- The Emperor accepts Miss Hua’s suggestion that they (the girls) should challenge each other with questions and out of remembrance for the soldiers’ bravery, someone could beat the drums as a count down for the amount of time someone has remaining to answer the questions.
Smiling sweetly at Ning Yi, Miss Hua inquires “I was wondering if us ladies have the pleasure of inviting Princess Chu to personally beat the drums for us?”
Ning Yi raised the wine cup to his lips then smiled.
Miss Hua’s little heart lurched in joy.
“No.”
……
Embarrassed, Miss Hua stood there awkwardly until the 7th Prince quickly interjects “How could Sixth Brother be the one to beat the drums? What if he was secretly helping a certain lady and slows down purposefully while beating the drums?”
Smiling gracefully, Miss Hua quickly accepts 7th Prince’s excuse as the room burst into laughter “Yes, Your Highness is right.” Turning to bow towards the Emperor, Miss Hua promptly asks the Emperor to appoints someone to be in charge of the drums.
Looking around, the Emperor decides to ask Helian.
Reluctant, Helian mutters “If I am going to beat the drums then I am going on the battlefield. Why would I do it for a bunch of chicks?”
Giving Helian a side glance, Zhi Wei reminds him “Your Highness, a chick is sitting right next to you.”
Unabashed, Helian replies “You are an aunt. Aunts are elders.”
“Go.” Zhi Wei gives Helian a push, “It’s not worth it to go against the Emperor on something so minor.”
Draining his wine cup, Helian jumps up and strides away but not before he turns to admonish Zhi Wei “Don’t you get mixed up in this. They are picking wives so it has nothing to do with you.”
Waving him off, Zhi Wei replies “Why would I? No matter who is doing the picking, it would have nothing to do with me.”
Pouring herself another cup of wine, Zhi Wei thought: Do what? The Emperor obviously favors Miss Hua. Or else he would not have agreed to such difficult rules…rules that give Miss Hua a clear advantage. Of course, Miss Hua is the logical choice as the Emperor’s daughter-in-law. While the Hua family has a high status, it doesn’t hold much actual power in court. The Emperor wouldn’t want Ning Yi to marry a woman from an influential family. (Miss Hua is well known for her scholarly abilities so everyone assumes she will win.)
- Not willing to let Miss Hua get all the attention, Miss Hu jumps up and offers her own suggestion that instead of select girls getting up to face the drum challenge, ALL the girls should instead write down a question before the drum stop beating. Out of all the questions, the Emperor will choose the best three and those three girls will then have the opportunity to answer their own questions. (Miss Hu figures that this way, instead of having Miss Hua as the ONLY winner, she too will have a chance to be one of the three winners…thus a chance at being chosen as Ning Yi’s wife.)
Miss Hua shrugs. What does it matter if the rules are changed? Can they change the fact that she is the best in the whole Captial?
After pondering for a moment, the Emperor agrees and directs the servents to pass out pens and paper to all the ladies. Even if he wants to favor Miss Hua he can’t be too obvious about it.
Suddenly stepping froward, Ning Yi smiles “This sounds great. I will drink a toast to thank all the ladies for their hard work.”
Following along with all the blushing girls, Zhi Wei raises her own cup and sees a ball covered in candle wax floating in it.
Just now, while everyone tipped their head back to drink their wine, Ning Yi had shot the candle wax covered ball into her cup.
Keeping her expression blend, Zhi Wei disceretly takes out the ball and opens it within her sleeve. The note hidden inside the ball reads “The way to deal with Prince Youngning”
Is this the so-called cheating? Zhi Wei destroys the note and ponders thoughfully. Prince Youngning is this nation’s only prince that was awarded and not by birth. Back in the day, Prince Youngning’s father had single handily helped the Emperor become who he is today. It could even be argued that the man could’ve easily become the emperor himself but instead, he had let the Emperor ascend to the throne. So of course at that time, Prince Youngning’s father was amply rewarded for everything he has done for the Emperor. However, as the saying goes, what was given must be taken back eventually and what you ate must be regurgitated later. Since the young Prince Youngning has inherited his father’s title, the Emperor has watched silently as Prince Youngning begins to grow his army and try to oust the Emperor’s influence within his land.
So Ning Yi wants her to win by using this question?
This question?
Zhi Wei laughs in derision. Looking up, Zhi Wei notices Miss Hua, who was sitting across the aisle from her is visibly excited for some unknown reason. Faced flushed, Miss Hua’s eyes are even brimming with tears of excitement.
What’s going on with her? Did she drink too much?
His patience long gone, Helian yells impatiently ” Drums!”
The ladies grab the papers in unison.
“Boom…. boom….boom….”
The sound of the drum came slowly but no matter how slow it eventually slowed.
Sipping her wine lazily, Zhi Wei finally wrote a few words on the paper when the second drum sounded.
The papers were gathered and presented to the Emperor.
Other than the sound of rustling of papers, the place was dead silent as everyone eagerly watches the Emperor’s expression.
Well…everyone except two people whose expression remained disinterested.
One of them is Ning Yi who behaves as if he wasn’t the one choosing a wife and is still reading his erotic scrolls.
Another is Zhi Wei…who noticed her next table has not touched her wine kettle because of nervousness and is in the process of sneaking the wine onto her own table.
She swears the wine is not for her. Turely. Poor Prince Helian only had a few small mouthfuls.
Under the many candle lights, the Emperor’s expression remained calm and unmoved until he suddenly lets out a slight sound of “Eh?” as he looks over a paper.
Someone tightens her grasp on the handkerchief.
Someone sits up taller.
The Emperor looks over the paper a few more times and finally puts the paper down. The crowd lets out a sigh that might’ve been disappointment or relief.
The speed of the Emperor flipping through the paper become faster and faster, playing with everyone’s nerve with each turn of the page…until the Emperor studdenly stopped.
Pulling out a piece of paper, the Emperor reads over it a few times then finally lets out a laugh.
Curious, Royal Concubine Chang looks over at the paper and promptly pulls out a handkerchief to cover her mouth.
Everyone else is equally curious but could only look at each other blankly. Armed with the title as the most favored princess, Princess Shao Ning runs up to the Emperor’s seat, looks at the paper then runs back to her seat all the while laughing wildly.
Up to this point Ning Yi had been focused on reading his own erotic scrolls but even he is unable to ignore the ruckus by now. Before Princess Shao Ning could get back to her seat, 7th Prince is already out of his own seat. Reading over the paper, 7th Prince walks back with a strange expression…one that is obviously twisted from the difficulty of trying to suppress a laugh.
Ning Yi looks over at 7th Prince. 7th Prince remains silent as his eyes darts first to the left then the right. Jumping in surprise when Ning Yi smashes his cup onto to the table causing the wine to spill all over, 7th Prince realizes that Ning Yi is at boiling point and quickly runs over to whisper in his ear.
Ning Yi’s expression turns several shades darker. If one looks closely, one could see the pure golden cup in Ning Yi’s hand has slightly changed shape.
Peering at the wine cup with pity, Zhi Wei feels great sympathy for all the stuff that is unfortunate enough to be close enough to Prince Chu.
Laughing with amusement for another few moments, the Emperor finally sets the paper aside, placing it in the first place.
Royal Concubine Chang grabs her handkerchief again, Princess Shao Ning who just manages to sit up straight doubles over again. 7th Prince is busy whispering to his wife…who promptly starts searching for her handkerchief as well. All the other princes rush up to read the paper before scattering away to find a place to burst out in laughter.
The poor wine cup in Ning Yi’s hand has become a thin gold leaf…
Glancing over the tables, Ning Yi’s eyes fall on Zhi Wei who stares back at him with a completely innocent expression– she was channeling Gu Nan Yi.
Taken aback, doubt flashed across Ning Yi’s eyes.
By now, the Emperor had picked out three winners. Looking over the three questions again, the Emperor’s expression looked conflicted for a second before letting out a smile as he says “All the questions were pretty good today. Who knew our empire had so many women scholars.”
All text copyright @ www.Ninja-Reflection.com
Omg what is this cliffhanger XD WHAT DID SHE WRITE! This scene is so exciting hahaha!!! I love Mondays
Arghhh!!!! These cliffhangers killing me! Now I’ll spend the rest of the week wondering what offensive question Zhi Wei wrote down. This must be your version of a April’s Fools stunt, lol. 😉
Ninja you take the prize for the best cliff hangers! Thank you for this. Next week I’ll have to read the next translation after this one to prolong the read and also enjoy the humor injected. I really liked how you summarized the “non important” bits above but translated in full the juicy parts. Also, I recall you mentioned that Helian’s character is a really awesome one, so I’m looking forward to seeing translated parts including him.
To Ninja’s credit, this is a very long scene. I couldn’t wait after the last post and started reading the book. I miss some of the details due to my poor reading skills, and her translations help me fill in the holes and create a fuller picture of the scenes. Wonderful job. This was already mentioned in the book by this point, her age. I still can’t get over the fact that she is only 15. I mean Ning Yi is about 22? But everytime her age is mentioned, I always have to blink a few times.
Really, ZW is only 15 in the Novel. In the drama, she states her age is about 20. That really interesting, because her character comes off really mature. Although they both seem playful and mischevious at times. I can’t wait to see what she wrote, the suspense is killing me.
Also, I love the drama scene, its one of my favorite because of Ms. Hua. she got what she deserves because she cheated with her answer to the question.
What happened in the drama is not at all what happened in the book. The book is better. I blocked the drama out of my head because of the ending. The mentioning of the cheating is interesting because that also will play into the scene next week. Ninja is doing a great job, and it does take work to get the Mandarin into functional English that’s also lyrical when read.
OMG! 15 and 22? That is sooo young! I was pretty stupid and immature at 15 AND 22! LOL
Cliff hanger?!?!?!?!?!?! This is pretty much the only reason I look forward to Monday’s
Loved this week’s translation. I guess we’ll have to wait until next week to find out what the letters contained!
Haha. I got impatient and read the book online. I used an online annotation site to help me with difficult words. As for the question that Feng Zhiwei wrote, it was not asked in TROP, but the answer was mentioned in a different scenario. Oh man, the book is so different; Ning Yi is much more affectionate. He had to work harder to win over Feng Zhiwei. Zhiwei is much smarter, like Nirvana in Fire’s Mei Changsu’s scary god-like smart. Her vow was different too. Now I can see why people who read the novel before seeing TROP are upset.
Sara, are talking about you reading the book in Chinese? Can I read in Chinese with an online translation in English? And what vow are you talking about? and what is TROP please explain for us that are not familiar.
Yes I read the novel online in Chinese. It is available for free on a number of websites. I use https://novel101.com/novels/62946417-c062-4c4f-99ab-f1877c485743
I also use https://mandarinspot.com/annotate
to help me read it. You can copy and paste text onto it or just input the http address. It will annotate the Chinese text with pinyin and allows you to press on words you don’t know and the meaning will pop up. It is good if you can read most Chinese but need help with some words. TROP is acronym for The Rise of Phoenixes.
I am not certain if this is true so don’t quote me on it but I had read online that the C-gov’t apparently wasn’t too keen on shows that make the heroine too powerful so that’s why shows like Phoenixes had to move from a heroine center story to one where it was more equally split between the two leads (or one can even argue that it focused more on our hero). I too though, love how scary smart Zhi Wei is in the novel- to the point that I think even Ning Yi knew he would have to pay dearly if he ever got on her bad side. They really tone that part of her character down in the drama which I thought was a real shame.