It took Feng Qingyun three full seconds to react, then he suddenly realized what the round object was actually used for. His face flushed bright red in an instant, as though he’d been burned, and he reflexively moved to throw it away.
“It’s new!” The clueless courtesan hastily exclaimed, thinking Feng Qingyun was concerned about whether it was used. He even stood up in a panic, continuing, “No one’s ever touched it!”
…Was that even the issue?!
Feng Qingyun’s face was practically on fire. He didn’t dare think about what “inside the body” meant, nor how a hollowed-out sphere like that was supposed to be put inside anything, ah!
Blushing furiously, he tried to shove the box back, completely ignoring the look of deep regret and heartbreak on Long Yin’s face beside him.
Seeing how resolutely Feng Qingyun refused, the courtesan froze. Perhaps realizing that he’d been steeped in the mortal world for too long, so much so that even his gifts were embarrassingly indecent, he stood there looking inexplicably dejected.
No amount of powder could truly conceal a corpse’s rotten face. Just as no matter how much he imitated refined manners, he would still remain someone who, both in life and death, survived only by selling his body.
Feng Qingyun needed only one glance to realize what the man was thinking. His heart tightened, and his rejecting hand slowed. That man had died, indirectly, because of him, so Feng Qingyun really couldn’t bear to make him feel so ashamed.
After several turns of thought, just as the courtesan lifted his hand dejectedly to take back the box, Feng Qingyun reddened to the tips of his ears, steeled himself, and in one lightning-fast motion shoved the bell straight into his storage ring.
“……Since it’s your heartfelt gift, I’ll accept it,” Feng Qingyun said against his conscience. “Thank you. That… that bell is quite beautiful and exquisite. I actually like it very much… I was just worried it might be something you treasured deeply. Taking what someone loves didn’t feel right, but given your sincerity… I truly couldn’t refuse.”
While Feng Qingyun’s words salvaged the courtesan’s dignity from the floor, his own face had already turned crimson under Long Yin’s half-smiling gaze.
To make matters worse, the Demon Emperor drawled meaningfully in his mind: [Since the Little Palace Master likes it so much, why not try it tonight?]
Feng Qingyun ground his teeth inwardly.
[……Get out of my body!]
Long Yin replied cheerfully, entirely on purpose: [Of course, of course. This Lord will roll right out of the Little Palace Master’s body.]
If there hadn’t been others present, Feng Qingyun would’ve happily grabbed that bastard and thrown him straight out of the second-floor window!
The courtesan, unaware of the storm raging between them, froze before breaking into a delighted smile, asking, “The Immortal Lord truly doesn’t mind?”
“…Why would I mind?” Feng Qingyun forced himself to sound composed. “Matters of the bed are only natural. A bit of… interest is perfectly reasonable…”
And of course, before he could finish, karma struck immediately.
“I also have a treasured jade tool…” the courtesan exclaimed eagerly, pulling out another box as if offering a priceless heirloom. “It’s made of pure mutton-fat jade! I never even dared touch it. If your Dao companion happens to be away, you can use this to comfort yourself!”
Feng Qingyun: “……”
He was at his limit.
His face burning, he snapped, “I don’t need that!”
“Oh…” The courtesan blinked. “Is it too small?”
Feng Qingyun nearly collapsed.
Long Yin, meanwhile, burst out laughing. “This Lord will be leaving for a while soon,” he said lightly. “But the moment I’m gone, your Immortal Lord here will probably be drowning in tears. He won’t have time for these things.”
“Oh, tears should be shed on the bed while you still can,” the courtesan said earnestly, entirely missing the gravity of Long Yin’s words. “Crying anywhere else is pointless. How long would your Dao companion be gone? For people like you, even a hundred years is just an instant, but for former mortals like us, a hundred years is a lifetime. And I survived a century just fine. Plenty of men look good but are useless. Some love fancy tricks, and I’d be in so much pain I’d have to fake it a bit. A jade tool is far more efficient.”
A male courtesan, using the very things cultivators scorned, to comfort a Golden Core stage Sword Master…. Yet Feng Qingyun froze at his words, a complex bitterness rising in his chest. “…You’ve suffered so much over the years. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, Immortal Lord, please don’t say that!” the courtesan replied immediately. “There’s no such thing as too much suffering. As long as you’re alive, you have to keep looking forward. Only after enough bitterness can the sweetness of the future truly stand out.”
After drifting through the world for a hundred years, he saw things more clearly than Feng Qingyun ever had. Unfortunately, he’d only managed to be serious for a few sentences before flipping the box open again, brazenly revealing the jade object inside.
“Immortal Lord, look at the texture, the craftsmanship! Just touching it for a test would be… are you sure you don’t want to try?”
Feng Qingyun: “……”
In sheer panic, he pinned the blame elsewhere, saying, “He’s jealous! He won’t even let me touch jade! I won’t try it, take it away!”
Long Yin chuckled, tacitly accepting the accusation.
“Oh…” The courtesan sighed in disappointment, closing the box. His face clearly read: what a big jar of vinegar…
But the wrongly accused vinegar jar murmured smugly in Feng Qingyun’s mind: [Little Palace Master… comparing sizes with this Lord, were you?]
!!!
You power-abusing bastard!
Feng Qingyun’s face flushed scarlet. He forced himself not to think about it, but his mind still betrayed him, conjuring several vivid images. Sensing them, Long Yin’s smile deepened. He said nothing, only turned his head and watched Feng Qingyun with an amused expression.
“…If you keep smiling,” Feng Qingyun snapped, “do you believe I’ll throw you down from here?!”
Long Yin responded by clearly not believing him. Gritting his teeth, Feng Qingyun looked away. After a moment of silence, he finally managed to shove those chaotic thoughts aside and lifted his hand toward Long Yin.
Having a Dao companion did have its benefits. Without a single word, Long Yin immediately understood, as he produced the ghost jade he’d earlier pilfered from the former fox Patriarch down in the Underworld and placed it in Feng Qingyun’s palm.
Feng Qingyun handed the jade to the courtesan and stuffed a handful of spirit stones into his storage pouch, saying, “Take this jade to the twelfth stall in the Ghost Market of the Underworld. The stall owner and his Dao companion are both ghost cultivators, more than capable of guiding you in cultivation.”
The courtesan was stunned speechless. When he finally recovered, he stammered, “…Th-thank you, Immortal Lord!”
After a brief hesitation, Feng Qingyun decided that a life mattered more than dignity and added, “…However, his temper isn’t very good, and he’s thin-skinned. You can spout nonsense here without consequence, but watch your mouth around him. Don’t make him angry.”
“I know, I know!” the courtesan promised eagerly, his eyes shining. “I’ll be extremely cautious! Please rest assured!”
Seeing how happy the little corpse was, Feng Qingyun should have sent him on his way, but one question had been gnawing at him. In the end, he couldn’t help asking, “…Didn’t you say before that you entered this line of work for your younger sister? Is she… doing well?”
However, the moment the question left his mouth, Feng Qingyun knew it would likely lead nowhere. Mortals lived barely a hundred years. Best case, she’d lived out her natural life. Worst case, well… There was no difference at all.
And as Long Yin once said, sick parents and young siblings were often nothing more than stories invented to placate patrons.
Yet the courtesan froze. After a moment, he smiled faintly, his voice softening. “She has spiritual roots. I did this because our parents were too poor and they’d rather marry her off than let her cultivate.”
“Later, I heard she entered Lingyuan Sect…” At that, his smile brightened instantly, continuing, “I wonder how she’s doing now. She probably thinks I’m dead, but that’s fine… Someone like her shouldn’t have a brother like me anyway.”
Imprisoned for a century, unaware of all the chaos Feng Qingyun and Long Yin had stirred, yet he had never forgotten his sister.
Long Yin paused, clearly not expecting that he truly had one. As for Feng Qingyun, he felt an inexplicable heaviness settle in his chest and couldn’t help asking, “What is your sister’s name? Since she’s from Lingyuan Sect, perhaps I know her.”
The male courtesan smiled with clear pride. “Her name is Nan Anxue. Has the Immortal Lord heard of her?”
Nan Anxue, Lingyuan Sect’s foremost Senior Disciple. True to her name, aloof and cold to the extreme… And yet, that woman, so restrained and indifferent, as though cultivation was the only thing in her heart, would almost everywhere she went ask after her brother, inquiring whether anyone had seen him.
Her conduct was nearly identical to Mu Hanyang’s former habit of constantly searching for the one he loved. The difference was that, unlike Mu Hanyang, who kept silent, never even daring to speak the name of the one in his heart, she told everyone she met that her brother was called Nan Anyu, and that he looked very much like her.
Unfortunately, a hundred years passed in haste, and everyone she asked told her they had never seen such a person.
Only now did Feng Qingyun faintly discern, beneath the courtesan’s thick layers of powder, a trace of resemblance to that cold and divine woman. Yet the face had long been soaked through with habitual flattery. No one would ever believe that such a man, a courtesan even, could be the elder brother of Lingyuan Sect’s foremost Senior Disciple.
Nan Anxue searched for her brother for a hundred years, while the brother who sold his body to fund her path to immortality spent those same hundred years selling smiles in a dark place she could not see.
All of it stemmed from nothing more than his desire to save a little more travel money for his sister, so he drank a few cups of wine with a kind-hearted cultivator, inadvertently angering that cultivator’s Senior Brother. And as simple as that, a single moment of wrath from someone in power was enough to destroy an ordinary person’s entire life.
Feng Qingyun suddenly felt his throat tighten, unspeakable regret filling his chest. After a long pause, he finally spoke: “She… she has been searching for you.”
The courtesan froze, as though he could hardly believe his own ears.
Feng Qingyun continued, “She is now Lingyuan Sect’s foremost Senior Disciple. All these years, to everyone she meets, she says her brother is called Nan Anyu, that he looks very much like her, and asks whether anyone has seen you.”
Nan Anyu’s eyes widened abruptly.
All his patrons called him Little Yu, without a surname. That was a courtesan’s name.
He had thought no one remembered his real name anymore, until this moment, when he realized that someone not only remembered it, but had never forgotten.
From the moment Feng Qingyun first met him, the young man, clever and adept at using his looks, had always worn a smile. Only now did he suddenly strip away the ingratiating expression etched onto his face. As his features cooled, a face nearly seventy percent identical to Nan Anxue’s finally revealed itself.
He lightly furrowed his brow, as though he wished to cry, but corpses had no tears left. All he could do was blink a few times stiffly. After a long while, he finally smiled.
“……Thank you, both of you, for telling me.”
Feng Qingyun couldn’t help saying, “The Xiān Gōng Sect’s Heavenly Gate Ceremony will be held soon. Lingyuan Sect has also been invited. Your sister, as the foremost Senior Disciple, will surely attend…”
Nan Anyu understood what he meant, yet shook his head, saying, “Thank you for your kindness, Immortal Lord, but given my current state, acknowledging each other would only bring trouble to my sister for no reason…”
“She may be the sort who doesn’t care about what others say, but I do.” At that, Nan Anyu changed the subject, continuing, “If the two of you happen to meet her, please tell her…” he smiled faintly. “Her unambitious brother is still around. But this brother is too weak right now. He needs to go and temper himself before returning to acknowledge her. Tell her not to be sad.”
Reanimated corpses were demons born of resentment, yet Nan Anyu’s resentment had long been worn smooth by a century of fate. He lived on heedlessly to this day, never thinking his past days bitter at all; rather, he felt everything was a blessing earned from previous lifetimes of incense offerings, that he could still live to see such a good day.
Feng Qingyun silently lifted his hand and patted his shoulder. Only when the talisman in his hand turned blinding did he speak softly: “We will pass the message on for you. Go cultivate in peace.”
Nan Anyu nodded solemnly as the teleportation talisman activated abruptly, his figure vanishing from the upper floor in an instant. Feng Qingyun rose, left a piece of gold on the table as Nan Anyu’s redemption fee, then pulled Long Yin along and descended from the wine house.
Yet once the two of them stepped back onto the bustling, lively streets, Feng Qingyun’s mood remained heavy.
Nan Anyu had borne Mu Hanyang’s restraints upon his body. Now that they had been completely lifted by Long Yin’s hand, Mu Hanyang would inevitably sense something amiss.
But that was not why Feng Qingyun felt so low.
He lifted his gaze toward the distant Imperial Palace, and beyond it, the faintly visible mountains of the Xiān Gōng Sect. His expression darkened beyond words.
In his previous life, he had ruled the Xiān Gōng Sect for over five hundred years. Because Mu Hanyang hailed from the Kingdom of Jinlin, and because he trusted his words, Feng Qingyun truly believed that Jinlin’s people feared cultivators and thus allowed the kingdom to govern itself.
He had never known that Jinlin, right beneath the Xiān Gōng Sect, was rife with mortals and demons alike being coerced into slavery and prostitution, such filth and degradation. It even made him wonder, why exactly did the Kingdom of Jinlin strictly forbid cultivators from entering? Was it truly, as they proclaimed to the world, to avoid interference… or simply fear of being exposed for enslaving people?
They were clever, too. The genuine nobles were nowhere to be seen within the city, and what Feng Qingyun encountered in Jinlin were all those already enslaved, their spirits long broken. Had he and Long Yin not come for Qinglong’s heart, they might never have known that this kingdom, under the banner of having once produced the renowned Lord Mu, conducted itself with such lawlessness behind closed doors.
And as the greatest shield protecting all of Jinlin’s actions, Mu Hanyang had likely known what transpired here, yet he remained silent, pretending ignorance.
And that alone explained his attitude toward Feng Qingyun all along. After all, in Mu Hanyang’s eyes, demons were nothing more than objects to be used. Perhaps, in his view, Feng Qingyun, favored above others, ought to have been grateful for that partiality.
“You haven’t said a word since leaving the wine house,” Long Yin said, not knowing Feng Qingyun’s thoughts and leaning close to his ear. “What,” he continued, “that male courtesan left you so reluctant to part, Master?”
Feng Qingyun snapped back to himself, though the sorrow in his heart remained. “No,” he answered. “I was just thinking… I did not kill Boren, yet Boren died because of me1.”
Upon hearing that, Long Yin scoffed inwardly. “Mu Hanyang speaks of saving the world, yet kills mortals without blinking,” he said. “And you’re a thousand-year-old blood rose now, recognized by the world as this Lord’s Dao companion. Can you at least have a little bit of a demon’s backbone?”
Feng Qingyun halted, turned, and stared at him without blinking. Long Yin thought he would object to the phrase “Dao companion of the Demon Emperor”, but instead Feng Qingyun complained: “In my previous life, I lived only six hundred years! In this life, barely three hundred so far! Together, that’s only nine hundred! Where did a thousand come from?!”
Long Yin: “……”
“I merely rounded it up a little. Is the Little Palace Master really so meticulous about such things?” Long Yin seized the opening, pulling him close with righteous grievance before continuing, “Even a mere thousand years troubles you so, Little Palace Master truly must resent this Lord for being ancient, right?”
“You know it yourself!” Feng Qingyun replied even more righteously. “An old cow eating tender grass should at least have the awareness of an old cow!” Suppressing the smile tugging at his lips, he shook off Long Yin’s wrist and strode ahead.
In truth, Feng Qingyun had only gone down the mountain once or twice before. Much of his previous imaginings of the mortal realm came from his own conjecture within dreams. Now that he finally stood in place, the novelty of his surroundings left him momentarily dazzled. But not long after Long Yin caught up and took his wrist again, both of them almost simultaneously sensed the strange feeling of being followed.
However, they detected no specific pursuer. Exchanging a silent glance, they casually stopped beside a stall.
[…People from the Imperial Advisor’s manor?] Feng Qingyun thought.
[Doesn’t seem like it.] Long Yin shared the same conclusion, continuing, [Nor that crippled immortal.]
Feng Qingyun frowned slightly.
[Could there truly be other immortals in this city?]
But just as they pondered silently, a voice suddenly cut in, asking: “Sirs, would you like your fortunes read?”
Feng Qingyun came back to himself, only to realize they were standing before a divination stall. The young man running it had almost no cultivation and looked quite young. A small table for divination sat before him, and beside it fluttered a banner washed nearly white.
“If the two of you truly wish to have your fortunes read, there’s something I must say beforehand,” the young man continued earnestly. “Though I possess spiritual roots, I have not yet entered a sect and only have basic cultivation. I’ve heard the Xiān Gōng Sect’s Heavenly Gate Ceremony is approaching, and I came seeking an opportunity. If you find my cultivation lacking, you may leave the city and head forward for better answers; the Xiān Gōng Sect isn’t far.”
His frankness piqued Feng Qingyun’s interest. “Whether divination is accurate depends on destiny, not level of cultivation,” he answered. “I only wonder, how accurate are you, little Daoist?”
“Never been wrong,” the young man said confidently. “If you don’t believe me, I can cast a reading for the two of you, free of charge.”
Seeing how assured he was, Feng Qingyun raised an eyebrow. “Oh? In that case, let’s try one.”
The young man immediately asked, “What would you like to have divined, sir?”
“Not for me,” Feng Qingyun said, glancing sideways at Long Yin before smiling. “It’s for him. No need for birth charts, just read his palm.”
A mortal divining the fate of the Demon Emperor… that was probably a first. The young Daoist had no idea whose palm he was about to read. With the fearless boldness of the inexperienced, he asked, “Then what does this gentleman wish to have read?”
“Let him speak for himself,” Feng Qingyun replied.
Long Yin raised an eyebrow and extended one hand toward the young man, saying, “Start with my fate with children.”
The little Daoist took his hand and immediately jumped at the heat of his pulse, clicking his tongue in amazement. “Your blood vitality is very repressed lately, sir!”
Feng Qingyun cast Long Yin a sideways, amused glance. Long Yin met his gaze calmly, utterly unbothered. The young man, completely oblivious to their wordless exchange, lowered his head and studied Long Yin’s left palm for quite some time. Then he frowned slightly and exclaimed in shock: “This… this is a sign of being cut off from descendants! You’re destined to have no biological children!”
His voice was far too loud, and passersby couldn’t help but turn to look.
Long Yin: “……”
The little Daoist continued as if nothing were amiss. “That said, your fate with children isn’t entirely empty. You should have one adopted child, either a son or a daughter, in your destiny.”
Well, that did not comfort Long Yin in the slightest. If anything, the surrounding gazes grew even more sympathetic. Feng Qingyun couldn’t help laughing. “He really does have difficulty with offspring,” he said. “Little Daoist friend, you’re frighteningly accurate. Please continue, we’ll settle the divination fee afterward.”
The young Daoist stiffened, looking at Long Yin with a subtly altered expression, as if he’d never expected such a tall, imposing, virile-looking man to be… impotent.
Long Yin, who heard his inner thoughts: “……”
Under Feng Qingyun’s gaze, Long Yin couldn’t exactly explain what nonsense the Daoist had just assumed, so he could only say, “…Read the fate with marriage next.”
“The marriage… let me see…” The young Daoist studied his palm again, then suddenly lit up. “Congratulations! Congratulations! Sir, in the future, you’ll marry a wife much younger than yourself! Truly enviable fortune!”
“…”
Well damn, Long Yin had been brooding about age even before they arrived! Hearing that, he fell instantly silent. Feng Qingyun tugged at his sleeve, laughing. “That’s accurate too,” he praised.
The empty-headed Daoist, clearly delighted to finally have divined a ‘good’ fate, was basking in his success until his expression suddenly turned grave. Long Yin was extremely sensitive to anything ominous regarding his marriage, so he immediately asked, “What is it?”
“This… this is exactly the ‘pear blossoms weighing down the begonia2’ hexagram my master once spoke of!” the young Daoist whispered. “By the time you marry this wife, you’ll probably already be over eighty!” With that, he winced, continuing, “Well, no wonder you can’t have children… at that age, whether you can even consummate the marriage is a question. You might even need the young lady to help you lie down.”
Long Yin: “……”
Feng Qingyun was laughing so hard he nearly doubled over.
With a stiff face, Long Yin asked, “Do you know why your readings are accurate, yet no one comes to you for divination?”
The young man looked up blankly, asking, “Why?”
“…Ignore him,” Feng Qingyun said, clutching his stomach with laughter and patting Long Yin once. “Little Daoist, please continue.”
The young man lowered his head again to study the palm. “Your marriage begins with water and fire intermingled, mutual conflict, a situation of irreconcilable opposition. But that’s followed by pure water. As the saying goes, ‘the highest good is like water.’ Falling within the marriage fate, it signifies harmony, like a fish returning to water.However, this period doesn’t last long. Soon after comes metal and wood in conflict, which is not a good omen.”
“This turbulent stretch lasts quite a while, but it’s followed by water nourishing wood, signifying a reversal of fortune. In other words, once these hardships pass, everything will improve.” At last, the little Daoist offered something genuinely auspicious. “To borrow a line from storybooks,” he continued, “two birds part for a time, but are destined to reunite. Sir, please set your heart at ease.”
At that, Feng Qingyun froze, and Long Yin also fell silent. Given the little Daoist’s previous manner of speech, there was no embellishment, and only what the hexagram showed. The Heavenly Dao had severed countless futures, judged countless destinations. And yet now, because of a mortal’s words, the two of them felt a quiet, secret joy bloom in their hearts.
Unfortunately, before that joy could ferment, the little Daoist suddenly let out a puzzled “Huh?”
“…But how does such a complex marriage fate align with the ‘pear blossoms weighing down the begonia’ hexagram?!”
Scratching his head, he fumbled around before pulling out a tattered divination manual from who-knew-where, flipping through it while muttering, “That’s not right… Could it be that he meets a seventeen-year-old beauty when he’s already seventy, but she marries someone else first, then remarries him at twenty-eight?!”
“…Is the begonia being weighed down actually an already married woman? But by then, he can’t even get it up… so where does the allure come from?!”
Right in front of the parties involved, the little Daoist lamented on behalf of some future young woman with tragically poor eyesight who would insist on remarrying to an old, impotent man.
Long Yin: “……”
Had this kid eaten some kind of immortality pill?! How could he be this accurate?!
By now, Feng Qingyun was barely holding it together. If not for Long Yin’s face being as dark as the bottom of a pot, he might have burst out laughing on the spot. Even trying to be considerate of Long Yin’s fragile heart, Feng Qingyun still had to suppress himself for quite a while before managing, “Thank you, little Daoist. That’s enough… you’ve already divined very accurately.”
“On the strength of your auspicious words, if there truly comes a day when the two birds reunite, I will personally bring him to thank you.” With that, Feng Qingyun handed him a token, continuing, “Take this. In a few days, when the Xiān Gōng Sect’s Heavenly Gate Ceremony begins, go and say you wish to see the Third Palace Master, Bai Ruolin. Once she sees this token, she’ll understand.”
The little Daoist took the token reflexively. When he finally heard what Feng Qingyun had said and looked up again, the two figures were already gone. He sprang to his feet, realizing he might have encountered someone extraordinary. So, with his heart pounding, he hurriedly bowed in the direction they had departed.
What he didn’t know was that elsewhere, the two unfathomably powerful experts were in the middle of a very different scene, one with a face as dark as thunder, dragging the other away by the arm.
Feng Qingyun was laughing so hard he looked like a flower in full bloom. Long Yin couldn’t take it anymore and bought a candied hawthorn skewer, shoving it straight into his mouth.
“Can you stop laughing, my ancestor?!”
The real candied hawthorn was sweeter than anything he tasted in an illusion. And Feng Qingyun was no longer that anxious little rose from before, forcing himself to swallow sour fruit he didn’t like just to keep something precious.
Now, pampered and fearless, he licked the sugar coating in small bites, smiling all the while.
But just as he was about to speak, that strange sensation of being watched returned. Feng Qingyun halted. With the hawthorn still in his mouth, he narrowed his eyes, a sudden guess forming in his mind.
The Kingdom of Jinlin lay directly beneath the Xiān Gōng Sect. If it wasn’t that immortal they’d encountered earlier, and not the so-called Imperial Advisor, then…
[Long Yin,] he said inwardly, [find a way to test whether Mu Hanyang is following us.]
Long Yin had clearly reached the same conclusion, but wasn’t worried in the slightest. Instead, his gaze lingered on Feng Qingyun’s lips as they closed around the candied hawthorn. Thinking of the month he still had to endure, he felt deeply aggrieved.
So after stewing for a while and confirming there were no living mortals nearby, Long Yin finally blurted out a very sincere accusation: “Little Palace Master, why were you playing favorites just now?”
“How was I playing favorites?” Feng Qingyun raised a brow, the hawthorn still between his lips. “Did the little Daoist get anything wrong?”
“How could he not be wrong?!” Long Yin immediately wrapped an arm around his waist, looking every bit the foolish tyrant. “This Lord is so handsome and mighty, how could he use ‘pear blossoms weighing down the begonia’ to describe me?!”
Feng Qingyun only laughed. But as he laughed, he still glanced around. Seeing no one nearby, he bit down on the glossy red hawthorn, now stripped of its sugar coating. Then, right in front of that unseen watcher, he took advantage of Long Yin’s distraction and tipped his head up, feeding that round, gleaming hawthorn straight into Long Yin’s mouth.
Long Yin froze.
The next moment, Feng Qingyun leaned into his arms and whispered into his ear, “The little Daoist wasn’t wrong, though… You look like you’ve been working day and night for ages, but now that I’ve finally borne a whole vine of fruit, not a single one carries your seed.”
“My good husband…” Feng Qingyun patted his cheek lightly, smiling, and not at all caring who exactly he was provoking. “Isn’t that exactly what ‘pear blossoms weighing down the begonia’ means? Pretty to look at, but useless in practice?”
- 我不杀伯仁，伯仁却因我而死 (Wǒ bù shā bó rén, bó rén què yīn wǒ ér sǐ). This is a proverb that means “although I resented Boren, I didn’t intend to kill him. But because of my resentment, he was killed by others.” It comes from the 25th chapter of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. ↩︎
- 树梨花压海棠, loosely translates to: “Bride of eighteen and groom of eighty, white hair and red makeup. Under the mandarin duck quilt, the pear blossom is crushing the begonia.” Poem possibly written by Su Shi, a great lyricist of the Northern Song Dynasty, who teased his friend Zhang Xian for marrying an 18-year-old concubine at the age of 80 (the pear flower implies Zhang Xian with his white hair, and the begonia refers to the red-faced and delicate concubine). However, the poem is really vulgar and lacks artistic value, so people are really reluctant to agree that such a great poet as Su Shi wrote it. There are other poems from the same period describing the event of Zhang Xian marrying a so much younger wife, so it’s really unknown who came up first with “pear blossoms weighing down the begonia”. Anyway, it’s meant to mock old men who lust after young girls, just as vulgar as “old cow wanting to eat tender grass” and “a flower stuck in cow dung,” which is used to refer to the poor girl stuck in such a situation. Interestingly, 一树梨花压海棠 is also the Chinese name for the movie Lolita, which describes the situation perfectly. ↩︎
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