Song Shijiu suddenly became interested. “What type?” “Probably around two years before I moved to the mountains, there was a young lady who asked me to act as a matchmaker.” The sound of rainfall had decreased a bit, and the skies had also cleared several degrees; the embroidery frame in Yan Niang’s hands stretched the white silk tight, reflecting the rays of light, and the fine warp and weft of the silk could be seen. “What you need to know is, the young lady came to visit herself to ask for a matchmaker, which was incredibly strange; not to mention, that young lady’s appearance was extremely lively and beautiful. My eyes are thin and long, and not very attractive; that young woman had a pair of both large, and black, and beautiful eyes, her brows rising upwards, with a tender-heartedness to them. In the decades before and the decades since, I’ve yet to see beautiful eyes like those again.” As she spoke, she gestured with the hand with the thimble at the edge of her eye; the corner of...

No one knew why Chen Man was so fixed on wanting to buy that piece of land. She’d originally assumed that her own role had changed, and so she could persuade Chen Man and make her give up on this plan, but the facts were clear; Jiang Xichu was still too naive. No matter what, Chen Man wasn’t planning on changing her decision; Jiang Xichu, infuriated beyond measure by her, could only compromise in the end. Never mind, never mind; it was just a piece of land, wasn’t it? As long as she was happy, even if she planned to go to Africa to buy land, there wasn’t a problem. The issue of the land temporarily came to an end; it wasn’t that Jiang Xichu’s stance towards her in her own mind was that magnanimous, but that she already couldn’t draw out an inclination to pay attention to this tiny matter of land. Because the day of the accident…was arriving quickly. Jiang Xichu’s thoughts had been consistently steady; she hadn’t forgotten any of the words that the young man wearing the white shirt had ...

They’d only walked half the way when suddenly there was a great downpour of rain, coming down in sheets, and the two were stopped halfway along the journey. Li Shiyi and Song Shijiu hid under a lush elm tree, clothes similarly soaked, wrapped frigid and wet around their bodies. Song Shijiu gazed at the water streaming in gurgles on the ground, and stretched her head out to gaze at the heavens. “Just now it was a bright and sunny day; how strange.” The top of her head warmed; she pulled her neck back, and saw Li Shiyi expressionlessly covering her head with her own hat. Song Shijiu reached her hands up to hold the hat, stroking it as if her palms were holding a watermelon. Both people were equally embarrassed; then they heard the sound of a whistle, alternating in length, approaching from the distance, as if looking for some sort of animal cub; it was an incredibly plain tarpaulin umbrella, under which was a woman approaching her forties, with one eye and sloping shoulders; her appearan...

The group was silent; Mulan’s obsession was so deep that, after her body was interred and rotted, her proud figure, unwilling to age, unexpectedly transformed into the appearance of her youth, dying stubbornly and desperately along with her faded sense of self. Washing hands and making soup, riding a horse and carrying an iron qiang—was the exchange not more than simply life or death? Li Shiyi sighed, and, along with Song Shijiu, left the tomb first; Tu Laoyao picked up the newspapers and followed along after A Yin. The remainder was Taishan prefecture’ business. A Luo stood upright in the middle, gazing at the kneeling Mulian whose heart beat with fear; she said, quietly and softly, “You changed fate without authority, and are guilty of a crime; now, I need to find and bring back Mulan; you’ll consider your actions while in the Shentu Command—bring back Mulan’s hun spirit, and we can discuss punishment then. If this is my judgement, will you accept it?” Mulian bowed her head, and said...

At Secretary Yang’s roar, the entire office trembled for a bit, and not a single voice was heard for a few moments; the first person to react was, surprisingly, Li Shuyun, who hurriedly pushed aside the people before her, and with rapid steps came up to Secretary Yang, and said, “You must be the leader—I want to make a report about the problem of your company’s Jiang Xichu; she doesn’t care about familial feelings, and mistreats her own mother; shouldn’t you attend to such a severe issue?” Li Shuyun’s words carried to the secretaries’ office without a single one getting lost; young Secretary Zhou’s brows furrowed, and she hurried towards the door, turning the automated doors into a keycard opened door; once she finished switching it, she even let out a phrase of ridicule. “Truly outrageous!” Among everyone there, the most unperturbed was, in fact, Jiang Xichu; she understood Li Shuyun the most, and knew that if she couldn’t create a result through her disturbance today, she wouldn’t le...

By the time they returned to A Luo’s residence, it was just noon; Tu Laoyao brought out soft, chewy, salted and fragrant stewed trotters, accompanying the appetisers that Wu Qian had made, as well as a pot of aged Shaoxing yellow wine, and the group of people ate and drank in the courtyard. The pig trotters had been soaked to a deep, red-brown colour, the skin melting in the mouth, not even a bit greasy, the chewy tendons pulling at the lean meat adhered to the bone, prompting one to lick the meat stock in the cracks of the bones clean. The more the group ate, the more aromatic they became, and the more Song Shijiu suffered, covering up her nose and struggling to eat; in the end it was Tu Laoyao who came up with a solution, twisting up a few strips of paper to plug her nose with, and only then did she sit down and begin to use her chopsticks. Having eaten and drunk to his heart’s content, Tu Laoyao sat on a rattan chair and rubbed his stomach, belching; Wu Qian gathered up the bowls an...

Jiu-daren? Song Shijiu’s eyes darted about. Unexpectedly, Li Shiyi didn’t have a notable reaction; she took the jade dizi that Wu Qian offered, and, on the way, knocked it against the soft, velvety back of Song Shijiu’s hand, and went with her to go look for a mountain god temple. Tu Laoyao, thinking about the pig trotters stewing back home, also hastily bid farewell, and after a bit of bustling, once again, the two of them, A Yin and A Luo, remained. A Luo washed her hands and watered the flowers; A Yin sat by the table and flipped through books, and then propped both hands on the table, her high heels unsteadily hanging off the ends of her feet, striking the legs of the table in alternating light and heavy knocks. She cast a glance askance at the person before her, gracefully supporting her waist— delicate, loose shoulders; even her lips were inhuman and indifferent, only tainted by a pathetic amount of cosmetics, as if having, just before, been marked carelessly. If it had been the...

Translator's note: I apologise for the delay in this update; I've had a rather hectic week. The next two chapters will be up over the next two days as usual. - A half shichen later, the originally bright, sunny day had turned to a drizzle, the wet droplets trying to get in through the window lattices, causing the occasional lovers to disperse. A Luo was still dressed in a crow-dark gown, her long hair combed to one side, and she walked to the table, reaching out a searching hand to hold the purple Yixing clay pot, which had long since been penetrated by the cold, and gently covered it with her hands; the water within sent up fine bubbles, white steam pouring out of the pot. As she sat at the table, A Yin fastened up the clasps at her collar, the practised movements like that of a theatre, at the end of a play, being shuttered. A few strands of hair stuck to the moist nape of her neck, and, with her large, round eyes and plump, rosy cheeks, it was like the scattering of cracked ...