Against The Current Episode 3 Recap
**SPOILER ALERT**
Table of Contents
TL;DR (Quick Overview)
Lin Jinqi returns home a decorated war hero to a frosty marriage, a suspicious household, and a father who barely tolerates him. Meanwhile, a corrupt housekeeper’s bribe scheme backfires spectacularly, and Lanxiang finds herself walking straight into the Lin mansion, and straight past the man she was once meant to marry.
A Homecoming, With Conditions
Lin Jinqi returns to Jinling flanked by his two aides, walking in with real presence to greet his father, who immediately tells him to leave his uncouth, boorish military habits back in the camp, he’s expected to be eloquent and refined now that he’s home.
Visiting his mother next, Qin Shunhua is overjoyed to see her son again after six long years on the battlefield. Thanks to Old Master Zhao’s influence, he’s been allowed to return to Jinling with a promotion in hand, and she wastes no time telling him plainly, she wants him to stay by her side now, and to start a family with his wife. She urges him gently to speak kindly to her, to actually try.
A Marriage Built on Mutual Contempt
Jinqi heads next to see Zhao Xingtang, and the reception is ice cold. Their mutual hatred fills the room instantly. Xingtang doesn’t hold back, reminding him bluntly that without the Zhao family’s intervention all those years ago, the Lin family would have shared the exact same fate as the Shen family. Jinqi taunts her right back, telling her plainly that whenever she wants a divorce, he’s more than ready.
A Household Rebuilt Without Him
Heading into his study, Jinqi calls for the head butler, Mr. Yang, demanding to know why every single servant in Zhichun Hall is unfamiliar, and where all his old staff have gone. Without loyal people of his own planted in the hall, he points out, he has no way to keep watch over his wife at all.
Mr. Yang reveals the truth, Xingtang had sold off every one of his former servants and replaced them entirely with her own hand-picked maids. When Jinqi asks specifically about Yuchan, Yang admits, uncomfortably, that Xingtang manipulated her into a marriage, and she’s now wed to a fool.
A Quiet Family Dinner
Back at the Xu residence, Wanquan lands another valuable painting deal, and as a small celebration, Lanxiang cooks up a chicken dish for a warm, happy family dinner. The peace doesn’t last.
Madam Han, acting on orders from the Lin family’s head butler, gathers the neighbourhood together and announces that every unmarried girl aged fourteen and over is to report to the Lin residence as a serving maid. Both Lanxiang and Lv Ji’er are named among those called to service.
A Desperate, Doomed Bribe
The Xus panic instantly, knowing full well that entering the Lin household is rarely a good thing for anyone. Lanxiang senses something’s off about the summons too, this kind of sweep specifically for unmarried maids isn’t standard practice. Convinced the best way out is to feign illness, she watches as Wanquan takes their entire life savings and pays the head shopkeeper to bribe Madam Han into skipping her the next morning.
A Scam Revealed
Morning arrives, and Madam Han collects the girls as planned. Lv Ji’er and her mother are thrilled at the news. Despite the bribe already paid, Madam Han calls Lanxiang’s name anyway, and the awful truth sinks in, they’ve been scammed outright.
As she’s led away, Wanquan grabs a butcher knife in a blind, furious rage, storming to the shop and attempting to attack the shopkeeper himself, only to be wrestled down by the man’s own hired muscle.
A Rescue, and a Threat
Lanxiang manages to talk her way free of Madam Han’s grip just long enough to rescue her father from the fallout. She lays out the stakes plainly, a servant caught stealing from their master faces a hundred lashes and ten years in prison.
If the shopkeeper wants to report Wanquan to the officials, fine, but that would trigger a full investigation, ledgers included, and everyone would soon be asking exactly why he wanted a measly twenty silver taels so badly in the first place. What would happen to him, she asks, once they discover he’s been embezzling all along? They walk away free, money fully intact.
A Daughter’s Goodbye
Before she leaves, Lanxiang tells her father to live a good, full life with her mother, reminding him plainly that if anything happens to either of them, she’ll be left completely alone in the world.
Tearfully, putting on a brave face she doesn’t fully feel, she departs for the residence. A whole group of young women is marched in and presented to Qin Shunhua, who selects the four prettiest among them: Xu Lanxiang, Lv Ji’er, Zhou Gantang, and Du Xiaolian.
A Feast Left Untouched
Back at the mansion, Zhao Xingtang waits eagerly for Jinqi, a full feast laid out in his honour. He arrives, visibly surprised by the spread, having assumed he’d only been summoned for something urgent. He asks, sarcastically, if she’s prepared some kind of reunion dinner.
She explains her father had arranged a proper welcome-home banquet, and Jinqi declines outright, claiming he still has duties to formally hand off at the garrison. Furious, Xingtang’s composure cracks. Madam Han arrives at exactly the right moment, introducing the four new maids.
Xingtang tries to wave them off, insisting she already has enough servants, but Madam Han insists, especially now that the young master’s home and will need attendants of his own. Jinqi simply tells them, since his mother personally selected the girls, to keep them and assign them duties, before walking out entirely.
A Cold Introduction
Unimpressed, Xingtang has the new maids introduce themselves one by one, their family backgrounds, their skills. She listens with total indifference, uninterested in entertaining any of them further, and hands them off to her own maid to be taught the household rules and assigned their chores.
Against the Current Episode 3 Recap: My Thoughts
And finally, we get introduced to Lin Jinqi properly. What an entrance! Liu Xueyi looked so formidable, and so handsome. We immediately see the full shape of his family dynamics, a strained, distant relationship with his father, real warmth with his mother, and something close to open hostility with his wife. It seems he left for the army almost immediately after the wedding and has only just returned now, six years later.
This marriage of convenience clearly isn’t working, both of them trading insults with hatred behind every word. Xingtang keeps reminding him of the painful debt, the Zhao family saving the Lins from the Shen family’s fate, but he isn’t having any of it.
Li Meng is the absolute epitome of nasty here, and she plays villainous roles to perfection. I remember her as a vicious princess in The Double and hated her for it, and she’s doing exactly the same thing here. Just an excellent actress.
Jinqi’s clearly not a man to be trifled with either, and six years away hasn’t dulled his cunning one bit, even with his wife having quietly overturned a household he once knew intimately. Bringing in these new maids feels like a deliberate move on his part, a way to plant his own eyes and ears back inside the hall. Liu Xueyi continues to be such a great actor, and so far, completely convincing in this role.
And by the end of the episode, we finally get that moment, Lanxiang standing face to face with the very man she was once supposed to marry. She should have been sitting in that hall herself, eating at that same feast, living the rich, noble life that was always meant to be hers. Instead, she’s now forced to serve the very people who destroyed everything she had.
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