Love from the Male Protagonist’s Harem - Chapter 35-2

Chapter 35-Seeing a Deer in the Deep Forest Part 2

Translated by Snowfall77

Something was approaching.  Without thinking, Xia Ge stole a quick look at the path the puppets had cleared.  Just as her fingers were about to touch Guilongyu, she saw a slender-limbed sika deer, covered in faint blue plum blossoms, coming towards her with a slow, graceful trot.

—-the way is lost, I don’t know how to return.

The sika deer was exceedingly beautiful, beautiful like a fantastical dream that was impossible to break away from.

Bewitched, Xia Ge gazed at the deer, all other thoughts lost.

“Oo, oo……”

The deer softly bleated, before tenderly rubbing Xia Ge’s cheek with the side of its own hairy face.  Only then did Xia Ge notice that its eyes were deep violet too.

A very beautiful violet.

Vivid, enchanting, the violet orbs seemed to contain all the stars in the skies in their depths.  Even if the sika deer couldn’t speak, Xia Ge felt that she understood it completely.

A demonic qi lingered in the air.

The system was anxious: [Host!!  Host, Quickly Run Away!!  It’s A Lost Deer!!  Don’t Look It In The Eyes——-]

Not even able to comprehend the system’s warning, Xia Ge’s mind was blank, all judgement gone.

——The sika deer had lost its way, it didn’t know how to return.

A lost deer.

……it turns out, it was a deer, not a lost way.

—–Come with me.

“……jade……”

The longer Xia Ge looked into the deer’s eyes, the more the violet in her own eyes slowly faded.  Pulling her hair back with a hand, Xia Ge instinctively tried to fight: “……Gui……”

“Oo, oo……”

A galaxy glittered in the sika deer’s deep violet eyes.  “Oo, oo……”

—–You don’t need that anymore.

—–You’re going to give it up.

—–Follow me and I’ll take you to a special place.

Stupified, Xia Ge woodenly stood up.  Slinging her sickle over her back, she trailed after the lost deer, step by step going even deeper into the back mountain.

Sorrowful tree branches hanging low quietly stole the youth’s green ribbon.

Freed, inky-black hair slid down slight shoulders, and under the dim moonlight, gave Xia Ge a tinge of girlishness.

—–The bones of the dead mourn, waiting for their ruler’s return.

= =

Something, someone, caused her to wake up again.

But Gu Peijiu was already accustomed to it.  Rubbing her temples, she got out of bed.

Since the peach blossoms had withered, now there were random sprigs of brush grass in her small white porcelain vase, round red hawthorns clustered around its base, adding an air of cuteness.  And, quite unusually, there was also a wine cup and jar of peach blossom wine on the table.

Walking over, Gu Peijiu poured herself a cup of wine.

Her hand shook, wine spilling out of the jar, and a sudden, unexplainable uneasiness came over her.

Gu Peijiu put the wine down and flicked aside the green curtain.  Outside, a night breeze was blowing, the scent of night-blooming jasmine mingled with something strange.

Despite its faintness, Gu Peijiu sensed demonic qi in the air.

From that direction……

The back mountain again!

Gu Peijiu dressed herself, tucked her ayara in a sleeve, and flew to the back mountain.

The demonic qi was billowing.

Gu Peijiu found the Jianfeng disciples supposedly on guard duty asleep, not one awake.

There was no doubt, something had changed!

Gaze ice-cold, Gu Peijiu ignored the slumbering Jianfeng disciples and went farther into the back mountain.

The back mountain was where the Lingxi Sect ancestors slept.  Ancestors from the era when puppetry was at its zenith—–

But nowadays on the back mountain, demon puppets and Yimei roamed, creating chaos.  Therefore, no one was to enter or leave!

So who was it that’d entered?

Gu Peijiu flashed to the spot with the highest concentration of devilish qi!

Large fir trees were toppled all around, one with its trunk cut right in half, with what’d clearly been a neat, efficient technique.   The ground in front of the halved fir tree looked it’d been torn up with weapons, and there was a demon puppet sliced in two laying in the grass.  A wretched sight, the two pieces of its sinister mask were on the ground too, also having been cleanly split.

……someone had obviously been here.

Who?

The demonic qi moving with the wind, Gu Peijiu froze for a couple of seconds before advancing in a certain direction.

Arriving at a clearing not that distant, Gu Peijiu caught sight of something hanging from a tree branch.  It slightly fluttered in the breeze and Gu Peijiu took a couple of steps closer.  Only to be surprised when she stepped on something hard.

Gu Peijiu took a step back, her eyes sweeping the ground under the chilly moonlight.  When she saw what she’d stepped on, her pupils slightly shrank.

It was a very familiar dragon-shaped jade with its right corner broken off, softly reflecting pale moonshine.  Her ayara rolled down and around the vividly fierce jade and lifted it to fall into Gu Peijiu’s palm

The jade was mildly warm to the touch.  Raising her head somewhat stiffly, Gu Peijiu again eyed the ribbon hanging from a tree branch not far off—–remembering a youth with his inky black hair tied back with a green ribbon, a broken dragon jade tied at his waist, a cup of wine in his hand, and a smile lighting his fine, delicate features.

Gu Peijiu grasped the jade pendant in her hand, her heart abruptly bereft.

Who had come here?  Yes…it had to be……

Xia Wuyin!?

Sika deer

The sika deer (Cervus nippon), also known as the spotted deer or the Japanese deer, is a species of deer native to much of East Asia and introduced to other parts of the world. Previously found from northern Vietnam in the south to the Russian Far East in the north,[1] it is now uncommon except in Japan, where the species is overabundant.[2]

Its name comes from shika (鹿), the Japanese word for “deer”. In Japan, the species is known as the nihonjika (ニホンジカ (日本鹿), “Japan deer”). In Chinese, it is known as 梅花鹿; méihuā​lù; ‘plum blossom deer’.