle.

Questions

1. What do you think of the Water Official and his dubious loyalties? How do you think he might change the trajectory of the plot?
2. Are these our final bosses?
3. For the BOY watchers - any speculation on how >!we might go from here to Prince Langya's eventual death?!<