The night is late, inside the tent they are still all crammed together. Gu Nan Yi refused to leave and ended up sleeping on her blanket. On top of his belly lies a baby, on top of the baby’s belly lies two monkeys.
Zhi Wei lays herself down on another blanket with her hands behind her head Shaking her head with a smile, Zhi Wei figures that everyone has gotten used to seeing their sleeping arrangement and Helian is certainly the generous sort to see his “queen” spending her nights in the same tent with another man.
A few hours goes by and a sleeping Zhi Wei is woken up by some lights. Hearing distant sounds of commotion, Zhi Wei quickly climbs out of the tent to see Helian and others heading towards the direction of the river. Across the water, the shoreline seems to be in commotion with lights of fires, shadows of people moving around and screaming.
“What’s going on?”
“Two possibilities.” Helian replies, “Either something has gone wrong within the Chimera tribe or someone is trying to trick us into crossing the river tonight.”
“How’s the level of loyalty the Chimera tribe has towards the king in the past?”
“Not great.” Helian sneers, “White Stag, Bluebird, Firefox are the three tribes that are loyal subjects.”
“Oh.” Turning back around nonchalantly, Zhi Wei says “Alright, back to bed.”
Everyone else follows her and turns their back to the river, ignoring the screams from the shoreline.
“Helian! You dolt who deserve to die a thousand times! Your mother is about to die and you are just going to stand there?” A high pitch shrill yell suddenly comes across from the river.
Helian abruptly turns back around.
Zhi Wei mutters “Whose lung capacity is this? This is scarier than the cries of ten Zhi Xiao combined.”
Under the fire torches from afar, they could see a fuzzy silhouette jumping around and waving something wildly. The person’s voice is quite impressive in that it was able to project across the noisy river and all the way past the shoreline.
“Helian, you brat! Helian, you jerk! Zha Da Lan Yin Er Ji! (Helian’s real name in his tribe language) Get over here! Right now! Immediately!”
In the dim light of the fire, Helian blankly stares at the fuzzy figure across the river, his face turning several shades of color.
The Eight Braves are also staring blankly at the figure until they suddenly all grabbed their heads and walked away in unison.
“Who is Zha Da Lan Yin Er Ji?” Zhi Wei frowns, suddenly getting a bad premonition. “It’s not…”
“It’s me.” Helian replies in a numb and dry voice.
“My lucky baby—- “ The figure that has been jumping around like a possessed soothsayer seems to realize name calling is not working and immediately changes tactics. Waving a whip around, the voice calls out pitifully “My precious baby, my little charming buttercup…your mom is about to die, that no good brute from the Gold Roc tribe wants to kidnap your beautiful mother to be his new wife. If you don’t come soon, then you will be calling that brute father!”
My little charming buttercup… Zhi Wei steals a glance at Helian and promptly decides to not ask who the figure is. Judging by his expression, he is about to expire on the spot at any moment now.
“Liu Mu Dan!” (Mu Dan actually means peony) Helian suddenly jumps and yells furiously “You go kill yourself! You go and get remarried! Go and sleep with that Gold Roc brute! The next time you meet me again, you and that adulterer can both kneel down to call me King Father!”
Zhi Wei catches herself from stumbling backward…what sort of people is this…what sort of conversation is she hearing…
After hearing Helian’s words, Miss Liu Mu Dan across the river abruptly changed her tone again, “You ungrateful pup! I gave birth to you after I was in hard labor for half a month! I raised you bit by bit. I ate grass to squeeze out milk for you but look what an ungrateful pup you grew up to be! Your father died and you won’t avenge him. Your mother is about to get dragged into someone’s bed and you don’t care. Why didn’t I just drown you in the urinal at birth?! You you you you you…I am going to drown myself so I can become a ghost to haunt you!” Waving her arm wildly as she runs along the shoreline, seemingly ready to kill herself anytime. The shoreline is quite long. She runs from one end to another, back and forth about four times with a bunch of people chasing after her but all are seemingly unable to catch up to her.
For the first time in her life, Zhi Wei’s mouth fell open in surprise as she stared at the woman across the river. Hard labor for half of a month! How are you still alive?
Helian’s face never stopped changing color the whole time he went from Zha Da Lan Yin Er Ji to little charming buttercup then to ungrateful pup. Glaring at the wild woman, Helian stumps his feet then turns to head towards his tent in a huffy yet after taking a few steps, he turns back around and ends up doing circles.
Feng Zhi Wei sighs. It is obvious now. This very impressive soothsayer is none other than the Grand Queen of the Wildgrassland, Helian’s mother. Even though she can’t figure out how the Grand Queen turns out to be this sort of outrageous woman but sadly, she IS Helian’s mother. No wonder the old king didn’t fill his quota of ten wives and only had four– this Grand Queen is a bit too special.
Narrowing her eyes, Zhi Wei stares at the scene across the river for a bit. Ugh, this suicide by drowning is sure difficult to accomplish, she has already made eight rounds by now. Grand Queen, your physical endurance is surely impressive.
“This is obviously a trap.” Zong Chen walks to her side and says “The area has been pillaged badly but Prince Helian’s…um…mother, could still have so much freedom to run around like this. It is obvious that they are using her to force Prince Helian to cross the river.”
“Do you think the Grand Queen is foolish or smart?” Zhi Wei doesn’t answer but asks a question instead with a strange smile, “The ruckus she is making, even a fool would be able to tell that something is amiss. As long as Helian is smarter than a pig, then he wouldn’t cross the river.”
“If she doesn’t make a ruckus like this and instead insists on not showing her face to lay a trap for Helian, the Gold Roc tribe would’ve probably just tied her up to threaten His Highness.” a faint smile also appears on Zong Chen’s lips “The people of Gold Roc haven’t figured out yet but once they do, then the Grand Queen will be in danger.”
Zhi Wei turns to look at Helian who stood in the darkness with his back to the river, unmoving, not turning his head.
The wild woman across the river, seemingly too tired to even wave the whip in her hand as she yells hoarsely “You ungrateful brat! Once your father dies then you care for nothing anymore! Kelie is much better than you! I will just pretend that I have never given birth to you! I will make him my son tomorrow!”
Helian’s back stiffens. Zhi Wei asks in a hush voice “Who is this Kelie?”
“The head of Firefox tribe…” Through gritted teeth, Helain answers “So, he is the traitor…”
Zhi Wei finally understood. Helian had told her before that his father’s death was very suspicious and it was obvious that there was an unknown traitor among them.
And now, the soothsayer like Grand Queen had informed her son in this manner.
Behind the Grand Queen there are hollers of laughter, seemingly filled with many audiences who are enjoying the show. Feng Zhi Wei raised her binoculars (they obviously don’t call it binoculars but since that’s what it does so I just translated it as that) and could see behind the heavy fabric tents, there are countless shadows.
“We have fighters who are good in water right?” She suddenly asks.
Zong Chen replies “Once we confirm the Grand Queen’s identity, I have already sent them in.”
Zhi Wei nods her head with satisfaction. Hearing Zong Chen’s words, Helian turned and gave them a grateful look. People of Wildgrass Land are usually not skilled with water and on such short notice, there is no time for him to find this sort of fighters especially since it is not easy to cross such a wide river undetected.
All text copyright @ www.Ninja-Reflection.com
Thank you so so much for your translation and your dedication! You are truly a wonderful person to take so much time from yourself just to translate this novel for us.
I was wondering if you have decided to translate the entirety of the novel or just the key parts.
To be completely honest, I am currently plagued by indecisiveness. In the very beginning, I had planned on just doing key parts but then I found myself skipping over less and less scenes. I figured that was understandable since I couldn’t possibly skip over our two leads’ scenes so I had assumed once we got to the second scroll and into the wildgrassland portion I would start skipping over a whole lot more. Sigh…what I didn’t count on is that I am currently like a kid in the candy store and am having a very difficult time skipping over scenes. I would go “ooh, this scene is cool” and “Oh, this would be important later on so I better put this in.” Anyhow, what I am currently doing is not very different from what I did with the first scroll where I translated most of the scenes as it is and only skipping over what I see as long but unimportant descriptions. However, I am still holding out hope that I would eventually be able to start skipping over the court intrigue parts in the wildgrassland.
Liu Mu Dan’s antics are very impressive at first sight… and I have a question about her: do you have any idea about why in the series she was Helian’s stepmother but in the novel is his real mother?
Thank you very much for your hard work, I’m loving to see how different Helian and his family are in the novel!!
As you can guess, the drama had to cut out A LOT of stuff so I am assuming they decided to write their own version of what happened in the wildgrassland instead of using the novel’s version. As we go along, you will see little pieces here and there that you can match up a bit to the novel but that’s about where the similarities end. I wondered if they chose to make her the stepmother because they wanted to add to the “is Helian the rightful king?” tension but in the novel, Helian had plenty of trouble on his hand to tame the 12 tribes so there was never any question that he is the king.
My other guess is that they decided to go with a much more conventional character for Liu Mu Dan because the Liu Mu Dan in the novel… well, that would probably destroy all the somber tragic feel the drama was going for towards the end.
ps. I had to go rewatch some episodes to answer your question…and boy, it made me mad all over again how much they slaughtered Helian’s character. The part where Zhi Wei knelt in front of Helian in an attempt to calm his anger? What?! Can you guys imagine the Zhi Wei and Helian in the novel acting like that?
Maravilhoso sem duvidas essa tradução, mas as resposta dada a leitora acima ,diz tudo. OBRIGADAAA