"Just be normal. No need to be so......" Murong Yunshu looked at the nine stunningly beautiful men in front of her and couldn't think of the right words to describe them. So she finally had to raise her eyebrows and just leave things as they were.
Although Murong Yunshu hadn't finished her sentence, the words 'be normal' had already made the Killing Demons’ face full of black lines. "Is this very abnormal?" One of the Demons asked.
Murong Yunshu looked at them carefully for a few more moments and commented, "A little too beautiful. Although they are gorgeous, they look a bit neither like a woman nor a man. Let's switch to the previous faces in future. At least they look more pleasant to the eyes."
Crows. That was one big flock of crows. The corners of the nine men's mouths twitched wildly as they looked at the sky with tears in their eyes.
Chu Changge smiled. "That's what they originally looked like." The tone of his voice was full of him taking joy in calamity and delighting in disaster.
"Uh......" She did comment on how their current appearance looked too lifelike. Murong Yunshu coughed lightly twice in embarrassment, then looked at the sky as if nothing was wrong and said, "It's a nice day. You guys should just hide."
"......" What did nice weather have to do with them hiding or not hiding?
*
At sunset, Murong Yunshu and Chu Changge settled in a cave in the wilderness bordering Miaojiang and the Central Plains. The cave was large enough to hold thirty or forty people, but the Killing Demons still had to crouch at the cave entrance.
"You can let them come inside." Murong Yunshu indifferently suggested as she poked at the fire with a branch.
Chu Changge was also poking at the fire with a twig. Hearing Murong Yunshu's words, his sword-shaped brows raised as he stated, "They like to stay out."
"Is that so?" Murong Yunshu glanced at him with a smile, then lowered her eyes and continued to stir the fire. She then casually said, "You are much better looking than them." At least in her eyes.
Hearing her compliment, Chu Changge was immediately delighted and smugly said, "That's for sure."
"......if you are so confident, why do you still let them paint their faces to look more demon-like?" Murong Yunshu asked.
"Uh......" Chu Changge became speechless.
"Are you afraid I'll be confused by beauty?" Murong Yunshu asked with a smile.
"Of course not." Chu Changge denied it flatly.
Murong Yunshu stared at him for a while before smilingly asking, "Or are you terrified of being compared to them?"
As if he hadn't heard Murong Yunshu's words, Chu Changge suggested with a smile, "It's going to be a long night, Madam. So let’s do something else."
"What can we do in a place like this......" Her words just came halfway through when Murong Yunshu suddenly realised what he meant by 'something else' was......Murong Yunshu blushed and questioned, "Aren't you......weak from being hit by the Enchantment Fragrant of the Snowy Region?"
When he heard what she asked, a wicked smile appeared at the corners of Chu Changge's mouth as he whispered, "This husband of yours may have broken body, but it still firm in spirit."
Without waiting for Murong Yunshu to fully comprehend the meaning of this sentence, her clothes had already spread out by themselves as if they had grown hands......
Meanwhile, the nine men guarding outside the cave walked away quite consciously. It was indeed a beautiful day today.
*
The following day at noon, a carriage was seen walking along the path outside Tianmen Pass, attracting the attention of a few travelling merchants. But it wasn't the carriage or the four horses pulling that caught their eye, but the coachmen who drove it, where there were nine of them.
What beautiful coachmen! Passersby couldn't help but speculate how beautiful the owner who sat inside the carriage would be if the coachmen were already looking good like this......
By this time, the carriage had arrived at the Tianmen Pass and was stopped by the guarding soldiers. The curtain of the carriage was lifted by a fair and slender hand. "Something wrong?" With this unsavoury, low question, the owner of the voice poked his head out, revealing his entire face.
Passersby could not help but gasp. What a handsome and elegant man, simply......like an Immortal who had descended to earth!
Even the soldiers guarding the gate also looked dumbfounded and stood frozen in place. [+]
Murong Yunshu, who was sitting in the carriage, could not hear any sound coming from outside. She also leaned out and asked, "What's the matter?"
"It's nothing. Just a routine check-up." The elegant and beautiful man, also known as Chu Changge, turned back and smiled at Murong Yunshu, then turned his head to the soldiers guarding the gate and said, "Make way for us if you’re not going to check."
Once a soldier returned to his senses, he quickly asked, "Who else is in the carriage?"
Chu Changge replied, "My wife."
Murong Yunshu smiled at the soldier, indicating that the 'wife' was referring to her.
The soldier glanced at Murong Yunshu and asked once more, "There's no one else?"
Chu Changge replied, "No one else."
"Okay, you can pass." The soldier put away his lance and retreated to the roadside, allowing the carriage to enter the gate.
With the clattering sound, the carriage soon disappeared at the end of the public road. The crowd had not yet regained their senses and were still looking in the direction of the departing carriage, wishing to see more.
A soldier suddenly scratched the back of his head and said, "That man just now looked so familiar."
Another soldier asked, "Which man?"
"The one sat inside the carriage that had four horses and nine coachmen. He looked so familiar like I've seen him somewhere before."
"A handsome man like that, if you had seen him once, you would never forget him, and how could you say he just looks familiar?"
"That's right. But...ah!" The soldier slapped his head and said, "I remember! He is Chu Changge! That woman is Murong Yunshu!"
"Chu Changge? Murong Yunshu? Are you talking about the Chu Changge and Murong Yunshu, who are wanted by the whole country? "
"Yes! I've seen their portraits. They must be the right ones! I can't believe I didn't notice it just now and even let them in! It's over. If the General finds out about this, we won't have enough heads for him to chop......"
"Don't panic, don't panic." The soldier looked around and then whispered, "Only you and I know about this. As long as we don't say anything, the General won't know. Let alone blame us for it."
"But they're both wanted criminals! We must report this to the General."
"Calm down! What can we even do if we tell the General? The opponents are Chu Changge and Murong Yunshu. One of them has great martial arts skills, and the other is rich. Can we deal with both of them? Besides, it's the rebelling kings who want them, not our General. I think it's best not to let the General know about this, to avoid getting us into trouble. The General has been able to keep the peace because he has remained neutral in the current turmoil. Say, if you think you can't mess with the rebel kings, do you think you can provoke the Demon King?"
"This......fine. Just do as you say."
*
The horses were spurred at their full speed until the carriage finally stopped in front of an inn by the public road just before sunset.
"We are here, Leader." The Killing Demon who sat in the centre said sullenly.
Chu Changge jumped out of the carriage first and then held Murong Yunshu down.
"Patron, are you planning to just stop by or stay in the inn?" The shop assistant came out and welcomed him eagerly.
"We’re staying." Chu Changge said while walking hand in hand with Murong Yunshu into the inn.
This inn was neither big nor small, neither new nor old, and it was the most common kind. But the couplets hanging in front of it caught Murong Yunshu’s attention――
In Chinese poetry, a couplet (simplified Chinese: 对联; traditional Chinese: 對聯; pinyin: About this sound duìlián) is a pair of lines of poetry which adhere to certain rules (see below). Outside of poems, they are usually seen on the sides of doors leading to people's homes or hanging scrolls in an interior. Although often called antithetical couplet, they can better be described as a written form of counterpoint. The two lines have a one-to-one correspondence in their metrical length, and each pair of characters must have certain corresponding properties. A couplet is ideally profound yet concise, using one character per word in Classical Chinese style. A special, widely seen type of couplet is the spring couplet (simplified Chinese: 春联; traditional Chinese: 春聯; pinyin: chūnlián), used as a New Year's decoration that expresses happiness and hopeful thoughts for the coming year. - Culture bays
The first line: Will not ask about your family, your country or your world
The second line: Abstaining from eating meat every day on a cloudy, rainy or sunny day
Horizontal scroll: Peace under the sky
Murong Yunshu couldn’t stop herself from laughing. She had seen limerick poems, but not limerick couplets. The owner of this inn was nine times out of ten (Chinese idiom: most likely) a freak.
When Chu Changge saw Murong Yunshu was laughing, he asked, "What are you laughing at?"
Murong Yunshu raised her chin toward the couplets on the door and motioned for him to take a look.
Chu Changge raised his eyes to look over, and after reading the couplet, he first raised his eyebrows and then smiled, "It seems we have very good luck to meet an old friend as soon as we return to the Central Plains."
Murong Yunshu was slightly stunned and asked, "Do you know the owner of this inn?"
Chu Changge took another look at the couplet and said, "I think we should know each other." There would be no other person all over the world except that one who would stick such strange couplets at the gate.
At that moment, a thin, middle-aged man with a black turban wrapped around his head came towards them with a smile and a big grin, "I think I must have known you too."
Chu Changge glanced at him lightly and greeted, "Mister Shi Er."
Hearing his 'Mister Shi Er', Murong Yunshu couldn't help but be secretly shocked. For a man as proud as Chu Changge willing to call the man in front of him 'Mister', it was clear that this man was no ordinary person. At least, his relationship with Chu Changge could not be explained just by the word 'know'.
Mister Shi Er smiled and looked Murong Yunshu up and down before inquiring, "Little girl, looking at your lustrous appearance, you should be a smart person. How could you get mixed up with Chu Changge?"
Murong Yunshu smiled faintly and calmly asked, "Elder also seems to be a wise man. How come Elder opened an inn in such a deserted place?" This public road was sparsely populated, and apart from the merchants going in and out of the gate, there would be no one patronising it, let alone staying there.
Mister Shi Er responded, "Because there is something I want on this road. What about you? What do you want from Chu Changge? "
Murong Yun answered with a smile, "He has everything that I want." He was all she wanted.
Mister Shi Er was flabbergasted. Then he patted Chu Changge's shoulder and smilingly said, "I never thought you would have such good luck too."
The smile on Mister Shi Er's face at this time was a bit gloomy in Murong Yunshu's eyes. Completely different from his previous smile. Murong Yunshu couldn't refrain from frowning. She was afraid that this person was probably an enemy, not a friend.
Chu Changge smiled brightly and said, "This Chu always has good luck."
Mister Shi Er said, "That's right. If you weren't so lucky, you wouldn't have been alive today."
Chu Changge raised an eyebrow, declining to comment. "Are there any more guest rooms?" He asked as he looked around, clearly not wanting to continue the conversation.
Mister Shi Er said, "With the friendship between you and me, even if there isn't one, I will still make one for you." After saying this, he turned to the shop assistant and ordered, "Show the guest upstairs."
"Okay." The shop assistant immediately smiled and made a gesture of invitation towards Chu Changge and Murong Yunshu.
"Let's go." Chu Changge urged.
"Hmm." Murong Yunshu gave Mister Shi Er a strange look, then followed Chu Changge inside. [+]
*
Once inside the guest room, Murong Yunshu asked Chu Changge, "Do you have a friendship with that Mister Shi Er?"
Chu Changge nodded. "There is."
"Very deep?"
"Not shallow."
Murong Yunshu hesitated for a few moments and said, "I feel like he's a bit hostile towards us." Although Mister Shi Er was all smiles from beginning to end, and his interaction with Chu Changge seemed 'affectionate', she always felt a little strange.
"That's not strange." Chu Changge said, "It would be strange if he were not hostile towards me."
Murong Yunshu was confused. "Didn't you say that your friendship is not shallow?"
"A bad friendship is also a friendship." Chu Changge said in a very light-hearted manner.
"......" No wonder she had felt at first that Mister Shi Er spoke peculiarly.
On Chu Changge's return to the Central Plains, he encountered an old friend with whom he had a not shallow friendship. His luck, as it turned out, was indeed 'good'.
Noob Translator's Musing
I also put the couplets in their original characters with Pinyin in the footnotes. They looked so much more fun when read in Chinese/Pinyin than in English.
Tags:
Black Belly Wife