While this episode was less eventful than the previous ones, there are a number of interesting things introduced in it, and it retained the very high quality of this season’s episodes.
The episode starts off with Jinshi dreaming of a memory from his youth when he is playing with a ball, and an old man who approached him appeared to want to bump fists with him, only for his mother to stop him. An old woman who everyone deferred to appeared and told the old man to go back to his room with Jinshi’s mother having the look of someone who wanted to murder someone in cruel fashion. Jinshi wondered why she had that look on her face, and while that man was being dragged back to his room, he dropped a piece of jewelry that Jinshi reached for, and then he abruptly woke up, calling it an awful dream, which I surmise is ’cause he got punished for picking it up and was about to remember the horror of whatever he experienced on that day. He was later told that the old woman was his grandmother and the old man his father and that the man, the current Emperor, who he had always believed to be his father, is his brother.
If you recall from Season 1 Maomao speculated that there was actually a baby swap and that it was actually Concubine Ah-Duo’s child that survived instead of the Empress Dowager’s, and that would be why Luomen, her adopted father, was fired for not catching that that had happened. Although she mused that it was unlikely, maybe she had actually arrived at the truth, and the reason Jinshi was so close to Ah-Duo was ’cause kin sensed kin. Jinshi and Ah-Duo did share many of the same physical features after all. We know just from appearance that there is a large age gap between the current Emperor and Jinshi, and if the current Emperor was the most prominent male figure in his life, it would reason to believe he actually is Jinshi’s father, and Jinshi was just fooled by the people who told him otherwise. We learned in Season 1 Episode 20 that the previous Emperor was a pedophile who exclusively sought young girls, and given how young the one Jinshi believed to be his mom was in the dream, she may have been the previous Emperor’s former child bride and actually his grandmother rather than his mother since Ah-Duo being his mother would actually be a secret. I’ll come back to this topic later in my analysis.
Jinshi thought that Maomao seems surprisingly dull in strangely specific instances, such as when it comes to him, and believes that she’ll come to realize what he knows (that he is the Emperor’s brother) soon or that she may already know. He believes that he would be put at ease if she knew as he stay quiet about it forever as it’s a burden on him. If you recall, also from Episode 20, Jinshi wished that the current Emperor’s first son had survived, not knowing that is likely him, ’cause he didn’t want next in line for the throne, which is why he said all the Emperor needs to do is make himself a new prince. Jinshi probably wants to confide in Maomao how he feels about his situation as it’s not something he really desires. Whether he’s the brother of the Emperor or his first son, he’s the immediate heir to the throne, and he’s not happy about that.
The next day, Maomao is observing the school for servant girls that Jinshi set up and hears from the teacher’s lecture about how in the distant past this land was inhabited by a different group of people, which was mentioned in a previous episode. That teacher then said that those people had no leader, but a noble woman from a distant land eventually arrive and became pregnant with the child from the heavens who would become the first emperor of Li. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I believe this might be the first time the name of the country was mentioned in the anime. The teacher then continued and said that woman, whose eyes could see even in the darkest of nights, later became known as the Mother Royal. Maomao understood it to be fable of this nation’s founding. There’s a bit drawn from Christianity in this story with how the Mother Royal gave birth to the child of the heavens like how Mary is believed to have given birth to Jesus although the Mother Royal in this story seems to have a special status in Li with her being tied to the story of the founding of this country and perhaps the land she originally came from.
Jinshi then creeps up on Maomao, and she tells him to be careful, or they’ll see his face, which will get the students distracted since almost all the girls and women fawn over Jinshi aside from Maomao. When Maomao remarks that there are about twenty students, Jinshi indicates they were hoping for more with Gaoshun interjecting that they started out with ten, so the number is increasing. It seems Jinshi really is hoping they can make a good crop of doctors from this endeavor given they’ll be short-staffed in time with the surgery banning eunuchs stopping more from joining their ranks and with only men being permitted to make medicine at this point in time.
After Jinshi and Gaoshun have taken their leave, Maomao got Xiaolan’s attention during the class’s break, and Xiaolan revealed she has only learned a few characters and still has to learn more from the teacher. She revealed she sometimes goes directly to the teacher for help since he’s close by in the building next door, and Maomao noticed a shrine on their way there. Inside, Maomao notes due to the features she sees that the shrine must be divided into quite a few rooms due to the distance between pillars being quite short and the shape of the building. The teacher revealed the shrine was built by the people who originally lived here, and that when she moved here, the Mother Royal didn’t denounce the old religion. She told her that son that the one who rules this land must pass through that shrine with only those who can choose the correct path being fit to rule. He said that the capital city was moved to this city ’cause of this shrine, which calls back to when the old lady of the Verdigris House indicated that when their town was chosen to be the capital city it was still underdeveloped and had no lodging for the special envoy, which is why they chose the area close to the ruins in the rear palace to be the site of the special performance. He wondered whether it would ever be used again though since it’s been many decades since it was last used given the previous Emperor’s older brothers all passed away from an epidemic, meaning the rite of passage to determine the heir wasn’t needed. He’s glad that someone is taking an interest in the shrine since it’s been a while since that happened. When prompted by Maomao, he said that a quirky doctor would wander around the rear palace whenever he had the time, and Maomao asked whether it was Luomen, resulting in the teacher asking her if she knew him, which Maomao didn’t actually want to answer ’cause she doesn’t want to get too involved with the Imperial family if you recall from Season 1’s premiere her belief that the less she appears to know the better her chances of getting out of there before she draws unnecessary attention. But since she had already let the cat out of the bag, she shared that Luomen is her adopted father who began working as an apothecary in the pleasure district after he left the rear palace. The teacher smiled upon learning that, which prompted Maomao to wonder whether they got along with each other.
Back to the Jade Pavilion after Maomao finished doing her duty of tasting for poisons, the Emperor declared she is to accompany her to the Shrine of Choosing. Jinshi was also asked to tag along and asked the Emperor why he’s doing this all of a sudden, but he didn’t get a reply. To Maomao’s surprise, they were greeted by the school’s teacher, who told the Emperor that he might get the same result again, but if that’s acceptable, it’s fine when the Emperor asked for another shot at going through the Shrine of Choosing, which Maomao thought was a very casual way to address the Emperor. When inside there were three doors (green, red, and blue) with a message to not open the red door. After the Emperor chose the blue door, the teacher remarked that he again spoke very casually to the Emperor, remarking that he wished the Emperor paid more heed to the ones tasked to maintain this place as it goes unused for so long before someone suddenly wants to use it, and the Emperor merely apologized for his troubles, showing he’s a very even-tempered chill guy given how the teacher is addressing him. The next room again had 3 doors, green, brown, and light blue with a warning to not choose the brown one. The Emperor chose the green one, and after much maneuvering through the many doors, Maomao had lost her sense of direction and thought about why the Emperor brought her along, hoping that this would end soon since she clearly didn’t enjoy the experience. The final selection had blue, purple, and yellow doors with a warning to not enter the blue door. Maomao also noted there was another door leading to this room, suggesting a separate path converged to that room. The Emperor chose the yellow one, and it led to a room with the message, “child of royalty, yet not child of the Mother Royal, which Maomao took to be a rejection of sorts. The Emperor noted that he got the same result as before, and Maomao wondered why Jinshi had such a serious look on his face. The Emperor remarked that he must be incapable of deciphering the will of the heavens, and the teacher disagreed immediately, speaking in favour of the Emperor for once by saying when he wisely chose to include this shrine to be part of the Rear Palace he became the sole person to manage this place, asking what value could there be in the will of the heavens since he had really wanted the job.
Outside, Maomao observed that the Emperor appeared to have followed every direction without making any mistakes, yet he was still unable to reach the correct answer, so she wondered whether there was some other intent behind the Shrine of Choosing with her thinking the number of rooms or the colour of the doors chosen as possibly being the key to the test. The teacher then jabbed at Maomao a bit by saying Luomen probably would’ve figured it out. Maomao said that it’s true that her adopted father had an astonishing amount of knowledge of but being told that she can’t do it is annoying. She thought Luomen’s knowledge was exceptionally advanced in the field of medicine and wondered whether that had something to do with it. When the Emperor asked the teacher if he has any idea what “not child of the Mother Royal” could mean, Maomao thought back to the founding fable of Li with only the Mother Royal appearing without any mention of a father. She thought that given the story, one would expect this country to use a system based on a maternal bloodline, but their nation uses a paternal hereditary succession system. She then thought about what would we be the best way to carry on the Mother Royal’s bloodline, and sprung onto Jinshi the question on whether the previous Emperor’s brothers were all born to the same mother, and the Emperor indicated that the mothers who gave birth to the princes were sisters, to which Maomao responded by saying they were of close bloodlines. She then asked for permission to speak freely, which the Emperor allowed. Maomao asked whether several of the previous Emperors had poor eyesight, to the teacher’s surprise, and the Emperor confirmed that that was the case, but he also noted that the previous Emperor could see perfectly well. Maomao then declared her interest in going through the shrine again, and the teacher remarked that only princesses and concubines had been allowed to go through the shrine in the past to opine on the doors. That led to the Emperor musing that he could make Maomao one of his concubines although Lakan would give him grief for that, which Maomao thought had to be a joke, and Jinshi said with outrage while also sounding pleading about what the other concubines would think, and then he told Jinshi to take Maomao as a concubine, but Maomao literally had no thoughts about that and showed no reaction whatsoever to hearing that, as if she literally doesn’t want to think about things like that, merely ending that interaction with he’s being playful.
I’m not going to go through all that with the doors again as it’d be tedious, so I’ll mention only the final room, which had purple, white, and green doors with a message to choose the red door. The secret was that Maomao knew that many in the western region have red-green colour blindness, and the Mother Royal and her servants from the west created the Shrine of Choosing specifically to choose people who would continue to have the red-green colour blindness trait that runs in the Mother Royal’s family with sons going through this rite of passage with concubines closely related to them if they couldn’t pass the test themselves, allowing for the Mother Royal and the west to infiltrate and take over the entire country, which she didn’t spare speak out aloud, only revealing to those in-person that it was meant to select for that trait to continue her bloodline even though the test doesn’t guarantee that the test-taker is not a descendant of hers. The teacher indicated that in the past, only women with the right blood would partake in the test, but this time someone else did. Maomao reasoned that the Mother Royal married into the leadership of the country since it’s never easy settling into a new land, and the paternal succession system was followed to honour the leader at the time. She thought to herself that’s how the Mother Royal became the origin for the founding fable since after some time, the people who knew the truth would’ve passed away. Maomao then put it out there that that might be how the brothers passed in an epidemic ’cause of too much inbreeding. It was said that the Mother Royal possessed a rare intellect, and the teacher suggested Maomao be added to the bloodline to thin the bloodline while also warning that many do not favour the introduction of new blood, and the Emperor joked that Maomao needs to have at least 15cm more in the chest for him to consider it. But we see from the teacher, he was actually directing that remark at Jinshi, and Maomao still doesn’t get it, saying some things are better left unknown, which shows she has a defense mechanism preventing her from realizing the truth by pushing uncomfortable thoughts away, and it’s unclear how long this defense mechanism can keep doing its job.
After watching this episode, I believe it makes sense why the Emperor looked deep in thought at the end of Episode 30. It makes sense if the Emperor was using the Shrine of Choosing to test Maomao to see if she would be a good partner for Jinshi, and if that’s the case, Jinshi is most likely his direct heir rather than his brother. That would be why the teacher directed his remark to Jinshi, and it’s ’cause he understood the Emperor was testing Maomao’s fitness to be Jinshi’s mate. That would also explain all the teasing the Emperor made, as it was just like a family outing in which he teases his son and daughter-in-law.
If you also remember from the start of the episode, the old woman appeared to have more power than the old man, who may have been the Emperor at the time, who had to defer to her when she told him to go back to his room. Perhaps the epidemic that killed the previous Emperor’s older brothers was no real epidemic and was actually a mass murdering of the Imperial family ’cause that woman had some sort of leverage over the youngest son. That could explain why she had such great power despite being far past the age one would expect her to hold such power.