CH 50.1

I’m freaking sorry for disappearing for a month, you guys. I started mi servicio social (which is a thing in Mexico but idk about other countries) and simply didn’t have much energy left to translate. I’m sure many translators were staring at this project to see whether I would abandon it so they could start translating it, but, no~ We’re so close to the end, already, and I don’t wanna miss the big romance coming our way! Thank you for reading, will release the second part in around two to three days. —Bambi.

Thank you very much to Bee for the ko-fi. 

Yinzhen looked around but didn’t see the seventh Fu Jin. There were a few eunuchs and servants kneeling in the yard, but the main wife was nowhere to be seen. Thinking that Yinyou seldom mentioned his own Fu Jin plus the fact he’d barely seen this Fu Jin appearing together with the seventh brother…

He had long heard that the seventh brother and the seventh Fu Jin had a weak relationship. He was naturally very happy hearing this, but seeing today’s scene, he only felt anger. As the seventh brother’s wife, she didn’t care about his affairs at all, which family had taught such a woman?!

The servants in the yard sensed the cold aura emanating from the fourth brother’s body, and they trembled even more, almost prostrating on the ground, not daring to even breathe.

“Where’s the seventh Fu Jin?” Yinzhen asked in a deep voice.

Hearing the fourth master’s tone, Fu Duo felt a chill in his heart. “Back to the fourth master, two days ago, Fu Jin said that she felt unwell and since then she hasn’t left her yard.”

“She didn’t come out even after such a big incident?!” Yinzhen’s voice became more and more stern, but after all, this was Yinyou’s own woman, and that although the other party’s father wasn’t a big official, he was at least a Deputy Governor. He reluctantly suppressed his anger, and continued speaking, his face expressionless. “In this case, you should inform the seventh Fu Jin’s maiden family to come take a look and let them take good care of the seventh Fu Jin!”

Inside the room, Yinyou didn’t know the situation outside. Thinking of his house being a nest of wolves, he sat on the Taishi chair dejectedly. He shouldn’t have regarded ancient women the same as modern woman. His girlfriend in his previous life once joked that, “modern women, if they lose a man, they lose face, money, and a man. But if an ancient woman lost her man, she lost her status, her children, and her own life.”

He thought he was a powerless prince, there should not be these kind of scheming in his backyard. He had also thought that Min Hui2The seventh Fu Jin’s name. (Reminder that women in ancient China were never recorded by their name, so this is just the author making it up). was young and ignorant, thus he let her go. She didn’t want to take care of the family affairs, and even if she did something that made him feel cold towards her, he still wouldn’t let her lose face. Cheng Ge Ge3Ge Ge. Polite Manchu title for a concubine. She’s from a branch of the Cheng family, we’re never told her name or surname, but I’m guessing she’s also ‘Cheng’ something. was a woman bestowed by E’niang, and he treated her well because of this. She tried to seduce him, and he didn’t punish her because he understood the helplessness of women on this era4The subtext of this sentence is that the concubine invited favor to get pregnant. A woman in ancient times gained power in her husband’s family by getting pregnant and giving birth to heirs.. Yet, only now did he truly realize that he was wrong. The women here were even more pitiful than the women in the previous life, but they were also more terrifying.

Virtuous? Gentle? Considerate? Thinking of this, Yinyou angrily swept down a teacup. If the women here were virtuous, wouldn’t the women in his previous life be kinder than angels?!

Even if the women in the previous life were bad, they would not kill a pregnant woman! How terrible was this twisted society, that even a woman’s heart was this evil?!

If all the women around him were like this, what would he do with them? Watching them scheme every day, watching them frame each other?

There were footsteps outside, and Yinyou shouted without bothering to turn his head, “Didn’t I tell you all to get out! What are you doing in here, go take the punishment yourself!”

Opening the inner room’s curtain, Yinzhen footsteps paused. Then, he silently walked into the room, looked at the broken antique jade, teapots, and cups all over the floor, and finally, he stopped and gazed at the person sitting on the large grand Taishi chair.

He had never seen such a Yinyou, as depressed as he was right now. In his memory, whether it was the eldest brother bullying him, the schemes between brothers, or being injured on the battlefield, Yinyou has always been stable from the beginning to the end, as if there was no hurdle he could not overcome. And now, because of a Ge Ge and a child who was a few months old, he has turned into such appearance.

“Seventh brother.” Yinzhen stared at the figure trapped in the shadows, and slowly, the worries in his heart which had emerged one after another, dispersed. He no longer cared to about women or children; he was simply afraid that the person in front of him would hurt himself.

Hearing a familiar voice, Yinyou turned his head and searched around in a daze. In the dim-lighted room, he caught a glimpse of a piece of sky-blue cloth and a jade pendant, on the man’s waist, there seemed to be a strand of golden yellow. Looking up blankly, it was the familiar face who had kept him company him for years in this strange world, the man who was first was a stranger, then familiar.

Reaching out his hand and taking Yinzhen’s hand into a tight grip, he gritted his teeth and said angrily, “Such a woman is my Fu Jin! What a good daughter of the Hada Nara clan she is!”

Squatting down, Yinzhen saw how the originally calm person now showed disappointment and boundless anger on his face. Seeing his distorted expression, he stretched out his other hand that was not held and gently placed it on Yinyou’s shoulder.

“Seventh brother, I know you are sad, but you are still young, and you will have gentle women and you will have children, many, many children.”

Being able to comfort him like this was the result of him hiding his secret affection for Yinyou.

Yinyou quietly listened to Yinzhen’s words, and weakly rested his chin on Yinzhen’s shoulder. Only after a long time of silent comfort, did he let out a soft sigh and muttered, “I was wrong too.”

He had made a mistake, and he’d also not taken good care of the Ge Ge. He and her were all in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After he finished speaking, his eyes, which at this time had never teared up, became red.  Closing his eyes, he silently warmed up his heart in the man’s tight embrace and gradually calmed down.

Soon enough, he calmly stated, “Hada Nara shi’s father is a Deputy Governor. Although it is not a grand position, the Nara family is still a Manchu and Mongolian family, and I can’t touch her. If this matter gets out, it will only be a scandal for the Imperial Family. I will report this matter to Huang Ama, and in the future… Since the seventh Fu Jin is weak and unable to bear children, due to her status as the main wife, I will let her go to another mansion to cultivate her health back.  She doesn’t need to manage the house affairs, so as not to make her work hard and affect her recovering.”

After Yinyou finished speaking, he tightly wrapped his arms around Yinzhen’s waist, unwilling to speak any more, snuggling closely. This all happened because she didn’t want his eldest son to be born from a concubine.5This was truly Yinyou’s fault. Usually, the eldest son must be born from the main wife, the eldest son being shu and not di it’s also not approved. People may accuse him of “favoring the concubine and killing the wife” which is a crime. If his Fu Jin has waited for the child to be born, she would have probably been able to accuse him and make him be punished (lol) and she then would be appeased with rewards or something, but she just killed the concubine which was simply ruthless. (Spoiler: From what I remember, she took Yinyou making the concubine pregnant before her as her “losing face”, she’s basically very immature and cruel.). In this case, let her not have children. It didn’t matter who was his eldest son, as long as it wasn’t this woman’s child!

Yinzhen gently patted Yinyou’s back, and slightly lowered his eyelids. “You still have Consort Cheng, and me.”

It turned out he liked that Ge Ge so much…

After a long time, Yinyou slowly moved his head away from Yinzhen’s shoulder, with the usual smile on his face, “Fourth brother, thank you.”

Yinzhen stood up from his squatting, squeezed into the same grand Taishi chair where Yinyou was, and stretched out a hand to rest on Yinyou’s shoulder, “My legs are numb.”

After finishing speaking, he sighed again. “Seventh brother, you don’t need to hurt yourself so much because of such a woman, think of what will happen to Consort Cheng if something goes wrong with you.”

Yinyou’s eyes sparkled, as if he had seen through something, and he stretched out his hand to pinch Yinzhen’s knee, with a faint, inexplicable smile on the corner of his mouth. “I’m the seventh prince of the Great Qing, and I really made a fuss out of a molehill.”

Grinning his teeth towards Yinzhen and thinking of Yinzhen squatting on the ground and letting him lean on him for so long without complaining, he teased the fourth brother with a smile, “Fourth brother’s legs and feet are so powerful, he has supported my weight and squatted in the ground for so long!”

“You bastard with no conscience, you don’t even look at who I’m doing it for!” Yinzhen reprimanded him with a smile, but in his heart, he felt relieved.

Yinyou had figured it out and Yinzhen no longer wanted to think deep about how much Yinyou liked the dead Ge Ge. Gazing at the person pinching his knees, he thought, maybe it wasn’t the Ge Ge that mattered, but maybe Yinyou was looking forward to his first child, yet the child’s small life ended this way. Who could have possibly foreseen it? It was inevitable to be sad, but seeing Yinyou so depressed, Yinzhen just didn’t feel comfortable in his heart.

In Qianqian Palace, Kangxi read through the report submitted by the seventh brother and by the end, his calm face had changed. Finally, he approved the memorial, and said, “The seventh brother has a strict temperament and has a progressive mind on things. He will be rewarded silk and satin, thirty horses, a five-hundred-year-old ginseng, a thousand taels of gold, and pearls. The seventh Fu Jin is weak and unable to bear children, so she will move to another mansion and her slaves will be beaten to death with a stick due to being unable to care for their master well.”

After this decree came down, no one in the entire palace dared to mention the matter in the seventh brother’s house, and gradually the matter faded away,

After this decree came down, no one in the entire palace dared to mention the matter in the seventh brother’s house, and gradually the matter faded away, but there was no woman in the seventh brother’s house, and Consort Cheng who knows why, also did not send another woman to serve her son.

A few months passed quickly, and there was not much change in the palace except for the marriage of the eldest princess. Soon it was the 37th year of Kangxi, and a new round of drafts began, and the concubines with adult sons in the harem began to pay attention, and they all inquired about the wealth and virtue of this year’s xianus6These are the noble girls sent to the palace to be given a marriage by the emperor. Either they stay in the harem to be the emperor’s women, or they are married to the royal family’s side clans or another nobles. . The only place that was quiet was the Xianfu Palace7This is where Consort Chen lives.. Consort Cheng, the birth mother of the seventh prince, twisted the Buddhist beads in her hand, listening to the actions of the women in the harem, with a mocking smile on her face.

Yinyou knew that he might have more than one side Fu Jin this time, but he didn’t care anymore. He did things honestly, and occasionally went to the fourth brother’s house to play. His life was very comfortable, and the shadow of the dead Ge Ge and child gradually dissipated.