the thugs take jumong to the house where their friend bu-young (she used to be yeo-mi-eul's servant in the palace) is and asks her to help them save him. buyoung takes a look and realizes it's prince jumong. the king catches the man who's been telling the story of lady yoohwa impregnated by hae-mo-su before he died, and the king asks the man why he's telling such lie, but the man says it was the queen's brother who told him to spread the rumor. the king gets furious and slashes the man to death. meanwhile in the hidden prison the prison ward tells his men about the story of yoohwa being pregnant with hae-mo-su's child just before he was killed. hae-mo-su hears them talk from his cell and hae-mo-su asks the ward what happened to yoohwa and the ward says the story varies on that, some saying she is still alive raising hae-mo-su's child, some saying she killed herself after hae-mo-su died.

yeon-ta-bal (soseono's father) decides to take over the salt transactions in the city, and agrees to soseono when she offered to raid the blackmarket merchant who is currently in control of the salt business. next, yeon-ta-bal gets invited to the buyeo palace by buyeo's fairy/witch lady yeo-mi-eul and soseono goes with him, but soseono sneaks around the palace while her father goes to talk to the king, and soseono wanders into the place where prince taeso is practicing his swordsory. taeso thinks she is a new palace maid and asks which chamber she is assigned to. when soseono fights him off taeso realizes she knows martial arts and tells her to exchange fists with her. the two start fighting, with taeso has the upper hand, but yeo-mi-eul's maids come to scold soseono for wandering without permission and tells her to apologize to the prince.
soseono apologizes and follows the maids and leaves, with taeso watching her leave. 

one of the street thugs mari meets with his mentor (the prison ward) and they're approached by men with picture of jumong asking if anyone's seen him. jumong tells buyoung he was thrown out of the palace and he's no longer a prince, next mari asks jumong who he is and why there are men looking for him in town and he should leave so he doesn't bring trouble to them, then jumong asks buyoung to help him find a way to stay there with them. the prison ward tells his sister who is yoohwa's maid about jumong being chased and injured. meanwhile the queen of buyeo is thinking about getting taeso a wife but taeso says he already has someone in his heart and when it's time he will tell her about it.

buyoung introduces jumong to do-chi (buyeo's blackmarket merchant) and dochi instructs one of his men to give jumong some work to see if he's worth anything. soseono takes a few men with her and raids dochi with his men while they're unloading salt from their merchant boat. soseono spots jumong fighting among the dochi camp and is surprised. wootae almost kills dochi but jumong stops him and saves dochi, who later tells jumong he will not forget that he saved him today. dochi sends his righthand man out to find out who attacked them by the shore. the man returns and tells dochi it was yeon-ta-bal who raided them. dochi offers large sum of money to the 'oh-ma-hyeop' street thug trio to capture yeon-ta-bal's daughter soseono. the 'oh-ma-hyeop trio' successfully kidnaps soseono during the night and brings her to the house of dochi. dochi tells the captured soseono her father will soon be here. but yeon-ta-bal sends sa-yong to meet with dochi. dochi tells him to tell yeon-ta-bal to come in person to kneel and beg for forgiveness, if not soseono's life will be gone.
jumong overhears the name of soseono mentioned and goes to the shed where she's locked up to free her and tells her to hurry and escape.

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