Zhi Wei went with Peony to make the rest of the room assignments and arranged for those closest to her to stay nearby. The grasslands are not like the Central Plains, where the different genders are separated into inner and outer courtyards. As long as people are in different rooms then they are considered appropriately separated. Nata was assigned to the room right between Zhong Chen and Gu Nan Yi which promptly made her face turn a shade of grey. 

Once they are done with everything, Peony immediately turns to leave with the babe in her arms but Zhi Wei asks her to stay for tea. After only sipping the tea for a bit, Peony then says she wants to go to the outhouse and starts walking out with the baby. A smiling Zhi Wei reminds her that there is no need to take the baby with her to the outhouse, what happens if the baby falls into the hole?

After coming back from the outhouse, Peony then says that she has missed the pond in the back and wanted to personally go and make sure that the female slaves haven’t dirtied it while washing clothes. Taking the baby from Peony, a smiling Zhi Wei says “I will hold Chamutu so you can focus on admiring your pond.” 

The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law exchanged smiles all the way until evening. Finished with their dinner, a seemingly relieved Peony says with Chamutu in her arms “I’ve spent most of the day here, it’s time for me to go back and go to bed.” 

“Alright, good night.” Peony’s eye lights up the moment she hears Zhi Wei’s words and promptly rushes out as if there is a fire chasing after her. 

Zhi Wei sits in silence listening to the wind and the wolves howling in the far distance. After a bit, she stands up and sees that Master Gu is already waiting by the door with her cloak. 

“How did you know I was going out?” Zhi Wei asked with mild surprise. 

Master Gu replies after a brief moment of silence “Have something on your mind.”

The guy who has never paid attention to others and might not even blink if someone dies in front of him actually sensed that she has something on her mind and is planning to go out? Zhi Wei stares at Gu Nan Yi blankly– when did it start? When did he change so drastically without her noticing? 

Putting on the heavy warm cloak, Zhi Wei reaches out her hands to tie the belt but so did Gu Nan Yi who was trying to tie the belt from the back. The moment their fingers touch, Gu Nan Yi’s hand shrinks back. He pulled his hand away so quickly that it made Zhi Wei blink with surprise again– He seems more sensitive now. In the past, he would grab her and touch her all over without a second thought. Do all of his changes have to be connected to her? Zhi Wei bites her lips, her mind suddenly a mess. Slowly finishing tying up the belt, Zhi Wei says softly “Let’s go.” 

Gu Nan Yi follows behind in silence. Taking out the walnuts he had not touched for a long time due to taking care of Zhi Xiao, Gu Nan Yi eats one and thought perhaps the walnuts were stale because for some reason the walnut had a slightly bitter taste. That bitter taste reminded him of when she was gravely ill in the South Sea and he had slept on the rooftop in the rain with the smell of moss permeating in the air. He remembered that snowy day when she buried her family and the smell of the fresh snow in the air as he helped her slowly walk on the snowy ground. He had turned around and looked back at the path they came from. In the blanket of snow, there were only her and his footsteps on the ground. At the end of their footprints, sits two lonely burial mounds. The walnut in his mouth lost their taste but he still slowly finished eating. Some of the walnut crumbs lingered on his fingers. He licked them clean. His movement was slow. On his fingers there seems to be some other fragrance on it, very faint, like the midnight fog that can’t be touched but is everywhere. He carefully smelt the fragrance on his fingers before his lips lightly touched them… 

Zhi Wei never looked back. The moonlight softly shines on the white-stoned path. He follows behind and tenderly covers her shadow with his own. 

The second palace consists of buildings that are spread out and not heavily guarded which is fairly typical of the wild grassland culture. The building styles are also not congruent. Obviously, anything that received Peony’s design input is not going to be congruent in style…thus when they turned the corner what greeted them was Peony’s bright red room with a long row of tightly closed windows. Peony is the type of person who likes to open windows wherever she goes yet today her windows are closed tightly. Zhi Wei smiles as she watches Peony’s shadow reflected on the window. Holding Chamutu, she slowly circles the room and is tenderly singing some lullaby in a very soft voice. The air has a faint floral fragrance from a small unassuming blue flower. The moonlight is soft and the breeze is bright sweet smelling. With the lullaby coming through the window, everything feels so serene and peaceful that there is a moment Zhi Wei thought she must’ve been mistaken about Helian’s meaning. 

Holding Chamutu, Peony sings nonstop as she walks to the bed and pulls down the bed curtain. Zhi Wei could faintly make out the lyrics “…little baby, like a flower, blown by the wind, hit by the rain…” The moonlight silently retreated, the clouds floated over, casting the building in the shadows. The lyric seems completely normal but for some reason, it feels a bit eerie. “…blown by the wind, hit by the rain…” 

Peony sings as she pulls out the fabric tie that held the curtain. “…Hit by the rain…” She wraps the fabric tie around on her hand until it forms a loop. “…Hit by the rain…”

Zhi Wei suddenly pushes open the door. The singing abruptly stops, a lost-looking Peony standing by the bedside turns around. Her face is full of tears with the loop tie in her hand. The tears streamed down her face, messing up her thick layer of makeup. Zhi Wei’s eyes slowly look from the loop tie to the peacefully sleeping Chamutu sucking on his thumb. This crying and singing mother is about to put that loop tie on her own son’s neck!  

“……….why…………” After a long long time, Zhi Wei finally got a word out. It was only then that she realized her voice was hoarse and broken. 

Looking at Zhi Wei as if she has lost her own soul, Peony suddenly lowers her hand and drops the fabric tie to the ground. She seems to have lost all her strength, dropping herself onto the bed with her hands covering her face. After a while, drops of tears seep out between her fingers. “I can’t keep Chamutu…none of my sons can stay alive…” Peony choked out, “Saint Da Ma said that if Helian’s brother survives then he will…” 

A chill suddenly wraps itself around Zhi Wei’s heart. After a long moment, she says “Your seven sons that died…” 

Zhi Wei stumbled back a step when only the sound of Peony’s sobs answered her. Zhi Wei stares at the usually joking and laughing woman. This woman who perpetually seems like she is without a care in the world, to allow her first son to grow up safely, killed seven of her children with her own hands? 

“Superstitions cannot be believed.” 

Peony shakes her head in utter despair “No…it can’t be wrong. After Helain’s third brother was born, I hesitated because he was so cute…but the result was that Helian fell off a cliff that year and almost died.” 

“I don’t understand.” After a long while, Zhi Wei asks slowly “Why does it have to be Helian that is saved to the point of sacrificing so many other lives that were also sons.” 

“Our tribe has a rule that the eldest son is the one with the most right to inherit.” Peony replies in a low voice “The make up of the twelve tribes are very complicated. There is always bloodshed in every generation because of inheritance issues. Sometimes, the conflict would even carry on to future generations. The eldest son is the one who could summon the most support and would be most quickly accepted by the other tribes. It would prevent many conflicts. Therefore, as long as the eldest son is not an idiot, the throne is basically his the moment he is born. Besides, on the year Helian was born there was a double rainbow and it was a year of great harvest. Saint Da Ma said this was a great omen and that he is the heaven-appointed leader. Helian, can’t die.” 

In the dark of the night, Peony slowly told her story in a broken voice that sends shocks straight to a person’s heart. Zhi Wei stood for a long long time until she finally lets out a sigh and puts her arm around Peony’s shoulder. Peony threw herself into Zhi Wei’s embrace, tears streaming down her face but held back from making any noise. Her slender shoulder shook uncontrollably like the butterfly that had lost its wing in the winter. It is difficult to believe that such slender shoulder had carried the heavy burden of a tribe’s future prosperity and carried seven innocent lives of her own flesh and blood all in silence. In those silent dark nights while her hands reached for the smiling faces of her children, did her body spasm in pain like now?” 

“…Chamutu…can’t be spared….Ku Ku’s grassland can’t fall into danger…” Peony’s tears have already soaked through Zhi Wei’s clothes but there is now an added determination in her voice. “It is obvious this child has an ill-fated life…while he was still in my womb he caused the death of his father. I abandoned him in the royal court that was surrounded by enemies but he ended up rolling under the bed and was completely unharmed. Afterwards, he could’ve easily starved to death if the maids couldn’t find him but then he had to be pooping right then. Such an ill fated life, Helian…can’t possibly go against that…” 

Some cultural explanations might be helpful here. There is a word in Chinese that if translated word for word would be “Life Hard”. I have yet to find a good way to translate it so I am using “ill fated life” here for now. The actual meaning is a bit difficult to explain but I will try. Remember back in South Sea when we first met Hua Qing, Yan Huei Shi’s family had accused Hua Qing of being cursed because she supposedly caused the early demise of her sickly first husband? Well, it is the same thing here. Helian is supposed to have a strong life force but if there is a brother who has even stronger life force than him, then it is believed that his brother would eventually cause Helian’s death. Now, Peony is not saying that the baby directly caused her husband’s death but that because the baby has such an “ill fated life”, that his existence brings about bad fate to those closest to him. 

Some exciting info and perhaps a change in the direction of this translation:

Two readers shared in the comment section last week on post #125 that there is an ongoing Phoenix translation at WebNovel titled Rising Phoenix. Looks like the translator had stopped translating about two years ago due to some personal circumstances but has since resumed and is publishing I think at least 1-2 chapter a day. I took a quick look and the translation is quite good. The caveat is that the translation is only free until chapter 40 (around the part when Zhi Wei was made the national scholar). I have not used WebNovel before so can anyone share what the average cost would be for each chapter or how the membership would work? 

With a good alternative translation source showing up, I would’ve been good with stopping my own work here but I am hesitating because the other source has a cost which could possibly make it unavailable to some readers here. With that in mind, currently, the option of stopping the translation completely is not in my consideration. However, with the WebNovel site that is translating the novel word for word that does free me up to skip around quite a bit more so that’s the new direction that I am currently pondering on. 

By the way, another exciting thing I found out but is probably old news to you all is the google translate function. While looking at the WebNovel site, I kept seeing this “Power by Google Translate” thingy on my screen (Just to clarify, the translation of Phoenix on WebNovel is NOT google translate. This particular translator is quite talented and obviously has put in a lot of work. I am assuming something on the platform triggers the “Power by Google translate” on the backend that has nothing to do with the actual work of the translation since it is obvious from reading the translation itself that the two are nothing alike.) I usually use google translate by copying and pasting passages into it but this “Power by Google Translate” thing was new to me. After poking around my own computer, I realized I could totally just pull up the Phoenix novel in Chinese, right click on the page, select the “translate to English” and magic, the whole thing is instantly converted into English! (Here the site I used to experiment: https://www.kunnu.com/huangquan/62223.htm It should put you right at the Phoenix chapter this post is on.) Now, as most of you probably already found out, google translate is far from perfect and the story will read pretty choppy and odd but I figure some of you will like to read ahead anyway. 

SO, here is what I need input on: 1. Experienced user of WebNovel sharing what the actual cost of reading a chapter of Phoenix would be. 2. Does the existence of WebNovel translation mean you would be supportive of skipping more parts? If so, to what extent? Choice A: Keep the story flowing and chop out more parts that don’t have the two leads together. (I will still bullet point the parts I skip). Choice B: I don’t care about the story (or will read the whole story elsewhere), just give me the good scenes.

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