Xin Mei remembered when Silan had just woken up from his serious injuries and saw her standing by the bed, his first reaction was to explode with anger.
“Why are you still here? Why are you not going after the General?!”
Xin Mei felt quite inexplicable, “He was going to kill me. You want me to catch up and court death for myself?”
“I’m not asking you to court death!” For the first time, Silan was really angry, “You can’t just stop chasing after him! You can continue to pretend that you are calm and ignorant, but you shouldn’t be so indifferent! Doesn’t it matter to you what the General has become as long as he likes you?! With what has happened to him, you still want to play dumb by the side and do nothing? You’ll just be happy as long as he comes back and continues to spoil you?“
“…Silan, you seem to have a fever. You are starting to talk some nonsense. I’ll call Zhao Guanren.”
As she walked to the door, she heard Silan’s cold voice, “In fact, you don’t like him at all! You just like someone who loves you and gives you everything. As for what this person is currently thinking and what he is concerned about, you don’t care!“
She opened the door and directly went out. Zhao Guanren who was at the door looked embarrassingly at her with a basin of water in his hands.
“That is...Miss...” He hesitantly said, “I don’t want to shoot my mouth off, but for you to be like this...hanging around in the Imperial Mausoleum as nothing has happened, is not really a good thing...” This noob translation was translated by a noob translator きつね. Please read this chapter at xin-shou.blogspot.com.
Maybe she should have been acting like the women in the play book. When something happened to her husband, she should immediately toss and turned in bed, while feeling uneasy even when eating and sleeping, and even tears would be streaming down her cheeks. She would also be filled with grief as to wish she was dead. If she had been acting these ways, everyone would have felt much better.
“I...” Xin Mei thought for a moment, then added, “It’s not that I don’t care about him. I just don’t want myself to worry so much about this.”
The incident that night came so suddenly that up until now, she still felt that Lu Qianqiao might come back safely in the next moment. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to catch up, but what was the use of catching up when the outcome would be her being killed, and then, left Lu Qianqiao to bear the regret and pain by himself?
“Miss, you don’t believe in the General.”
.....
“In the end, you have only been protecting yourself too much.”
From the first moment, Lu Qianqiao and her had met till their marriage, it had been going smoothly. Along the way, there had been a slight stir, but it was only a fleeting matter that was as transient as a fleeting cloud. She had always been very confident. Just like what her dad had said, no one in the world could bully her, only she would bully others. So, as long as she thought about it, Lu Qianqiao would certainly accomplish it. She once said that he would not die, he surely did wake up.
Now, she thought that Lu Qianqiao would definitely come back as if nothing had happened.
How could he not come back?
She saw him in her dreams where he was walking alone in the snow with his whip and wandered around like he didn’t know where to go.
She ran after him and asked, “Lu Qianqiao, where are you going? Why don’t you come back?“
Even if he strangled her neck or cut her head with a whip or something, she had long stopped being angry with him and she would not mind dying at all. She had finally become a generous and virtuous wife.
But he answered, “Xin Mei, I have nowhere to go.”
His favourite place, now he wanted to destroy it. His favourite people, now he wanted to personally kill them.
He had nowhere else to go to.
When Xin Mei woke up, she felt that she finally understood his state of mind at this very moment, to the extent that she had never even tried to think about his despair.
“You’re awake? Then, please sit tight as we’re gonna start jumping around.”
A strange but somewhat familiar voice sounded overhead. Xin Mei lifted her neck. However, before she could get a clear view, she felt a shaking beneath her. She rolled to the ground from a height and just like a bullet, she shot upwards and then tumbled back down. She was aware that she had turned herself into a pebble.
“Mountain...landslide?!”
She subconsciously grabbed what she could pull at hand, and immediately there was a cry of pain coming from the opposite side. When she glanced over, the Great Monk from the Fox Clan was in a bad situation as he awkwardly stretched his neck—his hair was firmly grabbed by her, while his face had an emaciated look.
Xin Mei fixed her eyes at him and blinked. He also followed along blinking.
In a split second, a slap was flung onto his face which immediately knocked out a layer of skin...eh, a layer of skin?!
The Great Monk covered his face and cried, “Aren’t your strengths a little too strong?!”
He put down his hand and turned his face. Indeed, the left side of his face had already turned red and swollen. Somehow, his current face was different from his former one. It was still an ordinary and easily forgotten kind of face, but his nose and mouth looked absolutely different.
“Hey, your face...”
Xin Mei leaned forward. Without caring for his embarrassment and shameful resistance, she pulled apart his resisting hands and seriously stared at him for a long time. She then honestly said, “You are wearing the legendary human skin mask!”
The Great Monk secretly coughed as he was feeling rather embarrassed, “They are masks, but not really made of human skins.”
Xin Mei grabbed his face and pulled it very hard, which made him give out a blood-curdling scream. With a ‘shua’ sound, a mask fell off, a stranger A’s face; with another ‘shua’ sound, another mask fell off, a stranger B’s face.
She continuously pulled down dozens of masks and looked at them. She felt that there was still more behind but the last one, but when she pulled, it wouldn’t fall off.
“You don’t have a face!” She was utterly shocked.
The Great Monk looked up at heaven and wept silently. No, he had a face. He really had a face...
“Tentatively, let’s put aside that I’m already married,” Xin Mei’s face suddenly softened as she became compassionate and gentle. She felt like she wanted to grant him kindness by graciously refusing him like she was set high above the masses. “Just because you have no face, I will not elope with you.”
...could he just jump off the vehicle? Would that be okay? Really okay?
All of sudden, there was another violent vibration under her body, and Xin Mei immediately tumbled down and rolled on the floor. Only then did she realise that she seemed to be inside the gorgeous long vehicle. The things inside the vehicle were already in a mess. The Great Monk with his emaciated face had also rolled up and down on the ground together with her.
“Is this vehicle yours? Are you going to let it fall apart just like this?!”
Xin Mei suddenly bumped into the wall inside the vehicle and immediately became dizzy.
The Great Monk only smiled wryly, “People are chasing behind us. So, don’t make any demands at this time.”
Xin Mei tried her best to prop herself up so that she could get up. She then grabbed the window ledge and leaned out half of her body to scout out. She could vaguely see spirit-horse quicken its pace to catch up from behind. She could also straight away see a faintly figure in a white overall. The vehicle shook so much that it didn’t seem so real.
A gust of strong wind blew past, and dispersed away a bit of the misty clouds, as the white overall person seemed to be getting closer.
Xin Mei caught sight of a pair of red eyes.
That person was from the War Demon Clan!
She raised her hand to say hello, but the man suddenly drew up his longbow. All of a sudden, a shrill, piercing sound splitting the air could be heard. The iron arrow flew from the string and it shot straight into her face.
In a single movement, Xin Mei moved back. The arrow grazed the outer wall of the vehicle, which split open a few blocks of wood, and it also left behind several cracks.
“...he wants to kill me?” she mumbled incredulously.
Although she had not seen many war demon clansmen, other than Liu Qianqiao and his family, according to her experience, although they were a bit fierce, they rarely would straightforwardly kill you right in front of your eyes. Did she offend her mother-in-law without even realising it?
“In any case, he’s not here to really kill me.”
The car rocked crazily under the pull of several birds of paradise, as the monk rolled to her feet and looked up at her seriously, “Actually, I’m here to save you.”
“...give me a reason first.“
“No problem, but...could you please slightly move your feet?”
The Great Monk pointed at her foot on his forehead and smiled bitterly.
The fact was very simple. Li Chaoyang’s awakening at the age of 25 resulted in her having a completely rare perfect war demon’s body. Later, she went and killed hundreds of people from her husband’s family. Also at that time, Lu Qianqiao was sent back to her clan to be cared for by the Li family members, hence he escaped the disaster that befell his father's family. As a mixed-race person, he was actually in an unfavourable position. Other clansmen believed that Daxiaojie would ruthlessly obliterate him once she returned. Who would have thought that Li Chaoyang just asked someone to send him away, leaving his life still intact?
Lu Qianqao and his mother always had a shallow mother-son relationship. They only met occasionally, with his mother would always sit in the carriage and the bamboo screen separated their two worlds.
As one could think about it now, the proud perfect war demon had no feelings at all. She left him alive with a faint hope that since she could achieve a perfect war demon body, as for her own son, it would also be possible for him too.
Now that he had hoped to be the same, his heart was unwilling to let go of his feelings. He would rather walk away quietly, leaving out of account the rise and fall of the War Demon Clan. This gave reasons for Li Chaoyang to be angry with him.
Since Lu Qianqiao wouldn’t do it, so this allowed her to personally handle it—
“With the above-mentioned, it precisely happened this way.”
The Great Monk was so thirsty that he tore off the bamboo tube at his waist and took a sip of water to moisten his throat. As he looked up at Xin Mei, she was completely unresponsive and was holding her chin in a daze.
“You don’t understand?” he waved his hand in front of her face.
Xin Mei thought for a moment before she shook her head, “No, I think...she is not that kind of person.”
“She had killed 137 people of the Lu family. This is a fact. I didn’t have the time to make things up.”
“I mean, she has feelings too.”
The pair of red eyes that she saw inside the tent that day was cold and full of murder, but she did not feel afraid nor did she want to hide from her. She had seen Li Chaoyang’s hand on Lu Qianqiao’s face. Her fingertip movements revealed a trace of regret and sadness. These actions of her body didn't seem like tricks for Xin Mei.
“That’s not for you to say whether she has feelings or not. Otherwise, why are we running for our lives right now?”
Xin Mei looked at him, “Yes, why did I run away with you? I don’t even know you very well.“
The Great Monk grinned, “That is certainly because, we, the Fox clan, is the most promising and just heroic group. We won’t permit evil war demons to continue killing others casually. I have come to stop their savage acts.”
Xin Mei didn’t say anything but just stared at him.
The Great Monk smiled again, “Anyhow…I won’t hurt you, so just rest assured.”
*
The birds of paradise were not common birds after all. They flew much faster than the spirit horse. After jolting violently for half a shichen, they finally managed to throw off the war demon that was chasing from behind.
The two people were a bit out of sorts after rolling around for some time inside the long vehicle. The Great Monk sluggishly propped himself up and took a glance out of the window. “I’m taking you back to my clan. Nobody’s going to kill you there,” he said.
“I’m not going.” Xin Mei was very quick to decline. “Send me back to the Imperial Mausoleum.”
The Great Monk simply howled in grief, “Did you really not understand what I said just now?!”
“Return to the Imperial Mausoleum.” She only replied with these few words.
The monk finally put aside his playful expression and quietly looked at her, “If you go back, Li Chaoyang will not kill you. But even if you wait for ten or twenty years, he will not come back. Even if he comes back, you will only meet him for a moment, and the next moment he will chop you to pieces. It’s your business to die or not to die, but the mission of the clan has given me is to protect you. If the mission cannot be completed, I will not have a good time.“
“I have something to say to him. I have to say it.”
There was nowhere else for Lu Qianqao to go. Thus, she would wait for him at the Imperial Mausoleum, continuously waiting for him. Wherever she lived, then that would be his place of return.
The Great Monk sighed, “You don’t have to go back to the Imperial Mausoleum. I know where he is. Let me take you to see him.”
Tags:
A Match Made In Heaven