The next morning, Bixuan asks Dong if she is married yet. She replies that she is not, and that she has no idea how to thank him for saving her life. He asks her if she would like to speak to the King about their marriage, and she replies that it would be inappropriate for her to do so given her identity. She also says that she knows that when she went missing, she felt bad and even thought of suicide, but she assures him that she will have a happy life. The next day, tao-hong and his lady-in-waiting tell him that the three nobles have been poisoned with a porridge containing the seeds of the red lotus. They ask him if there is any evidence that the seeds were poisoned, and he replies that he has. He also tells her that he had told the chef in the royal kitchen about the seeds, which looked red. He says that it is better to scare her than to kill her