EPISODE 18
It is getting serious. Very serious. Xiaoyanzi is the heart and soul of the whole group, now that she’s gone, they all feel uprooted. I mean, who is going to take all the blame for their crazy deeds if Xiaoyanzi is not here anymore?
But Xiaoyanzi doesn’t exactly have a plan as she wanders around the street. She goes in a chess house and tries to spend some money immediately. The club boss acts nice at first but we soon find out that he and his wife are a pair of criminals who pretend to run an honest business but are actually pretty much involved in human trafficking. unlucky for Xiaoyanzi, he’s also very good at chess. The girl learns the hard way that not everyone lets her win like her Huang-ah-ma.
When Xiaoyanzi loses and tries to smash the whole place out of anger — which, admittedly, is not a very nice thing to do — the chess guy knocks her out and enslaves her. So Xiaoyanzi is in a rather miserable spot this time. To be honest, it looks like if she’d just walked out of the club when she lost, she wouldn’t have been captured.
Now, the gang and the Liu siblings + Meng Dan begin their search for Xiaoyanzi. To no avail. The good news is: Meng Dan finally makes himself useful in this episode.
At the end of the day, they couldn’t find her. Obviously. Yongqi is heartbroken. Ziwei is heartbroken. Erkang is heartbroken about how heartbroken Ziwei is.
Later on, the group holds a private meeting, Hanxiang and Erkang believe that Xiaoyanzi won’t abandon them so easily, they’re her family, after all.
But the problem is, they can’t keep this under wrap forever. The empress and dowager are bound to find out at some point and who knows what’s going to happen once they do.
And Yongqi doesn’t exactly help the situation by suddenly flinging open the window and yelling Xiaoyanzi’s name.
Like a cue, the emperor arrives and asks for Xiaoyanzi for a chess match. Being a cool dad that he is, he hasn’t forgotten his quest to improve his daughter’s abysmal skills.
As the kids stare at one another in fear, Hanxiang jumps in to rescue the situation.
She invites the emperor to dinner. Oooh, dinner. The emperor agrees right away, forgetting… his daughter. OK, not exactly a cool dad.