Yuncheng is the novel’s principal setting for the interwoven domestic, business, and romantic conflicts surrounding Su Xiangwan, Lu Xun, Su Qingrou, and Lin Yanche. The city is presented through the places where its characters work, return to family, seek care, and confront one another; its narrative identity comes from those connected lives more than from a description of its geography. When Su Xiangwan leaves to find a few days of quiet elsewhere, the city’s ordinary network of family and business relationships becomes a measure of who can reach her—and who cannot.

A city defined by connected settings

The glimpses of Yuncheng establish a setting organized around movement between private residences and professional institutions. A drinking party beside a river draws Su Xiangwan into social company even though Lu Xun had not wanted her to attend. Elsewhere, a wedding shop is close enough to Bian Jiang’s company for her to go there after his call. The contrast between a riverside gathering, a commercial workplace, and a family home gives the city a practical, lived-in presence without fixing it to an elaborate street map.

The city’s locations also connect personal decisions to public standing. Su Xiangwan is reluctant to return to Scenic Mountain Villa and chooses to keep busy rather than be alone with her thoughts; she is anxious that her position as a noble is in danger and believes she must work hard to preserve a way forward. Her movement through the city is therefore not merely transit. Work offers a counterweight to private distress, while the villa represents a place she is not yet ready to face.

Family homes and private conflict

The Su family’s houses hold the weight of shared history. After moving back to her old home, Su Xiangwan spends the night recalling the childhood she shared there with Su Qingrou. The familiarity of the room and bed does not bring sleep: she wonders whether she has begun to regard Lu Xun’s bed as her own. The scene brings two forms of belonging into contact—the sisters’ shared past and the uncertain intimacy of Su Xiangwan’s marriage.

Domestic interiors are also places where relationships become impossible to keep abstract. When Su Xiangwan finds Su Qingrou weeping, she sees kiss marks on her sister’s body and then a photograph of Lin Yanche embracing Song Yuner, taken at the very time that has just passed. The bedroom, the visible injuries, and the image on the phone make intimate harm and betrayal present within the family’s private space. In another encounter at the Su family residence, Lin Yanche enters Su Qingrou’s bedroom and finds her there with Jin Zhengnan. The room’s occupants immediately sharpen the emotional conflict: Su Qingrou’s developing connection with Jin Zhengnan stands against Lin Yanche’s possessive and painful attachment.

The Su family’s domestic world also frames the possibility of a different future. Su Qingrou asks Su Xiangwan what she thinks of a small engagement ceremony with Jin Zhengnan, intended chiefly to serve the interests of their two companies. Su Xiangwan worries about Lin Yanche’s reaction, but Su Qingrou points to the support of their brother. The conversation shows how a private commitment is negotiated through kinship and business as well as romance; in Yuncheng, family rooms can become places where those pressures meet before they spill into public life.

Business and public encounters

Yuncheng’s corporate locations repeatedly place personal relationships in view of professional power. After leaving the wedding shop, Su Xiangwan goes to Bian Jiang’s company, where he gives her an exquisite jewelry box. The small gift makes the workplace a site of personal recognition as well as business. At the Imperial Group building, Chu Fei personally opens the car door for Su Xiangwan. Their arrival coincides with Lu Xun and Shen Yiyun, and Lu Xun recognizes Chu Fei at once. The building’s entrance turns an otherwise courteous gesture into a charged public meeting between people whose connections affect one another’s relationships.

The offices also register how news travels through the city’s business and personal networks. After a morning meeting, Lu Xun returns to his office, stands at the window, and lights a cigarette. A call from Lin Yanche brings news that Su Qingrou and Jin Zhengnan intend to become engaged. Lu Xun interprets the plan as a deliberate attempt by Su Qingrou to use Lin Yanche’s vulnerability against him. The office is thus not insulated from domestic affairs: information about a proposed engagement enters through a phone call and immediately alters how Lu Xun understands the conflict between his friends.

Distance, care, and the city’s limits

Yuncheng’s importance becomes clearest when Su Xiangwan is away from it. She travels to Yan City, turns off her phone, and seeks several quiet days without interruption. Back in Yuncheng, Lu Xun has been unable to find her all day and calls Su Qingrou, who confirms that Su Xiangwan is staying with her but has gone out. Her absence exposes the limits of the city’s familiar network: proximity to family does not guarantee that Lu Xun can locate or contact her, and the closed phone makes her withdrawal real.

The contrast continues when Lu Xun and Lin Yanche fly to Yan City that night and find Chu Fei’s men waiting at the airport. Their arrival resolves doubts about Chu Fei’s role, shifting the action beyond Yuncheng and into a direct confrontation elsewhere. Yuncheng remains the home base from which these relationships and rivalries take shape, but leaving it changes the terms of the conflict.

Care is another part of the city’s setting. At a sanatorium, Su Xiangwan and Yun Yun sit together on a swing reading when Lu Xun arrives. Their ease with one another surprises him; despite a contrast between Yun Yun’s rowdiness and Su Xiangwan’s quietness, he sees them as compatible. This scene offers a quieter counterpart to the city’s confrontations: a place associated with care makes room for companionship, while Lu Xun’s arrival reconnects that respite to the unsettled relationships beyond it. Taken together, Yuncheng’s homes, offices, and care settings make it the novel’s connective setting—one where domestic vulnerability, family obligation, work, and romantic conflict repeatedly converge.