12 Ye Cheng Fu

 FlamingoBees 

Translating Chinese Historical Dramas for your enjoyment... and mine! :)

Home    :    Novels

Ye Cheng Fu

 Chapter 12: 

 

As I stepped out of the inn, I saw that the streets were already filled with people, all dressed in the same ragged clothes of the beggar clan and wearing plain white masks. They chanted softly, moving forward in unison. In the center of the town stood a tall tower with a large clock. Someone at the top of the tower was slowly and rhythmically striking the ancient bell. The combined sounds of the bell and the voices created an illusion of stepping into a sacred place, as if leaving behind the mundane world and finding peace of mind.

Shen Ye pulled me along, and we moved slowly with the crowd. He was chanting along with them, though I couldn’t understand what he was saying, so I looked up at him.

For the first time, I realized how much taller he was than me, a full head and a half taller. Standing next to him, I felt like a child looking up. He seemed to notice my gaze and turned his head, his eyes crinkling beneath the mask.

We followed the crowd as they circled the town and then flowed toward the altar. The beggar clan’s altar was spacious; there was ample room between each person, so it didn’t feel crowded. Everyone found a suitable spot, standing around the altar and gazing up at it as if it were floating in the air.

After a while, when the crowd seemed to be complete, I heard the sound of drums. Then a man in white robes and a black mask appeared on stage and began to sing in a strange tone. Holding a particularly bright flower, he danced to the beat of the drums.

His dance was painful and disordered, and combined with the mournful music and peculiar tone, it left a heavy feeling in the heart.

Shen Ye stood beside me, his hand resting gently on my shoulder as he spoke softly, "The ancestor of the beggar clan came from afar in search of a beloved woman. After falling in love with her, she left, and the ancestor of the beggar clan followed her trail, traveling everywhere and eventually arriving at this remote place. That’s why the clan is named ‘Beggar Clan.’"

“Did he find her?” I asked.

© translations belonging to  flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com. If you read this somewhere else instead of flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com then the translations has been posted WITHOUT permission of translator.

“Of course,” Shen Ye replied with a smile, “Upon arriving here, the man saw an extraordinarily beautiful flower from atop a high mountain. He prostrated himself before the flower in anguish, asking the flower deity about the whereabouts of his lover. His tears fell onto the flower, and the deity, moved by his sorrow, appeared before him and pointed him in a direction. The man followed the direction and soon found his lover. They settled here, had children, and declared the flower as the sacred flower of the beggar clan. This sacred flower blooms only once a year, and after being picked, it remains unfaded.”

“It remains unfaded?” I was surprised, “How is that possible? Can it really stay alive after being picked?”

“Why?” Shen Ye's tone turned teasing, “Do you want one?”

“Not really...” I felt a bit embarrassed, thinking my curiosity seemed childish, “I’m just curious…”

“If you want to see if it really doesn’t fade, why not come over and find out? But,” he added with a mischievous glint in his eyes, “Are you sure you want it?”

“Hmm…”

“Alright, since you want it so much, I’ll reluctantly get it for you.”

As the priest’s dance neared its end and people began to disperse, Shen Ye released me and gave me a gentle push into the crowd, turning away and saying, “See you tonight.”

“Hey…” His sudden departure left me feeling a bit anxious. He turned back and shouted through the crowd, “Shu Cheng, if I find you later, you have to marry me.”

“What?” I was caught off guard, unable to process his words. Traditionally, it's the women who propose, not the other way around.

However, he stubbornly shouted against the crowd, “Marry me!”

His shout startled me, but he turned and walked away. I had no idea what he was up to, so I could only move forward with the flow of people. After a moment, I spotted a young girl and asked, “Excuse me, where is the location for the evening event?”

Hearing my question, the girl immediately became excited, "You’re from out of town, right? You’re coming to our evening event too? You have great taste!" She grabbed my hand and said, “Come on, I’ll take you there.”

With the enthusiastic girl's help, I easily reached the event location. When we arrived, I discovered that the venue was a huge racetrack. Many people were seated in the stands, while others entered the arena to select horses. Both men and women were entering the arena, each holding a colored stick. Amid the crowd, I spotted Shen Ye right away. Although everyone was wearing similar robes and plain white masks, I recognized him by his posture alone.

“What is this for?” I couldn’t help but ask the enthusiastic girl. She replied with excitement, “It’s for grabbing the sacred flower! Whoever gets the sacred flower and confesses their feelings using it can marry their beloved!”

“So… why can men participate too?!” I was quite surprised. The girl looked at me with a curious expression and said, “Why can’t men propose to women? It’s about who is stronger. Isn’t that how it should be?”

“So…” I recalled Shen Ye’s “marry me” and suddenly understood his meaning, “Regardless of gender, whoever gets the sacred flower can propose to their loved one, and the other person cannot refuse, is that it?”

© translations belonging to  flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com. If you read this somewhere else instead of flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com then the translations has been posted WITHOUT permission of translator.

“Yes, yes.” The girl nodded rapidly. My heart began to race. My pride as a woman told me that being proposed to by a man would be considered a great embarrassment for a woman from the Great Chu. In local terms, this is known as "eating soft rice."

I quickly removed my cloak and found another girl in a cloak to swap clothes with. Feeling more at ease, I returned to the stands. By then, everyone had selected their horses, and the sacred flower was placed on a high platform in the center of the arena. The rules were simple: whoever could ride their horse to the central platform and retrieve the flower would be the winner.

Once the referee announced the rules, the drumbeat started. Everyone entered the arena in sequence, taking their positions on the starting line. At the sound of the signal, the competitors raced forward on their horses.

This wasn’t just a straightforward race. The competitors began to clash almost immediately, and it wasn’t long before people started falling from their horses.

The arena was filled with excitement, and Shen Ye was leading the charge. A few people reached him and tried to block him, but he grabbed the saddle and leaped off his horse, using the saddle as a pivot to kick his opponents down, one by one.

Most of the participants were ordinary people without much skill, and I watched anxiously, worried that Shen Ye might accidentally injure someone seriously.

Soon, it became clear that the experts came from among the common people. More competitors caught up with Shen Ye and began to challenge him in a few rounds of intense fighting. By the time they reached the platform, only four remained.

The four of them dismounted and began to climb the platform. The other three had already gauged Shen Ye’s strength and decided to team up against him. They took turns trying to hinder him, and Shen Ye, aiming to avoid drawing too much attention, restrained his full strength and engaged in a tough battle with them. The tension in the arena grew as the crowd began shouting different names. The only name I recognized was Shen Ye’s. I wanted to cheer, but felt it might be too inappropriate.

The girl next to me was very enthusiastic, pulling at me and saying, “That young man in white is so handsome. I don’t know his name!”

I instinctively whispered his name into her ear, “Shen Ye.”

The girl turned to me with a knowing look in her eyes and said, “I see, he must be competing for the sacred flower for you.”

Without waiting for me to respond, the girl shouted Shen Ye’s name loudly into the crowd.

It seemed the people from the beggar clan were already familiar with the other three competitors. With Shen Ye’s name suddenly circulating, everyone quickly recognized that the unknown young man in white was him.

He was indeed very handsome. Even with the mask on, fighting three opponents at once, he maintained an air of noble elegance, as if performing a highly difficult dance on the platform. His every movement exuded a breathtaking beauty.

The three opponents coordinated well. Seeing Shen Ye about to reach the sacred flower, one of them leaped from the platform and grabbed Shen Ye’s leg, pulling him down.

Shen Ye managed to grab onto a wooden stake on the platform, leaving the other person hanging in mid-air, clutching him. If Shen Ye kicked him off, the person would fall from the platform. The crowd fell silent, holding their breath. I too watched the tense situation, my heart racing.

The person was betting on Shen Ye’s sense of honor, but from what I knew, Shen Ye had little of that.

The other two competitors continued to climb up while entangled in combat. Seeing Shen Ye about to lose his advantage, he smiled and suddenly used his foot to lift the hanging person higher. Amid the crowd’s gasps, he yanked the person up and threw him to the top of the platform. Then, with a swift, ghostly-like motion, Shen Ye reached the platform, grabbed the flower with one hand, and with the other hand caught the person falling from above, pulling him up by his collar. As Shen Ye secured the sacred flower in his hand, the falling person landed, and Shen Ye dragged him up to the platform.

The crowd was initially stunned, but soon they erupted in cheers as the drumbeat and a joyful accompaniment filled the air.

After setting the person down, Shen Ye used the support of the platform to lightly leap back onto his horse. Holding the bright red flower, he rode towards me.

I instinctively shrank back into the crowd, my heart racing. I regretted standing in the front row and even more so for swapping clothes with the girl.

I watched as he rode his fine horse, his white robe and dark hair fluttering in the wind, exuding a youthful charm reminiscent of the idealized figure I had longed for in my youth.

As he drew closer, my heart pounded faster. When I saw him heading towards the girl I had swapped clothes with, a wave of melancholy and regret washed over me. I was about to turn away when Shen Ye suddenly rode up beside me, wrapped his arm around my waist, and lifted me off the stands!

I gasped in surprise as the crowd’s cheers grew louder. With one hand on the reins and the other holding me, Shen Ye sped towards an exit from the racetrack.

His hair brushed against my face, and with the jostling of the horse, I clung tightly to him. Outside the racetrack was a dense forest, and he guided the horse into it. The sounds of the crowd grew fainter behind us, and Shen Ye gradually slowed the horse to a stop by a pool of water.

As we arrived, the beggar clan’s people seemed to start singing. The soothing melodies of their songs drifted from afar. Around us, mist swirled around the spring, and moonlight filtered through the gaps in the forest, casting dappled shadows. For a moment, I felt as if time and space had blurred.

He held me quietly, without speaking. I instinctively reached out and slowly began to remove his pure white mask.

© translations belonging to  flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com. If you read this somewhere else instead of flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com then the translations has been posted WITHOUT permission of translator.

As his exquisite face gradually came into view, I felt a sense of sacredness, as if unveiling a bride. My heart raced uncontrollably. In that moment, I thought of nothing—neither the Great Chu, nor the empress, nor the Shu family, nor even Rongqing. All I could see was Shen Ye’s face slowly emerging: his star-like eyes, his smiling lips, and the white jade moon on his forehead. Under the moonlight, he appeared almost divine, untouchable.

I stared at him in a daze as he adjusted me so that I was properly seated on the horse. He too reached out, his hands slightly trembling with nervousness, and gently removed my mask. Then he moved to the bow on my cloak, untied it, and let the cloak fall away, revealing my pink gown and the bare shoulders and arms beneath it.

He gazed at me with an expression of solemnity, as if performing a wedding ceremony. Carefully, he broke the stem of the bright red flower and tenderly placed it into my hair. His movements were meticulous, as if he feared disturbing my hair, and he approached the task with great reverence.

After placing the flower in my hair, he dismounted and extended his hand to me, saying gently, “Get down.”

At his soft words, I couldn't help but scowl. “I can ride a horse.”

He chuckled, “Today I’m marrying you, so I want to carry you down.”

“Get off!” I felt deeply insulted, my pride wounded. “A woman from the Shu family would never—”

Before I could finish the words "eat soft rice," he had already lifted me off the horse and pulled me into his arms, covering my mouth with his hand.

His lips were slightly cool, and I felt a gentle smile against them.

I heard the sound of flowing water, the distant singing, and smelled the fragrance of flowers in the night. My heart softened.

He held me tenderly and said softly, “Shu Cheng, marry me.”

My heart raced, and the word "yes" almost slipped out. But in that instant, Su Rongqing’s image flashed through my mind.

Under the moonlight, his silhouette walking away in the alley.

In the bamboo grove, his emaciated shadow behind the screen.

I suddenly came to my senses, shoved Shen Ye away, and took a deep breath, rejecting him on the spot, “No.”

“Shen Ye,” I stood up straight and said, “I already have someone I like. Don’t use your charm to force me into this! I didn’t like you before, I don’t like you now, and I won’t like you in the future!”

Shen Ye remained silent, looking at me quietly. For a moment, I couldn’t discern his emotions. I suddenly felt he might be a bit sad, but then I thought, how could someone like Shen Ye be affected by emotions?

As he said, coming from a place like the Phoenix Tower, such a person should have seen through the fickleness of human nature, understood the world's hardships, and been indifferent to life and death. How could he care about romantic feelings?

His prolonged silence made me uneasy. After a long pause, he finally smiled, “So, you don’t like Shen Ye. What is it about me that you don’t like?”

“Nothing…” I was at a loss for words.

“Is it because I’m not good-looking?”

© translations belonging to  flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com. If you read this somewhere else instead of flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com then the translations has been posted WITHOUT permission of translator.

“Absolutely not!” I was confident about this. I believed that the ambiguous feelings between us were largely due to his appearance. 

He laughed, “So it must be because of my personality… Do you think I’m too cold?”

“Not really… You’re quite lively…” I recalled his various facets and thought he was like a thousand-faced Guanyin[1].

He continued to guess, “Is it because I’m too lowly?”

“A bit…” I admitted.

“Then what about Su Rongqing?” He suddenly brought up Rongqing, “What do you like about him?”

“What do I like about him?”

I couldn’t answer immediately. I thought of Su Rongqing, who always seemed so noble and aloof, like the moon in the sky. Even in his times of downfall, he maintained the demeanor of a noble gentleman.

He and Shen Ye were indeed very different. The biggest difference was perhaps the unworldly nobility.

“Actually… I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “But if I have to compare him to you, I’d say… I like his ethereal, otherworldly quality. Even though I’ve only met him twice,” I recalled our encounters, “each time he gave me a sense of being unattainable, as if he were from another realm. And Shen Ye, you’ve been in this mortal world for too long. After all,” I searched for a gentler term, “you’ve been touched by the mundane.”

“I understand,” Shen Ye nodded slowly. “But Shen Ye will always just be Shen Ye. I will never be the Su Rongqing in your heart.”

“So…” I felt a bit awkward. What I thought was my honest feeling seemed to bring some sadness when spoken aloud. “Shen Ye, you should find a good girl. She might not have my power, but at least she should like you.”

Shen Ye remained silent for a moment before he let out a bitter laugh: “When you go back, are you planning to marry Su Rongqing?”

“Yes…” I said with difficulty. “I think what you said is right. When you like someone, you shouldn’t give up just because they’re not easily obtainable; otherwise, it’s not true liking. As a woman, since I like Su Rongqing, I should pursue him with all my effort.”

© translations belonging to  flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com. If you read this somewhere else instead of flamingobeestranslations.blogspot.com then the translations has been posted WITHOUT permission of translator.

•••

[1] Thousand-Faced Guanyin: the bodhisattva of compassion in Mahayana Buddhism, who is believed to have countless manifestations to help beings in various forms. The "thousand-faced" aspect signifies the bodhisattva's ability to perceive and address the diverse needs and circumstances of all sentient beings, each face representing a different aspect of compassion and understanding.

Prev  :  TOC :  Next

https://ko-fi.com/flamingobeestranslations

https://twitter.com/FlamingoBee2009

Thank You For Reading <3