These two episodes were a lot more straightforward than what came before and focused primarily on four things, Gaoshun telling Maomao about a story regarding two women, one of which who escaped a building while under the watch of men, Jinshi and Maomao handling the request of the two special envoys who are blonde women that want to see a moon fairy, Maomao pondering about the dynamic in the rear palace and about who taught Concubine Jin about the poisonous mushroom, and Ailan falling sick, requiring for her to be taken to a clinic. As it would be incredibly boring and tedious to simply recount everything in the order that it happened, I won’t be doing that.
So the two mysterious women from a foreign land who were seen at the end of Episode 25 are named Ayla and Aylin, are the two special envoys, and they actually get shown again the start of Episode 28, and Ayla, whose has red ornaments as opposed to blue with Aylin, actually met with Shishou, Concubine Loulan’s father, at night, and he had his daughter become a concubine that appears to be a different person every time the Emperor visits her due to her outfits and makeup varying wildly, which I believe is most likely a plot to allow her to live a double life as Shisui for some sinister reason. I wonder what the pair discussed although if I had to hazard a guess, it might have involved becoming one of the Emperor’s concubines given what happens later in the episode.
The special envoys had mirrors delivered to all the high-ranking concubines, and I’m not sure what the point of doing this was. Maomao thought it was done with the hopes of making a big business transaction, but she also considers that it might have been a provocation after seeing how Ayla acted later on it the episode. Regardless, shortly after, Gaoshun tasks Maomao with figuring out how two women who were under surveillance managed to trick the men surveilling them after telling a peculiar story about two daughters who looked like. They were located in a separate building attached to the main building through a corridor on the west and were watched through the east and south windows of the building with one man watching one woman from the third floor of the main building and the other from the first floor of the main building. Maomao realized that they had a very limited field of vision and reasoned that there was a large mirror placed specifically so that it appeared that the two were in the building at all times due to the embroidery looking different in a reflection, when in reality, one of them could escape at any time, and this. During this scene, Gaoshun mentioned that the ox bezoar that Jinshi promised to give to Maomao as a reward is hard to procure due to the demand for them suddenly going up, and Hongniang commented that Jinshi has been gifted many rare medicines from all sorts of people as rumours have been circulating that he is very passionately looking for an ox bezoar. In the meantime, Jinshi had Gaoshun deliver her a dried bear’s gallbladder, which is valued for its use in medicines for the digestive system. Jinshi intended to give it to her personally couldn’t due to his workload, but Maomao still has no idea what he feels for her. Gaoshun had stated that one of the daughters one day had become pregnant, but Maomao suspects that she was carrying a bigger secret than that, which is true since Ayla had snuck out to meet Shishou. I wonder what exactly Shishou’s role is as we know nothing about him aside from him being a favourite of the previous Empress Dowager. There has to be some reason Ayla approached Shishou of all people when she snuck out.
The biggest focus of these two episodes is a request from the special envoys to see an otherworld beauty who sheds pearls as tears he called a moon fairy. Ayla and Aylin’s grandfather told them the story about that when they were young repeatedly since he was the special envoy roughly 50 years ago. It was how he described a female dancer who had lights dancing around her as if she were being blessed. Jinshi said she was a courtesan from the pleasure district, and Maomao thought of the old lady from the Verdigris House. Maomao said the envoys know she was seen 50 years ago, so why can’t they just show her a different beautiful woman, but they had already tried during their welcoming party, and the envoys just laughed it off due to being very beautiful themselves. After Maomao had the old lady brought in, the old lady shared that the main reason she was chosen to be the main dancer at the time was probably ’cause of how tall (175 cm) and curvy she was and that a lot of the performance had to be improvised with them being made aware of the phases of the moon, having obstacles removed to give the envoy a better view, and picking out all the insect larvae from the orchard. She also revealed that people tampered with her outfit by rubbing insect carcasses on it, and after Maomao had a talk with Shisui next day, who was gathering the same insect larvae previously depicted, which is awfully convenient by the way if you ask me and made me suspicious, Maomao figured out that the pearls were actually moths sparkling in the moonlight attracted by carcasses of moths of the opposite sex, so she took the matter to Jinshi and the Emperor, who prepared heavily for the upcoming banquet for the special envoys and for the special entertainment to be given to them on that day. Maomao did her part in making sure that only Ayla and Aylin saw Jinshi dressed up as a woman dancing while being surrounded by little lights, and Ayla was so shocked that she went up to Maomao and asked whether the woman disappeared to, at which Maomao replied by saying, “Diana”, the name of a moon goddess in a western legend. Given Loulan’s father was important even 50 years ago, he may have been involved with the entertainment for the special envoy in the past, and that is how Shisui was able to give Maomao a nudge in the right direction.
During the bout of entertainment the Emperor had prepared for Ayla and Aylin, which took place before they had seen Jinshi, Ayla stepped out of her carriage to directly approach the Emperor and seduce him. She was very bored by the performances they were seeing, and Maomao had noted that Ayla gives off the energy that she believes herself to be the most beautiful person in the world while Aylin is the quiet type, which is not untrue given Aylin stopped Ayla after she interrupted the performance to approach the Emperor, and Maomao figured they were bored ’cause they both believe that there can be no woman more beautiful than themselves, which is why Jinshi’s performance came across as such a shock to them. After Maomao met up with Jinshi back in the building they had made preparations for his makeup and everything, Jinshi was pissed and had Maomao dry his hair since he had swam all the way to the opposite shore while in his heavy outfit as part of their plan to avoid him being seen so as to keep up their moon fairy ruse. And back in the building Ayla and Aylin stayed in, Ayla was fuming about how the Emperor didn’t visit her, and who knows whether she has some alternative plans in store for them.
The next day, Xiaolan shared with Maomao that she was going to school and proud to be part of the first generation of servant girls who were partaking in vocational training. Maomao was then bored and thought about how the problem about who had brought in the dangerous scented oils that when combined could seriously impact a pregnancy and who taught Concubine Jin about poisons, who she believes might have been Suirei. I have a thought about this as after Maomao finishes her pondering, she sees some members of the Crystal Pavillion, and Shin is among them. Maomao specifically noted that Shin was the only one from the Crystal Pavillion who didn’t smell of scented oils and thought that there’s probably always someone like that, but I find it extremely odd that Shin was the only woman who was serving Concubine Lihua that didn’t smell of scented oils. Perhaps Shin didn’t smell of them is ’cause she knows the harm those scented oils can cause and avoided involving herself with wearing those scents in case something happened to Lihua’s fetus, giving herself some plausible deniability and an alibi for why she isn’t at fault should something horrible happen. That she issued a complaint against Maomao might’ve been an act of self-preservation to avoid Maomao coming back to the Crystal Pavillion. While Shin might not necessarily directly threaten Lihua’s pregnancy, she might be hoping that someone else, like a servant girl or another lady-in-waiting, causes Lihua to have a miscarriage. Given that the title of the next episode is “The Crystal Pavillion for the Third Time, something is definitely suspect at the Crystal Pavillion.
In the last part of the episode, Yinghua tells Maomao to take Ailan to the clinic after she makes some medicine for her cold, and apparently it’s not the medical office with the quack doctor. It’s also located on the north side of the rear palace and is close to the washhouse, which is convenient for washing clothes and rugs often. Ailan says to Maomao tell Lady Gyokuyou that she’ll be back tomorrow since she wants to stay overnight just in case for Gyokuyou and Lingli’s safety. This clinic is full of older court ladies, and Maomao reasons that the reason there are older court ladies here must be ’cause they need clinic workers to have experience and knowledge. She bumps into Jinshi, who tells her to not let anyone find out she is making medicine as only mean are not allowed to be doctors and make medicine, which is why this more professional clinic isn’t the main medical office. Since the current Emperor banned the surgery for making eunuchs, they need a way to have more doctors, and that might be the purpose of the school since they’ll soon be understaffed when people become too old to continue serving the Emperor. When we flash back to the room Ailan is staying in for the night, the older court lady who arranged for her to stay in that room notes that Ailan has medicine on her since Ailan had taken it out for use with the court lady saying that she smelled medicine on the servant girl and said in an accusatory fashion that Maomao must be secretly making medicines. I’m sure this will lead to more conflict, and this week’s episode should be a blast.