Recaps

After surviving in Happiness Village, Zhou Yao married Yang Aijin and Yang Ailian and discovered his hidden royal identity and the forces loyal to his father. He began rebuilding that power through the Brocade Guard, a private army, and plans to transform the village into a trading estate, while demonstrating his martial strength to the provincial leaders.

• Zhou Yao used his hidden supplies and savings to establish his household, feed his animals, buy furniture, and share a wild boar feast with Damao, Ermao, and Sanmao.
• After tending his land and studying the Great Zhou State, Zhou Yao decided to write books for income, but a government officer soon brought him the unchosen twin sisters Yang Aijin and Yang Ailian.
• Zhou Yao married Yang Aijin and Yang Ailian, gave them food and clean clothes, and learned that the second prince had framed their family after their father refused to give them to him as concubines.
• Zhou Yao promised to avenge the sisters’ family and showed them the food, livestock, and vegetables he had accumulated, then celebrated their marriage and approaching birthdays with a special meal.
• Zhou Yao killed an agent of the second prince who had been watching the sisters, confronted another watcher, and learned from Wuying that he was the heir of Prince Zhou Shun.
• Wuying revealed that Prince Zhou Shun’s intelligence network and twenty-thousand-man force still existed, and Zhou Yao funded the troops, organized them as heavy cavalry and infantry, and renamed the network the Brocade Guard.
• Zhou Yao ordered Wuying to expand her bodyguards, investigate his family’s enemies, and recover Yang Aijin and Yang Ailian’s female relatives, then taught her two martial arts techniques.
• Zhou Yao secured the officers’ loyalty, appointed Zhang Fei and Chen Dao to train the cavalry and infantry, and ordered Wuying to buy all of Happiness Village for a private estate and trading market.
• Zhou Yao hired Damao and his brothers to build houses, then faced the eleven provincial Brocade Guard leaders and defeated them by striking their acupoints after evading their attacks.

Zhou Yao expanded the Brocade Guard and launched Dream of the Red Chamber, whose success spread through Stone County and beyond. He married Qiuye and Qiuyu, learned of their family’s ties to Zhou Xian and Pei Yuanli, and killed a watcher sent to monitor them.

• Zhou Yao defeated the eleven chiefs, organized the Brocade Guard under his sole command, and sent the chiefs back to their provinces to recruit and gather intelligence.
• Zhou Yao wrote the first ten chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber and signed an exclusive publishing contract with Yan Liusheng for a seventy-thirty profit split in his favor.
• Yan Liusheng’s staged dispute over the novel’s price drew a crowd, and five scholars praised the book before buying copies and encouraging others to do the same.
• Readers snapped up the first volume, and Yan Liusheng used deliberate shortages to fuel demand as the novel’s popularity spread across Great Zhou.
• Wuying reported that Pei Yuanli had tampered with supplies meant for the northern and central borders, and Zhou Yao ordered investigations and killings of officials responsible for the delays.
• During the wife-delivery campaign, Zhou Yao chose twin sisters Qiuye and Qiuyu, who reunited with Yang Aijin and Yang Ailian and revealed that their family had been destroyed after their father rejected Zhou Xian and Pei Yuanli.
• Qiuye and Qiuyu told Zhou Yao that they and the other sisters had once been betrothed to a young prince, and Zhou Yao killed a watcher monitoring the twins for Zhou Xian.