This episode seems very different from that of what came before given Maomao indicated some things are simply beyond her understanding.
The episode opens with Lady Hongniang introducing Maomao to the three new ladies-in-waiting, Haku-u, Koku-u, and Seki-u, who are all from the same hometown as Lady Gyokuyou, which is the safest way to ensure only those who have earned Gyokuyou’s trust can be her ladies-in-waiting. After Maomao is unable to differentiate between them, Haku-u says that the three of them will wear hairbands that match the colours in their names. After Yinghua and Maomao caused a scene in the presence of the new ladies-in-waiting, Hongniang drags them back to Lady Gyokuyou where it’s made clear that the shed is now Maomao’s main quarters but that she must sleep in her original room, probably to maintain an air of normalcy to the new arrivals to the Jade Pavilion.
Maomao then thinks as they’re all working that with the new ladies-in-waiting that the work per person has reduced dramatically, but Gyokuyou’s pregnancy isn’t the only reason they needed more ladies-in-waiting since they had to balance out to an extent the astronomically high number of ladies-in-waiting from Concubine Loulan’s Garnet Pavilion. When Maomao finishes her work, she heads back to the shed, leading to Koku-u (black hairband) and Seki-u (red hairband) asking Yinghua whether Maomao really lives in a shed considering she’s Gyokuyou’s lady-in-waiting, and Yinghua is at a loss for words while Haku-u (white hairband), who is the same age as Lady Gyokuyou and could be a personal best friend of hers, is calm, possibly to show that she trusts Gyokuyou.
Maomao, in thought, shows that she understands that the reason Yinghua tried to get her out of the shed was so she could get comfortable with the new ladies-in-waiting faster, which shows how considerate she is. She then apologizes to Yinghua for being so selfish all the time, and Yinghua guilt trips her into accompanying her somewhere later in the night. They venture out to a building on the north side of the palace and meet a woman, who Maomao thinks to herself is pretty but quite old for a court lady. The lady reveals that this place was used during the era of the late emperor and that compared to back then the number of court ladies has gone down considerably but that this place is still useful on occasions like this.
Once Maomao has taken a seat in a room with the others, she thinks up an incomplete thought with 12 people total in such a hot room on closed-off room like this with it being interrupted by the organizer asking if everyone was prepared with their stories, saying that tonight they’ll enjoy thirteen spine-chilling tales. Maomao reacted to there being thirteen stories, but Yinghua being a scaredy-cat got her distracted. After the first story is told, Maomao clearly sees that Yinghua is easily scared by the ghosr stories but thoroughly enjoys them. Maomao thinks to herself that the stories are more like rumours heard in the rear palace, saying they’re not particularly spine-chilling, reasoning that there not being much entertainment in the rear palace being why they’re allowed to gather like this.
For one prominent story, there was a forest near a village that villagers were told to never enter. It was said that if you went in, you’d be cursed and demons would eat your soul. One day, a child broke the rule and returned with a lot of food since crop yields had been low that year. When the other villagers found out, the boy and his mother were ostracized, not even getting food any longer, resulting in them getting very weak with not a single person reaching out to help them. One night, another villager saw what appeared to be a light floating into the family’s house. The next day the village heard the news and went to visit them only to find the son already dead and the mother near death. Her last words to him were “let me tell you a good secret” before she died with no one the wiser about what had happened to them and the locals all regarding the forest as the forbidden forest. The story spread that anyone who entered would be attacked by a demon and have their souls devoured. Maomao is not all that interested and having pieced out what had actually happened, tells Shisui she’ll tell her the truth behind the story after this is all over, and she thinks to herself that she’s awfully tired for some reason.
Shisui then told a story from a distant land far to the east, and it’s like she became an entirely different person once she starts telling the story with her tone of voice. Apparently, a monk from a foreign nation finished performing funeral rights in a distant land. On his way home he realized the sun had set at some point, and given he could hear wild dogs nearby, he was eager to get out of danger, and suddenly an old house appeared in front of him. There was a couple inside, and the wife gave the monk food and bedding. The monk was grateful but had nothing to offer her in return so he thought the least he could do was to chant a sutra for her. As he chants it, he hears the couple arguing, and he gets the feeling he shouldn’t intervene and should keep chanting the sutra. The wife talks about using the monk as a replacement, and when she walks into the room she had offered the monk, she has the body of a monster and is unable to discern the monk’s location, probably due to the sutra. She then goes and eats the husband instead since she couldn’t find the monk, and the monk continued chanting until the chewing sounds stopped. He didn’t see the couple outside and only the wings of insects, and that convinced him to continue chanting the sutra until dawn. Maomao notes that it’s as if Shisui had become an entirely different person and that she’s a good storyteller. She also notes that Shisui’s face at the angle she’s looking at seems familiar, so maybe Shisui is Loulan in disguise as I had previously speculated.
Then it was Maomao’s turn to tell a story in which rumours were flying around that floating spirits had been seen in a graveyard. Suspicious of that, a group of young men went to investigate only to find it was another man from the same town walking with a torch. The man was a graverobber and grew an unhealthy interest in a strange curse, going around digging up graves to cut up corpses and harvest human livers he believed were cures for the curse with Yinghua interrupting her before Maomao finished her thought. Yinghua was up next and turned out to be a terrible storyteller.
The organizer then mentioned it was her turn to share, and Maomao thought back to her saying there’d be thirteen stories even though only twelve of them were there. During the late emperor’s reign, the rear palace was always growing, constantly adding new sections. The Great Empress Dowager, also known as the Empress, wielded immense power at the time. She was constantly trying to find girls who would fit the late emperor’s tastes. He’d choose the youngest girls again and again with those that he chose spending their time in the rear palace, barred from ever leaving. One of those girls eventually became pregnant, and she petitioned the late emperor, but she was never allowed to leave either, which seems eerily similar to what happened to what was implied in the previous episode with those having relations with the late emperor not being allowed to leave. The storyteller then said that right before the woman who got pregant died, she said that it’s his turn next very loudly, which jolted Maomao awake and made her realize why she was getting dizzy. She then rushed to the window and opened it, ordering Shisui and Yinghua to move the unconscious ladies to the window, saying that the smoldering fire was trapping a lot of bad air in the room. The organizer said that she was so close too, and then Maomao when turned around, she was gone without a trace.
On their way back, Maomao explains to Shisui that the story was probably a superstition with how some things have a reason for becoming forbidden as forest are full of food but also inedible things. If someone got sick from eating something from the forest, word would get out to not do so, and over many years, what was once just a recommendation to not do something could morph into being a forbidden endeavor. After the famine ended, no one could distinguish between what could be eaten and what couldn’t. Maomao surmised the mother and son from the story must’ve entered the forest while it was dark since they were breaking the rules. She indicated there’s a type of mushroom called the moonlight mushroom that resemble oyster mushrooms and looks delicious but are actually poisonous and glow in the dark with a villager seeing someone carrying them from a distance in the dark possibly mistaking them for floating spirits. It’s not a potent poison, but if eaten by a starving, weakened person, it’d kill them. Maomao reasoned that the mother was perhaps trying to say there are delicious mushrooms in the forest as a way to get back at the villagers who abandoned her and her son. Satisfied with the answer, Shisui parted ways with Maomao and Shisui. Yinghua said all of those stories must have background stories like that, and Maomao replied with “Well… who knows?” showing that she has doubts whether what happened back at their gathering could be explained by a natural cause.
When they returned, Hongniang indicated that they came back earlier than they expected with Yinghua saying that there was a bit of commotion, which Hongniang had figured would happen since the organizer of the event this year was new with the previous organizer, a helpful court lady who never got to leave the rear palace after having relations with the late emperor, having passed away last year. Maomao realized that that was the organizer’s own personal story, thinking that the world is full of things she can’t truly understand and that she’s glad they didn’t become the thirteenth ghost story. Yinghua then forced Maomao to sleep with her tonight due to her being spooked.
This was a very interesting episode as I never expected Maomao, a creature of logic, to acknowledge the supernatural like she did, and it seemed that the new organizer was the ghost of one of the girls the late emperor had preyed upon who had malicious intentions.