I enjoyed this episode but I don’t have anything new to say about it, except that when Mr Shisan was being sad because Mei Changsu looks nothing like Lin Shu, I suddenly remembered that part of the whole Confucian filial piety thing is that you’re not allowed to do any body modifications, because your body was given to you by your parents. You aren’t even allowed to cut your hair, which is why all the men have those amazing top knots. So Lin Shu’s changed appearance is not just weird and unsettling, it breaks a major cultural and religious taboo. When Consort Jing finally meets him and cries because “you used to look so like your parents”, she isn’t being massively tactless, as I used to think, she’s acknowledging the enormity of his sacrifice. And I think this is why MCS tells Mr Shisan, right after his outburst of sorrow, that his mother would be grateful for all Shisan has done for him. He’s trying to establish that the filial connection hasn’t been broken by his changed appearance.

MCS is certainly trying very hard to let EVERYONE know that he and Gong YU are NOT an item, no matter how many sachets of perfume she sends (is it just me or is Mr Shisan being a bit suggestive when he tells MCS the perfume will give him "sweet dreams?"). Earlier we had Consort Jing stitching pouches as a way of getting touch with Liyang, and now we have Gong Yu trying to communicate with MCS via embroidery - everything is just so much harder for the women.

The episode also contains one of my favourite lines, the one where Meng Zhi tells MCS to build a tunnel so he can have a secret rendezvous with Prince Jing and MCS says "Isn't there another way you could put that?" I have nothing new to say about it, but it deserves an honourable mention for being so funny.

Oh, one more thing. Li Gang says, after the assassins have attacked, that a snowy night is good for murder. Apparently in Chinese culture snow is a symbol of corruption because it covers everything up, so when Jingrui walks off through the falling snowflakes, it isn't just because that makes the scene look pretty. I find it really hard to overcome my Western association of snow with purity and beauty, which just goes to show how deeply ingrained these things are. I assume the snow imagery makes the scene hit a lot harder for Chinese viewers.

I think my favourite part of this episode is Mu of the Yard going around making enquiries into how all her rescuers happened to show up at Zhaoren Palace at the right time. I bet that even when she was thanking Prince Yu, she took the opportunity to slip in a couple of leading questions. She has a suspect in mind already – no doubt it wasn’t just the fact that MCS cared enough to have her rescued but that the person he asked for help from was Jingyan that got that bloodhound nose sniffing again. Her surprise when Prince Jing says it was Meng Zhi who sent him is hilarious. Then the two of them go off together to make enquiries of the Commander, who soon cracks under their combined probing. It’s such a shame we don’t get more scenes of Nihuang and Jingyan working together.

I don’t have any new observations about either Prince Yu’s confidence that he’s now got MCS on his side, nor the crucial meeting between MCS and Prince Jing to “set the rules.” I will say, though, that I can see why on first viewing I had such a hard time trusting MCS. He has inscrutability down to a fine art. Of course, with hindsight you can see all the little cracks and twitches that indicate Deep Emotions going on underneath the surface, but when you don’t, he seems entirely reserved, and this, as Frank Churchill says in Emma, “is a most repulsive quality, indeed […] There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.”

Xia Dong comes back with all the evidence needed to damn the Duke of Qing, but she’s also found out about Tianquan Manor’s involvement in the escape of the slaves, so Xie Yu decides the world would be better off without her. Once again, I am consumed with resentment that Xia Dong wasn’t cast age-appropriately. It looks just ridiculous when Jingrui says that she taught Yujin when he was a child.

I’m bad at noticing what’s going on in fight scenes, so it took me until this rewatch to realise that Xia Dong is only pretending to be badly hurt the whole time in order to draw out one particular attacker. It also occurred to me, as we see the black-clad assassins come ninjing out of the river in slow motion, to wonder what on earth they were doing in the river in the first place. They haven’t swum across it, because their clothes are dry. Perhaps they spent most of their cultivation time learning how to dry wet clothes with their qi, because they can’t be very good at fighting if even Yujin can beat them.

Xia Dong is very impressive as she savagely beats a tooth out of the fallen assassin to find his cyanide capsule. Credit where it’s due, the actress does a good job here. Covered in blood, the man coughs out a confession that it was Prince Yu who sent them. The audience knows this a bare-faced lie, but will Xia Dong believe him? Tune in for the next episode to find out…

This is such an edge-of-your-seat episode.
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Episode three and now things get really exciting. Nihuang’s intervention when the eunuch beating Tingsheng insults Prince Jing is brilliant (and of course it would be Consort Yue who sends arseholes to oversee the children of the servants’ prison). The three-way scene between her, MCS and Prince Jing over Tingsheng is even better. Prince Jing is so cold and hostile to MCS and Nihuang is already inserting herself between them, turning Jingyan’s questions back on him whenever he probes MCS too hard. She’s already decided that she and MCS are on the same side, whatever that may turn out to be. And asking the Emperor to appoint Su Zhe to oversee the written examination was a genius move on her part. She’s tag-teaming MCS, whether he wants it or not.

Commander Meng is very Mengish and commandery when he sees off Mu Qing's boyfriend-tester, and we also learn that he and MCS have had an ongoing correspondence for many years. But Meng, like the audience, still doesn't know what really went down with Chiyan army and MCS says we'll all have to wait until the time is right. Meng also lets us know that MCS's appearance has changed completely because of an illness. Really, this time around I suspect Meng's function is primarily expository, either through telling us what he knows or asking questions about what he (and we) don't know, so it's lucky they picked the perfect actor for the role (I have a mental list of NiF characters sub-divided according to whether the actor is utterly perfect for the part (MCS, Nihuang etc.), very good but not perfect (Emperor, Consort Jing etc.), or terrible (Xia Jiang). Obviously there are also actors who are just good or just adequate but they're not as interesting as the extremes. NiF has an astonishingly high proportion of perfect actors, and not just in the main roles).

I notice that when Mu Qing complains about Baili Qi’s looks, Nihuang asks him when he learned to judge a person by their looks. Has she been pondering whether MCS's appearance might be deceptive, I wonder? At all events, it’s a very fair point and I’m glad at least someone at this court is willing to argue that looks aren’t everything. For all her philosophical attitude, though, the poor girl looks sooo onervous when Baili Qi starts demolishing Jingrui at the dinner.

I love all of Mu Qing’s scenes but especially the one where he barges into Snow Cottage and displays a shocking lack of etiquette in interrupting all of MCS's polite bows. Judging by MCS’s face, he hasn’t been this surprised by anyone since the Grand Dowager Empress called him Xiao Shu.

It's so clever the way the plot appears to thicken around the marriage tournament when really it’s thickening around “How will MCS get Tingsheng out of the servant’s prison?” Nihuang’s tag-teaming is working, judging by the glances she and MCS exchange. And MCS, who I note in the previous episode gave his tray of tournament food to Fei Liu, demonstrates his mastery of trolling-by-orange.

And finally I find myself thinking that the pregnant Liyang must have thought the gods were smiling on her when the plague broke out in Jinling and enabled her to escape Xie Yu’s house for the birth of her bastard child. Did she, I wonder, also see the hand of the gods in the arrival of Madame Zhuo and befriend her with the deliberate intention of somehow swapping babies?

I started the Great NiF Rewatch last night and this time what struck me most forcibly is NO WONDER it's so hard for first-time NiF watchers to orientate themselves. This episode is so misleading! Prince Yu looks like he's going to be a stoic hero, Lin Chen looks like he's a serious scholar and swordsman, the library at Langya Hall looks like it's going to be really important, Mei Changsu floats around in a boat defending the territory of the Jiangzuo Alliance as if this were his real job. So much of the episode has a kind of mythic quality to it (or do I just mean a standard wuxia quality?) that is replaced by a much more realistic narrative and filming style from the moment MCS arrives in Jinling. Once you know that these big, beautiful set pieces are just there to fill us in quickly on a big chunk of backstory (so you don't need to devote any brain power to them), the story becomes easier to follow, but on first viewing you don't know any of this. You think you might have to remember how the steampunk shelving system works, or that the Two Swords Leader might be a major antagonist, or that Lin Chen will turn up in Jinling any week now to worry sombrely over MCS's health. And you don't yet even know that MCS is the protagonist, let alone who all the minor characters are and whether they'll recur. The episode takes absolutely no prisoners, you sink or swim, just like that guy from the Two Sword Sect that Fei Liu throws into the river, and it's glorious.

Also, how much do I love the super-intense look MCS bestows on Marquis Ning when Su Zhe first meets him? It's the first of a whole series of MCS stares, each somehow both expressionless and entirely unique, and it's absolutely top quality, ten out of ten, no notes.