Chapter 46
Chapter 46
Mingxuan Hall (2)
Zheng Wan was indeed tired. Even though Cui Wang had fed her many elixirs, her body had been badly injured after all, and her spirit was exhausted. At this moment, her eyelids drooped as she barely managed to wave:
“Go back and rest early too, Father.”
Zheng Zhai had been chained and jailed; it goes without saying that prison was not a good place for one to be. Before coming to his daughter’s room, he had deliberately gone to wash up, until he managed to rid himself of his sickly pallor, but he still looked much more haggard than before.
“Father is fine, Father will stay here. I’ll leave after you fall asleep.”
Zheng Zhai gently stroked the top of Zheng Wan’s head; he uttered not one word about his own plight.
Bathed in her father’s kind, warm gaze, Zheng Wan felt as if she were wandering in the warm spring sun; her entire being was nice and warm. The painstaking calculations, the coldness, and the pain of the arrows piercing through her body in the Transient Realm gradually dissipated.
But she felt her nose sour, and she rushed fiercely headfirst into Zheng Zai’s arms. She hugged his thick waist and started bawling unreservedly as she had as a child.
“F-father——”
Buried in the wilderness, there was no Wanan and no Mother—this was how he had died all by himself in her dream. Whenever Zheng Wan thought about this, she felt a coldness that cut straight through her bones, and a massive fear that came with it.
Compared to that, the cold treatment and guardedness that she had to endure became insignificant.
Zheng Wan cried in a way that was not at all polite and not at all beautiful, but the sight of it made one’s nose sour too.
“My Wanwan has suffered.” Zheng Zhai’s eyes were moist; he tried holding it in, but after some time, he also teared. “It’s Father that’s useless. From the beginning, Father was… wrong.”
As the saying goes, ‘Don’t look down on the young for being poor’; he didn’t listen, and now he had to watch his daughter put in so much effort to earn the other’s favour—he wished every day that he could go back in time and give himself a slap!
Not long after, Zheng Wan sobbed herself to sleep. Zheng Zhai sat upright by her bed for half the night; he only left when light started to arise from the east.
Zheng Wan had an exceptionally good night’s sleep.
She did not dream about anything. When she woke, it was still dark outside. The room was lit by only one glazed lamp; through the gauze lampshade, the candle flame emitted a faint glow.
Luodai was sitting next to her, with her head propped up in her hands, nodding shortly like a chicken pecking at some rice.
“You’re finally awake.”
The faceless monster’s voice was hoarse and bored.
“What’s the matter?” Zheng Wan felt there was something off about her tone.
“You’ve been sleeping for two whole days.”
“Oh.”
Zheng Wan wasn’t really bothered. She touched the glazed bead around her neck, “I still don’t know your name.”
“My name huh…” The faceless monster froze for a long time before saying, “I’ve lived for so long, I forgot.
“You can just call me Granny Jin3.”
“Granny Jin, has the love gu really been planted?” asked Zheng Wan curiously. “I see nothing unusual about Cui Wang.”
Granny Jin snickered, “You think planting the love gu is like how you mortals bear children? Plant a seed today, and give birth tomorrow?”
Zheng Wan retorted, “It takes ten months to bear a child4.”
“Oh? Does it take ten months? Isn’t it born in just one day?”
Zheng Wan: “……Granny.”
“Love gu comes in a pair, one male one female, and they are affected by their host. Your lover’s cultivation level is high, but you are just a regular mortal, so naturally, the male gu is powerful, and you cannot affect him. However, he can’t affect you either. At most, certain emotions would be amplified, such as fear, vulnerability, or… joy, jealousy, disgust when the mind is unstable.” Granny Jin looked at Zheng Wan, who had ‘I’ve made a losing deal’ written all over her face. She said joyfully, “But there is an advantage: if you die, he will die too. Your lives are now bound together; even if he uncovers the truth one day, he will also have be scrupulous with your life.”
“But——”
“There is another advantage,” Granny Jin cackled. “The more advanced the female gu’s host gets in her cultivation, the more beautiful she will become. If both the female and the male cultivate together… hehehehehehe…”
Zheng Wan flushed; don’t bully her just because she’s a mortal—even she knew what ‘cultivating together’ means!
However, beauty… was always something to be pleased about.
“So, does Granny Jin mean that if I want Cui Wang to like me, I will have to do it myself?”
“Naturally. There is no such thing as a free lunch in this world.” Granny Jin said cryptically, “In my opinion, that lover of yours is so cold-hearted—he seems unconcerned about everything in this world. But towards you, there is still something special.”
“Some people are born heartless and unfeeling. Your lover, with his immaculate glazed body and pure and steely swordsman’s heart, is a good seedling for cultivation. It is already tremendous that you can obtain a little bit of ‘special’ from him.”
Zheng Wan thought about what she had seen in her dream and found that Granny Jin was exactly right.
Footnotes:
3 Jin: 烬; meaning ashes, cinder.
4 the ancient Chinese calculates pregnancy differently from modern medicine, and it’s a common phrase even to date to say “怀胎十月”, literally, ‘pregnancy takes ten months’. For those interested, read this: https://www.happygoatproductions.com/blog/2014/10/13/how-to-map-the-classical-chinese-ten-months-of-pregnancy-onto-the-biomedical-system-of-counting-gestational-age