Eastern Palace Reading Guide+Epilogue Summary (Heavy Spoilers)
Fei Wo Si Cun’s Eastern Palace has been invading my feeling heavily for these past few days. I started reading the novel only a year ago since I’ve heard many good (bad) review of it. Some called it “the ultimate tragic story in the history of romance C-novels”. And that tells A LOT.
Long story short, since I knew that the novel isn’t completely translated I just let it be. Until early this year when I decided to gear up for the release of the drama adaptation, I found the summary spoiler-y page for the rest of the chapters that havent been translated. I read it, and.. I was so devastated…
Li Cheng Yin and Xiao Feng are….that thing… They conspicuously have infiltrated every quarter of my being. That being said I will definitely write more about them. This particular post is just gonna be a simple and summary guide to the Eastern Palace novel and its epilogue+a few additional chapters.
THE WRITING UNDER NUMBER 3 CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS, PROCEED ONLY IF YOU HAVE DONE NUMBER 1 AND 2.
How to read Eastern Palace in order.
Let’s start with the translated chapters of Eastern Palace. There are a total of 42 chapters + epilogue chapter in Eastern Palace. Novel Update has them translated up to chapter 25, and here is the link https://www.novelupdates.com/series/eastern-palace/
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Next, to get insight into what happens more in the flashback and what happens after chapter 25, basically you can go to this page, link http://xia0yuer.tumblr.com/post/24595824421/review-of-eastern-palace-and-scene-translation-an?is_related_post=1#axzz5fgRstQdU they did a one chapter translation and brief summary for the rest of the story.
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So we have arrived at the edge of our demise. How could a story be this tragic, how could a character be this cruel. We all hate Li Cheng Yin. We root and cry for Xiao Feng. I was looking for an answer and it happened when an amazing Twitter friend of mine, Riya, who have read the rest of the chapters and the epilogue by herself enlightened me when I asked her opinion on whether Li Cheng Yin have truly loved Xiao Feng or not. She then told me the detailed explanation on what happened in the epilogue. I also then braved to read the epilogue myself.
I’ll give you the link to our Twitter conversation and the original novel (below this summary)
From Pei Zhao chapter, it is said that Li Cheng Yin never believed in the river of forgetfulness. So he was certain he will die with Xiao Feng the first time they jumped into the river. The second time Xiao Feng tried to kill herself, he was ready to jump following her but Pei Zhao held him back.
Pei Zhao also mentioned when he rescued both Li Cheng Yin and Xiao Feng from the river the first time they jumped together, he saw how their hands are tied together with a belt. Pei Zhao thought the prince must be wanting to be together with Xiao Feng in death.
The epilogue is set 30 years after Xiao Feng’s death and is in the POV of Pei Zhao’s son. Pei Zhao also had a daughter named Liu Niang (which eventually ended up together with Li Mu, Li Cheng Yin’s son-this was written as separate short story). From here we learned that Li Cheng Yin had only two kids from different concubines. The two kids were also a daughter and a son, the daughter was named Chaoyang, while the son was named Li Mu (Amu). It is told that Chaoyang received Li Cheng Yin’s full love and was the most carefree and cherished person in the palace.
Li Cheng Yin conferred a title Queen of Mingde for his beloved crown princess Xiao Feng. It is also said that Li Cheng Yin never take anyone as his official empress after he took the throne as The Emperor.
Liu Niang, Amu, and Chaoyang liked to play together and they were close to each other. Li Cheng Yin believed Chaoyang was his daughter with Xiao Feng and told everyone that she really resembled Xiao Feng. In actuality, she wasn’t. Li Niang and Amu once asked a nanny is it true that Chaoyang looked like the late crown princess (Queen Mingde) and the nanny answered she actually did not. The nanny then described Queen Mingde as someone who is so beautiful and although she has thin and pale body, her beauty did not look anything like Central Plains’ women.
Eventually Chaoyang died. Li Niang and Amu were deeply sad about her death but she thought to herself that there was other person that was far more affected by Chaoyang’s death, and that was The Emperor.
Pei Zhao visited The Emperor in his old age and convinced him that Xiao Feng was long dead and Chaoyang was also not her daughter. Li Cheng Yin refused to believe it and kept saying that she was only going back to Xi Liang. Pei Zhao added a little detail by saying that more than 10 years ago he visited Xiao Feng’s grave and the grass was already so full, meaning that Xiao Feng had long gone and The Emperor should accept it
Some other additional details that Riya found from FWSC weibo and other fans’ page
Li Cheng Yin came across Xu Baolin (who was wearing red dress at that time) when he was drunk and fell for her silhouette that reminded him of Xiao Feng. Hence, Xu Baolin is pregnant.
FWSC wrote a deleted scene in the epilogue. Not long after Chaoyang’s death, Li Cheng Yin passed the kingdom to his son and he went to wall from where Xiao Feng jumped. He jumped and successfully took his own life in the same place Xiao Feng died.
The daughter name was named Chaoyang, but her pet name is actually A’Huang. Amu, her half brother liked to call him A’Huang too. It is said that the name A’Huang is based on the phoenix where the other word for phoenix was ‘Feng Huang’. So it might be related to Xiao Feng as well.
On the additional new scenes, it is revealed that Xiao Feng wasn’t actually her birth name and it was something like Malzima. It is the name of a tree with red leaves/maple. Gu Xiao Wu (Li Cheng Yin) told her that maple leaf is called “Feng” in Central Plains hence he gave her the name ‘Xiao Feng’, the ‘Xiao’ was added because there is ‘Xiao’ too in ‘Gu Xiao Wu’.
They had some pets together. She gave him her 2 gerbils to raise. One of them dies and he tries to find another gerbil which looks exactly the same because he didn’t want to break her heart.
Note that both Riya and I read the epilogue with the help of google translate. So please take this with a grain of salt as the translation may not be accurate but it did give a brief and general understanding as to what happened in the epilogue.
Link to the original novel
Thank you for reading until the end, hope we can be sad together! Also feel free to correct me and tell me if you have come across other posts that have done another translation or brief summary on the epilogue or additional chapters part :D
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