Love from the Male Protagonist’s Harem - Chapter 48-1
Chapter 48-The Kindness of One Candy Part 1
Translated by Snowfall77
The wind blew lightly, rustling through tree leaves on the back mountain.
Guardian puppets, left masterless and unmoored, moved stiffly, decayed clothing floating in the slight breeze, while a pack of demons danced about in a confused furor.
Overgrown weeds choked the opening of the untended tomb, its descending bluestone steps covered in damp moss, and the engraving on the stele at the entrance, long since eroded by the elements, was impossible to decipher.
Su Chan stood before the stele, her blood-red garments a little sodden from humidity, and the gold on her brow faintly glowing. Gazing fixedly at the desolate stele, Su Chan finally bent down to it. Her long pale fingers slowly cleaned away the moss and the muck, making the ruined inscription more visible.
“You undoubtedly had 3000 disciples.”
Su Chan’s voice was low, barely audible above the gentle wind: “So how is it that, in the end, there’s not even one left to sweep your tomb?”
The stele remained unreadable, its words already lost a long time ago.
Quietly regarding it for a long time, eventually Su Chan sighed and leaned against a tree. Surrounded by verdant forest and coiling mist, Su Chan took her flute from her sleeve.
The translucent bone flute was like white jade, red knot fluttering at one end. Lowering her eyelids, Su Chan put the flute to her lips and played it softly.
The beauty in red, juxtaposed against the lush greenery, gave the appearance of bright, almost gaudy, wantonness, yet the low notes of her flute ached with indescribable sorrow.
And despite its faintness, the flute music was also undeniably demonic. Slowly filling the air, the mountain currents carried it to float further and further away.
Until the aimless guardian puppets began to stiffly follow its will. Trimming tree branches, tearing up weeds, cleaning the bluestone steps, they gradually tidied up the tomb they ought to have been guarding, urged on by the devilishly mournful flute.
Then the song ceased.
Dropping the flute from her mouth, Su Chan eyed the tidied tomb, but it didn’t bring her any consolation.
She stood motionless for a long while, as if deeply pondering something.
“I saw one of your disciples today……she reminded me of you.”
“The lost deer brought her here, and at first I thought maybe you’d come back.”
“But Biaguai didn’t react to her.” Su Chan glanced down at the bone flute in her hands, her pupils a black void, “……also……”
Putting the flute away, Su Chan took out the sandalwood box and opened it, revealing the sheepskin map inside.
Or more accurately, half of a map to demonic Lingshan.
A couple of seconds later, Su Chan chuckled lowly, snapped the sandalwood box shut, and once again caressed the neglected stele with her long, slender fingers. Despite the fact that the inscription had eroded into illegibility ages past, Su Chan recited its lost words, as if they’d been engraved upon her heart.
“—–Zhen Hun is incomparable, and not even the deities know to where it will return.”
Using Zhen Hun, the Yimei which could suppress countless of evil spirits, to redeem the mistakes you’d made. Is that how you left so easily?
Where you will return……
“I might not know where you went,” Su Chan’s long eyelashes delicately fluttered, “But I know how to get you back.”
Her voice fell, gently whispering: “If I seize Zhen Hun……if I release those innumerable evil spirits……you’ll have to come back, right?”
“You were always kindhearted.” Her head drooped, “How could you bear to see me make people suffer, to leave them with no way out?”
“I’m that awful.”
“So you should return quicker……to kill me.”
——I miss you.
——It doesn’t matter how.
——Just come back.
= =
The refreshingly minty taste of the candy melted on Xia Ge’s tongue, a sense of perfect contentment stealing over her, her dizziness banished.
Looking at Xia Ge, Mao Qing tapped Huo Bai with her elbow: “You got any more?”
Huo Bai: “No, I don’t!”
Mao Qing: “Liar, I just saw that you’ve got several pieces! Don’t be so stingy!”
Huo Bai: “……”
Eventually a sullen Huo Bai also gave Mao Qing a peppermint candy.
Happily chewing on the candy, Mao Qing’s attitude abruptly switched: “Huo Bai, you really are a good person.”
Xia Ge laughed out of one side of her mouth with a ‘pfff.’
Look who’d just been issued a ‘good man’ card……
“Next time is on me,” Xia Ge smiled widely at Huo Bai, “Thanks.”
Huo Bai gave one last mighty effort: “No need, they’re not mine.”
Mao Qing blinked and then an understanding look crossed her face: “Oh, we get that they’re not yours, cause after all a manly man never eats sweets, heehee.”
Pale face flushing red, Huo Bai opened his mouth to retort, but the solemn voice of the Danfeng disciple on the platform suddenly announced to the field: “Light your furnaces!”
The examination was about to begin.
Refreshed by the peppermint candy, Xia Ge felt she could carry on despite her body’s condition. She just had to hold on a little longer. Calming herself, Xia Ge lit her furnace and went through her materials one more time.
Swallowing his words, Huo Bai also lit his furnace. Not knowing if he was more upset at being robbed of his candy or losing face over said candy, Huo Bai glanced over at the loose-haired Xia Wuyin.
The boy’s black clothes were in rags and the soft black hair falling over his shoulders hid his face for a moment, no red Danfeng ribbon to be seen. So disheveled. Then Huo Bai’s brow furrowed and he wondered if he was imagining things. Did Xia Wuyin smell faintly of blood?
But all Xia Wuyin was doing was a boring double-check on his materials. Just as Huo Bai was about to withdraw his gaze and focus on his own liandan, Xia Wuyin seemed to find something wrong. Scratching his head, Xia Wuyin reweighed some silver carbon, while the flames of his furnace masked his ashen face with a false rosiness. He turned sideways, giving Huo Bai a glimpse of blood-red bandages around the abdomen underneath the black tatters.
Beyond a doubt—those were blood stains.
白骨 báigǔ
bones of the dead bleached bones
哀āi
sorrow / grief / pity / to grieve for / to pity / to lament / to condole
灵山[línɡ shān]
immortals’ abode
(a literal translation of the text could be ‘evil spirit mountain’ but I’ll stick with Lingshan)
