Tear Jerker / Story of Yanxi Palace

• After Yingluo is able to avenge her sister's murder, Empress Fuca sends her away to protect her from the Emperor's fury. Mingyu is driven to tears as she tries to stop Yingluo from packing her things, and Yingluo gently holds her cheek with a hand to comfort her. This doubles as Heartwarming given how far their friendship has come from their early days of petty rivalry.
  • Furthermore, when the Emperor confronts the Empress, the Empress confesses to him that Yingluo reminds her of when she was younger, and reminds her of who she was not allowed to be due to the expectations heaped on her, and she is visibly holding back tears as she tells him this. The Emperor softens with surprise at this, unaware that the Empress had possessed such sadness this entire time. Doubles as Awesome, as the Empress doesn't back down in the face of her husband's rage, the Emperor himself, as he accuses her of protecting Yingluo even as she claims she's "punished" her. We get a flashback of Fuca, newly married to the Emperor, looked much more innocent, with a brighter smile and open expression, getting sharply berated by the Dowager Empress.
• Empress Fuca's death. What makes her death worse is that she is far and wide the kindest character in the series, was a mother to Yingluo, and had made it this far in life through endurance and exceptional grace. After a near life-ending birth, she is finally able to birth another son for the Emperor. This should've been a moment of triumph if someone hadn't decided, in a moment of vindictiveness, to set the baby's room on fire. The Empress is too late to save her son and it drives her to commit suicide. Yingluo is devastated, breaking down and crawling on the floor to reach her surrogate mother's body, and even the emotionally distant Emperor is shaken by it.
• Even though she was an evil woman, Chenbi’s backstory is pretty disheartening. She is raped, then exiled from her tribe, and her son dies looking for her, and she tries to commit suicide out of grief, only for Fuheng to stop her attempt, and she gets sent to the Forbidden City to be Hongli’s concubine. When she is finally apprehended by the guards, she starts crying and screams, wondering why Fuheng and Hongli aren’t being punished for what they did to her.
• Yingluo finding out that her first love, Fuca Fuheng is dead, as she recovers from her poisoning. What's more, she is told that he had died whilst finding her antidote. We get a short montage of their scenes together, culminating in Fuheng's happy grin, as their love theme plays in the background. They were never able to end up together in this life, though through all their sweat and tears they never stopped loving each other. Yingluo promises she'll look out for him in their next incarnation.