Continuing from the previous episode, Maomao sees the urgency in the situation since the building the late Emperor stayed in was going to be demolished, which would mean the only way to find out more about him would be through his grave, and that would reduce the likelihood of Lady Anshi ever feeling better, so her request is to visit the room that was out of bounds for visiting. She believes the Emperor would probably grant permission for that if Anshi put in a good word for them.
Maomao stays the night at Suiren’s place, much to her relief since she didn’t want to get an earful from Lady Hongniang considering how lenient she’s been all this time, but it must be difficult for Hongniang as a head lady-in-waiting to have a worker who doesn’t belong to any specific pavilion and visits other pavilions regularly since her job is to have the people most loyal to Lady Gyokuyou working for her, ending with Maomao saying she herself doesn’t know what position she has at times.
Suiren likes reading romance novels targeted to young women, and when Maomao looks towards the backroom to see what might interest her, she reaches for a box, which we find out from Suiren is full of Jinshi’s favourite toys from childhood. Suiren then asks what Maomao thought of Jinshi, and Maomao responds she thinks he’s a good boss with the caveat as long as he kept bringing her rare medicines, that part being something she kept to herself although her beaming with enthusiasm led to Suiren wondering whether there was something more to it than that. Suiren reveals often took away toys Jinshi took too much of an interest in when he was growing up since his mom wanted for him to step up and be an adult since if one focuses too much on one thing it could result in one losing sight of other things that are important, which is something someone born into Jinshi’s position can’t afford to do. Maomao then thought that she has heard that when one is raised in a repressed environment it can effect that person’s mind. She reasons that the childish tendencies Jinshi’s starting to show around her are probably a part of his true personality rather than his role everyone sees as the elegant eunuch. Maomao’s defense mechanism protecting her from realizing the truth still seems so powerful given Suiren indicated Jinshi has a position that is very important, and all she got from that is that Jinshi’s repressing his true self.
Maomao then reached for a piece of parchment that ended up being revealed later in the episode to be a picture of Lady Anshi drawn by the late Emperor. She then noticed something odd, which she asked for permission to touch, and it was the shiny gold object Jinshi touched in his dream from childhood. She reveals that it is orpiment later on in the episode, which is extremely toxic, and she thought back to when she saw the paintbrush in the late Emperor’s room, asking Suiren if Jinshi ever visited the inner court when he was young, and when Suiren confirmed that he did sometimes, Maomao reveals that she can resolve the matter of the curse Anshi talked about tomorrow and ask for her to wait regarding why she asked the question.
The next day, they arrive at the late emperor’s room, and Maomao wishes that Jinshi didn’t also have to be there as she didn’t want to make a big deal about it. When she asks whether the late emperor painted only in this room, the others have no idea, so they have Anshi’s lady-in-waiting find that one servant that attended to him after he started locking himself in this room. Maomao touches the brush and smelled it, probably noting that it smelled of orpiment, and then she noted the translucent shards (of orpiment?) and the markings on the ground as if someone furiously tried to clean something, highlighting that the number of marks increase as they get closer to the wall. After that one servant arrived, it was revealed that he is mute, which Maomao thought wasn’t a surprise since it’s common for someone who couldn’t speak to attend to the noblest person so that the mute person couldn’t protest against that high-ranking person, and he is uncooperative towards Maomao, so Maomao took the liberty of approaching the wall and requesting to tear down the wallpaper.
After tearing it down, a painting with a woman in yellow being the primary fixture of the painting was on the wall. Maomao indicated that she didn’t care about the late emperor’s personality but that he passed away without being able to let his true talents shine since he ended up as the leader of the nation given how impactful the painting was to her on first glance. She noted that the paint used to create the colour of the garment worn by the woman in yellow was made by crushing a mineral known as orpiment, which is as toxic as arsenide and can also make things less likely to decompose. At first she had thought that the wallpaper was made of orpiment, but after seeing the shape of the brush the late emperor used, she thought that he was using a pigment made from orpiment, which is why they tip of the brush was cut off so that it could crush orpiment. In doing so, he gradually absorbed orpiment into his body, making her confident that it spread throughout his body by the time he died. Maomao reasoned to herself that the people around the late emperor would find it unacceptable for him to be painting pictures all the time, so that’s why he never revealed it even when he was referred to as the idiot emperor and had a mute slave manage the room. Maomao notes that the wallpaper is still soft, meaning there must be many layers of paintings, and she figures that the late emperor’s mother, the acting empress, must have been the one who acquired all the tools for him to paint so extensively. Maomao believes she knew her child was not fit to be the emperor, so she consolidated power around herself to protect him even if it resulted in others calling her empress although I wonder how true this considering how little Maomao actually knew about her. After Maomao gave her orpiment explanation, Anshi indicated she was satisfied with that and moved towards the picture, and Maomao got all emotional thinking Anshi was communing with someone in the skies, although I don’t know why she’d get that idea if she believed Anshi had been the late Emperor’s prey.
Anshi was actually infuriated ’cause she perceives the person in yellow to actually be the late Emperor’s mother and wondered whether she herself is even in the picture with her ruling that out since she believes she was a passing thought to him. She angrily thinks that the scar on her body is the only thing allowing her to be treated as the mother of this nation. Some people would say she was a young girl who accidentally fell victim to the late emperor and became pregnant, but Anshi knew of the late emperor’s tastes and her father’s plan to have her give birth to the late emperor’s child, so she willingly seduced the late emperor after he rejected her sister, who had no idea that their father arranged for a visit from the late emperor for Anshi to make her move. The late emperor wouldn’t even let her older sister touch him and was crying just from her getting close to him, so Anshi used the opportunity to console the late emperor. After that, her life was put in danger countless times due to her carrying the emperor’s child. She was relieved that the child was a boy, and the empress officially acknowledged him as her grandson.
Anshi also recalls there was once a woman who gave birth to a daughter, and when claimed that the girl was the late emperor’s daughter, he denied it saying her knew nothing of it, and a random doctor was declared the father and exiled with the baby, which shows how fortunate Anshi was in this patriarchal society. Back then, doctors were the only ones allowed in the rear palace without castration, and after that exile, even doctors had to be castrated as well. She felt pity for the one in charge of her C-section, and the girl who gave birth to a daughter was left in the rear palace with her probably never being allowed to leave.
She then recalls that the late emperor stopped visiting after she no longer looked like a child. Her lady-in-waiting at the time, who was most likely Suiren, indicated that the rear palace was expanding again with many young girls arriving, tasked with the same mission as she was, bedding the late emperor. She was so furious that a man who was a puppet of the empress and who could only talk to young girls forgot about her. This led to her raping him after tormenting him about all he had done. In the end, she figures he spent all the time is his room thinking about his mother and the young girls with no ambition with her being the only one he had forgotten. She mentioned that the late emperor painted her just once, and she treasured the painting, but she told Suiren to discard it as she has no need for it much like the late emperor had no need for her. Jinshi, as if reading Anshi’s mind, brought up that the late emperor visited them once, and that’s when he picked up the orpiment Suiren confiscated from him. He also saw the picture of Anshi dressed in yellow at the time, which she wore often at the time, leading him to ask her if the mother really was the person he had drawn in the painting on the wall, musing about what the late emperor had been trying to tell them with the visit. Anshi then cited that she didn’t know and thought to herself that she chose not to know.
Anshi then notes aloud that Jinshi seems partial to quite an interesting girl, which took him aback, and he merely replied after a pause that she’s quite useful with her knowing that there’s more to it than that since she has watched over him for many years. She said that you should hide your favourites, or someone else may hide them from you, which is what she had Suiren do when he was a child, and it’s also a good point given she herself became a target for assassination when she became pregnant, so who knows what someone else might do to Maomao given how he blatantly favours her.