Estranged - Chapter 121

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A-Rong did not know about sayings like “returning to purity by washing away powder” or “bright colors fall behind reflections”—she just thought that the person in front of her eyes was particularly beautiful and put to shame any other fox spirit she had ever met.

Both idioms essentially praise natural beauty [1]

Fox spirits always cared a lot about appearances. When choosing a human skin to take over, they would never go for someone who looked like a misshapen watermelon or cracked date palms. At the same time, fox spirits were naturally adept at seduction, so the skins they had occupied would start to glow with more beauty and energy.

But she had never met anyone who looked like this person.

She mumbled: “Have you taken the skin of some nobleman, a crown prince perhaps?”

Why else would he be so unusual?

“I’ve always looked like this,” he answered.

A-Rong tilted her head: “Then why have I never seen you?”

She was not on guard against him—after all, this person had saved her life and had an aura of her kind.

“I’m a rogue cultivator from a mountain in Shangzhou. I’ve been withstanding heavenly calamities to obtain this form for hundreds of years, and descended the mountain to travel. I was only passing here and could not overlook one of my kind being in danger, so I stopped to lend a helping hand,” he was talking slowly, but his manner of speaking was remarkable, as if he was soon to become immortal, unlike typical fox spirits. A-Rong believed anything he said without doubting them for a second.

It was not that she had never heard tales of someone cultivating for hundreds of years and even undergoing a heavenly tribulation to absorb the essence of the skies and the earth and obtaining a human form, but she had not expected that such fox cultivators actually existed. Compared to fox spirits like her who were just wandering around and stealing human skins, this person was much more impressive—he deserved to be called the ancestor of fox spirits!

A-Rong’s face was glowing with admiration as she saluted him respectfully: “A-Rong introduces herself to Senior.”

Jiufang Changming’s attitude was too profound to be understood. He smiled faintly and accepted her greetings without saying much, which only made A-Rong trust him even more.

“Dare I ask how to address Senior?”

Changming fell silent for a moment, “Zhou Keyi.”

A-Rong looked perplexed and asked, “Why the surname ‘Zhou’? Do some fox spirits have surnames?”

Changming’s expression did not change as he said: “When I descended my mountain, I met a family with this surname. They thought I was a traveler who had gotten lost in the mountains and received me cordially, so I decided to take their last name.”

A-Rong nodded, as if she had learned something from a lesson, and asked with curiosity: “Then what about Keyi?”

He answered casually: “Heavens created every creature in the world, and everyone has their place. Whatever humans can do, fox spirits can do as well. If one is intelligent, they can grasp anything.”

Can do: “Keyi” from Zhou Keyi

How bold!

A-Rong gasped with admiration once again. She trembled, not knowing where to put her hands and legs. As luck would have it, this body was prone to illness. Moreover, she had been wounded and had been running from her pursuers a lot. The pain caused her to tilt to the side, and she was about to fall onto the broken tiles when an arm caught her.

“Why are there so many of you in Hongluo?”

A thread of qi entered her body, and A-Rong felt the pain subside from her arms and legs by a lot.

Strangely, A-Rong felt that this qi did not quite resemble what her kin had, even though this person’s aura was one of a fox spirit. But A-Rong quickly attributed it to the fact that the senior’s qi was of a fox cultivator, which had been formed by the spirit of the heavens and the earth. So, it was naturally a bit different from what she had as a mere fox spirit. She accepted this explanation and relaxed again.

“Sister Hua-Shan said that here’s someone important who can provide us pills with internal alchemy and human cultivation and qi essence if we listen to their orders.”

“What orders? To kill people in the town?”

“Well…” A-Rong kept her voice down, “I don’t want to kill humans, but I can’t go against sister Hua-Shan’s order. She’s so good to us.”

“And who’s that important person?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen them. He’s always wearing black robes that hide his face and never says anything in our presence. But sister Hua-Shan knows him well. We just call him a young master.”

Black robes that hide the person’s face.

Changming recalled Sir An who had invaded the medicine shop to fight with them. He was associated with yamen, and Constable Xing held him in high esteem. Was he the one colluding with the fox spirits?

“Have you received the pills with alchemy?”

“Yes. I’m the youngest and have little experience, so I received the smallest one. They promised that after we succeed, they’ll give me a skin that is of high quality. Then, I’ll be able to mix among common people and live with them openly like a real human.”

Although fox spirits possessed certain skills and tricks that were not available for common people, they actually envied humans who could live peacefully and freely. Humans enjoyed simple lives, and experienced all kinds of emotions. While they sometimes complained about how mediocre and mundane their lives were, this was something fox spirits yearned for. Many fox spirits never managed to transform into a human shape and could only steal skins or possess people to walk amongst them.

A-Rong was perhaps the most naive fox spirit of all. She even spat out a red pill and opened her palm to show it to Changming.

The red pill was as small as a grain of rice and it was not made by the alchemy of a fox cultivator. Changming moved closer to inspect it and felt an all too familiar spiritual power.

This pill… was a refined spiritual soul with essence. Moreover, it must have been refined after the cultivator’s death and had been split afterwards into many parts. This girl had received the smallest one.

A-Rong saw that he had fallen silent and could not help inquiring: “Senior, is there something wrong with this pill?”

“No,” Changming withdrew his gaze as if nothing had happened. “Why did you choose this body?”

A-Rong swallowed the pill again.

“I don’t want to kill people. This girl comes from a poverty-stricken family, and her parents wanted to sell her for food, but she died from hunger. Since it hadn’t been long since she died, I could use her body. The others mocked me for not finding something better and using scraps instead, but I, I…”

She was originally hesitating, but, after meeting Changming’s eyes, she spoke more decisively.

“I want to be like Senior and become a human through my own cultivation! I don’t want to use someone else’s skin for my whole life!”

Changming answered after a moment of silence: “It is undoubtedly the correct path, but you’ll have to go through much more suffering than you kin—perhaps a thousand fold more.”

A-Rong nodded: “I can do it.”

When she said this, she seemed to be in a hurry to prove it to herself, but her voice could cut a nail and crack steel. She seemed more resolute than ever before.

Cut a nail and crack steel: resolute

Changming recalled that there was someone else who had said to him just as decisively that he could—

Even through mountains of knives and seas of flames, I’m willing to follow Shizun till death with no regret.

This memory was very vague.

A familiar person slowly appeared in his memories. His name was on the tip of Changming’s tongue, yet he still did not manage to recall it.

That person looked at Changming once, turned around and headed to the Nine Layers of the Abyss. He left to fulfill his destiny. For many years to come, he was caught in the mess there, and because of that, he was even infected with demonic qi.

But he never spoke of regret.

The cut on the back of his hand caused him burning pain once again, and this time, it seemed as if the feeling was spreading up his arm. Soon, even his chest hurt all over.

But Changming could not tell whether the pain was triggered by the fox spirit or by the memories of that person. 

Was that Yun Weisi?

“Senior? Senior?”

A-Rong witnessed senior Zhou freeze on the spot, as if he had been bewitched. But he quickly regained his composure after being called by her.

He asked A-Rong: “When will you have a chance to meet that young master?”

A-Rong shook her head: “I don’t know either. Normally, sister Hua-Shan just calls him if she needs something. Truth to be told, I’m a bit afraid of sister Hua-Shan. Although she’s formidable, I don’t really know why I’m always frightened to speak in her presence at all…”

She stopped talking abruptly and headed to the exit of the room, as if listening attentively.

Changming turned his head to look in the same direction, but heard nothing.

“Sister Hua-Shan has given us a command!”

Tn:

[1] Returning to purity by washing away powder: as I understand it, it’s about how people look beautiful and natural even without makeup

Bright colors fall behind reflections: the literal translation is “Thickest ink is inferior to shallow shadows”. The original poem for these two characters, “shallow shadows”, is here link. The line we need is “Delicate, tilting branches [of a plum blossom tree] reflected on clear and shallow water”. Given the context, I think that the idiom says “No matter how brightly one colors a painting to emphasize the beauty of the tree, a simple but genuine reflection on the water would always be more impressive”, and the moral is the same: natural beauty needs no adornment.