Pursuit of Jade: Ep 26 Recap - Always Tell Your Wife the Truth
Previous Recaps: Ep 1-5, Ep 6-9, Ep 10-11, Ep 12-13, Ep 14-15, Ep 16-17, Ep 18-19, Ep 20-21, Ep 22-23, Ep 24, Ep 25,
Novel fan translation: Chasing Jade
Main characters:
Zhang Ling He as Yan Zheng/Xie Zheng, title: Marquis of Wu'an, courtesy name: Jiuheng
Tian Xi Wei as Fan Changyu/???
Ep 26: The Princess shows up athte punishment and tries to kneel and share responsibility which freaks everyone who knows her identity out. Then in runs Gongsun Yin to try to smooth over the whole thing by saying men were coming to rescue Sui Yuanqing and Fan Changyu prevented his escape. The poor man pretending to be the Marquis:
Everyone is allowed off with a warning. All the soldiers are gossiping about Fan Changyu's heroic deeds. These are being wildly exaggerated as it goes on. They also talk about how her husband is weak and dying. One of the Pig Butcher Squad guys tries to talk to her but chickens out. Fan Changyu does some cooking and explains to the princess that she understands that she messed up.
Fan Changyu brings food to Xie Zheng and then measures his armour with her hands (I see your plots). She says she's not angry about the punishment and only wants to beat Sui Yuanqing as much as she wants afterwards. Xie Zheng promises her that. Xie Zheng asks if Fan Changyu would be okay with him being promoted to marquis, and she says that would be cool because then she'd be a marchoness.
Gongsun Yin and Xie Zheng discuss that their hostage (Sui Yuanqing) might not be that valuable anymore because the enemy troops fired arrows at him. They anticipate a battle. This is exactly what the enemy army is discussing:
They are in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, worried they'll be in trouble no matter what they do.
The youngest Pig Butcher Squad member Fan Changyu his savings in case he dies. She scolds him for saying unlucky things and promises to get them all back home safely.
Please don't be ominous foreshadows
If they kill this cutie, I will riot
Gongsun Yin gives the princess the Go manual she wanted way back at the academy. He says he'll be fine. Then he gets a princess hug.
Fan Changyu drugs Xie Zheng's medicine so she can take his place in the army. Which is, in my humble opinion, a hilarious and actually pretty foreseeable consequence for faking his identity and exaggerating his injury (he's fine). This is why you tell your wife that you are in fact, the person in charge, and kind of hard to replace.
One of Xie Zheng's men (Xie Wu) sees Fan Changyu and she admits to drugging Xie Zheng. He runs off to find the marquis and tells the Pig Butcher Squad to protect her. Gongsun Yin's army job is to dramatically play qin?
that is Xie Wei's job (Story of Kunning Palace)
The battle begins
Fan Changyu's helmet falls off almost immediately, because helmets are not sexy (this is a costume pet peeve of mine, sorry. Also common foot soldiers would have spears not swords because swords were SUPER expensive... I'm done, I'm done, I promise). Huge burning catapult balls and arrows are raining down on them. Back at camp, Xie Zheng wakes up and then cuts himself so he can fully wake up
he remembers not to traumatize the kid
Fan Changyu is doing well. Kudos to the director for making the battle look very scary and chaotic.
Fan Changyu sees Xie Wu being attacked by the Big Bad Sexy General (Shi Hu) of the other side:
this guy (I'm told some people find him very attractive)
They fight. He breaks her butcher knife but she epically defeats him! They won!
I will wait patiently for the beautiful GIFs to be made
The Marquis of Wu'an shows up and Fan Changyu finally knows the truth. He grabs her onto his horse and rides away
One more shot of Fan Changyu being epic:
Novel notes: So remember when Xie Zheng asked General He about the Fan family's real identity and he was like, "Nope." Here is the novel explanation of why (they really haven't foreshadowed her identity much at all in the drama, so I'll spoiler it)
!But Xie Zheng had now taken Fan Changyu as his wife, and the younger Fan daughter had been kidnapped by traitors who mistook her for Xie Zheng’s child. He Jingyuan couldn’t imagine what would happen to the two sisters once the truth was revealed. He intended to tell Xie Zheng the real identities of the Fan couple—but not now. At the very least, he needed to wait until both sisters were safely out of harm’s way.!<
!So basically, he was worried if Xie Zheng knew the truth, he wouldn't save our little Cutie.!<
I got to this part last night while reading and was like, "Ohhhhhhh"
Also, translation note! So remember how Changning said that her sister should sleep with her BIL last episode? No she didn't. I guess the wording in Chinese is a bit ambiguous but the sentence probably meant ""Ningniang (her nickname) is about to freeze to death! I was better off sleeping with Jiefu (BIL)"
As in, Xie Zheng was taking better care of Changning before her sister arrived at the camp. Here are some comments from iQIYI in Chinese:
This episode was amazing! Very excited for the confrontation tomorrow
Posted Mar 18, 2026, 11:27 AM UTC