Song Yuner Drugs Lu Xun and Pretends to Be Su Xiangwan

Song Yuner Drugs Lu Xun and Pretends to Be Su Xiangwan is a pivotal act of manipulation built around bodily resemblance, emotional substitution, and the deliberate violation of trust. Song Yuner uses the likeness of Su Xiangwan to approach Lu Xun after drugging him, hoping that confusion and impaired judgment will collapse the boundary between the woman he wants and the woman standing before him. The attempt fails to produce the outcome she seeks: Lu Xun recognizes the deception, restrains himself, and the incident instead intensifies his attachment to Su Xiangwan while deepening her suspicion and the surrounding conflict.

The Deception and Its Stakes

Song Yuner’s scheme depends on more than physical resemblance. She presents herself as a substitute for Su Xiangwan at a moment when Lu Xun has been drugged, turning identity into an instrument of access. The danger lies in the overlap between appearance and intimacy: Lu Xun later explains that Song Yuner’s face and voice were the same as Su Xiangwan’s, making the impersonation powerful enough to threaten his recognition of the woman he actually loves.

The deception also enters a relationship already burdened by jealousy and uncertainty. When Su Xiangwan confronts Lu Xun, she asks whether he had any feelings for Song Yuner while facing her. Her accusation treats the incident not simply as an attempted assault or a failed seduction, but as evidence that Lu Xun’s desire might be transferable. The question forces him to distinguish between the body placed before him and the person he believes it represents.

Lu Xun’s Resistance

Lu Xun states that he had been drugged but had not touched Song Yuner. He says that he did everything he could to restrain himself, and that he might have been unable to identify the deception if Song Yuner had not suddenly called his name. That moment breaks the impersonation: the familiar face and voice can imitate Su Xiangwan, but Song Yuner’s response reveals the substitution.

His explanation does not immediately restore trust. Su Xiangwan is stunned by the fact that Lu Xun remained controlled despite being drugged, while Lu Xun is furious that she interprets the situation as proof of latent desire. The confrontation therefore has two layers. On the surface, he defends his conduct; beneath it, both characters are trying to determine whether love belongs to a recognizable person or can be redirected by resemblance, circumstance, and physical vulnerability.

Consequences for Su Xiangwan and Song Yuner

For Su Xiangwan, the incident becomes another source of emotional insecurity inside her marriage to Lu Xun. Her suspicion is sharpened by the fact that Song Yuner’s face and voice could temporarily stand in for her own. The impersonation makes the threat intimate: Song Yuner is not merely competing with Su Xiangwan from outside the relationship but attempting to enter it through Su Xiangwan’s identity.

Song Yuner’s position also changes through the failure of the scheme. Her effort to obtain Lu Xun by replacing Su Xiangwan does not establish a relationship; instead, it exposes the desperation and instability of her pursuit. Later, Song Yuner clings to Lu Xun and appeals to him for help, while also acknowledging that she has been abandoned and has suffered what she considers her due retribution. Her dependence and resentment coexist, showing how the failed impersonation leaves her caught between the role of victim, rival, and rejected former intimate.

The Wider Pattern of Bodily Vulnerability

The episode belongs to a broader narrative in which physical states repeatedly reorganize power. Lu Xun’s drugged condition makes him vulnerable to manipulation, while Su Xiangwan’s fever leaves her weak and nearly without strength, requiring Manager Wu to buy antipyretic medicine. The contrast matters: one body is placed in danger through deliberate intoxication, while the other becomes endangered through illness, yet both circumstances make care, control, and trust inseparable.

The same pattern appears when Lin Yanche warns Lu Xun that Su Xiangwan is unusually vulnerable to illness and may suffer a fever for three days and three nights. His warning provokes sudden physical pain and fear in Lu Xun, turning knowledge about Su Xiangwan’s body into an emotional weapon. The story repeatedly makes bodily weakness legible to others before it is fully controlled by the person experiencing it.

Narrative Significance

The action’s decisive revelation is that Lu Xun’s response is governed less by visual recognition than by an attachment that the impersonation cannot reproduce. Song Yuner can borrow Su Xiangwan’s face and voice, but she cannot sustain the identity once her own behavior and name emerge. The failure therefore confirms the limits of substitution even as it demonstrates how dangerous substitution can be.

The incident also amplifies the novel’s recurring conflict between possession and autonomy. Song Yuner attempts to seize intimacy by disguising herself as someone else; Lu Xun’s restraint prevents the deception from becoming a completed physical betrayal, but the marriage is still damaged by the possibility that such a betrayal might have occurred. Trust must consequently be rebuilt not through appearance, but through action, recognition, and the difficult separation of Su Xiangwan from every woman who claims to resemble her.