The Rise of Phoenixes Novel Translation #96

Looking worriedly at the darkening sky outside, Zhi Wei’s thoughts turn to Master Gu who in a rare occasion has left on his own for a personal errand and hopes that he won’t get caught in the rain. 

The box Yan Huai Shi brought sits on the desk. It is not made of jade as commonly seen but a pale green sort of wood with beautiful natural wood grain running through it. On the edge of the box carved a single gold flower of Devil’s Snare. It matches the embroidery on Ning Yi’s cloak and gives the box and strange mesmerising feel…kinda like the feel Ning Yi gives people. This guy…even when making a box he has to turn it into another version of himself. 

Zhi Wei smiles as she gently caresses the smooth wooden surface. She has to give it to Ning Yi, compared to expensive gold or jade jewelry, this box, fits her taste. What could be in the box? Looking at the box, it is obviously not going to be a normal jewelry sort of accessories. Could it be some interesting Minnan trinket? Or is it some great medicine for her? Or could it be a prank like when she opens the box then two more ink monkeys will jump out? He has been busy leading an army, worrying over military affairs but he still spent time getting a present for her. 

The box sitting in front of her, Zhi Wei rests her chin on both of her hands as she takes her time to think of all the possibilities that could be inside. She is not in a hurry to open the box. Rather, she enjoys the process of guessing what her present could be. In sixteen years, this is the first time she has received a gift someone has carefully prepared for her, she would like to prolong her enjoyment. After an hour, finally satisfied, Zhi Wei languidly goes to open the box. Her finger pressed against the opening and gently exerts some pressure. Eh? It didn’t move? Pushing upward, pushing doward, pushing left, sliding right…not matter what she does, no clicking sound of opening is coming. No longer languid, Zhi Wei sits straight up, grabs the box, and promptly shakes her head in speechless amazement after a careful examination. The latch was not a latch at all, it was just a decoration that looks like a latch, she was fooled! 

Holding the box in hand, a tender smile appears on Zhi Wei’s face as she thinks about this rare prank from Ning Yi. Tracing her hands all over the box for a while, Zhi Wei discovers that the box is actually completely sealed except for a narrow long opening at the bottom. Is this the opening? A bit stunned as she stares at the box, Zhi Wei wonders how in the world she is supposed to open this thing. It looks like all her guesses of miracle medicine, jewelries or ink monkeys were all wrong.  

The gap at the bottom of the box is narrow and long. Looking at the width of the gap, Zhi Wei suddenly had a thought and poked a finger into it and just as she had guessed she felt letters. A lot of letters, all crowding up inside. Something else seems to be crowding the opening so it is impossible to pull all the letters out at once so she could only shake it until the obstruction in the opening could be shaken away for a bit. *plop* a letter falls out, the envelope is pale green with a golden flower of Devil’s Snare embossed on it. The paper itself is quite unique, smooth yet very stiff. Pursuing her lips, Zhi Wei stares at the letter and breaks out in a laugh. This guy, he sure is creative! Yet, Zhi Wei is a tad bit disappointed as well– Since the box contains letters then there can’t be any surprises. Ning Yi’s eyesight is still not back so he can’t write the letters himself but would’ve had someone write them for him, which meant the letters would only contain official matters.

After staring at the letter for a while, Zhi Wei finally opens it, slowly and carefully as if she is afraid she would damage the letter. 

Before Zhi Wei even read the black ink words on the white paper a laugh burst out of her. What kind of writing is this? The words at the beginning are all ink circles, they were not intelligible at all. As the writing progressed, it slowly got a bit better. The words were slanted in all directions even if one could tell the writer had a great writing foundation but the form was still terribly ugly. The base of each word is all flat and slightly elongated, making them appear strange and awkward. The laughter instantly disappeared from Zhi Wei’s face. This is written personally by Ning Yi. She knows his penmanship, even if it looks completely different right now she can still recognize them. And precisely because his penmanship looks so different that she knows these words are written by him personally late at night in his tent, a word at a time. Heavens know how in the world with the current condition of his eyes that he manages to write a letter blindly. Judging by the flat base of the words, he must have been afraid that he would skip lines and used a ruler as a guide.   Clicking her tongue, Zhi Wei mutters “Such ugly looking writing, isn’t he embarrassed?” Even though her tone was one of complaint, her eyes were smiling. 

Bringing the oil lantern closer, Zhi Wei squinted as she carefully read the letter. The ink circle at the beginning is most likely her name. “….Wei, how is my writing? I had first practice with the military report for a good while but Ning Cheng could never tell what I was writing. By the time he says he can read my report then I know I can write letters to you. The army has started to march. We pitched our tent after marching thirty miles. I have been discussing the upcoming battle late into the night with the generals. The generals are divided into two camps and they have been arguing nonstop. The more reserved camp wants to do this the safe way. They suggest sending in the spearhead infantry first then followed by the core battalion. The group that is more brash and eager mostly consists of the brand new generals in Minnan. They are volunteering to lead elite platoons to surprise the Cheng clan by flanking them for two sides. While the two camps are busy arguing, I thought about what you would do if you were here? Going by how cunningly vicious you are, I figure you would use the method of “Clamor in the East, Attack in the West”. ( A strategy where you draw the attention of your opponent to a fake while your real attack is elsewhere). Therefore, I ordered the South Sea army to attack the city of Le Du. Then ordered 10,000 of Minnan general’s men to wait at the river pass Cheng clan’s army would have to cross in order to ambush them. Once we scatter their army then we will pursue them from all three directions. Do you think this is a good idea? But then you don’t have to worry about these things. I will recover Minnan so you just have to focus on getting better. Today we passed by the city of Feng Wei that produces a kind of Feng Wei wood. The wood is solid with exquisite grain. The people here also use the juice of a young Feng Wei sapling as a wood stain to produce the pale green color, it is very lovely. I ordered Ning Cheng to make me a box and drew up a design for him. He made it quite quickly but then decided on his own to add a golden latch saying it is a “Clamor in the East, Attack in the West” strategy. I told him to scram and go do his strategy back in the Capital. It’s almost morning so I will stop here. Reading this is like seeing me, please be sure to take care.” 

Zhi Wei reads the letter four times before carefully folding it up, stares at the golden latch, shakes her head and grumbles “What cunningly vicious? That’s you!” Holding the letter, she looks all around unable to find a safe place to hide it. After thinking over it for a bit, she stuffs the letter back into the box through the gap. Shaking the box vigorously again, another letter falls out. Zhi Wei smiles, this takes her back to her childhood when she and her brother would go get spin candies, the street vendor would also use a box. Of course it wasn’t as pretty as this one but it had a simple mechanism that would kick out a picture when they spin it. The red one is big round candy, yellow is small round candy, and green is sugar syrup. She had little luck so she gets the sugar syrup every time. Is she luckier now? Picking up the envelope she sees that on the top corner it is labeled “three”.  Taken aback, Zhi Wei quickly realizes the letters were likely put in by order but now that she has randomly stuffed the previous letter in the order is probably all messed up. All well, messed up has its own messed up fun. Zhi Wei smiles and opens the letter.

I am not skipping as much of the story as I initially planned since I keep finding myself unable to leave out scenes I feel really show off how awesome our heroine AND her friends are but then I was plagued by thoughts maybe I am the only one who thought they were cool scenes. Thanks to everyone who commented and assured me that scenes without our two leads together are still keeping your interest so I will go ahead keep on the course I am currently on now.

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