The First Jasmine (Mo Li): Ep 31 Recap - It's So Dark in Here
Previous recaps: Ep 1-4, Ep 5/6, 7/8, 9/10, 11/12, 13/14, 15/16, 17/18, 19/20, 21/22, 23/24, 25/26, 27/28, 29, 30
Main characters:
Bai Lu as Ye Li
Cheng Lei as Mo Xiuyao/Prince Ding
Novel fan translation: Mo Li
Ep 31: We'll just start with some puppies before I tell you about 40 minutes of pure suffering.
The box had the paper for the package of pastries that Ye Li gave Mo Xiuyao before he went to prison. He tells her what is it and then he burns it. Somehow this was much worse than what I imagined.
He tells Ye Li that her debt is paid so she doesn't have to stay with him out of pity and guilt anymore. She doesn't seem to be able to speak. Then he writes a very kind mutual divorce letter which they both sign.
(I just learned about divorce in historical China, this is the "no fault divorce" version which is better for the woman. The other type is repudiation, which means she failed at one of the seven virtues and it would be very hard for her to marry again.)
Ye Li goes back to her room and imagines herself. She's told by her younger self to get Qingshuang back. She also gives herself the same advice she gave Mo Xiuyao all those episodes ago when he was depressed:
Then she departs, leaving a letter for Mo Xiuyao (which he doesn't read). She goes with Hallucination Maid and the master who lets her fight. The dead people.
Everyone at the Jingzhao Prefecture office is rewarded for their service. They are all happy but Mo Xiuyao is pissed off and yells at them to get back to work. He isn't even sleeping at home these days. Gu Zheng invites him out to drink, which he mostly refuses, but then decides to go. He gets completely hammered and then looks at home for Ye Li
He bought her favourite candy and everything...
real footage of me during this episode
In the morning, Mo Xiuyao discovers all the letters that Ye Li wrote and realizes that none of them were ever sent.
He goes to find Li Feibai and asks wtf is going on. Li Feibai is very angry that Ye Li went back to the mountain.
Li Feibai expects Mo Xiuyao to have figured out that Lishan is empty. Now, this is very unfair because Li Feibai himself also seemed to think Ye Li just had a weird habit of talking to an imaginary maid until she started making him look for a master who wasn't there. But I get that he's angry on her behalf.
Mo Xiuyao goes home and has flashbacks of what Ye Li said to him, which all makes sense now. But really, she doesn't even know herself that the mountain is empty, how was he supposed to figure this out? Anyway, now it's his turn to not be able to breath.
Mo Xiuyao's hair has gone completely grey overnight
is it bad if I think this is hot?
And now he has to ask the emperor for permission to go see his wife on the Forbidden Mountain
Routine Normal Emperor Requests
The emperor finds this pretty weird and wonders if it's a trick, the Empress Dowager sends her men with Mo Xiuyao to find out what is going on. We end with a joke about the eunuchs not being used to rough food which does not make us any less depressed.
Also! This episode, was A'Jin worried because he was watching his boss on a Greif Spiral or did the doctor tell him something a few episodes and Mo Xiuyao is dying or something. We don't know!
9 episodes left...
Analysis: I'm so ready for the takes blaming Mo Xiuyao for not realizing that Lishan mountain was dead because Li Feibai said he should have figured it out. But it's not really possible!
It is a massive leap to get from "my wife hallucinates a maid who was with her from childhood because she's lonely" to "the entire mountain is dead and she's been in solitary confinement for 6-7 years but she doesn't know this because of a mental block"
He always saw her writing letters to people on the mountain. She confabulated (this is when a patient doesn't know they are lying) about the mountain ALL THE TIME. Aside from the monkey thing, she mostly talks fondly about it. She just asked if they could visit to see the moon. MXY only knows about the maid, LFB knows about the secondary "alter" master and that is why he went to the mountain himself. He also seems to treat the maid as just a quirk at first.
There was no way MXY could have known! He probably thought she was lonely because he was distant at first, she left all her friends on the mountain, and she hates her family. He probably blamed himself and her obligation of guilt for the hallucinations. LFB was angry because he's Ye Li's friend, but he really didn't have any justification to be.
Posted Jun 24, 2026, 10:20 AM UTC