Against The Current Episode 36 Recap
**SPOILER ALERT**
Table of Contents
TL;DR (Quick Overview)
Jinqi finally learns the real reason behind Lanxiang’s resentment, not lost love, but a life taken from her without consent, while a dying Zhao Xingtang hands over damning proof of his greatest secret, only for Lanxiang to burn it without hesitation. As Wei Bao closes in for a final confrontation, this episode delivers its most emotionally devastating turn yet, and possibly the first real crack in Lanxiang’s guarded heart.
A Confession of Exhaustion
Still guiding Lanxiang’s hands as she practices aiming the gun, Jinqi collapses against her shoulder, spent. He insists he isn’t taking advantage of her, that he simply has no strength left, and she understands, easing him back down onto the reeds.
He tells her to leave him and take the mule to save herself, insisting that if he survives, they’ll meet again as husband and wife, but if he dies, she should remarry. He admits he used his authority to force her away from Han Liang against her will, and since Han Liang still isn’t betrothed, she should marry him instead.
Lanxiang tells him plainly that she’s never thought of Han Liang that way at all, and could never have had feelings for him. Jinqi is stunned, and clearly overjoyed. She clarifies what actually wounded her, was that Jinqi used his power to take away her freedom without ever once asking what she wanted for her own life, binding her to the Lin family through an imperial decree with no regard for her wishes. Jinqi listens with great remorse as he sheds a tear.
She reminds him however that when he helped her register Ji’er in Quanzhou, she’d promised to help him if he ever needed it. Besides since their marriage was decreed by the Emperor himself, she couldn’t simply remarry even if she wanted to. Jinqi promises to petition the Emperor to allow it if he dies, though she reminds him grimly that if Prince Han takes the throne instead, she may end up beheaded alongside him regardless.
A Search for Medicine
His fever worsens, and Lanxiang makes him a cold compress, but it does little good, so she ventures out to search for herbs. She feeds him what little food they have, hard flatbread meant to be softened in the mouth, since there’s no way to boil eggs or find fresh food in this bitter cold.
While searching, she hears a woman in distress and finds a ransacked carriage, its servants and maids already killed by bandits, the woman inside assaulted. The woman falls from the carriage and tries to fight back against her attacker, and Lanxiang, horrified to recognize her as Zhao Xingtang, loads the gun and kills the man.
An Unlikely Alliance
Xingtang is equally stunned to see Lanxiang, who covers her torn clothing with a fur shawl. Surveying the area, Lanxiang notices the bandits carried Tiance Army blades, proof that Prince Han has been defeated. She tells Xingtang to find cover and starts to leave, but Xingtang follows her back toward the hut. Lanxiang tells her not to follow but Xingtang ignores her and follows anyway. Upon arrival, Xingtang sees a wounded Jinqi and laughs bitterly telling Lanxiang not to waste her time looking after men.
She settles on the reeds and takes out a wooden comb and proceeds to comb her hair. Lanxiang checks on Jinqi and starts to prepare the herbs she found. She manages to put some droplets of smashed herbs into Jinqi’s lips.
Xingtang asks for food, and Lanxiang gives her some flatbread of which she devours. As Lanxiang continues to care for Jinqi, Xingtang shares what happened to her. Fleeing the fallen capital with her sister Xingluo, she is set upon by bandits who taunt and threaten her.
Her own father and brother had abandoned the two women partway through their escape, deeming them burdens, killing their maid Qingxiang and stealing their money before fleeing themselves. Ironically, Xingtang and her sister later come across her father’s and brother’s bodies along the road, already dead before Xingtang herself.
Xingtang fiddling with her wooden comb, opens a secret compartment which holds a document. Xingtang passes the document to Lanxiang, repaying the kindness she had shown by killing hose men and giving her food. Grateful to Lanxiang for killing the men who assaulted her and for the food she was given, Xingtang decides to repay her.
She reveals the truth behind the evidence, that her father and brother had travelled all the way to the capital hoping to expose Jinqi’s treason and claim credit from Old Master Zhao. But Prince Han’s rebellion erupted before they could act, and Old Master Zhao never returned from the palace. Jinqi is now awake and overhears his and begins to panic, but pretends to continue sleeping.
Believing Xingtang still illiterate and harmless, the two men let their guard down enough for her to secretly read the document herself. She had kept it hidden, planning either to use it to save her own life, or, failing that, to make sure the Lin family fell alongside her if she died.
The document details a secret investigation confirming that the man Jinqi helped escape from the Furong Troupe years earlier was in fact the deposed Crown Prince, smuggled out by sea, along with testimony from boatmen and porters. The discovery of a body recovered from the river that same year, staged to look like an accidental drowning but bearing signs of violence and a missing left index finger, proof enough to establish Jinqi’s guilt beyond doubt.
Lanxiang is dubious but takes the document anyway and asks why Xingtang is repaying kindness with kindness, something very unlike her personality. Xingtang laughs and agrees with her but in death, you sometimes want to do something good. She removes the fur shawl to reveal a big wound on her side, bleeding profusely. She falls to the ground and Lanxiang starts crying.
Xingtang’s Farewell
Xingtang explains she’s giving it to Lanxiang precisely because she saved her life and showed her kindness when no one else would, admitting that facing death has left her speaking only from the heart. She didn’t want to die surrounded by the men who wronged her and that spending her last moments with Lanxiang instead feels right.
Lanxiang holds her bloodied hand and asks her what she should call her. Xingtang? Xingtang smiles, admitting Lanxiang understands her even better than her own maid once did. She laments about her past. Spent her whole life defined only by her relationships to others, Young Lady Zhao, Madam Dai, and that she’s had enough of it entirely. She asks that when she dies, she be cremated, hoping that in another life she might finally exist simply as herself.
She reflects on the unfairness of a world where women cannot attend school, sit for exams, hold office, run businesses, or choose their own husbands, wondering aloud when such a world might ever exist, one where a wife answers to no one, not husband, not son, simply herself. Lanxiang tells her that such a world will come one day.
Xingtang says that if it were true, she and Qingxiang could have lived and earned their way honestly, with real dignity. She urges Lanxiang to keep the evidence safe, reasoning the Lin family will never dare mistreat her while she holds it, and tells her, simply, to live well.
A Letter Burned
Later, Lanxiang lights a small fire and reads the confession in private. Jinqi, still pretending to sleep, is terrified of what she’ll do with it and what it contains. Jinqi is reminded of the time his grandfather asked him if he had ever betrayed the Emperor and if ever found, the entire Lin family would perish.
Lanxiang reads the letter to herself:
I conducted secret investigations day and night and finally obtained conclusive evidence. Father’s suspicions were correct. The man Lin Jinqi took away from the Furong Troupe was indeed the deposed Crown Prince. The two conspired in secret, and Lin Jinqi helped him escape by sea. We personally interrogated the boatmen and porters involved.
There is no risk of this being leaked. Li Qi, a coroner with the Western City Patrol Office, recovered a floating corpse west of the city in June of that same year. Though it was reported as an accidental drowning while drunk, the examination found no foam around the mouth or nose and no water in the stomach. The victim was killed before being thrown into the water. Even more strangely, the corpse was missing its left index finger. Lin Jinqi’s guilt is now established.
She blows out the flame, turns back to look at a sleeping Jinqi and mutters his name softly. She then turns aways from him, re-lights the fire and burns the evidence completely. Jinqi, overwhelmed with love and gratitude, says nothing.
When he wakes properly, Lanxiang is in good spirits, telling him first that Prince Han has been defeated. He’s briefly speechless that this is the first thing she chooses to share. He asks if there’s anything else she wants to tell him, and she says only that Xingtang has died. He can hardly believe she never mentions the letter at all.
He presses one more time if there was more information to tell him and proceeds to mention more about bandits being everywhere and unfortunately that’s how Xingtang met her fate. Given her multiple opportunities to mention the letter and she doesn’t, she smiles at her. He tells her that he will spend his entire life remembering that she saved his life and he looks at her knowingly and Lanxiang smiles in understanding.
A Standoff With Wei Bao
Jinqi, still recovering, is confronted by Wei Bao, who has finally tracked him down and declares that with Prince Han’s defeat now confirmed, Jinqi’s head will make a fitting offering in his fallen prince’s honour.
Jinqi, in no condition to fight back, asks only to be heard out first. He reminds Wei Bao that he helped the current Emperor ascend the throne and remains one of his trusted ministers, and that while killing him now might be simple enough, Wei Bao’s own parents, wife, children, and entire family would inevitably pay for it with their lives once the reckoning comes.
He accepts that the victors rule and the losers pay the price, but asks Wei Bao directly whether he is truly willing to throw away the rest of his life as an outlaw, robbing and killing, shaming his ancestors, and leaving no descendants behind, all for the sake of one final act of vengeance. Wei Bao wants to know what the alternative is and Jinqi enlightens him.
Against the Current Episode 36 Recap: My Thoughts
Oh my goodness, I loved this episode. Liu Xueyi, I will keep telling everyone what a superb actor he is. So much expression conveyed in such subtle facial movements. So much guilt for marrying her when she was supposedly in love with Han Liang, happiness once he learned she never loved him at all, then tears when she finally spelled out what she was actually angry about, that he took her life without ever asking her and bound her to the Lin family. For him, that revelation was probably worse than believing she loved someone else.
I loved that she genuinely cared and worried for him, and oh, that scene when she burned the evidence, I was screaming in relief. His expression watching her do it said everything, he was clearly bursting with love. And when he kept asking whether there was anything she wanted to tell him and she never mentioned it, he completely crumbled.
And Li Meng, oh Li Meng! You were wonderful in this episode. What a tragic life she led, and when she revealed she was dying, I actually felt sad for her. When the two women held hands, the acting was fantastic. I cried at the strange bond they’d built, hatred dissolved through Lanxiang’s extraordinary kindness.
This was truly a fantastic episode, and I hope it marks a small, pivotal shift in Lanxiang’s feelings toward Jinqi. His love for her has only grown exponentially after everything she’s done for him, but I’m wondering if, even just a little, she could ever fall for this man too.
The pace felt slow in this episode and yet it flew by so quickly. I was so invested in every piece of dialogue, every unspoken expression and every emotional beat of the storytelling.
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