Pursuit of Jade (逐玉) doesn’t just conclude with a death; it ends with a twisted confession that redefines everything you thought you knew about its most volatile character. Qi Min (齐旻) doesn’t kill the Princess of Changxin (长信) for power or revenge, but in that single, brutal act, he reveals the desperate, ugly truth of why he loves Yu Qianqian (俞浅浅). It was never about a kiss that saved his life. It was about a scarcity so profound that one woman’s simple act of courage looked like salvation. The story pulls back the curtain on a monster built, not born, and forces us to ask: what happens when the one thing you crave most is simply to be seen as human?
Why a Life-Saving Breath Was Just the Start
For Qi Min, the night with Yu Qianqian began as something monstrous. She was a concubine forced on him by Lan Momo (兰嬷嬷), a desperate attempt to secure an heir for the Eastern Palace while his own body was failing. The memory of that night, orchestrated and clinical, filled him with disgust. He saw himself as no different from a stud animal. His first instinct was to kill her. Her pregnancy stayed his hand, but it wasn’t until he fell into the water—and she, in the middle of trying to escape, stopped to breathe life back into his lungs mouth-to-mouth—that the calculus changed.
This act was a turning point, but it wasn’t the romantic catalyst it seemed. It was the first time someone looked at his ruined face and chose to save him rather than recoil. Her repeated attempts to flee, and his subsequent captures, only intensified his fixation. It wasn't love at first sight; it was obsession born from a profound lack of connection. He wasn’t falling for a woman; he was desperately trying to hold onto the first person who made him feel like a man, not a monster.
This is where the conventional idea of love shatters. Most would see a hero falling for the woman who saved his life. In Qi Min’s world, that moment wasn’t about romance; it was about survival and a terrifying new kind of dependency. She gave him something no one else had: a moment of unflinching, physical intimacy that was purely about life, not duty or horror. For a man who had been treated like a walking plague, that single act was more intoxicating than any grand gesture.
The Princess’s Secret: A Mirror to a Broken Boy
The murder of the Princess of Changxin is the key that unlocks Qi Min’s entire psyche. When she confronts him about manipulating Sui Yuanqing (随元青), he doesn’t deny it. Instead, he exposes the rot at the heart of his upbringing. “Father never favored me,” he tells her, “and in your heart, Mother, you also favored Qing.” He had spent a lifetime feeling her bias, knowing he was the second choice. But the deepest wound was one he didn’t know she carried. He was unaware that she knew the truth: her own son had died in the fire seventeen years prior, and the boy she raised, Qi Min, was the legitimate imperial grandson she chose to protect out of pity for a crying, wounded child.
His entire existence in the Changxin household was a performance of neglect. He was a living ghost, a replacement child whose real mother was dead and whose adoptive mother’s mercy was laced with a tragic distance. The loyalty of Lan Momo was to his bloodline, not to him. The servants couldn’t look at his scarred face without flinching. This is the foundation of his personality: a child orphaned in a horrific fire, physically and emotionally scarred, left to navigate a world that saw him as either a tool or a terror.
He learned early that dependence was a trap. His body was a source of pain, his face a source of fear, and his very identity was a pawn in a political game. The Princess’s hidden truth—her quiet grief for her lost son—was a wall he could never breach. He grew up not just without love, but without the fundamental human experience of being seen as an individual worthy of care. Every interaction was transactional, every kindness a strategy. He was a prince, but he was also utterly alone.
Chasing Scarcity: Why Yu Qianqian Was the Only One
Yu Qianqian saw him. Not the scarred face, not the imperial title, not the weapon. When she saved him from drowning, she didn’t hesitate. To her, he was a drowning man, not a disfigured monster. This was a resource more precious than gold in Qi Min’s world: simple, unbiased human connection. Her subsequent attempts to escape only deepened his obsession because they proved she had a will of her own. She wasn’t a cowering servant; she was a woman with agency, someone who fought for her freedom, a quality he had never been allowed to possess.
He was mesmerized by her resilience. Even when captured and brought back, she didn’t break. She would calmly plan her next escape, living with a kind of internal freedom he could only envy. In his final moments, he admits to her, “I envy the freedom you have.” This is the core of his twisted love. It wasn’t about possession in the purely physical sense; it was about trying to absorb the qualities he lacked. She was the mirror reflecting his own shattered self, showing him a version of humanity he desperately wanted to touch but could only think to cage.
Ultimately, Qi Min’s love for Yu Qianqian is a story about scarcity. She was the one who treated him as an equal, the one who wasn’t afraid, the one who embodied a freedom he craved. In a life defined by fear, hatred, and transactional relationships, she was the single person who offered a different dynamic. His love was less a feeling and more a desperate, possessive grab for the one thing he had never had. He didn’t love her as much as he loved the feeling of being seen as human, and he was willing to kill—even the woman who raised him—to try and keep it.
