How easy it is to ruin a middle-aged man—you know, do you also just skip ahead when reading *Dream of the Red Chamber*? Right in Chapter 1, you flip the pages looking for Baoyu. Daiyu only wants to see the romantic entanglements between them—she feels the earlier matters involving Zhen Shiyin are nothing more than an inconsequential prelude. Skipping it doesn’t affect the story. But if you manage to read through these ten episodes with patience, you’ll feel your back go cold. In the first chapter of *Dream of the Red Chamber*, there is no Jia Baoyu, no Lin Daiyu.