THE CALM BEFORE THE STORME

EDIT: Can you guys let me know if there are missing posts? This just got deleted after I posted it. So weird.

I am all up to date now, and I can safely say that these two episodes are the calm before the storm. I’m all caught up and some some serious shit goes down in the next two episode but I’ll just fill in on what happened on 21 and 22 briefly.

So the only time that Zuo Zhen isn’t stalking Jin Xiu (or having his men stalk her) is conveniently the same time she gets captured by creepy-ass Long Yi.

Yes Long Yi is a creepy-ass mf to me now, which will be explained in the events in the next recap (in case you’re not all caught up yet). He switches Jin Xiu into a kimono and puts her hair up, so she’d closely resemble his dead lover.

Someone tell him putting 10 candles next to an unconscious person is a fire hazard.

So how did Jin Xiu narrowly miss death and how did Long Yi manage to fool his teacher that he killed Jin Xiu?

Well originally, watching episode 20, I assumed that Long Yi and his teacher went straight to murder Jin Xiu after his teacher told him that Jin Xiu must die, but apparently he had the time to make a call to Ming Zhu to make sure that Jin Xiu stays late after work as well as get a girl to show up near Jin Xiu’s house.

SO he gets one of his men to knock her out with chloroform and kidnap her to safety, while he shoots that poor innocent girl and pretend that he killed Jin Xiu.

No wonder he clasped her head to his chest after he shot that girl, because it wasn’t even Jin Xiu.

We see a more detailed version of Long Yi’s past. Apparently he fell in love with a rich powerful man’s daughter named Yang Zi, and the man prohibited them from being together. When they planned to elope, Yang Zi took a shot for Long Yi.

While in his arms, Yang Zi asked him to end her pain from the shot…

…with MORE PAIN ELSEWHERE?!

Wait WHAT using a knife to die is possibly the most painful and counterproductive way to end your bullet wound pain. I mean… if he took a knife and stabbed her in the heart, thus effectively killing her immediately, I would perhaps understand a little bit more but she took that knife in her abdomen, so still she’d have to bleed to death no?

Finally Andy Lau decides to leave, thinking that Jin Xiu was dead, and tasked Long Yi to obtain more funds in Shanghai for the Japanese soldiers. Long Yi returns to the still passed out Jin Xiu, and cuts himself.

Imagine if she woke up now LOL. 

He lies that him and his friends saw that she was almost going to get attacked and managed to save her. He ‘proved’ it with his cut hand (which was really cut by himself). Jin Xiu believes all of this, and he walks her home, all smiley and in love. AHEM SORRY LONG YI, YOUR CHARM WON’T WORK ON ME NOW, AFTER EPISODE 24.

Ming Zhu approaches Long Yi and confronts him with “WTF did you do?!”, because the girl that she had sent him had returned shot and dead. I completely agreed with Ming Zhu on this – Long Yi’s complete disregard for human life was chilling and inhumane.

Annoying Ying Dong approaches Ming Zhu again at this point, to try to ‘get to know’ her, and for her to give him a second chance. At this point, I’m so sick of his shit because he’s the one that’s been pushing her away at this point, and he keeps flip flopping around. Ming Zhu is desperate and sad from the threats from Long Yi, and she offered to give Ying Dong a second chance if he still accepted her after she told him her whole story.

Which… at this point Ying Dong proves that he is truly the scum of the Earth by declining, and saying that “You’re nearly my sister-in-law, from now on we’ll be strangers now, ok?!”

He approached her… And now he’s spazzing?!

CAN YOU BE MORE UNLIKABLE?

I would also like to add that you can see from this scene that it’s solid concrete beneath the tower.

Remember Miss Xiao’s death? How she fell in such a strange trajectory is beyond me.

Ying Dong, yet proving again that he’s a scumbag, tries to woo Jin Xiu after the loss of Ming Zhu. He takes her to the movies, brings her flowers, and tries to win over her heart.

Zuo Zhen is obviously not pleased that this another man is courting his girl.

In fact, he’s so mad that he decides to wear sunglasses. Indoors. At night. Inside a ballroom.

I mean he takes them off briefly while he confronts Ying Dong.

Then he puts them on again. Even though it’s night time. And indoors.

That’s how mad he is.

Finally, my love, Ling Li leaves to travel again, and I am saddened. There goes the only male lead that I really like.

For the remainder of episode 21, and all of 22, Ying Dong and Zuo Zhen take turns courting Jin Xiu, and nothing really big happens. Let me briefly explain:

Xiang Shao asks Ying Dong if he’s serious about Jin Xiu. Ying Dong gives a half-assed wishy-washy answer.

But in the next scene, we see that Xiang Shao helped Ying Dong create an elaborate and romantic setting for Jin Xiu. Ying Dong proceeds to propose to Jin Xiu, only to get rejected.

Meanwhile, Zuo Zhen’s boss, Boss Fung, demands that Zuo Zhen cooperates with with Long Si to sell firearms from his German friend to the Japanese. It’s a profitable business, but Zuo Zhen doesn’t want to do this because the Japanese are using the firearms to fight against their own Chinese people.

Boss Fung won’t accept Zuo Zhen’s refusal to do it though, and he talks big of taking Zuo Zhen down since he was the one that brought him back up.

Boss Fung demands to use half of Zuo Zhen’s men for Long Si to complete this business deal.

Zuo Zhen doesn’t comply obviously. He puts laxatives in Long Si’s drink, and makes him get diarrhea on the same day that he’s getting the German guest.

Zuo Zhen manages to kidnap the German guest and demands that he puts off the deal, or else that he’d,,, well, murder him. The German guest complied and left. This put him at odds with Boss Fung.

Boss Fung, angry that Zuo Zhen didn’t comply, and afraid that Zuo Zhen was out to dethrone him from his place, decided to try to assassinate Zuo Zhen.

  

So during Zuo Zhen’s date with Jin Xiu, he gets almost assassinated twice – once in the movie theatres, where this guy was blatantly walking in with an unconcealed gun (c’mon man it’s like you’re not even trying), and there was the other waiter that put a bomb in their restaurant. Luckily they live, but this caused Zuo Zhen to be afraid that he’d be putting Jin Xiu in danger, so after that night, he decided to stay away.

Ying Dong tries to take Jin Xiu on a date too, but now that Jin Xiu had a comparison of the two dates, she realized (in the middle of the night) that she loved Zuo Zhen. She felt truly happy with Zuo Zhen, and decided to tell him the next day.

Episode 24 and 25 get heavy.

It gets real heavy, guys.

Read Episode 23, 24 recap here.