Helian finally doesn’t have to climb the academy wall anymore. (He keeps sneaking in to see Zhi Wei/Wei Zhi in the academy and gets tossed out not so gently by Gu Nan Yi) He has figured out the one weakness his “aunt” has– alcohol! Showing up frequently with some sort of rare wine that Zhi Wei simply can’t resist, Helian’s “aunt” AND Gu Nan Yi are all smiles lately.
Helian was all smiles as well at first…but then the smile slowly turns to a frown– “Aunty” lied to him again! Aunty’s doesn’t get drunk on two wine kettles– she doesn’t get drunk at all!
Poor Prince Helian who had really hoped that he could get his “aunt” drunk and have some sort of sizzling “incestuous” encounter ended up getting disappointed day after day…
In a sour mood, Helian naturally needs to find someone to vent his frustration on and who else is better suited than his beloved aunty’s precious brother? Which is why whenever Helian drinks with Zhi Wei he always hollers at Feng Hao to do this and that.
Feng Hao has always been spoiled so how would he be used to being ordered around like a servant but much to Zhi Wei’s surprise, other than looking displeased, Feng Hao is actually obediently doing Helian’s bidding. There is one more thing that has been bothering Zhi Wei, a question she was finally able to ask one night while drinking with the boys in the academy. Zhi Wei asked one of the students how they ended up getting to know Feng Hao. Patting Zhi Wei on the shoulder, a student says with amusement “Why would we be interested in that kid? There was one time we were out with Prince Chu (Ning Yi) and we noticed the kid poking around. We wanted to chase him off but Prince Chu was in a good mood and told as to leave him be. Taking pity on him, Prince Chu told us that we might as well show him around the Capital so he could be introduced to the city. The kid of course had no money so we thought we would just pay for him but then Prince Chu wouldn’t allow it saying Qiu Manor is plenty rich and pawning something randomly from his house would be plenty for him to spend… The kid disappeared after that somehow but then he popped up here again. I have no interest in being friends with the kid but who knows what about him had caught Prince Chu’s interest…”
Ning Yi again!
Zhi Wei remembered right away how she met Ning Yi in the Qiu Manor, remembered the gold under her uncle’s concubine’s bed, remembered how Feng Hao had kept asking their mother for money so he could go play with the important boys….all of this seems to have some connection to Ning Yi, as if he is hidden in the background…everywhere.
Is he trying to find something?
What secret could Feng Hao has that Ning Yi would be interested in?
These last few days, while Feng Hao has been ordered around by Helain, there was a hint of excitement in his expression…what has he done now?
Playing with the wine cup in hand, Zhi Wei looks relaxed but her mind is swirling with the unanswered questions. Before the questions could be sorted out though, the uninvited guests have already shown up.
“Assistant Director Wei!” A man rushes in with panic in his voice “The Ministry of Justice and the guards are here. They said the academy is harboring a criminal and they have come to arrest us.”
Calming the man down, Zhi Wei promises that she will not let anything bad come to their precious Academy.
Awed, by Zhi Wei’s confidence, one of the students mutters out loud that whatever Zhi Wei says seems to be correct.
“Of course!” Helian opens his arms wide toward the sky “My aunty…oh, no, my Wei Zhi is the most ferocious! Like the eagle lurking in the dense forest, vicious and fierce. The most gentle deadly hunter!”
“…..” Watching Helian excitedly runs off, the student stood dumbfounded wondering if Helain’s words were actually compliments.
- Zhi Wei meets the officials from the Ministry of Justice and realizes her hands are tied when they demand to search the academy for an escaped criminal. If Zhi Wei was to allow the Ministry of Justice to search the school then she will lose all the respect she had gained from the students and be forced out of the school soon. However, if she was to forbid the search then she is willingly hiding a criminal thus landing herself in jail anyway. After weighing her options, especially thinking over the fact that Ning Yi must be behind all this (Both the Ministry of Justice and the Academy are under Ning Yi’s control so there was no reason for Ning Yi to pit his own people against one another unless he is trying to get rid of her.), Zhi Wei calmly agrees to the search despite the students’ angry protests. To make matters worse, when the guards go to apprehend the criminal who has been hiding inside the academy with a fake name as one of the students, they found the guy long gone and instead found Feng Hao in the man’s room with a bag of money obviously given to him by the criminal.
- Amidst the chaos, Zhi Wei turns to whisper a few words to Gu Nan Yi. Gu Nan Yi nods and immediately disappears. The search was obviously just for show since it ended almost as soon as it began.
“Did you find something?”
“No. We apologize for disturbing you. You all can continue with what you were doing.” Giving Zhi Wei a nod, the two officials turn to leave. They didn’t come to destroy the academy. Their mission was accomplished the moment Zhi Wei granted them permission for the search.
“There is no more problems really?” Zhi Wei asks in a very polite voice.
One of the officials give Zhi Wei a look filled with pity– this kid is still too young. No matter how polite you are, you can’t save your status in the Academy.
“No.” A bit impatient, the man turns to leave.
“Wait.” Zhi Wei stops the men. “You don’t have any problems but I do.”
Ignoring the man’s narrowed eyes, Zhi Wei asks with a friendly smile “Did you searched all the rooms?”
“Yes.”
“Including the Biling Yuan?” That’s the area where the academy director and VIPs live.
After a moment of hesitation, the man wants to say no but since he had just said all rooms were searched he had no choice but to answer “Yes.”
“Then I have a problem.” Holding out her arms to indicate she is forced to do this, Zhi Wei continues ” I don’t care if you search the student’s rooms but all those who live Biling Yuan are not here right now. So as the one who is in charge of the academy, I have a duty to them. You searched their rooms and if something goes missing…I feel uneasy.”
You feel uneasy? Then why didn’t you go with us on the search? The officials complained silently to themselves but outwardly they still assured her “We didn’t touch anything in the room….”
“Seeing is believing.” Taking no arguments, Zhi Wei gestures with her hand for them to follow “Pease.”
Seeing the officials hesitation, Zhi Wei says dryly “I do have to report to Director Xin. (Xin Ziyan, our hero’s advisor who is the dean of the school)”
Exchanging a glance, the two officials remember Prince Chu’s order that other than the search they are not to be rude to Assistant Director Wei. In fact, they were told that they were forbidden to use force even if Assistant Director Wei insists against the search. Knowing well that Assistant Director Wei is somehow special to Prince Chu, the two officials reluctantly nods.
The crowd could smell that something is afoot especially after seeing the two officials’ reluctant expression, everyone follows after Zhi Wei eagerly.
Before the group has even arrived at Biling Yuan they could already see that its door is wide open.
The officials let out a surprised exclamation when they finally see the front yard of Biling Yuan.
“Ah, ah! What’s this?!” Taking one look at the chaotic mess in the front yard Zhi Wei immediately lets out a loud wail as if the sky has fallen ” Ah! You guys…”
Standing in the middle of the mess, with a pained expression, Zhi Wei’s body visibly “shakes” from anger.
Blinking in disbelief as they look over the mess of overturned furniture and stumped on flowers, the two officials exchanged a silent questioning glance “You did this?”
“AH!!! You….” Zhi Wei’s scream came again from the second floor, sending everyone rushing upstairs. Letting out a silent sigh of relief when they run into Xin Ziyan’s room only to see a mess of books tossed about, the two officials figures that throwing a few books on the ground can’t be that bad…right?
Belatedly noticing the strange expression on the crowds’ face the two officials finally realize something is terribly wrong.
“The 38 Ways of Succeeding in Bed”, “Da Cheng’s Glorious History”, “The Way to Conquer a Virtuous Lady”, “108 Ways of Flying Into Ecstasy Together”. Under the books that have a bunch of footprints on them, a letter is poking out with the prominent title “From Prince Chu…”
Prohibited books of the worst kind, check. Secret communication letter, check.
Completely stunned, the two officials are about to go crazy. Why are these books here?! “Da Cheng’s Glorious History” is a book that is supposed to be destroyed eons ago. The writer of the book, including his whole family was all killed so how could Director Xin just nonchalantly leave a book like that in his room?! And those letters…Director Xin’s alliance with Prince Chu is a secret only a few confidants know so how can it be exposed like this in front of everyone?!
Exchanging another glance, the two officials step forward but before they could try to shield the letters, Zhi Wei has already put her foot on the letters. Much relieved, the two officials were thankful that Zhi Wei knew the importance of hiding those letters.
Unfortunately, Zhi Wei only has two feet so while the letters were covered, the prohibited books were left out for all to see. “Ah! Wow!” Came the immediate responses from the students.
“Ah! You!” Startled by Zhi Wei’s yelp, the two officials look up to see a vase on the shelf broken in half.
“That’s worth ten thousand gold!” Zhi Wei hollers as the two officials’ heart sink to the bottom of their feet.
Stumbling out to the next room, Zhi Wei screams again after a moment “Ah! You…”
The two officials feel their legs buckling every time Zhi Wei yells…
Holding a sword shelf that is broken in half, Zhi Wei bows towards the palace’s direction and says with a solemn expression “This is 10th Prince’s room. There is a lot of items in the room that were bestowed by the emperor. Among them, this sword shelf was the 10th Prince’s favorite…”
Staring at the broken sword shelf, the two officials begin to discreetly back away as Zhi Wei rush off to another room.
Stepping out to block the two men’s escape path, Prince Helian smiles brightly as he whispers “We have not checked my room yet. The emperor gave me stuff too. A lot!” Master Gu didn’t say anything but the short sword in his hand is quite bright and pointy.
“Ahh…. You!” Came another one of Zhi Wei’s yell.
Giving up hope completely by now, the two men turn around to see Zhi Wei’s newest find.
Holding a cracked rose glass mirror, Zhi Wei calls out “The princess’ most beloved possession!”
“…………”
“Assistant Director Wei.” Wiping the sweat from his forehead, the official knows there is no way to escape the snare Zhi Wei has set for them. Who would believe them now that they had simply poked their heads into Biling Yuan’s front door and not touched a thing?! The only one he could blame is himself for underestimating his opponent. “This is our mistake. We will go back and report to our superiors, apologize to the Princess and 10th Prince. We will also make the appropriate compensations.” Giving Zhi Wei a nod, the officials turn to leave.
“Wait!”
With obvious reluctance and dread, the men turn back around.
“You wanted to do a search, I allowed it.” Zhi Wei sneers coldly as she slowly walks around the two men “But did I allow you to smash the academy, break precious possessions and destroy items bestowed by His Majesty?”
“Did you allow you to barge into Biling Yuan?”
“Did I allow you to barge into 10th Prince’s room?”
“Did I allow you to touch an unmarried Princess’ possession?” (No man other than family members is supposed to touch an unmarried noble lady’s possession or it could be seen as tarnishing the lady’s virtue.)
“Coming in is easy! Searching for a criminal, sure! To search the whole place? As you please!” Standing in the middle of the crowd, Zhi Wei declares “But I want you to know, you can search but you can’t leave! Close the door!”
No interaction between our two leads this week, but this post is an important set up for the next awesome scene so I couldn’t skip it. Plus, I feel this scene is a great one to showcase how smart and scary our heroine is. In the drama, Zhi Wei is more of an innocent idealistic girl who while certainly smart is not one to enlist fear in her opponents. In fact, I feel the Zhi Wei in the drama often seems to be rather helpless because of the various situations she is in. In the novel there are obviously many things that require our heroine to step very carefully and situations that are out of her control, but one thing that the drama left out of her character is that she is as dangerous as she is smart. Be it foes or friends, those who know Zhi Wei well knows that she has a hundred ways to make you regret crossing her. That’s also why in the novel none of the male leads would be dumb enough to force Zhi Wei to do something against her will because they all know that while they might win for the time being, they would not be able to handle the consequences of getting on Zhi Wei’s bad side.
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Thank you thank you. I love how ruthless our ZW can be. Looking forward to next week. Also thank you for the names of all the “dirty” novels in Prof Xins room. They made me laugh
It’s hard to believe in the novel she’s only 15. If I think about it too hard I get a little weirded out that there are basically 3 guys vying for her attention. Do we know how old the guys are?
And yes the name of the banned books made me laugh too!!
I actually look forward to Monday morning and now- thank you!
Hmm…I can’t remember off the top of my head if the author actually mentioned ages for the male leads but all of them would’ve been fairly young (like in the very early 20’s). Fifteen is super young to us but 18 year olds are considered old maids to them. Remember, all the girls that were vying for Ning Yi’s attention were probably our heroine age if not even younger.
Don’t think too hard on the age thing. I usually put on my “fairy tale” brain when I read novels and watch dramas.
“Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned.” Definitely don’t mess with Zhi Wei, lol. Thanks for the translation, looking forward to next week’s. 🙂
In the drama is this the scene where the princess supposedly lost emblem in ZW room, where the Prince conducted the search with Ning Yi? Please clarify for me. I love the interaction of ZW with the official. It is hilarious those books found in Director room, I was not surprised, because in the drama, despite being married to several women. He seems to be a womanizer. I can’t wait for next week, because I am a wondering scene could be next. Great job with the translation.
Hmm…I can’t think of that scene right now for some reason. Do you have an episode number?
I believe that it was episode 37 or 38.
So, it is actually in episode 39. Yes, as you can see, the drama took this chapter in the novel and turned it into a palace intrigue scene between Ning Yi’s brother and him. In the novel though, this scene is nowhere as serious/dangerous since it was simply another battle of wits between our two leads so our heroine was never in any physical danger.
Who is Biling Yuant and is Prince Helian living at the Academy in the Novel?
Biling Yuan is not a person but it’s the name of the place where the VIPs of the academy live. Helian doesn’t live at the academy which is why he had to sneak in before…that’s until he figured out that he should be bringing wine with him.
谢谢 !