CH 20

Xia Yujin’s reverie shattered. Life must go on. 

But Ye Zhao’s performance that day had been excellent. She had followed along with him, she had lifted his worries in front of other people, and even turned around a disappointing situation, so even looking at her face felt very pleasing to the eyes. That’s why he leaned over and asked, grinning, “When I went back to the estate to change my clothes, I heard you’d been summoned by the Empress Dowager. Was it because she wanted to teach you how to be a good wife?”

To this surprise, Ye Zhao nodded and confirmed his joke, and said, with the solemn expression she took when marching out to war, “She wants me to treat you better. She also said that husband and wife should not be too aggressive when living together, and that I could learn much from the other women in the family, so that I could relax my posture appropriately, put on make-up, and do that coquettish act. I’m still thinking about how to do that.”

Xia Yujin was struck dumb by these words. 

Sure, he seriously disliked how manly his wife was, but how could such a manly wife pretend to be womanly? 

His mind sketched out the image of Ye Zhao: she was wearing a woman’s red skirt and jacket,[1] her hair rolled up in an elaborate bun on top of her head with a set of bejeweled golden and silver hairpins, her ice-cold manly face covered in white powder, pasting on forehead decorations;[2] with her aura of violence and two large blades in her hands, she was walking over in small, restrained steps, then “shyly” calling him husband, like other wives, trying to throw coy glances at him.

What kind of terrifying scene was this? It would make anyone throw up their day-old wine in fright… 

Xia Yujin’s face paled as he imagined it. He covered his mouth and desperately shook his head. “Don’t! You’re good just the way you are!”

Ye Zhao sighed. “Right, I haven’t been taught how to be a girl since I was a kid, it feels too weird.”

“Yes, yes,” Xia Yujin agreed mindlessly. “Too weird.”

“I thought you hated it?”

“I do hate it,” he replied honestly, “but I hate pretending even more. Being some way upfront and another in people’s backs, clearly disliking something but having to pretend not to — this kind of hypocritical behavior irks me.”

Ye Zhao gave him a thumbs-up. “Good! I appreciate your honesty!”

Xia Yujin twisted his mouth and disdainfully said, “Honesty, my ass!” Then, taking advantage of the good mood to ask a question he’d kept to himself for a long time. “You didn’t know me at all yet you chose to marry me. Is it because you heard those messy rumors about me?”

Ye Zhao hesitated for a long time. “No, I just thought… Our characters seemed somewhat compatible. I thought we could probably get along.”

But Xia Yujin, who’d been listening intently, only felt ridiculed. “What? You’re a hero! I’m a good-for-nothing! You’re a pillar of the court, I’m the trash of the Great Qin! We’re as different as night and day! In fact, when we divorce in three years, you’ll be free. You can choose yourself a man you love. You won’t have to live the rest of your life with unreliable scum you can’t stand.”

“Who said I couldn’t stand you and that you were scum?” Ye Zhao said, shocked. 

Xia Yujin, remembering in time that Hu Qing was her subordinate and that he was unwilling to provoke her, vaguely said, “Everyone says that. From the first day of our marriage, I’ve never believed you thought highly of me.”

Silence descended upon the carriage for a moment. Only the sound of the horses’ hooves resounded from outside. 

Suddenly, Ye Zhao burst out laughing, breaking the sullen silence. She bent in half, still laughing, holding onto her stomach. She almost teared up laughing. Then, struggling, she pointed at him. “Whether or not I can stand you, it will never be because you’re unreliable scum.”

Xia Yujin flushed. “What’s so funny?” he asked furiously. 

“Someone like you, a scumbag—that’s too funny.” Still bent in half, Ye Zhao wiped her eyes and added, “I started leading a group of kids from the aristocracy when I was twelve. I was the head of the local brutes of the Northern Desert, the gang leader. Always aggressive and irritable, torturing people at every turn, throwing the blind down to drown, senselessly beating women and children. What crime didn’t I commit? I grew harder to restrain with the years. My father finally couldn’t contain his anger. He wanted to teach me a lesson, so he broke my wrist. I stayed in bed for more than two weeks, and almost got disowned. Only my grandfather’s and my mother’s defiant efforts saved me. There were a lot of angry people in the Northern Desert, who hadn’t dared say anything, who quietly burned incense and prayed that I’d die soon, because it would do more good than bad…” 

She had been a dissipated teenager, and her crimes were inumerable. 

Then disaster struck the Northern Desert and she led her troops against the Man Jin, desperately fighting back. As it went one, more and more people started to forget the past, until in the end they only remembered the brave, strategic, heroic and fearless general whose name struck terror in the hearts of their enemies. 

But she did not let herself forget that unmentionable past, because some of the mistakes she’d made would require a lifetime of atonement. 

Ye Zhao suddenly couldn’t laugh anymore.

For the first time, Xia Yujin saw deep regret on her unwaveringly calm face. 

Ye Zhao lowered her head, eyes dimmed. “No need to tell you more. I’ve behaved far worse than you have.”

Xia Yujin couldn’t resist the urge to lean over and pat her head. “Well… you’ve changed now,” he said, reassuringly. “‘A prodigal son who returns home is worth more than gold,’ and all that.”

Ye Zhao, already barely able to bear this conversation, felt her eyelid twitch at his daring move.  

“Although it does sound like you were worse than me. No wonder you hate mentioning the past,” Xia Yujin said, completely unaware. He went on, trying to comfort her, “Except for the brainless, everyone will forgive you now that you’ve changed.”

“Yes,” Ye Zhao agreed, “if you’d done this to me in the past, I’d have crushed your bones and broken your nose, and you’d be lying in bed for six months just to recover.”

Xia Yujin hurriedly took back his hand. “Change’s great!” he exclaimed. 

He swept his dark eyes away, like a ferret who’d gotten away with something, giving her a sly smile.

Ye Zhao turned aside first, putting the painful memories aside. 

She slid out a booklet from the front of her clothes and changed the subject. “The Empress Dowager gave me the Precepts for Women[3] written by the late Empress Xiaohui.”

“It’s useless for you,” Xia Yujin said disdainfully.

“I only liked playing with weapons and reading bored me to tears when I was a kid,” Ye Zhao explained. “I started reading military books and documents when I joined the army and had to start studying, but I never got good at it and it didn’t do much. To this day I still get a headache if I stare at literary stuff, so if I couldn’t understand the documents someone sent me in the army, I’d drag them out for a few hits of the staff. Now they’ve all understood the lesson and only express themselves in the simplest way. But Empress Xiaohui’s on another level, her writing is too literary. There are large segments in the Precepts for Women that use sumptuous flowery language, plus erudite analogies. I read three rows and doze off.”

“Didn’t you write the divorce letter very well?” Xia Yujin asked angrily.

Straightening, Ye Zhao proudly said, “That’s paperwork, my advisor ghostwrote it.” She paused, then flaunted, “Fox’s quite shrewd with his words, and he has a good handwriting as well.”

She’d had the nerve to go to someone else for her divorce letter. 

Xia Yujin’s anger toward this scoundrel rose again. 

“I’ll show the Precepts for Women to my staff advisors later,” Ye Zhao was still saying. “They can explain it to me after they all brainstorm it.”

“Don’t you think it’s embarrassing enough having to go to your advisors for stuff like this?!” Xia Yujin hastily snatched away the Precepts for Women, flustered and exasperated. 

Ye Zhao shrugged. “The Empress Dowager may want to test me in a few days. I need to make some sense of what’s written inside, so that I can at least fool her and not disappoint an elderly woman too much.”

Xia Yujin shoved her away, angrily flipping through the book. “Alright, that’s it! I’ll study it for you!”

Satisfied, Ye Zhao patted his head. “You’re so good.”

“Beat it!” 

Seeing he was starting to lose his temper, Ye Zhao jumped out of the sedan chair. Light-footed, she skipped to Taxue, who had been following behind them the entire time. With a wave at Xia Yujin and a flick of her whip, she galloped away. 

Xia Yujin leaned back against the cushions, immersed in the book he held.

He’d already been reading for a long time when he felt that something wasn’t quite right… 

Why was he the one seriously reading the Precepts for Women, in the end?! When did it stop being his wife’s concern?

Fuck that!

So this chapter starts touching upon Ye Zhao’s less-than-glorious past, which the show completely glossed over. I think this is why all those reviews on NovelUpdates saying that Xia Yujin sucks and isn’t worthy of how virtuous Ye Zhao is make me laugh so much. She’s not, you guys! Well, she wasn’t always. She sucked way harder than he ever has or will. Xia Yujin is a pampered lamb who was raised in an society fraught with toxic masculinity–masculinity which doesn’t come naturally to him and whose weight frustrates him.

Now, am I annoyed by the fact that the narrative sometimes seems to give him reason, in a story in which you’d rather expect those social expectations to be challenged? Yeah. But honestly I do think that’s only occasional (and more of a problem in the show IMO), and that the general narrative of the novel goes on to say: Ye Zhao and Xia Yujin both have their flaws, which they both need to overcome to go on and be happy together. Ye Zhao has already accomplished a lot of her own character development by the time we meet her, that’s all. Plus, and people who’ve watched the show know it, she has a reason to be acting so permissive towards Xia Yujin! Actually, at the time of writing this I haven’t finished reading the novel either, so the thing I’m referring to could be something the show invented, but I don’t think it is.

Anyway! That was chapter 20. Regular release schedule from now on! See you guys in 2 days

[1 ^] More particularly, this: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A2%84%E8%A3%99. 

[2 ^] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huadian_(make-up).

[3 ^] Lit.《女则》nǚ zé, Examples for Women. A book by this name exists, but it’s written by Empress Zhangchun of Tang and contains examples of famous women’s deeds. It’s often confused with another book titled《女诫》nǚjiè, Lessons for Women, written by female historian Ban Zhao (1st c. CE), which is a code of conduct for women. I think this is made up, because the author seems to be making up a LOT of historical context stuff in this novel, so I won’t translate it as Examples for Women, to distinguish it from the real thing.