CH 27

The Imperial Palace had never been Dan Yi’s home. He was only here to have some fun, and certainly had to go back when duty beckoned. Chen Ziqi understood all this, but he still felt a deep sense of reluctance.

Linghe passed a wooden box to Dan Yi, and Dan Yi thrust this at Chen Ziqi. “This is for you,” he said.

Chen Ziqi opened the box. An inner vest made of frost silk lay gleaming inside it.

“I only have two sets, so this one isn’t new,” Dan Yi said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Dan Yi had two sets so that he would always have one to wear whilst the other was being washed. If he gave this one to Chen Ziqi, then he would only have one left for himself.

“I don’t want it,” Chen Ziqi said, pushing it back to Dan Yi. The world outside was very dangerous, and there were probably many more skilled assassins like Cheng Zhou after Dan Yi. If it so happened that they managed to pick a day when Dan Yi’s frost silk vest was being washed… Chen Ziqi didn’t want to think about what would happen then. “Give me something else if you feel sorry for me,” he said.

Dan Yi pressed his lips together and smiled. “What would you like?” he asked.

“I want those blankets and the silk bedcurtains,” Chen Ziqi said after thinking for a bit. The bedsheets from the Cloud Palace were just too comfortable, and he probably wouldn’t be used to the usual sheets when he moved back in with his little fairy.

Linghe hid her smile as she turned to pack up the bedsheets and bedcurtains. She instructed a servant to send them over to the Qingyun Palace.

In the end, Dan Yi still left the frost silk inner vest with Chen Ziqi, telling him to wear it for important events, just in case.

Chen Ziqi hugged that little vest to his chest as he watched Dan Yi get on the light blue palanquin and slowly put down the curtains. Lan Shanyu clasped his hands together in farewell, then led the two maids away. They leapt lightly into the air and floated away behind the palanquin. They looked like a flock of birds, disappearing quickly into the horizon.

“Stop being embarrassing. You’ve just lost a playmate! It’s not like you lost your wife,” Chang Er said impatiently. Her little rascal had pulled a long face ever since he moved back in. She couldn’t resist giving him a quick flick on the head. 

“Dan Yi is my wife! We’ve slept together and everything,” Chen Ziqi said seriously.

“Get lost. The two of you have dicks! He can’t possibly be your wife,” Chang Er said dismissively. “Go do your homework, quick! If your handwriting is still that ugly chicken scratching when Dan Yi comes back next year, he might not want you any more.”

Chen Ziqi’s lips curled, but he went back to his room to practice his writing. As he wrote, he thought that it would be great if Dan Yi was his wife. Dan Yi was rich, good-looking, skilled in martial arts, and even gave in to him… The more Chen Ziqi thought about it, the better it sounded.

When Dan Yi left, he didn’t leave from the Xuanwu Gate, but leapt directly over the palace walls instead. The Zhenlong Emperor felt like the Cloud Palace was really disrespecting him, and wondered if it was because they were still unhappy over the Invincible Duo matter. The more he thought about it, the more likely this seemed, and the perturbed Emperor decided to pay a visit to Chen Ziqi. 

“Little Seventh, you’ve grown taller again…” the Zhenlong Emperor said. He made some small talk with Chen Ziqi before speaking about Dan Yi. “Before he left, did he say anything?”

Chen Ziqi tilted his head as he thought hard. “He said that he’d come back to play with me one of these days. Father Emperor, can I go and play with Dan Yi in the Cloud Palace?” he asked.

The Zhenlong Emperor was rather surprised. He hadn’t thought that Dan Yi and Chen Ziqi would have such a good relationship. This round, the Crown Prince had not managed to take advantage of the chance to get close to Dan Yi, but Little Seventh had managed to do so. Chen Ziqi was part of the Imperial family anyway, so the Emperor wasn’t fussed. 

“You’re not fourteen yet, so you can’t leave the palace. When you’re older, you can go and look for him there,” the Emperor said. With Chen Ziqi here, Dan Yi was unlikely to take any action against him even if was displeased. He couldn’t help smiling in satisfaction at this thought. “Little Seventh, you made great contributions at the Autumn Hunt this round. What would you like as a reward?”

Great contributions? What did he contribute? If anything, it was the Phoenix King’s Shizi who took a hit for him! Chen Ziqi found this very incomprehensible, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. “I want more meat to eat every day. The food that’s sent to my mother isn’t as delicious as the food at the Danyang Palace,” he said.

“You little rascal. You’re always thinking about food,” the Zhenlong Emperor said, laughing heartily. He waved an arm grandly. “Pass my royal edict. The Seventh Prince has made great contributions at the Autumn Hunt, but because of his young age, there’s nothing suitable I can reward him with. As such, I will be raising his mother, Chang Jieyu, to the rank of Pin. Henceforth, she shall be known as Yue* Pin.”

*T/N: Yue means “moon”. I’m quite amused, because in the legend of Chang Er, Chang Er is the goddess of the moon. Pretty sure that’s what influenced LYQH in giving her this name as well!

In order to add more meat dishes to the Qingyun Palace’s menu, the allowance given to Chang Er, the mistress of Qingyun Palace, also had to be increased. As the allowance was fixed according to the concubines’ ranks, increasing Chang Er’s allowance meant that her rank also had to be increased.

As such, because of Chen Ziqi’s simple request to “eat more meat”, Chang Er rose from a third-ranked Jieyu to a second-ranked Yue Pin. It also meant that she could take more of the residences within the Qingyun Palace as her own. 

Chang Er happily cleared out an entire side palace in the Qingyun Palace for Chen Ziqi to live in, and even claimed a small martial arts practice area for him.

With Dan Yi gone, Chen Ziqi now had to walk to Chunxi Hall by himself again every day. That long palace road became scary again, but all he could do was grit his teeth and run through it quickly. 

Chen Ziqi also didn’t have anyone to play with when Dan Yi left, so he applied himself faithfully to his studies and martial arts practice. The Emperor did not say how he finally dealt with that uncle of Berry Brown’s, but he did hear that Cheng Jieyu had brought Berry Brown to beg the Emperor for mercy three days in a row. She was finally allowed to meet Cheng Zhou for a short while, and when she returned to her palace, she cried for a very long time.

Berry Brown was even more taciturn these days.

“Do you think a person’s name can be changed?” Chen Zimo asked Chen Ziqi. He’d come over to play with Chen Ziqi on one of the few days they had a break from lessons. The two of them were squatting over the pond with fishnets in hand, trying to catch some fish when he suddenly asked this question.

Chen Ziqi executed the Roving Dragon Follows the Moon and caught a fat koi fish. “Of course,” he replied. “Didn’t we both change our names once already?”

“In the past, you were called Chang Qi, and I was called Cheng Mo, so our names were changed to Chen Ziqi and Chen Zimo. There’s still a correlation to our old names,” Berry Brown said. “But is there such a thing as someone changing both characters of their name?” It was very rare for Berry Brown to string so many words together. He seemed to be very intent on getting an answer to this question.

Chen Ziqi used both his hands to pin the struggling koi fish down, trying to prevent it from escaping. “It’s quite rare for both the characters in a name to be changed. It’s a name given by your parents, after all, so even if you were accepted as a disciple of a sect and had to change your name, they would usually only change one of the characters to show which generation of disciples you’re from*. For example, Dan Yi told me that your mum’s generation of Suxin Sect disciples are all called Su-something,” Chen Ziqi said.

*T/N: A generation name is so called because every member of that generation, e.g. siblings / paternal cousins / disciples of a sect of the same generation all have a certain character in their name. In martial arts sects, when you were accepted as a direct disciple, the sect members became your family, which was why they took on the sect’s generation name. Read the wiki page for more information.

“That generation of the Cheng family had the generation name ‘Jia’. That means that my mother should have been called ‘Cheng Jiayao’ before she entered the sect, right?” Chen Zimo asked, his eyes boring into Chen Ziqi’s intently.

Chen Ziqi nodded. “And so?” he said.

Chen Zimo clenched a fist slowly as he bent his head to gaze at the fish swimming in the pond. “My uncle, he called my mother Jiazhen…” he said.

“Plop!” The struggling koi fish in Chen Ziqi’s hands escaped back into the pond. Chen Ziqi stared at Chen Zimo for a moment, then looked around carefully. “You’re suspecting that she’s not your mother?” he asked quietly.

Chen Zimo didn’t say anything, but he nodded his head slightly. He’d previously thought that his mother’s ill-treatment of him was normal; he was an illegitimate child born out of wedlock after all, unworthy of a mother’s love. It was only after he came to the palace and saw how Chang Er treated Chen Ziqi that he slowly realised he might have been wrong, that love could exist between an illegitimate child and his mother. He knew now that his mother should not have treated him that way.

If Cheng Jieyu really wasn’t Chen Zimo’s mother, this would truly be an earth-shattering revelation. Chen Ziqi bit his lip in thought. “For the time being, don’t confront your mother about it, or she might hit you again. Let’s try to investigate this ourselves,” he said.

Any investigation had to begin from Cheng Jieyu’s person, however, and the only person Chen Ziqi knew with access to Cheng Jieyu was his mother. As such, Chen Ziqi had no choice but to tell Chang Er about it. 

“What?” Chang Er found this story to be incredible, but she listened seriously as Chen Ziqi spoke nonetheless. After Chen Ziqi finished explaining the whole situation, she was silent for a moment before she spoke again. “If we really want to pursue this train of thought, I have to say that actually, Cheng Jieyu’s body’s is a little strange – she doesn’t look like she has given birth before.”

“How can you tell?” Chen Ziqi asked, snuggling into his mother’s arms and feeling her up and down. “What’s different if you give birth?”

“You little bratty bastard, keep your hands to yourself!” Chang Er said, catching hold of his ear and pulling him off her. “How about this then? I’ll test her next time I see her.”

As to how this test was to be conducted, Chang Er refused to say, so Chen Ziqi didn’t say anything to Berry Brown about it. He continued to let him have his meals and spend most of his time at the Qingyun Palace.

Autumn soon ended, and the first icy winds of winter blew into the Capital.

Chen Ziqi huddled in his blankets, listening to the wind whistling outside the window. It was probably going to snow soon. When the roads were blocked by many feet of snow, Dan Yi was even less likely to come back…

The next morning, sunlight shone in through the windows, and it somehow seemed brighter than it had ever been before. Chen Ziqi opened his eyes and saw that everything was blanketed in a layer of glistening white. The first snow of winter had fallen last night.

He squirmed further into the blankets, not wanting to get up. He suddenly heard a sweet little chirp, and he stiffened in surprise for a second before throwing off his covers. A small, red, fluffy ball was nestled in the blankets, reclining lazily on his tummy. 

“Divine chicken!” Chen Ziqi was elated. He gathered the little red chick into his hands. “Did you come to accompany me because you knew I was cold?”

The little red bird ignored him. It crawled determinedly into the sleeve of his undershirt, found a comfortable corner to sleep in, and refused to move after that. 

“Hahaha…” The little red bird’s feathers had tickled Chen Ziqi as it wormed its way into his sleeve, and Chen Ziqi couldn’t help laughing. He shook his arm a little to get the little chick out, then arranged the blankets comfortably around it. He got into his robes in trice, pulled the chick out of the blankets and stuffed it into the front of his clothes before heading to the High Priest’s Taizhen Palace with a spring in his step.

In the Taizhen Palace, Lan Shanyu was holding out a cloak edged in white foxfur for the High Priest to see. “I came of age last month, and the Cloud Palace Master gave me a courtesy name, Qingchen. It complements your courtesy name perfectly, doesn’t it?

Lan Shanyu, courtesy name Qingchen. Lan Jiangxue, courtesy name Qinghan.

*T/N: Shanyu means “mountain rain”, and Qingchen means “light dust”. Jiangxue means “a snowy river”, and Qinghan means “light chill”.

The mountain rain settles the light dust, fishing alone in the snowy river. Even the artistic concept of their names was complementary.

“We’re not even brothers related by blood. What’s the point in making our names complementary?” the High Priest said dismissively. He stretched out a hand to grab hold of the cloak, but Lan Shanyu dodged at the last moment. The High Priest overbalanced and fell straight into Lan Shanyu’s arms.

“High Priest!” Chen Ziqi ran in with the red bird grasped firmly in one hand. The scene that met his eyes was Lan Shanyu with his arms wrapped around the High Priest, and the High Priest clutching at Lan Shanyu’s clothes. The two men froze at the sound of Chen Ziqi’s voice and turned their heads in unison to look at him.

The atmosphere was just a little awkward.

Why was Lan Shanyu here? And why were they in that compromising position…

“Ahem. Dianxia, you’re here,” the High Priest said, pushing Lan Shanyu aside. He straightened his clothes. “Is there something you need?” he asked in genial tones. 

“Umm…” Chen Ziqi hesitated. He wasn’t sure what kind of relationship Lan Shanyu had with the High Priest, and whether Lan Shanyu knew about the little red bird being the Protector-God.

Because Chen Ziqi didn’t speak up, a weird hush fell over the Taizhen Palace again.

“Tweet?” The little red bird stuck its head out of the clothes at Chen Ziqi’s chest.

The atmosphere seemed to become even more awkward…

Author’s note: Mini-theater

Lan Shanyu: We’re dead, the boss found us making out in the office

High Priest: Boss, you’re here just in time, I want to complain that Lan Shanyu has been sexually harassing me at work

Birdie Gong: Tweet?

Qiqi: He’s still a little chick. He doesn’t understand

Birdie Gong: (⊙v⊙)

Beansprout: Thank you for all the lovely comments in the previous chapters – keep ’em coming! I love reading your comments! I haven’t had time to respond to them this week because it’s been a crazy week at work, but will try to do so when things ease up! It’s about all I can do to release the chapters on time rn. o.o