Chapter 142: CH 142

Lying down on the bed, Xiao Feng Wu had no inkling of sleep at all. His fingers tapped out a random rhythm, each tap sending a signal all the way to the bottom of his heart and occasionally making him anxious. He closed his eyes, thinking back to the prognosis of the Empress, and his eyebrows couldn’t help but bunch up for whatever reason. After a long while, he suddenly pushed himself up with a loud rustle. 

Frightened by Xiao Feng Wu’s sudden movement, Xiao Feng Chuan quietly admonished him, 

“What are you doing, surprising others in the middle of the night!”

The Empress could be giving birth tonight——

Xiao Feng Wu’s lips moved, but in the end, he swallowed those words, not making a sound. 

Sitting by the edge of the bed, his hands tightly clenched together, so tight that the pressure caused his knuckles to go white. 

Through the faint moonlight shining down from the window designed to bring some air into the prison, Xiao Feng Chuan could see Xiao Feng Wu’s tightly locked jaw and the veins on his forehead almost bursting out of him. Feeling as if some evil spirit had come over his youngest brother or something, he didn’t dare do anything else. Instead, he silently moved a bit further away, finding a corner to continue sleeping.

The moon was hanging high up in the sky but the Imperial Palace was still full of brightly lit lanterns. Numerous people walked in and out of Jing Yang Dian amongst a silent atmosphere that was fraught with tension. The delicately carved windows were tightly shut to keep out the cold night wind but still, every so often there was the stuttering, pain-filled cries of a woman screaming.

At first, there was still some strength to those cries, but the voice began to grow weaker and weaker until her screams almost couldn’t be heard.

Sitting right outside the hall, the Emperor was rhythmically rolling a bracelet made of prayer beads faster and faster around his hand. When a palace maid came running out from the inner palace hall with a cry, that bracelet suddenly split open, and all the beads fell onto the floor with a jarring pitter-patter, irritating to the ear.

The palace maid knelt on the ground as she cried out, 

“Your Majesty, the Empress… the Empress, she has fainted……”

When a woman gives birth, the scariest thing to avoid was fainting, as there was the danger of dying with the baby still inside the womb. Upon hearing her, the Emperor suddenly opened his eyes, the sharpness in them made others not dare to look straight at him. 

With a bang, he stood up from his chair and he said with a heavy tone, 

“If the Empress has even one small issue, the entire academy of physicians can be buried with her!”

Every servant in the hall immediately knelt down, and as it was as silent as death in the hall, these words from the Emperor were carried all the way inside without fail.

Numerous physicians from the Imperial Academy of Physicians were all here. Separated by a divider from the inner room, they discussed with haste as a bloody scent was slowly wafting over, enough to make others gag. Through a curtain, Xiao Lin Ru felt the Empress’s pulse, and his face was quickly becoming ashen.

A female physician quickly asked, 

“Senior Physician Xiao, what should be done?”

Xiao Lin Ru rose up with a complicated and terrible expression on his face, 

“Feed her another stabilizing pill.”

A maid quickly brought hot water and handkerchiefs in but when she passed by his side, she accidentally tripped. Xiao Lin Ru unconsciously went to stabilize her and a thick wad of paper appeared in his hand. In shock, he lifted his eyes but that maid did not look at him, directly heading inside the curtain instead.

Xiao Lin Ru hid the papers in his sleeves, quickly turning around to face the back and quickly taking a few glances when no one was paying attention. A shocked expression descended onto his face and there was evident hesitance, yet it was at this time that the female physician’s frantic voice came from behind the curtains, 

“Physician Xiao! We have already fed her the pill, but the Empress’s pulse is getting weaker and weaker——”

“Wah-la——”

Hearing this, Xiao Lin Ru couldn’t control his strength and a corner of the stack of papers was ripped. A facial muscle twitched, as if a trapped monster was pacing back and forth. Cold sweat was also beginning to fall, making it look as if he just emerged out of water. In the end he stomped on the ground with a ruthless conviction, as if making a decision that could change the world, 

“Prepare a knife and some strong alcohol. We will cut open the Empress’s stomach to take out the child. Cong Yue, you will hold the knife, and do exactly as I say!”

Cong Yue was the best female physician in the Imperial Academy of Physicians. The moment she understood what he was saying, her face turned white, but she did not dare to disobey. This was a method used amongst commoners when they had trouble giving birth, but with the Empress’s body being infinitely much more precious, who could dare to take a knife to it. Yet at this time and place, why not take the last chance that they have as anything would be better than having the entire academy of physicians all be buried alongside the Empress.

In front of Jing Yang Dian, the eunuchs could only hear the shattering of a teacup. They did not know what was going on, but the Emperor seemed to be enraged, as if he could swallow humans whole. Each one of them shrunk their necks, terrified and trembling from fear, yet for whatever reason, it was quiet once more. Only the servants preparing for the birth were coming and going, bringing basins and basins of bloody water out.

The night seemed extremely long, and the legs of the eunuchs guarding the door were all numb from standing. But just thinking that the Emperor was sitting inside, they didn’t dare to change guard and they could only keep enduring, enduring under the soundless and almost suffocating pressure knocking all the way into their hearts.

For however long, perhaps it was an hour, or two, just when humans felt the most tired in the late late night, a weak cry of a baby came out, waking up everyone into a state of complete alertness and all of them widened their eyes—-

The Empress is finally giving birth?!

The thought just appeared when a sudden and frantic yell broke out from all of the racket.

“Oh no! The Empress is bleeding out rapidly!”

A small ray of light could be seen shining through the thick layers of clouds from the skies above, yet it was enough to feel basked in it. The glass on top of Jing Ying Dian was shimmering with a colorful rainbow, rising along with a red blazing sun.

Xiao Feng Wu turned his head to the side, taking a quick look before retracting his gaze, as he heard the play slowly fade into the distance. Even so, he could still tell that it was << Wenzhao Pass >> 1.

“The shine from the clear moon to the window, is like an arrow that hits our hearts with worry.

Who could have known that Wenzhao Pass would have such a barricade, when we wish to head to Wu to turn our situation around.

Thankfully that Dong Gao Gong has ease of access, that he could hide me here in the back of his garden…”

Quickened horse steps stopped in front of a small courtyard where the crabapple tree inside had just reached full bloom, looking the liveliest it has ever been. Xiao Feng Wu flipped off the horse and was just about to push the door open when Zhong Bo coincidentally just came out. The two of them looked at each other and before Xiao Feng Wu even opened his mouth, Zhong Bo happily exclaimed, 

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“Physician Xiao, you have finally come back. I had really thought that you were dead.”

With huffing breaths, Xiao Feng Wu said quietly, 

“I was dead, but I came back alive…… Where’s Ming Yue?”

Zhong Bo said, 

“Did you not know? Xian-sheng has already packed up and left. I heard he was going to Tong Cheng.”

Xiao Feng Wu’s pupils dilated and his fingers tightly grabbed on the door frame at his reply, 

“How long ago has it been since he left?”

Zhong Bo thought about it, 

“He went north. Past the mountain to the harbour for a ship ride.”

Xiao Feng Wu came in a haste and left in a haste. The moment he heard, he immediately flipped back up onto his horse and disappeared without a trace in a gust of wind. 

In his youth he had followed his family’s merchant caravan, and he knew that there was a small shortcut road nearby. He quickly hastened his steed, and when he was at the bottom of the mountain, he could see a carriage in the distance. Quickly putting on even more speed, he blocked the carriage right in the middle of the road.

The coachman thought it was bandits and got frightened, immediately grabbing a stool from his side. He jumped off the carriage and said, 

“Gah! Where has this horse come from! If you dare to fool around then you can eat a piece of this stool from your grandfather!”

Xiao Feng Wu’s gaze however was focused on the curtain doorway instead. He got off his horse, wanting to step forward, but he was blocked by the coachman who had immediately flew forward the moment with his stool when he moved. The coachman was kicked aside by Xiao Feng Wu and his cold face, 

“Get out! Keep messing with my business and I’ll take off your tongue!”

Kicked and now rolling on the ground, the coachman lay where the momentum left him, motionless and pretending to be dead.

Xiao Feng Wu’s gaze returned to the back of that deep blue curtain and he moved his lips, but the only words that could come out in the end was, 

“Ming Yue……”

He tightly held on to the carriage, lightly asking, 

“Why must you leave?”

The person inside the carriage did not make a sound and a breeze passed through, lifting up the corner of the curtain before letting it fall back down. Still, silence.

Xiao Feng Wu couldn’t hear a reply and his straight back bent down, lowering his head as he slowly closed his eyes. He looked a bit disheveled, a bit pitiful, and as his voice transmitted out, it trapped the slight sound of the trees shuffling from the wind, making it hard to tell what his emotions were.

“I, Xiao Feng Wu, have been mischievous since youth, living so falsely and uselessly all these years, never having a moment to grow up. Others have scolded me, hated me, and this is what I deserve. On these roads of Yan Cheng, find any ten people to ask, and all ten would say I am a fucking bastard, but you said, why…….why……”

The hand on the carriage was clenched so tightly that his hand was white. Xiao Feng Wu’s throat felt as if it was caught with something, and after a while he was able to speak out the words. It was as if he was asking others yet it felt more as if he was asking himself, 

“Why would there be people…… who would be willing to give up their life, for this kind of fucking loser bastard?

“I was held in prison for six days, yet it felt as if six years had passed. I kept thinking about the past, all my numerous mistakes that were not only limited to the hundreds. The thing that I have regretted the most in my life was two years ago……

“Did you know, two years ago I had kicked someone out. I had put him on a pedestal, and pushed him higher and higher, yet when he fell, I had not cared nor asked. When he was starving and suffering under the harsh cold winter days, I was not by his side. When his fingers got slammed into and broken off, I was not by his side. When he was eating leftovers tossed onto the side of the road, I was not by his side….. When he suffered the most, I was not there……

“When he became famous, I appeared again. He was the best singer in all of Yan Cheng. The moment he stepped on stage, who knows how many people were willing to toss him gold and silver, yet he was still willing to follow me. Follow this penniless, status-less bastard, me.

TL Tidbits:

It’s been a while since I’ve drafted a chapter haha : ) Plum’s currently on their vacation, so the task has fallen back onto my hands for this week, and I hope I didn’t miss anything! Please let me know if something is not working, as I’m a bit dusty at this (▔﹏▔)/

Since I am here and since it’s been a while, I wanted to give a warm thank you to all the Galactic Judges out there who is still on the journey with us (even if you’ve just started!). It’s really encouraging to see that there are people who (still) enjoy this translation (and I’m really glad that you all enjoy the novel as I have especially since I feel like I’m discovering new easter eggs like the footnote below), and I really do thank you all for your continual support, from the commenters, likers and silent readers ʚ♡⃛ɞ(ू•ᴗ•ू❁)

There is currently only one chapter left to this volume, and then we will bid farewell to our couple here! Next volume is an interesting one, as it is actually the most memorable out of all the volumes for me (though I’ll have to compare my feelings for volume 4 now that I’ve gone reading it more in depth…) but we’ll see what you all think (a little bit of a spoiler that you may or may not already know, it’s apocalyptic! …(；′⌒`) which does give me some apprehension over the new terms that I will probably be struggling over lol).

In any case, let me know what you think of Xiao Feng Wu and Qin Ming Yue as we wrap up this volume! I will say Plum dislikes Xiao Feng Wu the most out of all the volumes because they don’t really feel like he’s really changed nor made up for the fact of what he did to Qin Ming Yue. I do agree with that it feels like more should have been done for Qin Ming Yue, but I do feel that Xiao Feng Wu has changed, especially given his attitude from the very beginning to the point where he showed that he can take responsibility for himself when he opened up to Qin Ming Yue in the prison ( ｡_｡)

But anyway, I hope you all Galactic Judges are safe and see you next next Saturday for the finale of volume 6! ヾ(｡･ω･｡)

(Side note: …… has anyone seen the BL drama collections (HIStory 1/2/3/4)? Plum’s very tired of my commentary haha, but I’d be interested if anyone has any thoughts on it… especially that ending for HIStory3: Make Our Days Count | ू•ૅω•́))

Notes:

*1 Wenzhao Pass is an opera piece based on the “Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms” by Feng Menglong which is a historical novel about the late Ming Dynasty. This particular part is about King Ping of Chu and his wrongful pursuit of the Wu family. As the remaining Wu family members were trying to run away, they were in danger of getting caught when they had to pass through Wenzhao Pass to get to where they wanted to go but of course, it’s tightly guarded. They then happen to be saved by Dong Gao Gong, a disciple of Bian Que who is a well known Chinese physician, and he devises a way for them to get out. 

The Wu family members were able to escape because of him and when the Wu family members come back into the state for revenge, they find that the place where Dong Gao Gong resides was all empty and not lived in for a long time, so it ends with the commentary that Dong Gao Gong was a great man for giving his grace but not expecting anything in return (and the Wu family members go on to give him a grand bow and say they will repay him much more than he gave if he ever returns to Wenzhao Pass). (TL sidenote: it feels quite symbolic if you compare it to Xiao Feng Wu’s situation with Qin Ming Yue which was perhaps the intention of the author : ) )

Note that the “Wu” mentioned in the opera piece is not the Wu family (as “伍”)  but the state of Wu (as “吳國”), and also note that I did a very very rough literal translation of the opera piece since there’s not really a english version I could find, so please bare with my terrible literary skills again lol. If you are interested, here’s a version in chinese opera style (headphone/volume warning!) and the verse to be sung is from the beginning to around 3:40ish – Wenzhao Pass (Youtube)

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