Prince of Lan Ling Episode 1

You can watch Prince of Lan Ling over at DramaFever.

 

 

The Great Omniscient Voiceover tells us it is 557 A.D. (that's right, I'm old school. No C.E. for me.) and the Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties have fallen. A lone man, Yang Jian, Black Cape Swordsman (played by Han Dong), is walking through a desolate land. Nearby, a couple of peasants are eating some fish they just caught when they discover a human finger inside. Yang Jian stops long enough to explain to the hungry men that there's been a major battle further upstream and all the dead bodies were dumped in the river. The fish have been eating on the corpses, so Yang Jian advises the locals not to be eating the fish for a couple of months.

 

Yang Jian walks on farther until he reaches a fog bank. He releases a very pretty/very fake bird. The bird flies through the fog into a land where the harvest has been so abundant the villagers don't know where they're going to put all the extra food. The bird flies into the home of Xue Wu's grandmother. (Granny doesn't seem to get a name.) Granny, who is blind, knows the bird is from Yang Jian. She waves her hand and the fog bank magically disappears, permitting the swordsman to enter the land of milk and honey.

 

Visiting with Granny, Yang Jian relates the news about the outside world. It's all in turmoil. He asks why Granny and her people don't help out. Granny goes into manga mode as pictures tell the story. Once long ago her tribe of sorceresses did help the king, but the power hungry used and abused them. What was left of the Wu tribe then retreated to White Mountain Village and put up the magic wall of fog to protect them from the outside.

 

Granny proceeds to read Yang Jian's fortune. She talks about the Zhou and the Qi. They're strong. The Chen down south are weak. She advises Yang Jian to keep an eye out for four people. There's Yuwen Hu and his nephew Yuwen Yung, both of the Northern Zhou. In the Qi state there's Gao Wei and Gao Chang Gong (otherwise known as Prince of Lan Ling).

 

BTW, this entire conversation is being eavesdropped on by the young Yang Xue Wu.

 

Time skip ahead ten years. Over at Hu Kou, in the northern part of Qi, Gao Chang Gong (played by Feng Shao Feng) is preparing his men to face off with their enemy, the Zhou. I've never seen an army dressed in hot pink before. As the trumpets blow, Chang Gong dons his mardi gras mask. Already engaged in battle are Yang Shi Shen and Hulu Xu Da.

 

The Zhou, figuring they've got the Qi outnumbered, are confident of a victory. Their leader, Yuchi Jiong, has put a large reward on Hulu's head. Capture him and it will be like Gao Chang Gong has one hand tied. But when they see Gao himself is joining the battle, Yuchi puts an even bigger bounty on his head. Yuchi is just dying to rip off that mask and see the pretty boy's face.

 

When they see Gao Chang Gong get on his horse and ride away, Yuchi Jiong orders his entire army to go after the one guy. A nameless minion warns to watch out for traps. Gao is heading into an area with quicksand. Of course no one listens to the nameless minion. No one ever does. Which is why the Zhou end up losing most of their army.

 

Yuchi still has a thousand men or so and he won't give up on his desire to capture Chang Gong. This time our hero leads his pursuers into a deep dark canyon. Once again it's a trap and waiting just around the bend are some more Qi soldiers, led by Prince of An De (Hey, it's George Hu from Love Around. Did you know he's actually an American? I didn't.)

 

Yuchi Jiong and what's left of his army high tail it out of there. Chang Gong's horse, Snowy, has been injured. Yet another nameless minion says there are supposedly fairies around this area. Perhaps the general can find one and heal his war horse. Thanks for the advice, nameless minion.

 

Meanwhile in White Mountain Village, Xue Wu (now played by Ariel Lin) has nearly blown the house up with her latest experiment. Granny doesn't approve of Xue Wu's chemistry set. She wants her granddaughter to be a simple wife and mother. In order to get a man, Granny insists Xue Wu embroider a belt in time for tomorrow's initiation ceremony.

 

Xue Wu is trying to do some acupuncture on a chicken. The chicken is like, "The hell with this," and runs away. Xue Wu gives chase. She follows the fowl all the way past the wall of fog and to the outer world. Since she's needing some sulphur for her experiments, Xue We wanders over to a nearby hot springs. This just happens to be where Gao Chang Gong has taken his horse to heal.

 

Chang Gong, who is partly undressed in the water, catches Xue Wu giving him an open mouth stare. Only Xue Wu has seen him from the back and thinks he's a girl. Xue Wu starts taking off some (but not all) of her clothes so she can join the "other woman" for a bath in the hot springs. Never once does Chang Gong announce, "I'm a dude!"

 

Suddenly Xue Wu sees enemy soldiers sneaking around the springs. She recklessly goes into action, swearing to protect Chang Gong from these peeping toms. Chang Gong is touched that Xue Wu would try to protect him. He leaps up out of the water, lands on dry land in front of the soldiers and starts to take them down. Xue Wu is too busy drowning one soldier to notice all this. Snowy just stands there.

 

Now that everybody's dead, Chang Gong finally turns around and reveals to Xue Wu that he's a man.