chapter 67

In fact, Murong Yunshu didn’t do much, except for seizing the opportunity to write the character ‘楚 (Chu)’ on the table, floor, books and other various places wherever she could. When she had nothing else to do, she would study on how to copy other people handwriting, so this ‘楚 (Chu)’ character was written in a way that it was similar to Chu Changge’s handwriting. It was all thanks to a certain person’s habit of leaving his name behind whenever he did something bad. This character ‘楚 (Chu)’ which was written like dragons flew and phoenixes danced[+]Chinese idiom : flamboyant or bold cursive calligraphy, not many people in the jianghu[+]lit. rivers and lakes—people wandering from place to place and living by their wits, e.g. fortune-tellers, quack doctors, itinerant entertainers, etc. , considered as a social group who were unable to recognise it, hence it had almost become his signature. As long as the people in the jianghu[+]lit. rivers and lakes—people wandering from place to place and living by their wits, e.g. fortune-tellers, quack doctors, itinerant entertainers, etc. , considered as a social group see the character ‘楚 (Chu)’, they will associate it with Chu Changge. Thus, when the ‘楚 (Chu)’ character left by Murong Yunshu was discovered, rumours sprung up everywhere and made everyone feel themselves in danger[+]Chinese idiom : everyone feels insecure.

It was purely by chance that Murong Yunshu could think of this method. On that day, when they reached Jinling, she saw a bald monk strutting on the road, while flirting with female performers. Some people tried to take up the cudgels for the injured party[+]Chinese idiom : defend sb. against an injustice, but the monk pointed ferociously at his bald head and said, “Laozi[+]I (used arrogantly or jocularly) have the signature of Chu Changge, the head of the Mojiao Sect, on my head! Which one of you is still brave enough to stop me?”

No one dared to complain anymore once they heard his statement.

Murong Yunshu was staring at this scene while being dumbfounded[+]Chinese idiom : being flabbergasted. Shouldn’t the monk rely on Shaolin Temple to take advantage in deceiving other people? When did he gang up with the Mojiao Sect…

But then again, that monk really had the word ‘楚 (Chu)’ on his head.

She remembered that all the men in Mingjian Mountain Villa not only had the word ‘楚 (Chu)’ on their heads, even their bald heads were personally shaved by Chu Changge himself. Wouldn’t that mean they were much more blessed by the Mojiao Sect? So it seemed that Chu Changge had become Guanyin…no, it should be Tagatha[+]lit. “one who has thus arrived”; one of the titles of Buddha.

Although Murong Yunshu felt it was kind of ridiculous, she did not dismiss it with a laugh[+]Chinese idiom : make light of sth.. Rather, it had made her realise Chu Changge’s intimidating force in the jianghu[+]lit. rivers and lakes—people wandering from place to place and living by their wits, e.g. fortune-tellers, quack doctors, itinerant entertainers, etc. , considered as a social group. Hence, she had come up with the method of leaving the word ‘楚 (Chu)’ everywhere.

Murong Yunshu, with a smile on her lips, slowly put down another black piece, while thinking, if this method could drag their stay here until Chu Changge came to her rescue, she would definitely mould a clay figurine for that monk, and then plastered the word ‘楚 (Chu)’ in gold on top of its head. Then she would put it in the darkest place of the God of Wealth Shrine—if she left it in the brightest place, no one would come to worship then!

“Chu…” Wang Chao suddenly shouted, while staring at the chessboard. Then he said, “As I expected, this is one of your tricks! No wonder the rumors about Chu Changge in Jinling City come in waves. As it turned out, it was actually you who left the word ‘楚 (Chu)’ around…”

Murong Yunshu raised her dark eyebrows slightly. She was surprised that he was able to find out about it. After all, ever since she had interacted with him for this long, he had never acted like he had any brains at all. She was rather unaccustomed to his sudden shrewdness. “Yes, I wrote all of them.” Since she had achieved her purpose, there was no need for her to hide it anymore.

“I…I…I can’t believe I fell for your trick again!” Wang Chao put his hands behind his back. He worried that he would lose control and immediately strangled her.

When she saw Wang Chao looking like he was so pissed off to the point of him wanting to vomit blood, Murong Yunshu indifferently said, “That’s why I believe that ignorance is bliss[+]said to emphasize that sometimes it is better for you if you do not know all the facts about a situation.”

Wang Chao’s boorish face began to distort, as the corners of his mouth quivered severely like it had a sense of rhythm. It took him a long time to resist the urge to bite her to death before he questioned her, “Since you don’t want me to find out about it, then why do you use those chess pieces to put out the word ‘楚 (Chu)’?”

Was there such a thing? Murong Yunshu suspiciously turned her attention towards a direction. When she turned the side that was originally facing Wang Chao towards her, right away, a straight out ‘楚 (Chu)’ character came into her view. She was startled for a moment, then she smiled, “Chu Changge is really everywhere, huh.”

“Chu Changge is not in Jinling at all!” claimed Wang Chao.

Murong Yunshu nodded in agreement and said, “Well, he must have fallen for your plan of stealing the sky and putting up a sham sun[+]Chinese idiom : perpetrate a gigantic fraud. He must have been chasing after you to the capital of Shu Province.”

It was originally a certain fact in his mind, but when she said it like that, the sense of his statement suddenly changed. Wang Chao hesitated again. This woman never told them the truth. Since she said that Chu Changge had gone to the capital of Shu Province, then Chu Changge must have not gone there. If he didn’t go to the capital of Shu…could it be that…Chu Changge had really come to Jinling?

Wang Chao suddenly felt that his brain had turned into a mass of paste, which was currently in an extreme chaos. Murong Yunshu’s apparently true but really wrong[+]Chinese idiom : specious words were truly going to drive him crazy…

*

While in Murong Mansion, Chu Changge was taking a bath. Suddenly, he could hear a burst of sneaky footsteps coming from outside the room door. There was obviously more than one person out there since the tones of voices kept on rising and falling. His dashing eyebrows started to frown. He pulled his clothes off the screen, and dressed neatly in the blink of an eye. Then with a wave of his long arm, the room double doors opened wide.

“Ah…” The people who had come to the door screamed.

“Who are you people?” asked the already annoyed Chu Changge.

After the visitors glanced at each other for a few times, the eldest one boldly said, “We should be the ones who asked you this question. Who are you? What are you doing in Yunshu’s room?”

Chu Changge raised his eyebrows. Yunshu? From the way they called her, they should be someone whom Murong Yunshu were close to. “I asked you guys first,” he countered back.

The older one glanced at her sisters and then became the first one to introduce herself, “I am Yunshu’s First Mother.”

“I’m Yunshu’s Second Mother.”

“I’m Yunshu’s Third Mother.”

“I’m Yunshu’s Fourth Mother.”

“That’s enough.” Chu Changge didn’t have the mood to listen to them go on and on. He summarised, “In short, you are all Murong Yunshu’s mothers.”

“Yes.” The nine people said in unison.

Chu Changge placed a hand on his forehead. Didn’t old man Murong feel annoyed by marrying these many women? Even the noise of them speaking just a word could kill a person. While he already felt tired just by looking at them altogether.

“I heard that the future Guye[+]son-in-law (used by wife’s family) has dropped by. It can’t be you, right?” asked the Third Wife.

“Are you not satisfied with me?” Chu Changge looked at her coldly.

The Third Wife shivered, and replied, “Satisfied, of course we’re satisfied. For Yunshu to be able to marry you who is such a brilliant and confidently at ease Guye[+]son-in-law (used by wife’s family), naturally, it is our Murong Mansion ancestors’ sins…no, it is the ancestors’ accumulated merits.” Horrible. Really horrible. This Guye[+]son-in-law (used by wife’s family) not only unwilling to please his mother-in-laws, but also dared to threaten them with his cold eyes. Poor Yunshu. She had fallen into a fire pit[+]fig. living hell this time around…

Although the rest of the ladies did not speak, they all had the same thoughts as the Third Wife. To all of them, this Guye[+]son-in-law (used by wife’s family) was so frightening.

When they noticed that Chu Changge didn’t intend to pay attention to them anymore, everyone quietly withdrew. As soon as they left the yard, they all breathed a sigh of relief. Then the situation became noisy because of the seven mouths and eight tongues[+]Chinese idiom : lively discussion with everybody trying to get a word in.

“Our Yunshu’s foresight is always good. So why did she make an error in judgment this time around?”

“Yeah. I always thought that Nie Qing was the prospective Guye[+]son-in-law (used by wife’s family), but I didn’t expect that Cheng Yaojin has come and ambushed the enemy[+]Chinese saying : sb shows up unexpectedly and disrupts the plan / sb whose presence is regarded as irksome.”

“Actually this one is not bad either. He’s so handsome.”

“What’s the use of being so handsome? The main point to be the Guye[+]son-in-law (used by wife’s family) of our Murong Mansion is to make money, just like Nie Qing.”

“If you ask me, the most important thing is to have an extremely strong life-span.”

“Yes, yes, yes. A strong life-span is the most important. Don’t be like Master…ai!”

“I heard Chief Qian said that our Guye[+]son-in-law (used by wife’s family) is a big devil. You think, him being the big devil, that must be a curse. There is a saying…”

“The scourge stays for thousand of years[+]From a Chinese saying ‘Good people do not live long life, scourge stay for thousand of year’. For the second half of the saying, it means bad thing never dies..”

“Yes, the scourge stays for thousand of years[+]From a Chinese saying ‘Good people do not live long life, scourge stay for thousand of years’. For the second half of the saying, it means bad thing never dies.. So he must live a long life.”

When they thought that Chu Changge would be a long-lived Master, the ladies breathed a sigh of relief again. It was good that he would have a long life. Really good. Whether he was a fire pit[+]fig. living hell or not, having a man by one’s side was much better than being a widow.

Although they were a few dozen meters apart, their conversation still had not escaped Chu Changge’s ears. He didn’t hear anything else, other than these two words—Nie Qing.

From the tone of their voices, they seemed to be more interested in having Nie Qing as their son-in-law who would live off his wife’s family.

Suddenly, a faint cold flashed in his calm black eyes.

In the study room separated by a wall, Nie Qing, who was currently writing a memorial to the Emperor, suddenly shuddered. He looked strangely at the sky. It was a stretch of cloudless blue sky. Unlike how the sky looked right now, why did he feel that there was a dark cloud hovering above his head?

*

Meanwhile, Wang Chao was anxious, extremely anxious. It was because he couldn’t make up his mind whether to leave or stay. Therefore, he had been pacing back and forth in their room for the whole morning.

Murong Yunshu really wanted to ignore him very much, but he seemed to want to attract her attention on purpose, as he flashed past in front of her eyes. With a sigh, she stopped her hands from embroidering and said, “Exercising won’t help you change the fact that you are born stupid. So just stop doing it for a moment.”

Born stupid…born…Wang Chao discovered that over the course of a few days, he had became a calm person. Such as now, he actually didn’t feel anything at all after hearing her words, since he was determined to carry his already cracked pot that should just be smashed[+]Chinese idiom : when one feel really down in one’s life, one abandon oneself to despair because one lack the strength and courage to pick oneself up. vigour until the end…he never expected to hear any good things about him from her anyway.

“Are you happy to see me fidgeting?” Wang Chao weakly asked.

Murong Yunshu hung her head and continued to embroider plum blossoms on her handkerchief. She passed a needle through to make a stitch before she slowly, and quite carelessly said, “I don’t want to base my happiness on your pain, so why bother in insisting to entertain me with your own suffering?”

Wang Chao’s whole face was full of black lines. It was his own fault. It was really his own fault. He shouldn’t have released her mute acupoint at all!

With just a little bit of touch with his forefinger, Murong Yunshu could feel that her airflow had been blocked inside her throat. No matter how hard she tried, it was unable to break through. For this reason, she could no longer pronounce any word. Thus, the time for her to get her fresh air had ended.

Zhang Yu could no longer sit around watching as he coldly said, “If we wait any longer, Chu Changge will really be coming for us sooner or later.”

Wang Chao nodded hard. At times like this, even if Zhang Yu said he should just go to hell, Wang Chao would still praise him since his words really made sense[+]Chinese idiom : sound reasonable.

“Rather than cowering and hiding inside the brothel, it’s better to put our all into the fight till it ends our suffering by letting us die quickly and reincarnate[+]fig. to get it over with.”

Wang Chao continued to nod his head. ‘Since your mind is clear-headed, I’m going to listen to you.’

As a result, the three finally left the brothel. They took a carriage that was neither good nor bad, and drove towards the city gate.

When Wang Chao and Zhang Yu were drawing the carriage to make a right turn towards the south main road, a charmingly, and amazingly handsome man in white spurred his horse from the north as well. His long, loose hair flew arrogantly in the wind, while his line of sight that was as sharp as a goshawk, followed them from far till they got quite near to him, which was truly imposing. Wang Chao suddenly had the illusion of bumping into a ghost in broad daylight. He wondered whether he had been too worried about meeting up with Chu Changge on a narrow way, to the extent that he had hallucinated this meeting…

When Wang Chao had no idea what to do with his hands and feet[+]Chinese idiom : feel completely at a loss, Zhang Yu pulled the reins and let the carriage drive onto the south main road. He drove the carriage neither too fast nor too slow, until they managed to drive it smoothly.

“He, he seems to have seen me…” said Wang Chao with his trance-like look.

“Shut up!” Zhang Yu scolded him in a low voice with his eyes continued watching six roads and his ears listening in all directions[+]Chinese idiom : be observant and alert, while he constantly paying attention to the movement behind him.

Inside the carriage, Murong Yunshu was closing her eyes to rest her mind[+]Chinese idiom : take a rest when she suddenly heard Wang Chao mentioning Chu Changge, and her heart was overjoyed. She quietly looked out from the small window on the side, just in time to see Chu Changge’s figure flash by.

Murong Yunshu immediately poked her head out completely, while her sight never stopped following his majestic figure. Her gaze followed him obsessively for a long time until she couldn’t see him anymore, before she withdrew her sight with a deep, long sigh.

After waiting for so many days, all she got was this brief encounter. Was she meant to stay this way, or their fate had not arrived yet?

NOOB TRANSLATOR’S MINI NOTE

The reason for Yunshu’s father having these many mothers will be explained after the King Liang Jr. arc has ended.