secret passageway designed by Fuheng and expose the plan of treachery. As it turns out, Prince He is betrayed by the Empress, who always loved Qianlong and wanted to use the rebellion to prove her devotion to her husband. Just then, Yingluo comes out of hiding under the protection of the Emperor's guards, the only consort to receive protection. This clear favoritism after all her years of devotion drives Empress Hoifa-Nara mad. In a fit of jealous rage, she cuts off her hair, a taboo in Manchu tradition, effectively cursing the entire Aisin Gioro clan. After Qianlong sentences Prince He to confinement and the Empress is dragged away, Yuan Chunwang proclaims his innocence, only for Yingluo to reveal the real reason Yuan hated Qianlong so much. Yuan believed he was an illegitimate son of the late Yongzheng Emperor, because of the clothes belonging to Yongzheng that were left behind to his family. The Empress Dowager loudly denies this and claimed that he was an offspring of a bandit who killed Qianlong's birth mother Lady Qian and later raped Yuan Chunwang's mother, and asserted that the clothes belonged to Yongzheng were the same ones Lady Qian exchanged with Yongzheng and wore to distract the bandits. Her pity for his "wasted life", which she said Yuan Chunwang would have used to spend as a commoner who could marry and have kids, drives Yuan Chunwang, who instead was misled by a lie and thus chose to be castrated and enter the Forbidden City for revenge, into madness. Although Qianlong desired to execute the now insane Yuan Chunwang by lingchi for his crimes, the Empress Dowager however, suddenly asks for the emperor to spare him. When he protests, the Empress Dowager tells him to trust her this one time and it is implied that the she was lying about Yuan Chunwang's backstory to maintain peace in the family. Yuan Chunwang is banished to the hard labor department for life, never recovering his sanity. Back when Wei Yingluo was being punished to work in the hard labor department, the then Consort Xian had saved her life by ordering an Imperial Physician to attend to her after she collapsed from illness. To repay this kindness from long ago, Wei Yingluo pleads for leniency for Empress Hoifa-Nara, and she is permitted to keep her title, but loses her managerial authority in the imperial harem and all of