The episode led with Jinshi asking whether Gaoshun had made the necessary preparations and then saying that all that’s left is that girl since he has never once addressed Maomao by her name up until this point. Gaoshun doubts he’ll be able to hide it from her on this expedition, and Jinshi says that he intends to reveal his true status to Maomao.
Then Maomao is summoned to Lady Gyokuyou’s quarters where Jinshi and Gaoshun are, and Gyokuyou has a wonderful teasing exchange with Jinshi wherein Jinshi wants Maomao returned to her while Gyokuyou says he wants to borrow her Maomao and deliberately points out indirectly that Jinshi has never referred to Maomao by her actual name, which doesn’t actually bother Maomao, as for her it probably helps her subconscious not allow her to realize the truth about Jinshi’s identity. The reason Jinshi wants Maomao with him is ’cause he’s been invited to participate in a hunt by Shishou, Loulan’s father, who was a favourite of the previous Empress Dowager, the powerful mother of the previous emperor.
Then on their way to Shishou’s domain, Basen explains to Maomao that the character representing the name of their nation, Li, which was first mentioned in Episode 31, also depicts the founding of Li. Three swords under grass. “Grass” is for “flower”, representing the Mother Royal, ancestor of the Emperor, and the three “swords” under it represent the three warriors who helped her, which again shows how the people from the west infiltrated the land and took control entirely, naming the nation after their own personal story. One of the three swords, the one larger sword, represents the Shihoku-shu, the northern lands. That entire area grows sorghum and wheat and is controlled by Shishou’s clan. Basen then gets upset that Maomao was falling asleep and wonders why his father, Gaoshun, cares so much about her. Gaoshun was invited on this trip as a guest in his own right with Basen serving as Jinshi’s aid instead.
When they arrive, Maomao thinks to herself that Shihoku-shu was the late emperor’s favourite summer resort, and he visited yearly. Members of the imperial family haven’t visited during the current Emperor’s reign, but Shishou continues to manage the area, showing he is quite an important individual, whatever his official title is. When Maomao and Basen have arrived where Jinshi is, she’s perplexed by how unrestrained he is with the manner by which he’s relaxing with his legs fully stretched out, acting like he owns the place to some degree. She thinks he may be more tired than usual, but there must be some limits, showing that she can’t even begin to think of Jinshi as having that high of a status, possibly as a subconscious defense mechanism so that she doesn’t realize just what it would mean for their relationship if the truth were to get out to her about him. After being prompted by Basen, Jinshi tells him to call him “Kousen” whenever they’re outside. Maomao, not understanding the implication of this, asks if there’s some special rule, which the people around are hesitant to talk about. When Maomao gets it confirmed that Gaoshun was invited as a guest, she thinks to herself why Gaoshun was in the same room as Jinshi considering there is a large difference in rank between them, leading to Basen showing he isn’t by dumb by sniffing out what she thinking, saying that they, the Ma clan, have served Master Kousen’s family for many generations, so of course they’d be placed in the same building, which led to her thinking Jinshi comes from a good family after all. Gaoshun then pulls Basen aside after he started whispering to him to tell him that Maomao doesn’t know about Jinshi’s true status, and he hit Basen on the head when he questioned not having told her something that important. Maomao apparently didn’t think about that interaction on why Gaoshun and Basen moved to a corner to discuss when it was clearly regarding her question and just reminds herself to be mindful of her work lest she gets in Suiren’s bad graces.
When it’s dinner time, Maomao wonders why they’re all staying inside and suggests opening some windows, leading to Jinshi telling her to taste the food, and she’ll know why they’re doing that after she has done that. Maomao notes that all of the food is invigorating, leading to Jinshi saying, “Now you see, right?” When Basen brings Jinshi some preserved food, Maomao still doesn’t get the picture and asks if she can eat the food prepared for him instead since it’d be suspicious if it went untouched. When Jinshi watches her eat the food while clearly being very satisfied, he asks her if it’s good with her confirming that’s the case and asking him if he’s sure he doesn’t want any, leading to him asking her if she’s sure he can eat, absolutely sure, and Gaoshun just puts his hand on Jinshi’s shoulder and shakes his head to get out the message that Maomao just doesn’t understand why he asked her to taste the food. Jinshi then orders Basen to eat the food, and he gets a nosebleed, probably due to getting an ejaculation, with him remarking why she isn’t affected, and Maomao just responds that she’s built different lol. Basen then limps his way away from the table and passes out entirely. Clearly, Maomao does not see that Shishou intends to reveal that Jinshi is not a eunuch. Then there are cloaked figures out in a forest with guns saying that this is where they die.
The next day, Jinshi has donned a face mask and is never seen outside without it. Maomao thinks the point of the hunt is to cook the game caught by the nobles on the spot, and it seems she didn’t think at all about why Jinshi’s food was spike with what it was. Given what Shishou has been doing, the hunt could actually be part of a plot to execute Jinshi. As they set up camp, Maomao thinks there’s nothing for her to do, so she takes a walk and enters the forest where she learns of a waterfall being nearby, and during that walk she encounters Lihaku, who was surprised to see her there, and when she revealed she was asked to join, he revealed that he was asked to join the guards but that the other guards forced him to look after the dog. Maomao notes that he appears to have been climbing the ranks lately, but that tends to be met with resistance, which might be why he’s stuck watching the dog. When she remarks that he’s bad at whistling, he takes out the actual whistle and says that the dog can be summoned from miles away after doing a demonstration.
At the party, Maomao finally observes that Jinshi is the most important person in the room based on where he was seated, but she didn’t think more of it. When Jinshi shows discomfort while speaking to Shishou, and she picks up that it’s due to the heat in conjunction with the face mask, Gaoshun gestures to her to not do anything about it. Basen himself seemed quite concerned himself. When Jinshi gets up and tries to leave, Gaoshun calls her, and she gets some water for him. Jinshi had wandered into the forest, and after Maomao successfully finds him, he still won’t take off his face mask off in case somebody comes by, leading to her suggesting they head somewhere where nobody else is, which is the waterfall she observed earlier. When they’re there, Maomao wipes Jinshi’s face and moves to give him the water he needed, he says that there’s something he needs to tell her, but they are interrupted by two gunshots, one of which would have killed Jinshi had he not reacted quickly to the first shot. Jinshi thinks the shots came from a feifa, which mean illegal in Mandarin, and he jumps off into a waterfall, startling Maomao heavily in the process.
Although CPR shouldn’t have been invented yet in a world based on Imperial China, Jinshi uses it to resuscitate Maomao, and he says that this waterfall basin is very deep, so if you jump correctly, you won’t die unless you drown. Maomao then took off everything aside from her undergarments since she didn’t watch to catch a cold. Maomao offers to wring out Jinshi’s clothes too, but he replies that he’s stronger so he’ll do it for both of them. Maomao then offers him butterbur, which was part of what they had for breakfast. She brought it as a snack, but she noted how important it was for him to get some salt at that very moment since he was dehydrated. She had brought some water with soy paste and sugar in it when she was chasing him, but that was lost when they were shot at. She then reached to to touch his face and saw that his fever had come down but recommended he eat the butterbur as he needs some salt. Then her belly growled, and he offered some butterbur back to her, and very much like a territorial cat, she accepted it in a somewhat standoffish fashion.
When Maomao asked just what they were attacked by, Jinshi said that it was a feifa, a weapon of war that uses gunpowder and requires preparation after every shot, but since two shots were fired in succession, it meant there were multiple assailants. Maomao then asked if Jinshi knew a way out aside from swimming, and he replied that there’s a hole deep inside the basin and that Basen knows where it is. At the hole, Maomao wonders whether others would be able to hear them if they kept shouting, which Jinshi doubted unless someone was nearby, and then she did a whistle with the dog Lihaku was looking after on her mind. Jinshi suggests that if one of them stands on top of the other that one of them should be able to get out. Maomao shudders at the thought of standing on Jinshi as Suiren would be give her trouble for that, leading to Jinshi saying outright that if he stood on her that she’d be crushed, and that settled the matter. Maomao almost got out until a frog jumped on her head, distracting her, leading to the pair falling over, and Maomao on top of Jinshi in a position that will make it hard for her to ignore the truth, that Jinshi isn’t a eunuch.
In the next episode, Basen notes that several high-ranking officials immediately realized what was going on and started a search, and a couple of officials laughed about Jinshi/Kousen potentially having a lover’s tryst with the servant girl. Basen dismisses that as being impossible given what he knows of Jinshi, but he still has a mental note that Jinshi has been gone for two hours. He himself also sent out people to do a search but has gotten no updates, and he can’t ask his dad for help since he’s Jinshi’s aid at this event. He noted that Gaoshun had issued an order to Maomao but not him, so he’s sick of roles that are pure formalities. He thinks if only the organizer of the party could at least wrap it up, but Shishou might intend for Jinshi to die, which could be exactly why he isn’t wrapping things up. Basen believes Shishou wouldn’t want trouble at his own party, thinking he might not have anything to do with this, but I wonder about that.
Then back to Jinshi and Maomao, Maomao starts feeling up Jinshi’s penis, leading to Jinshi saying that that saves him from needing to explain more with Maomao thinking that there were a lot of hints about him not being an eunuch but that she rejected them subconsciously. When Jinshi motions to reveal his true status to her, she decides to try to pretend that what she touched was not his penis but actually the frog that landed on her she might’ve crushed, which led to a funny scene that ended up pretty serious with Jinshi on top of her and about to kiss her/sexually assault her until the dog Lihaku had been looking after landed on top of him. Lihaku then gets them both out of the hole. Jinshi indicates that he didn’t see the face of his shooters and thinks of searching all of the guests’ luggage, but Maomao says that since they’re all high-ranking officials invited by Shishou that wouldn’t hold on to weapons. She then asks whether the dog knows any other tricks aside from following a whistle, and Lihaku says that he can sniff out a rabbit’s burrow. Maomao, realizing that Jinshi is mad at her for interrupting him when he planned to reveal something to her and how she taunted him on how his penis is only somewhat large, then quickly lets them know that she knows a way to find out who the shooters are, probably by using the dog’s sense of smell.
At this point, simply recapping everything would be really tedious, so I’ll summarize it with how they had Lihaku and the dog join the search party, resulting in them finding one of the shooters, and they framed a guy to expand the search area from just the river to the forest as well, leading to that shooter going back into the forest to search for his feifa, only to be caught red-handed, clearly outmaneuvered since Jinshi, Lihaku, and Maomao had already found all the feifas, with there being three total that Jinshi noted are foreign-made and most likely the latest model from the west. Jinshi then fires a gunshot, confirming that it was the same weapon that was fired at them earlier, and Basen comes running, telling Jinshi that they’ve got eyes on the associates of the shooter they caught after Jinshi asks for a status update.
At night, Gaoshun notes that the disappearance during the day was written off as being the masked lord’s whimsy. It became public knowledge that during the party, a certain official and his entire party accompanying him disappeared, and that they’d never be seen in public again. He doesn’t know the specifics of everything that happened to Jinshi, but Jinshi seems tired. But since he, Gaoshun, is here as Jinshi’s surrogate, he’s not in a position to hear about that since Jinshi is going by Kousen here. Gaoshun thinks to himself that Basen still has a ways to go since he’s still upset with how things played out. A drunk then comes to Gaoshun and remarks that it’s a shame that Gaoshun became a eunuch ’cause he angered the empress although we know that isn’t true since he’s a taking a hormone-suppressing medication just like Jinshi is. It’s just his cover story for why he’s a eunuch. The drunkard would’ve preferred to see the beautiful eunuch rather than be graced by the presence of the masked lord, who he hears has a horrible scar his face, saying that it must be horrible for “that” to be the crown prince, showing that Jinshi’s true status is that of a prince and that this man has no respect for Jinshi, who is the actual crown province, with the scar being a cover story since Jinshi has to both play the role as the crown prince and also as the handsome eunuch. The drunkard then whispers to Gaoshun whether he has heard any news about any of the concubines being pregnant after the tragedy, and Gaoshun takes his leave since he doesn’t want to answer the question. Outside, Gaoshun remarks that everyone is trying to determine whether the Emperor’s younger brother, who I believe is actually his firstborn son, is fit to be the future ruler of the country. He wonders whether Jinshi was able to tell Maomao the truth since she needs to know it in order to deal with problems in the near future, noting that she really is that useful. He says this may sound cold, but they need all the useful pawns they can get.
Back in her room, Maomao thinks back to how things took a turn for the worse again and how the west was involved. She says the story about the twins tricking the guards was probably about the special envoys and wonders what had actually happened when they snuck out. Jinshi then asks at her door whether she has a moment. Sensing Maomao’s apprehension, he says that she doesn’t need to open the door since he must’ve startled her so much earlier. Maomao says that she’s probably the one who should have apologized, thinking to herself apologizing for calling his penis somewhat large. She wonders what he’s thinking at this moment since she’s always been slow to understand human feelings since the big sisters who raised her were hard-working courtesans and couldn’t tend to her whenever she cried, leading to her quickly learning not to cry. That’s why she’s slow to notice how others feel about her, whether that be good or bad. She says that she won’t breathe a word of it regarding his secret and that to her, he’ll always be Master Jinshi, which gets him in a good mood. He then passes off to her the ox bezoar she wanted, and she has such a look of elation on her face that made him flustered to the point he didn’t react in time before she closed the door and said good night ’cause the ox bezoar had taken up all of her attention, and she wouldn’t let anything come between them. Jinshi is banging on her door to no avail, and then the narrator says that there are only two people with “Ka” for “flower” in their names, the Emperor and Jinshi, the Moon Prince, whose real name is Zuigetsu. Gaoshun notes that Jinshi cannot stay in his temporary position forever due to his relation to the Emperor. This is almost certainly what Jinshi had intended to share with Maomao only for him to denied the opportunity.