The weight of a father’s past can crush a future. In the historical drama Pursuit of Jade (逐玉), this truth lands on Fan Changyu (樊长玉) with devastating force. After she personally kills the Prince of Changxin (长信) on the battlefield, a dying man reveals a secret that shatters her world. The valiant warrior she admires, the man she loves, is Xie Zheng (谢征). Between them now lies an unspoken horror: the shadow of a murdered father. This revelation forces her to flee his protection, to forge her own path, not as a clinging vine, but as a soldier determined to earn her place.
Yet, fate has a cruel way of unearthing the deepest secrets, leading her to a truth more damning than any battlefield wound. It is a story not of simple romance, but of identity, inherited sin, and the painful question of whether love can survive the ghosts of a generation.
The Blade of Truth: A Legacy of Blood
In the chaos outside Chongzhou (崇州) City, Fan Changyu fights with a fury born of desperate independence. An old soldier, recognizing her unique blade style, stops her cold. He asks about He Jingyuan (贺敬元), revealing that the very sword techniques she wields were co-created by him and his sworn brother—a brother who died years ago. Her world tilts. Her father taught her that style. Who was he, if not the simple man she believed him to be?
Before she can process this, the enemy Prince is upon her, and her survival instinct takes over. With her last ounce of strength, she lands a fatal blow, just as an arrow from afar pierces the Prince’s chest.
When she awakens in the military camp, the air is thick with victory and grief. The Prince is dead, but He Jingyuan is mortally wounded. Summoned to the commander’s bedside, Fan Changyu receives a truth more horrifying than any she could imagine. He Jingyuan speaks in a strained whisper, connecting the dots of her lineage.
An Inherited Sin: The Shackles of the Past
The revelation is a death sentence for her spirit. In that instant, Fan Changyu understands her new reality. She is not just a soldier or a woman in love; she is the daughter of the man whose actions led to the deaths of one hundred thousand soldiers, the fall of the Crown Prince, and the national humiliation of lost territory. Her entire family, she realizes, is branded as traitors in the eyes of the Great Yin (胤) dynasty.
Before she even knew it herself, he had uncovered the tangled, bloody roots of her family tree. He knows she carries the blood of the man who orchestrated the nightmare that has haunted his entire life. She finds him on a gentle slope outside the camp, a solitary figure grappling with his own warring loyalties. Her apology is a desperate, jumbled plea, trying to separate her father from the terrible acts of the past. She insists her father could not have been a betrayer, that her father was an honorable man. But her words sound hollow even to her own ears.
In Ep 3, when the Emperor is contemplating giving Wei Zheng a posthumous title they keep talking about his part in the “Jinzhou Massacre”. Are they actually referring to his father’s actions or did Wei Zheng also have a battle? Or is this just a subtitle translation mix up?
This scene doesn’t exist in Episode 3 at all. It’s a subtitle misspelling: the character is Wei Qilin, not Wei Zheng. Discussions about his posthumous title and the Jinzhou Massacre happen in later episodes. He was framed, not the culprit of the massacre.