Yes!!! Prince Jing is back! ♥ And so are you and your lovely reactions :D
You had a question in the beginning about, if you had skipped an episode: no you haven't. Magistrate Gao had a talk with Banruo (Prince Yu's devastatingly pretty advisor), who essentially gave him the idea, that as he has evidence that this case (the women in the well case) involves a higher ranking official than himself, he can just push this whole thing to the Ministry of Justice. This he did between episodes, and thus in this episode he was just relieved to have dodged that bullet and asking the gods not to send him any more cases involving Ministers.
A lot of storytelling in this series is like this, someone suggest a thing in one episode and in the next, we get confronted with a conversation about how this situation was handled, sometimes really just as a side sentence. It doesn't make it easier with following the intrigues going on....
Su Zhe/Mei Changsu being absolutely relaxed in his new home, while assassins are being murdered outside is absolutely a statement of trust in his people, which is not only Fei Liu, but also the martial artists of his sect that are now openly living with him.
I absolutely agree with the characters driving the love of a story. The story can be really well written, if the characters don't have chemistry, if you can't fall in love with any of them, you just don't continue watching. For this story Su Zhe/Mei Changsu/??? and Prince Jing, but also Commander Meng, Fei Liu and Princess Nihuang are absolutely these characters for me. (And one more for me, but she will get more screentime later, so I wont say yet ;D).