Where the Mask Ends episode 25 recap: The eclipse, a second wedding and Nanny Wu's body

In short

In the eclipse A Chou and Lu Zhuo run to each other, and he soon marries her again, this time as the Wengzhu of Wu'an. When Nanny Wu's body turns up in a well, Lu Zhuo takes the blame himself.

What happens in episode 25

As the sun disappears, A Chou and Lu Zhuo run to each other through the crowd. If the light never comes back, she says, she doesn't want to die alone. He tells her she won't be alone. They hold each other and kiss, and the sun returns. On a lucky day soon after, Lu Zhuo marries her again. This time he fetches the bride himself, and she enters the Lu house not as a stand-in sent to bring a dying man luck, but under her own title, the Wengzhu of Wu'an.

On the wedding night A Chou acts unbothered and reads a cloth book on farming. Lu Zhuo quietly reads his own book, until she sees it is an illustrated pillow book and blushes, and he makes his move. The next morning she sleeps until noon. Lu Zhuo takes the wash basin from A Man and helps her wash himself. They have missed the morning greeting to the elders, but he has already sent someone to apologize.

Hong Xian moves into the Duke's house with A Chou's guards, introduced as her sworn sister. Lu Changning, who dislikes A Chou because of Xie Hualou, grumbles about the second wedding, so A Chou frightens her on purpose to keep her from bullying Hong Xian. Lu Zhuo lets A Chou do as she likes. He has the garden's flowers dug up and alfalfa planted: it survives cold and drought, grows anywhere and fattens horses, and he went to great trouble to find the seed just to please her. She offers him a razor-sharp sword from her storehouse in thanks, but he sulks when he hears Qi Zhongkai gave it to her. She doesn't understand love yet, he says; if she ever does, it can only be him, and even if she never does, she is his for this life.

Servants clearing a dry well in the woods behind Songyue Hall find Nanny Wu's body. Zhuo Chengjun and Ren Yuzhen, the Duke's second and third daughters-in-law, seize on it, show a silver needle to prove she was poisoned and all but call A Chou a murderer. When the old Duchess asks A Chou to explain, Lu Zhuo walks in and takes it on himself: Nanny Wu tried to steal military reports from his study, Zhao Song caught her, and she took poison out of fear. The matter is dropped, and Lu Zhuo sends away his cousin He Weiyu for siding with the accusers.

A Chou is upset anyway, because Lu Zhuo lied and bent his own principles for her. She tells him to sleep in his study and share her bed only on the first and fifteenth of the month. He knows she is scared, climbs back into bed that night and refuses to leave, and she quietly decides never to let him go. Then Liu Shuo brings word of a spring banquet: Consort Zheng wants to make peace between A Chou and the crown prince and crown princess, and Hong Xian must come too. On the way back, Liu Shuo lets Xie Hualou see he would like to marry her, leaving her flustered. At the banquet, Consort Li introduces A Chou to Yi Jiang, Prince Fu's consort, who reads faces. She reads A Chou's and sees disaster ahead.

Why it matters

The reunion the official synopsis promised finally happens, but married life is no shield: Lu Zhuo's aunts are after A Chou at home, and the next trap is a palace banquet with the crown prince and Wei Shu.

Based on the episode synopsis, summarized in our own words: TVmao (电视猫) episode synopses, cited by Baidu Baike Baidu Baike: official synopsis, episode synopses, cast and 追剧日历