How Hailan became a concubine. She was just a young seamstress, but Hongli (then a prince) got drunk and raped her. Hailan could’ve been killed to protect his honor or cast out of the palace and driven to suicide out of shame, but Ruyi managed to convince him to take her as a mistress to protect her. Ruyi is the only one who sympathized with her, while the others either ignored her or (like Xiyue for example) blamed her for it and said that she tempted Hongli to try to gain favor. No wonder why she is so timid all the time.
Zhen Huan orders Ruyi to commit suicide, and if she doesn't Yixiu will die. Then she threatens to kill Yixiu anyway if Ruyi tells Hongli.
Ruyi and Suoxin find Li Yu kneeling on broken, bloody bricks and they ask him what he is being punished for, and he refuses to answer out of fear. Ruyi bluntly asks Wang Qin what he is being punished for, and the latter gleefully says that Li Yu deserved to be punished because he served Hongli a cup of tea that was too hot.
Lianxin is forced to marry Wang Qin, who abuses her. Virtually no one has any sympathy for her (and the people who do feel sorry for her can't do anything to help), and A Ruo even mocks her for being unhappy.
Ruyi and Suoxin's first introduction to the other women in the Cold Palace, when they wake up to see eyes staring at them through holes in the wall.
A deposed former concubine from Yongzheng's reign attempts to assassinate Zhen Huan. It's very clear that she only has one goal in mind and that is to kill Zhen Huan. Ruyi steps in to shield Zhen Huan but she keeps charging at her seemingly intends to take her out as well for standing in her way despite having a good relationship with Ruyi. It's frightening to think Zhen Huan survived many hardships when she was a consort to become the Empress Dowager but could have died an unceremonious death by the hands of her erstwhile adversary.
After being viciously abused by Longhua, Xiyue, Yuyan and A-Ruo, and realising that Ruyi can't protect her from the Cold Palace, Hailan gets vicious. Prince Yonglian is shown to have died due to accidentally inhaling reed fluff during an asthmatic flare up. Hailan is next shown arranging some reed flowers in a vase. The fact that even the gentle, genuinely kind and loyal Hailan would be provoked into murdering a child to get back to his parents is chilling.
Once Ruyi is out of the Cold Palace and Langhua's second son Prince Yongcong dies, she actually has to ask Hailan if she had anything with it and make her promise not to target children's lives.
Ruyi and Suoxin almost burn to death in their room during the Double-Nine festival. The guards hear their screams for help but ignore them because their duty isn’t to save them, it’s to keep them confined there until their deaths, so the fire is speeding up the process. Only Ling Yunche braves against the fire and saves them, and even so they’re still shaken by it and Ruyi asks Suoxin if she’s okay. Langhua gives Ruyi a cold glare before walking away because her plan of killing them didn’t work (Xiyue supplied the fireworks seen earlier and A’Ruo gave servants inflammable oil to pour over the Cold Palace).
Zhen Huan chooses Muping to be one of Hongli's concubines. Muping is sixteen (and her reaction when Hongli asks if she knows what's expected of her implies she doesn't even know what sex is) and Hongli is at leasttwenty years older than her.
Out of fear that she will remain a helpless concubine with no favor or power, Yanwan orders Chunchan to bring Ling Yunche over at night to calm Yanwan down because she was thinking of killing herself (in the novel, she wanted info about Hongli’s current interests), and Chunchan leaves him in the room by himself. Yunche smells incense that was laced with aphrodisiac and is cornered by Yanwan, who is trying to manipulate his old love for her so that he will let down his guard and copulate with her. Yunche realizes what she’s doing and pushes her back, asking her why she’s doing this, and she starts crying and tells him that she is scared that Hongli will grow too old and she won’t be able to have his kids, and if she wants to have an affair, it had to be with Yunche because he’s “stronger and younger”, and he “obviously” still has a thing for her. Yunche says that he knows if Yanwan had a child from him, she will immediately kill him so he won’t rat her outnote And he’s right, Chunchan was planning to give him poisoned liquor after the deed was done, and Yanwan is confused by his assumptions. He bids her goodbye and leaves, and Chunchan is scared out of her mind because she thinks Yunche will tell Hongli what Yanwan wanted to do. The fact that Yanwan is so desperate for favor she’s willing to manipulate her childhood love and rape him sets up the avalanche of her low morals that will come later in the series.
Hongli orders Ruiji to poison Muping and cause her to be permanently infertile so he can have an excuse to get rid of the former and lose the latter’s influence, because he discovered they were spies implanted in his harem years ago. After the scene where Muping drinks the whole cup of (poisoned) anti-miscarriage medicine, Ruiji is seen playing on her pipa while gazing out at the sky and her maid tells her the tune is kind of frightening. Ruiji says that the tune is for her baby who’s waiting for her, and that the “deadline is coming”. Her tone of voice shows that after what she’s been forced to do, she’s not putting up a fight anymore and is just waiting for her execution.
Ruiji’s execution. She drinks a cup of wine laced with poison and plays one last song on her pipa while coughing, and as Ruyi leaves, the scene lingers on Ruiji’s fingers as they freeze and blood drips from her mouth onto her knuckles. This poor woman goes from a playful and sassy girl to a mother driven to the depths of mental anguish by her baby’s death, and in the end, no one is there to keep her company while she dies.
Yihuan sets her palace on fire out of despair over the fact that Qianlong lied to her and gave her contraceptives because he knew she was working with Zhenhuan to spy on him. By the time Ruyi arrives and learns Yihuan locked herself inside, the fire has gotten too large to be put out by small buckets and Yihuan is no doubt a charred corpse by then. To make matters worse, Yihuan's suicide inadvertently causes Ruyi to go into labor. The premature birth of Jingsi is what likely makes her heart so fragile.
Luyun spends such a longtime kneeling in front of Hongli’s palace, in the rain, begging him to forgive Yongzhang for speaking out against his father pampering Xiangjian, that she is bleeding from her mouth and forehead, but Hongli pays her no mind because he thinks she is using her children against him for power. Ruyi begs her to just go back to her palace and recuperate, but she refuses and says she won’t go home until she knows her son is forgiven. Hongli still won’t forgive her, and even accuses her of killing Sulian and coveting the empress seat. She starts coughing blood, and when she learns of the news that she will become an Imperial Noble Consort, she says this must mean Hongli knows her days are numbered. This entire scene is chockfull of stress, and it’s all caused by Hongli not standing most of the harem (wrongfully) disliking Xiangjian, and all he is concerned about is them controlling who he likes and doesn’t like. This is probably the moment in which Hongli and Ruyi’s relationship starts to deteriorate.
After all the rumors spread around about how Yunche and Ruyi allegedly are in love and are having an affair, Hongli stoops too low in his pursuit to “keep the peace” and does the unimaginable: He castrates Yunche and sends him to work as a Eunuch in Ruyi’s palace. Such a despicable act causes Ruyi to cry in actual anguish instead of the usual stoicness she possesses when faced with tragedy, because one of her only friends in the palace suffered a humiliating punishment. Hearing about her reaction isn’t enough for Hongli, so he visits her palace and offers to eat with her a bunch of meals that not only Ruyi dislikes, but are specifically, in some way or another, metaphors for malehood and genitals. It still isn’t enough, so he calls for Yunche to serve food to Ruyi, and when she can’t bear to look at Yunche, Hongli immediately says that Yunche must be bad at his job, because he just ruined Ruyi’s appetite. One would never imagine this much sadism coming from the Hongli seen at the beginning of the series, but it appears that in his pursuit for always being right, he had left his morals behind.
As part of A Ruo’s punishment, Ruyi has her nails pulled off her fingers, and throws her in a bag full of specially feral cats found outside of the palace. She then has Sanbao whip the bag and the novel describes A Ruo’s feeble attempts at screaming her head off in pain as the cats scratch her body trying to find a way out from the bag. After she has enough, Ruyi lets her out of the bag and what’s left of her clothes is drenched in blood.
Nanny Tian’s method of killing Yongjing is different. After Ruyi gives birth, she grabs Yongjing and covers his mouth before he can let out any sound, and chokes him with his umbilical cord. The bruises of her fingers are still present when Ling Yunche checks his body days later.
Novel!Ruyi, angry at Eyinzhu for endangering her son by shouting at Imperial Concubine Xun’s lover and exposing him, which caused him to take Yongji hostage, chooses a horrifying punishment. She has Eyinzhu held down by two eunuchs while Rong Pei slaps her on her mouth with a wooden board. The punishment ends with blood splattering around and Eyinzhu’s two front teeth being knocked away into the ground.
