The last episode!!!! Episode 36 starts with Fan Xian wrapping up his conversation with the 3rd prince and Shi Chan Li where he brings forward the idea that he wants to create intellectual property rights so that more people can gain wealth. Both the 3rd prince and Shi Chan Li don’t think this is an idea that can work but before they can say much more, Hai Tang Duo Duo arrives. It’s a lighthearted interaction where it is established, once and for all, that they are GOOD FRIENDS. FRIENDS ONLY ok!? Well friends that also leave important tricks up their sleeves. Hai Tang Duo Duo tells Fan Xian, only after he admits that he is seriously weakened from his conflict at the Hanging Temple, that the text she gave him needs editing or else he’ll die a painful death if he tried to practice the martial arts in that text. He was shocked and indignant at this but then immediately said he also needs to give her a few more paintings of his martial arts chi because if not, she and her master if they were to actually learn it, would also be seriously injured. So, it goes to show, there’s deep trust, but not 100%.
Now turning to actual matters at hand. That night, a disguised Deng Zi Yue arrives to speak to Fan Xian and Wang Qi Nian. He, at the behest of Fan xian, had disguised himself as a refugee in order to help investigate exactly what the Ming family was up to. The Ming Family were quite diligent in investigating Deng Zi Yue’s background but ultimately loosened up. After seeing that he had skills in accounting, Deng Zi Yue was successfully able to join the Three Great Workshops.
That immediately surprises Fan XIan. Wasn’t the 3 great workshops burned to the ground as we saw in the last episode? Nope. The Ming family, now confirmed by Deng Zi Yue, moved the entire enterprise to somewhere outside of the city. They killed all those poor people in the last episode to make it seem like the 3 great workshops actually burned down but that is not the case. He gives Fan Xian the location of the moved 3 great workshops, somewhere in HangZhou, not too far from Su Zhou.
[Cathy]
The next morning, Fan Xian heads out on horseback with Wang Qi Nian. He is carrying the case that holds the sniper rifle because if you recall, there’s a piece missing from it that prevents it from operating right now. There’s some horrible CGI of Fan Xian and Wang Qi Nian riding horses while being joined by members of the Black Knights or Cavalry.
What Fan Xian doesn’t know is that there’s an even bigger threat waiting for him. The Princess Royal personally went and requested for the Grandmaster Ye Liu Yun to come kill Fan Xian. The grandmaster is on his way right now. Shadow manages to stop Fan Xian and Wang Qi Nian before they head to the 3 great workshops to inform them of this daunting piece of news. Fan Xian has the option to run right now if he wants to save his life. If he continues to the 3 great workshops, he will likely forfeit his life in the clutches of the grand master. The problem is, if Fan Xian leaves, the Ming Family will likely move the 3 great workshops again. It will be impossible to find it again.
Fan Xian thinks only for a moment and decides that he wants to go to the 3 great workshops. It is his mother’s inheritance after all. Shadow and Wang Qi Nian think Fan Xian’s crazy but follow him as the group of men head to the 3 great workshops.
[Karen]
When they arrive, it’s quite a sight to behold. Evidently, the three great workshops were influenced by modern technology that Ye Qing Mei brought over because the workers were using basically a railway system to transport materials within the workshops. That type of technology should not have been invented yet in this time period. It’s quite an impressive set to have only appeared in the last episode of this drama. Inside the workshop, you can see they are creating glassware which is again, likely materials that are more modern in terms of technology.
Once Fan Xian and company are squarely inside the 3 great workshops, hordes of men come otu to greet them. One of the leaders, head of the 1st workshop, has the audacity to claim that Fan Xian is trespassing on the Ming Family’s private property. That certainly displeased Fan Xian who clearly came prepared. With a lengthy document of crimes for the leader of the 1st workshop, Fan Xian executes him swiftly. The same goes for the leader of the 2nd workshop who similarly has a litany of egregious crimes on his hands. With such a powerful and bloody entrance, the rest of the workers all step back, scared at how ruthless this Fan Xian is.
Fan Xian successfully takes over the 3 great workshops. But he has more pressing matters. He needs to use facilities to try to fix his sniper rifle to give him a chance at survival. He instructs one of the chief clerks to take him to the smelting workshop to see what can be done.
It seems like Fan Xian is successful because shortly after, he exits the warehouse and jumps back on his horse. He heads directly back to the city to greet the Grandmaster. Both Wang Qi Nian and Shadow think Fan Xian is crazy since no one runs straight to a grandmaster aka death, but opt to follow.
[Cathy]
At the city’s port, the trio awaits Ye Liu Yun with baited breath. It is his and our first encounter with a bonafide Grandmaster. For Fan Xian, it could be where he perishes but Fan Xian has nothing but his life to gamble. Ye Liu Yun arrives by a little boat shortly after. He is an imposing older man dressed in blue robes. As he is paddling his way over, Fan Xian places his modern case on a table and opens it to reveal the seemingly fixed sniper rifle. It is the only weapon availble that can help him kill a grandmaster and save his life.
After staring at it for a few moments, Fan Xian opts to not use it. Instead, he closes the case and walks towards the dock empty handed. He is making a bet. In a style the befits a grandmaster, Ye Liu Yun basically surfs and jumps over a building with his little boat and lands directly across from Fan Xian.
Interestingly, when Ye Liu Yun arrives, he states that he owes someone a favor. He won’t kill Fan Xian and urges him to leave. THAT LINE TO ME IS VERY PECULIAR. WHO does he owe the favor to. He made it all the way here under the pretext of killing Fan Xian but opts to let him go?
Fan Xian then makes the bold claim that he didn’t need the powerful weapon, aka the sniper because Ye Liu Yun won’t kill him. This amuses Ye Liu Yun. Fan Xian continues that Ye Liu Yun doesn’t dare kill him. The fact that the Ye family still exists and was exiled from the capital means that Ye Liu Yun still cares about someone. If he kills Fan Xian, the entire Ye clan will perish. Fan Xian is betting on Ye Liu Yun still having a modicum of humanity in not wanting his family to die. Hence why he thinks HE won’t die.
Ye Liu Yun simply responds, who told him that he cares about the Ye family? And with a dagger he swiped from Shadow, he takes one exceptionally powerful swing at Fan Xian. The force shakes the ground where they stand and even extends all the way to the multistory restaurant some ways away. But, fortunately, no one is injured.
[Karen]
Fan Xian is absolutely delighted to realize that his big gamble paid off. He bet that Ye Liu Yun still identifies as a human with some humanity left. Ye Liu Yun actually quite appreciated this. Ye Liu Yun muses that Fan Xian is more sentimental than his mother. Clearly there is some type of relationship between Ye Liu Yun and Ye Qing Mei that Fan Xian is unaware of. He leaves with the words that while HE is still a human, it doesn’t mean any of the other Grandmasters are human. This suggests Fan Xian must be more careful of his assumptions moving forward. With that, the Grandmaster Ye Liu Yun just casually walks away and disappears into the crowd.
But the grandmaster’s power is not for nothing. That one powerful swing he did earlier? Well…the ground has now cracked and the multistory building? Split cleanly in two.Yea…my jaw dropped just like everyone else. That just goes to show just how powerful and inhuman grandmasters truly are. The power they weld can not be overstated.
Fortunately, after this entire saga, Fan Xian is left with his life intact. Even better is that in the closing scene, we see that his powers have returned. Yay! He has leveled up now.
We didn’t talk about them earlier, but hte Ming Family will definitely have their hands full. The matriarch and Ming Qing Da were speaking earlier that someone will have to be sacrificed to placate Fan Xian if he were to survive. That will be a key thread in the next season.
With that! That’s the end of season 2!
While it WAS nice to see a grandmaster in person, I think the overall consensus is that season 2 was largely weaker than season 1. The antagonists were not as intriguing, the storylines less memorable. It was clear that there was additions to certain people’s roles, cough cough the 2nd prince and ye ling’er, that probably didn’t make a lot of sense and people were included for cameos that didn’t entirely make sense. But, it was overall nice for season 2 to have aired with largely the same cast.
It seems like season 3 is still in pre-production with the script still yet to be finalized. Hopefully we don’t have to wait TOO many more years for it to wrap up. I wrote up all of our thoughts in a review of season 2 on our website so feel free to read that if you haven’t. Overall, not as strong as season 1 but still a strong drama nonetheless.
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[Cathy]
For our last episode, the drama focused on hurtling towards a conclusion so there’s not much history and pop culture but there are a few topics to discuss.
The first is the 矫情. Fan Xian and Hai Tang Duo Duo call each other this during their brief scene together.
矫情 or Affectation has a couple of meanings. It is used to describe someone deliberately going against normal behavior to appear unconventional or to describe someone that’s trying to conceal one’s true feelings or intentions. In modern times, it more often describes exaggerated, pretentious, or unreasonable words and actions.
Typically people read it as jiáo qing. In written text, it’s jiǎo qíng. jiáo qing typically refers to someone being unreasonable or pretentious.
The phrase first appeared in the Book of the Later Han, where Wang Yun 王允 was described as 矫情曲意 “affecting his emotions and bending his intentions,” meaning his words and actions did not match his inner thoughts. Similar usages continued in later periods, such as in the Book of Jin describing Xie An 谢安, and in Song and Ming dynasty writings.
I actually didn’t know there was so much history to this phrase because I always thought it was more of a modern term. Nowadays, people use it quite often as a condescending way to describe someone. Like – oh, this person is very Jiao Qing. Someone from Southern China will have to correct me but I hear this phrase used more frequently by Northern Chinese people.
In the drama, Fan Xian and Hai Tang Duo Duo are definitely teasing each other with this phrase.
Next let’s discuss the spinning wheel or 纺车 that the Ming Matriarch is manning in the episode. A spinning wheel is a traditional textile tool that produces yarn by drawing fibers through mechanical rotation. It mainly consists of a wheel, spindle, and transmission structure, and can be divided into three types: hand-cranked, foot-treadle, and large spinning wheels. The one we see in the drama is a hand-cranked version.
A version first appeared in Han dynasty texts and stone carvings, over 2000 years ago, and it became a common spinning tool during the Eastern Han period. During the Song dynasty, about 1000 years ago, large spinning wheels with dozens of spindles were invented. During the Yuan dynasty, water-powered spinning wheels were developed, capable of spinning over a hundred jin of hemp per day, featuring a transmission system with 32 spindles and fiber-separating mechanisms.
The hand-cranked spinning wheel consists of a wooden frame, spindle, pulley, and handle, using a cord drive to achieve high-speed spindle rotation. The foot-treadle spinning wheel converts the up-and-down motion of the feet into circular motion via a crank, freeing the hands and improving efficiency. Depending on the location and purpose, you can still find a variety of the old school spinning wheels in China.
I do think from a symbolism perspective, perhaps this was the drama’s way to show that the Ming family was the one spinning the wheel but of course it was easy enough to just dismantle that machine by simply knocking it down.
[Karen]
Ok lastly, let’s discuss the 4 lines of song that introduce the grandmaster Ye Liu Yun
浪花只开一时，但比千年石，并无甚不同，流云亦如此
“The spray of waves blooms only for a moment, yet compared with stones that endure for a thousand years, there is little difference; drifting clouds are much the same.”
Ye Liu Yun’s name is Ye Drifting Clouds so the song incorporates his name.
These lines stem from the book and written by the author. It’s a good way to introduce the first of the 3 known grandmasters. There’s 4 total but no one knows the 4th. Ye Liu Yun makes only a brief appearance here. He makes 2 more appearances in the book so we’ll have to see if he returns in the next season!
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[Cathy]
Let’s conclude with book differences! I obviously don’t have a magic ball into the future but I am curious to see how the drama will close out the Ming family storyline. There’s still a decent amount left that isn’t touched upon, namely that MANY people die relating to the Ming family. I won’t spoil who right now. There’s some heavy foreshadowing in this last episode though. The drama skips right to the end of the volume to neatly introduce Ye Liu Yun. In the book, Fan Xian actually glanced at him from afar when Ye Liu Yun encountered Wu ZHu in Dan Zhou when Fan Xian was 12. Ye Liu Yun battled against Wu Zhu and wound up in a tie, which is respectable for Ye Liu Yun. This is the second time he meets Fan Xian. Ye Liu Yun initially introduces himself as Si Gu Jian, another Grandmaster. Fan Xian also spends a lot of resources trying to actually kill Ye Liu Yun but all fall short. Ye Liu Yun spares Fan Xian similar to how Fan Xian interacted with him in the drama. In the book though, Fan Xian tells Ye Liu Yun that he knows Ye Liu Yun won’t kill him BECAUSE he’s fought against Wu Zhu before. Fan Xian knows that Ye Liu Yun is very aware of the fact that if Fan Xian dies, Wu Zhu will murder every member of the Ye family. That’s Ye Liu Yun’s reason for sparing his life. At the very end of the drama, the modern day reader is asking what happened to Yuan Meng. We don’t see her in the drama, but in the book, as I mentioned last week, she is already murdered. Well now, I don’t want to end on SUCH a dour note. Fan Xian returns back to the capital with the power of the Ming family in hand. For Season 3, we will have to see just where the drama decides to pick up!