The Apothecary Diaries S2 Ep 17 & 18

Episode 17

With Maomao’s disappearance, Jinshi finds himself on a race against time to find her. There is much at stake, because if she remains missing for too long, as per the rules, she’ll be punished. But nobody at the time expected things to blow up the way it did. Everything has finally begun to come together. And it thanks to her hidden clue she had stashed away, trusting Maomao the cat would be drawn to it, and in hopes for Luomen to pick up on it (which he did).

But Maomao’s hidden note (which she used the distilled alcohol for) was a bit difficult to decipher, so they sought out Lady Gyokoyou and her ladies-in-waiting. It was Seki-u who was able to recognize the character “Sui”. The answer being Shisui (the servant girl), as she’s the only one who had actually met her, and knew her name apart from Xiaolan. However Jinshi had also picked up the face “Sui” also pointed to Suiren, but couldn’t put a face to her name right away. But later they did manage to confirm their suspicions: There was never a Shisui registered among the servants, and one of the new eunuch’s had also gone missing.

In the meantime, Maomao has been taken quite far away. On their way to their village (which was a fortress), Maomao came to realize that Suisui was never a hostage to begin with. She was able to expose them by throwing a snake at Suiren because Suisui had pointedly situated herself between the two, removed it and tried to calm her down when Suiren broke down into panic attacks.

Maomao did however finally arrive the conclusion that Shisui is actually Lady Loulan. It is important to note though, for a long time, Maomao really had no way of knowing or even truly suspecting Shisui was Lady Loulan simply because she was the one concubine she personally had never met nor had to deal with. But for a while now, her suspicions that Shisui was nobility much in part due to her high education (a servant, being able to read and write) and having access to things like full book of paper to create her textbook on insects.

And that’s not the only thing she’s come to discover. Upon arriving to the village, noticed a number of things, notably not only catching sight of one of two the foreign envoy ladies, but also their guard. Suiren even confirms this by revealing she has been working behind the scenes since her resurrection, suggesting yes, she has been doing things related to them.

Although Maomao taken out of the rear-palace, the moment she had exposed Shisui and Suiren working together, they sort of stopped treat her as a hostage. Surprisingly they only took away her alcohol, but otherwise let her keep her hair stick that Jinshi had given her. She was also introduced to Kyou-u, a cute little kid who tries to act high and mighty, but is actually a good kid at heart.

However there’s one problem that’s pressing Maomao’s mind, she has lost track how many days it’s been since she has left the rear palace. But thanks to Jinshi, at least we know that she’s been missing for at least ten days now.

Episode 18

Going back to the Rear Palace, we saw Jinshi experience some moments of weakness when he was caught off guard and stunned speechless, but also lost his cool.  The first instance was when he went to investigate the graves at the north’s clinic. He had spotted Shenlu praying at a grave, and had stopped her when he sniffed the distilled alcohol he knew Maomao had been carrying on her. The confrontation led to an awkward and tense situation where Shenlu was equally stunned to see how much he resembled the late Emperor, to the point that she called him out for why is someone of his status pretending to be an eunuch– something nobody, except for a select few, knew.

But what also really shook him was the fact someone actually was able to pin-point whom he had taken after in the family line which ended up being his grandfather, the late emperor. Because when he was young, he was gossip of being an legitimate child. Nobody believed or thought the Emperor would have bedded with Anshi at her age (who was near her thirties- but as we also know, Anshi assaulted the Emperor in revenge). And to further complicate that, Jinshi (who’s unaware to have been swapped at birth) was always haunted by the fact he knew he didn’t look anything like his mother nor his “brother” (actually his father).

It gone on long enough that he had actually come to believe the rumours of illegitimacy which contributed to the catalyst to his motives of escaping the position of crown prince. That’s why he had struck the deal with the Emperor to work as an eunuch. But now that he has received a form of validation that he’s actually is royalty, now he’s left wondering what was the point of all that struggle. Unfortunately he doesn’t really have the time to reflect on that at the moment. There are more pressing matters at hand, and that’s finding Maomao and dealing with this evolving crisis.

Thanks to Shenlu’s confrontation, and having been seen visiting Taihou’s grave, Jinshi was able to put together all the pieces that revealed a stunning connection. Taihou is connected to Shishou, the court lady who used to tell ghost stories was the lady-in-waiting for one of the concubines, who was rumoured to have had a baby with a doctor, who was expelled from the rear palace with the child, (and that child is believed to be Suiren). The concubine that Taihou served was later given to Shishou, and gave birth to a daughter, who is Loulan (who we now know is Shisui).

But things quickly snowballed from there, and that’s when Jinshi actually lost his cool again. The moment he noticed the one standing before him was not in fact Lady Loulan, the gloves were off. He dropped his charming eunuch facade and turned what was initially planned to be a peaceful questioning, to a quite an intimidating interrogation– to the point the poor girl standing in for Loulan actually wet herself, oof.

Jinshi has always found it very particular how Loulan would always wear flashy outfits and her ladies-in-waiting all had matching make-up, to the point he likened them to foxes. Additionally, he has always kept very close tabs on how many ladies-in-waiting the concubines have, their names, the details of their faces– to the point it’s actually insane how sharp he is to remember all of that considering how many people work in the Rear Palace. But it’s thanks to that he was able to spot the flaw in the disguise (a poorly concealed mole), and pick up the fact among Loulan’s entourage, they were short of one person. This exposed the fact that Loulan was in-fact no longer in the rear palace, and this had been planned all long, and she had no intention of returning. And at that moment, Loulan had been stripped of his status as concubine, because the punishment of leaving the rear palace is far too great.

And then a new development that is related to the on-going crisis arose. Kan Lahan (Lakan’s adopted son, who I must say absolutely sounded exactly as I had imagined him sound like hahaha), had been investigating where the feifa had come by going through the national treasury records. Doing so, he had made notes of irregularities among the receipts, such as the sudden and unexplained rise in costs for grains and metals. With no natural disasters or plagues ravaging the country, not any major projects that’d require that much metals, it revealed that someone had been pocketing the excess profits and acquiring a lot of metals. So now what’s left to do is follow the money to finally expose the culprit. But it goes without say, the wordless threat that can be read between the lines of this development: Someone is preparing for a War.

With that said, Episode 18 was definitely an info dump, but it was a crucial episode of Jinshi beginning the process of tying everything that’s been building up to this point together! It was also quite fun to see an entire episode focusing on Jinshi for an exchange. We got to see a lot of different sides of him, especially when put under stress. He does it best to remain cool under fire, but when he does lose it, we saw how he’ll resort to intimidating those who must be confronted. The only other time we’ve seen him use intimidation was dealing with the troublesome lady-in-waiting, but that one was much more controlled. This time, because Maomao’s on the line, Jinshi’s a lot more emotionally riled up.

And apart from all the chaos from this week’s episode, we also had some positive developments. Lady Gyokuyou has begun her labour earlier than expected, but thankfully Maomao’s treatment has helped her avoid a breech birth. With Luomen around, she’s in good hands. And for a dose a comedy, much to Jinshi’s dismay, Maomao’s disappearance had be leaked to Master Lakan, and as one would expect, he went crazy over it to the point he damaged the palace’s gates and poor Lahan was left to deal with footing the bill to fix it!