Chapter Summaries

Pang Liangji persuaded Wei Xun to serve as his groomsman by calling in an old favor, then recruited Huo Qilang as a second attendant. As the wedding preparations continued, Baozhu discovered that Pang Liangji had been given a poem unsuitable for his wedding and he asked her to guide him.

• Pang Liangji explained that he needed Wei Xun to protect him from wedding pranks and drink in his place, then invoked an old debt to secure Wei Xun's promise.
• Pang Liangji told Wei Xun that Baozhu and Thirteenth Son planned to travel east to find her relatives, and gave Wei his groomsman's clothes.
• Huo Qilang arrived as Pang Liangji's backup groomsman, accepted a gold ingot, and learned she was expected to wear men's wedding clothes rather than guard the bride.
• Pang Liangji complained about his future in-laws' demands and recited a fan-lowering poem while Baozhu listened from above.
• Baozhu recognized Pang Liangji's poem as lines from Bai Juyi's Twenty Poems on Late Spring that described a courtesan's house, and Pang Liangji asked her to teach him what to say instead.

Baozhu helped Pang Liangji replace insulting wedding poems with famous verses and devised a way for him to read any he could not memorize from court tablets. Pang Liangji tried to swear siblinghood with Ninth Lady, but she flatly refused.

• Baozhu examined Pang Liangji's wedding poems, exposed insulting allusions in several of them, and recited famous replacements for him to copy.
• Pang Liangji worried he could not memorize the new verses in three days, so Baozhu advised him to write them in tiny script on the backs of his court tablets.
• Pang Liangji ordered several tablets and thanked Baozhu, while Steward Pang mistook her palace connections for a sign that her family were imperial merchants.
• Pang Liangji eagerly proposed swearing siblinghood with Ninth Lady, but Baozhu refused.

Baozhu visited Crown Prince Li’s Tomb with Wei Xun and Thirteenth Son, where memories of her family’s political persecution surfaced. After recovering from her distress, she shot down a wild goose and asked Wei Xun to retrieve it as a wedding gift for Pang Liangji.

• Pang Liangji invited Baozhu, Wei Xun, and the others to his wedding, and Baozhu decided to visit local historic sites while Yang Xingjian recovered.
• Baozhu rode with Thirteenth Son toward Crown Prince Li’s Tomb, and Wei Xun followed to lead her donkey.
• On the way, Baozhu recounted Liu Ju’s fate and angrily explained how Li Chengyuan had proposed sending her, aged nine, to marry Trisong Detsen and had helped slander her brother Prince Shao.
• At Crown Prince Li’s Tomb, Wei Xun observed that Emperor Wu’s willingness to believe rumors had caused the tragedy, and Baozhu was overcome by the painful comparison to her own father.
• After regaining her composure, Baozhu shot down a wild goose and told Wei Xun to fetch it as a meaningful wedding gift for Pang Liangji.

Baozhu and Wei Xun enjoyed a hunt near Crown Prince Li's Tomb, then visited a smithy where a towering ascetic monk encountered Wei Xun. Baozhu's gift of a wild goose delighted the Pang family, while the schoolteacher who had sabotaged the wedding verses was beaten and expelled from Jade City.

• Baozhu spared a fox because it reminded her of her elder brother, Li Yuanying, and told Wei Xun and Thirteenth Son the story behind his childhood name, Little Fox.
• Baozhu, Wei Xun, and Thirteenth Son returned from the hunt with game, and Baozhu and Wei Xun bought arrows and an eating knife in town.
• Baozhu admired a sword at the smithy, but Wei Xun explained that swords were impractical weapons for most people.
• A towering ascetic monk entered the smithy, yielded the doorway to Baozhu and Wei Xun, and told Wei Xun he was in town because someone in Luoyang had ordered gunpowder.
• Baozhu sent Pang Liangji a wild goose and two pheasants as wedding gifts, and the Pang household added her to its honored guest list.
• The Pang family discovered that the schoolteacher had independently tampered with the wedding verses, beat him, and drove him out of Jade City.

Baozhu listened to a storyteller perform The Story of Li Wa at the inn before a mysterious, ill wandering prostitute arrived and played the pipa. Baozhu noticed unsettling details about the woman’s instrument and recognized the danger just as the woman turned hostile.

• After Pang Liangji and Huo Qilang left, Wei Xun evaded Baozhu’s questions about Pang Liangji’s expulsion from the sect.
• Baozhu found Yang Xingjian still unconscious, then paid a storyteller to perform The Story of Li Wa for her and Thirteenth Son.
• A sickly wandering prostitute entered the inn with a pipa, and Baozhu invited her to play a tune.
• The woman played Green Waist and told Baozhu that a young gentleman had injured her, while Baozhu noticed strange bones, strings, and paintings on the pipa.
• Thirteenth Son silently recited the Shurangama Mantra, and Baozhu realized the woman was sinister after spotting a skull-shaped hairpin.
• When Baozhu remarked that something seemed hidden inside the pipa, the woman smiled chillingly and sent a murderous cold presence toward her.

Baozhu and Wei Xun faced an attack from Tuoba Sanniang, a fellow disciple who had come seeking revenge, and Baozhu mistook her for a ghost. Tuoba Sanniang escaped, while Wei Xun reassured Baozhu that their relationship was only hostile before she returned to her room.

• Baozhu and the storyteller grew terrified as Tuoba Sanniang interrupted Thirteenth Son's chanting and accused Wei Xun of hurting her.
• Wei Xun arrived and fought Tuoba Sanniang, protecting Baozhu from her attack and deflecting a knife aimed at her.
• Tuoba Sanniang escaped across the roof, while the injured storyteller fled the inn after discovering his scalp had been cut.
• Wei Xun checked Baozhu for injuries and insisted Tuoba Sanniang was alive and that they had no romantic history.
• Thirteenth Son identified Tuoba Sanniang as their third senior sister, the Pipa-Tone Demon, and Baozhu found evidence that the frightening encounter had been real.
• Baozhu told Wei Xun she believed him rather than a stranger, then went to wash up in her room.

Wei Xun prepared to protect Pang Liangji and Baozhu from Tuoba Sanniang as they traveled to Pang Liangji’s wedding, where the Swiftwind Guardian would retire from the martial world. At the inn, Baozhu saw Huo Qilang dressed in red and was struck by how much she resembled her absent brother, Prince Shao, while Wei Xun reacted with unsettling coldness.

• Pang Liangji denied inviting Tuoba Sanniang and explained that his wedding would also mark his retirement from the martial world, while Wei Xun promised to protect him.
• Wei Xun told Pang Liangji to assign four guards to Baozhu, suspecting that Tuoba Sanniang might be targeting her.
• Baozhu helped the disoriented Yang Xingjian back to his room after he called her a princess, and Wei Xun concealed the remark from Pang Liangji.
• Baozhu chose peach-blossom hair ornaments and dressed for the wedding, while Wei Xun appeared in vermilion ceremonial robes.
• Baozhu saw Huo Qilang in matching red robes and recalled her brother Prince Shao’s beauty and estrangement from their father.
• Huo Qilang withdrew to a corner after Baozhu stared at her, while Wei Xun’s icy reaction made Huo uneasy.

Wei Xun struggled with jealousy while Baozhu teased Huo Qilang and learned about trouble threatening the Pang family wedding. The wedding procession reached the bride’s dark, closed-up home, where the master of ceremonies called for the household to open the gate.

• Wei Xun’s agitation eased when Baozhu teased him, and Thirteenth Son returned with a peach branch for the wedding procession.
• Baozhu and the others arrived at the Pang residence, where Pang Liangji prepared for his wedding amid a frantic rush of servants.
• Baozhu learned that someone had poisoned the household’s horses with croton seeds and warned Steward Pang to rest them and replace their fodder and water.
• Pang Liangji set out with the wedding procession to fetch his bride from the Xiao Family’s home, while Baozhu and Thirteenth Son followed.
• The procession found the bride’s home dark and its gate shut, and the master of ceremonies called for the household to come out.

Pang Liangji and his companions endured the Xiao Family’s wedding trials before the bridal procession set off, while Wei Xun noticed two vicious attacks hidden among the customary teasing. Baozhu heard the crowd gossip about the bride and her own past, then had Thirteenth Son silence a lewd spectator; she ended the chapter spotting a familiar banner in the crowd.

• Pang Liangji recognized the henbane in the welcome wine, and Wei Xun drank it for him and suppressed its effects with his internal strength.
• Wei Xun and Huo Qilang shielded Pang Liangji from the women’s beating, and Wei Xun stopped two concealed iron-rod attacks aimed at the groom.
• Pang Liangji recited prepared poems, met the bride behind the curtain, and watched her leave in the wedding carriage as the hundred-load procession began.
• Onlookers spread rumors about the bride’s remarriage and the Pang Family’s dowry, while Baozhu grew disgusted at their remarks.
• A spectator spoke lewdly about Princess Wanshou, so Thirteenth Son struck him with the flagpole and warned him to stop gossiping.
• Baozhu noticed a familiar banner reading “A miraculous hand restores spring” passing through the crowd.

Wei Xun protected Pang Liangji and Baozhu’s wedding procession from extortionists and a series of suspicious attacks, then escorted the bride safely to the Pang residence. As the wedding ceremony began, hidden weapons suddenly flew into the Blue Tent, leaving Wei Xun unable to protect everyone at once.

• Wei Xun and Huo Qi drank down the wedding blockers until a gang of ruffians demanded enormous sums and tried to reach the bride’s carriage.
• Huo Qi stopped two men from lifting the carriage curtains, and Wei Xun drove the ruffians away by embedding silver coins in a shop door and the street.
• Wei Xun revealed himself as the Green-Robed Wanderer of Guanzhong, and the procession continued as martial artists came forward to toast him.
• A Command Banner pole snapped above the stone bridge, and Wei Xun and Huo Qilang kept it from crushing the carriage and the spectators.
• Wei Xun broke the arm of a young Daoist who rushed toward the carriage, then ordered Pang Liangji to charge through as he suspected sabotage and felt the effects of drugged wine.
• At the Pang residence, the newlyweds began their ceremony, but sleeve arrows, steel darts, and throwing knives flew into the Blue Tent as Wei Xun faced the choice of whom to save.