The Blade and Petal Episode 3 Summary

Despite the fact that Moo Young finds Choong in the court hall with General Yeon, she doesn’t have any thought that they’re father and son and simply just warns Choong that the man he was talking to was her father’s enemy and Choong has to be careful with what he says or does while he is in the palace. She’s glad that the new prime minister being on their side and teases Choong that even if he is a person who doesn’t talk much at least he can congratulate on their success. Choong says nothing.

The prime minister announces that they will celebrating the Dongmyeong Festival and a harvest festival. The  next day, King Yeoung Nyu leads the royal family and all the councilmen in a prayer ceremony for the coming year’s harvest. He then announces that the crown prince’s official installation ceremony will take place fifteen days after the Dongmyeong Festival, and that the prince will perform his martial arts skills on the last day.

Moo Young spies Choong walking in the palace and pretends that she is just around to let Choong sees and calls her. She talks about Choong’s day off and asks how he plans to spend it tries to get a chance that Choong might invite her but he unfortunately says that he has a friend downtown to meet. Moo Young then asks him to buy a book while he is in downtown. At the market Choong bumps into  stranger warrior which intrigues Choong’s caution.

Choong actually meets his buddy Jin Gu who all this time takes care of him. Happy to see how his old friend now turns into such a guard for the royal family, Jin Gu takes him out for a drink to celebrate it. On the way to the place they want to visit Choong catches a glimpse of the stranger he was bumped into. Choong sees the stranger is seeing Ohn Sa-moon, one of the ministers from General Yeon’s side. Choong accidentally overhears a part of their conversation, “On the last day of the festival, when the performance reaches its climax, a raven will soar and the descendants of the sun and river will fall.”

Too bad his friend then appears and gets him out of the place.The stranger is actually an assassin hires by Minister Ohn to kill the prince and princess. The minister tells him that the perfect time to assassinate the royal siblings is on the first day of the harvest festival, when tradition dictates that they will dress as commoners for a day to mingle with the people.

Moo Young tries her best to convince her brother to let Choong prepares him for his martial art skill performance, but clearly the crown prince has no interest both to practice or neither to perform. Choong steps forward, persuades the prince with his own way. He calmly rolls all the prince’s paintings, and coldly states that the king authorized him to use any means necessary to train the crown prince. And if the prince refused, he’s approved by the King himself to burn all his paintings.

The prince gets angry by Choong’s action and threatened him with a sword. Choong doesn’t even move and tells him that martial arts is about protecting what one loves and cherishes. Choong’s words touches the prince and he demands to be left alone to think. Few moments later he meets Choong in the practice room where he finds Choong is reading a book which happens to be one of the prince’s fave books. The book is actually the one Moo Young asked Choong to get in the market. She smartly planned that the prince might want to listen to Choong more if he finds out that he and Choong shares the same interest. In General Yeon’s resident, his loyal guard reports him that Choong now becomes the prince’s martial art instructor. The general then instructs his guard to convey a letter to his son in person. Hmmmm, intriguing.

Choong leads the prince and princess for their mingle-with-the-commoners-night tradition and begins alert when he notices the sight of the suspicious stranger he met in the market. The streets  are energetic with the festive spirit which seem to catch the royal siblings too. While they are taking a stroll in the street, a gisaeng grabs the prince’s arm, tries her best to get her guest for the night. The prince manages to escape and walks out from the gisaeng house. Then he  sees how Moo Young enjoys the street performances with Choong beside her. The prince smiles, noticing how the two seem to take pleasure in each other companion.

Hiding well from the crowd, the assassin hired by Minister Ohn gets a good spot to aim his poisonous dart to the prince. Unfortunately for him, the prince’s guard moves forward and blocks his sight to the prince …  only it then opens a clear range to hit Moo Young. It’s just such a fortunate night because unknowingly now Choong is the one who fails the assassin’s shot at the princess by keeping at her side.

Sensing a romance is in the air suddenly the prince says that he’s seen the celebration enough, making Moo Young almost sighing for leaving all the festivities. Cute Moo Young almost can’t contain her giddiness when her lil bro tells her that he’ll go back alone to the palace and asks her stay. Again the assassin tries another shot but he completely fails when the dart he spurts hits a cargo instead. The prince stays safe, and Moo Young enjoys the night with her broody hot guard.

The princess spots a street fortune teller and wants to hear what he says. Taking Choong’s hand to the stall she stops there, making the fortune teller guy thinks that they are a couple therefore insists to read their future. The fortune teller asks them to throw a dice together and then read what the dice says to them. It’s so funny, the dice predicts that if Moo Young and Choong spends a night together in the full moon then they will have a son! Whoohoo.

Moo Young and Choong have no idea that all the time they are watched by Cousin Jang. At that time, while the two lovers sheepishly smile to each other at the thought of that surprising prediction, a street boy steals Choong’s sword. Without thinking, Choong grabs Moo Young’s hand and together they chase after that kid through the crowded streets. Moo Young thrills with the sensation of holding hand with Choong, while all Choong thinks is that he needs to get his sword back but at the same time he still has to guard the princess. They lose the boy, but suddenly General Yeon’s guard appears and gives Choong his sword back. Cousin Jang sees all the exchange and looks troubled.

Choong showed Moo Young the place he used to live, makes her wonders how nice it must have been for him to be able to come and go whenever he pleased. Choong responds with, “Though you’re always smiling, I know that you’re heavily burdened in the palace,” he understands her well now. In a chat with her, then Choong reveals that he had a mother.

While they’re chatting Moo Young notices some word games carved in the wall and then tries to play some with him, giving him clues and ask him to guess the full character. He gets the easier ones, so she gives him the more the difficult question and this time she expresses what she feels through the word game. She asks, “What about the character where the words inside one’s heart are confined by threads?” (The character means love and yearning). Choong looks he doesn’t know the answer but I guess he does though, he just doesn’t want to get them both into an uncomfortable situation. He is the one who knows best that their romantic relationship might not bring them anywhere but dead end.

After they come home to the palace Choong goes to the backyard and quietly finds his father’s letter is  attached to his sword. Basically his general dad disagrees with his staying in the palace. He burns the letter, unknowing that Jang secretly watches him from behind. Choong perks up when Moo Young unexpectedly appears. She asks what he just burned, but Choong distracts her by asking why she comes to meet him there. It turns out that she just wants to give him a gift, a hairpin she bought at the market. The one actually Choong chose at the same day they met at the accessory shop. She is thankful that Choong able to persuade the prince to take part in the martial art skill performance.

The next day the prince and Choong start their training day.  Choong teaches him about learning his opponent moves to block their attacks and then defeat them. Jang visited the practice room and somehow Choong’s fighting style reminds him of almost similar movements from the fight he had in the rain with the masked assassin.

Moo Young comes by to train too, and now the prince convinced that his martial art instructor and his sister like each other. He tells Choong a story about his beloved sister, letting him know more about the woman he likes. In a flashback it showed how Moo Young demonstrated her sword fighting skills in front of their King dad, all the minister and also foreign delegates. She won, and everybody rejoice at the thought of how powerful their princess is. But she isn’t. Later when her brother visited her with a bunch of lovely flower, he found out how the fight wounded his sister. In a banquet with the King and the statesmen the princess perfectly hid her wound and appears in from of everybody as the royal princess their country can proud of.

The prince tells Choong how he refuses to fight not because he’s afraid but it’s just that he hates fighting. He never does what he doesn’t want to, but his sister selflessly does anything she can for him, for her father, for their country. Amazed with what he finds about the princess, Choong promises, “You’re not alone, Princess. I will be by your side.”

On the last day of the Festival Day, the royal family enters the meeting hall filled with all the councilmen dressed to enjoy a special performance. The poisonous assassin is among the performers disguises as a crow dancer. The prince opens the gala with his martial art performance and successfully defeat his opponent, he glanced a thankful look to Choong who received that with a smile and a bow. Then a traditional acting troupe come to the stage, performing a show. They’re this sophistication and just beyond gorgeous to stare at.

While the performance takes place, Choong notices how anxious Minister Ohn in his seat. His anxiousness triggers an extreme caution to Choong, makes Choong watches every move with sharp eyes. He sees how Minister Ohn then talks to his dad, and now he also sees the assassin backstage.

Suddenly it’s clear for Choong that Minister Ohn hires an assassin to kill the royal siblings. So when the assassin who disguises as one of the raven performer shows up and tries to shoot his poisonous pills Choong is ready and flies to the center of the room to block the attacks.

The assassin fights Choong back and slices Choong’s arm at the same place Jang has wounded him. The fight finishes when Choong cuts the silk used by the assassin to dangle, make him falls flat to the ground.

Because the fight is so sudden, no one can really understand what just happened, not to mention how the King is so mad at Choong’s abrupt interruption. He demands to know why Choong ruined the performance, and Choong frantically tries to defend himself as best as he can without involving his general father.

He can’t reveal that there is an attempt to murder the royal descendants because immediately the attempt will be related to his father as the King’s biggest enemy. So he protects his dad by lying that he just misunderstood the situation and thought that there was a threat to the royal family. Both Moo Young and the prince do their best to defend Choong, explaining that it was a mistake he made out of a loyal spirit from a guard to protect the royal family. At first everything seems to be solved smoothly when the King accepts their explanation and wants to let the case as it is.

But it’s just not a good day for Choong indeed. Jang speaks up and revealing a hidden old wound on Choong’s arm, recognizing the wound he gave to the mysterious assassin who killed the attackers to royal convoy back then. The king then turns to Choong to ask him if he infiltrated the palace as a spy. Moo Young is so surprised with all this and pleads Choong to say that the accusation is wrong. Choong keeps silent because he doesn’t know what to do to get out of this situation without involving his dad but everybody takes this as a statement from Choong that he is indeed a spy.

Choong then replies that he came to the palace as a guard and that he really isn’t a spy, but when Moo Young asks him why he has a wound from Jang’s sword, Choong can only say that he had a reason for doing what he did that day. Choong keep denying the spy accusation on him but then Jang throws down a huge fact. That Choong made contact with General Yeon through a letter which then he burned so nobody will know.

Choong can’t let himself to keep being accused as spy because it will lead to an idea that his father is a rebel who wants to kill the royal family. So finally he decides to say the truth. That he’s an illegitimate son of General Yeon. Everybody is shocked with this confession, and it seems that it hurts Moo Young the most. The man she loves is a man she doesn’t know anything. Choong carefully approached her, hid the fact from the very beginning that he knew she’s a princess, and he’s the son of her father greatest enemy.

The king uses this opportunity to hit General Yeon. He announces that Choong is gonna be beheaded under the law, to see how the general is going to react. The general does his best though to defend Choong. He knows his son knows about the plan from his side to murder the royal descendants. He rejected the poor kid, refuses to acknowledge him as his son. But the kid is still loyal to him. Loyal enough to put his life in danger to be beheaded rather than revealing the murder plan.

When the King still questions the truth about Choong being his son but works as a palace guard General Yeon says, “I have nothing to do with him. He is of my blood, but he’s never been part of the Yeon family and is an illegitimate child without a name.” The General’s statement shocked everybody, and we can see how it hurts Choong.

Despite General Yeon’s statement to defend Choong’s life and clear the accusation, the king decrees that Choong will be beheaded in the middle of the capital square in public.

 

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