After Dawn - Chapter 7

***

Qing Ran, having finished her mission, naturally returned to the space of the Time Management Institute.

“Host, do you need to know where the story goes from here?” The system asked dutifully.

Generally speaking, Qing Ran did not care much about the aftermath of the world where she had completed her mission, but when she thought that the concealed piece she had planted in that world by pretending to be crazy and using a faux divine technique had not yet worked, she was rarely interested in the aftermath of the plot that she had changed.

The system that had expected her to refuse was a little surprised to see Qing Ran nod. However he was just a system that, apart from giving quests to the taskmaster, was to meet all reasonable requests of the taskmaster in their personal space, so he did not raise any queries.

A blue screen emerged in front of Qing Ran’s face with a wave of the system’s hand, just like a television, and the events of the Xuan Yuan Dynasty after Qing Ran’s departure were described one by one.

When Feng Yue carried the already dead Huo Qing Ran to the Guardian Temple, Xuan Yuan Zhi had gone back to the imperial palace for the night, but Xuan Yuan Chao and Xuan Yuan Cheng were still waiting there.

“Wang Rui, Wang Xian.” A simple nod was given as a greeting, and the grip he held on Huo Qing Ran tightened, “I wonder if you two have any business here?”

“Thank you, Divine Doctor Feng Yue, for taking care of this king’s royal concubine.” Xuan Yuan Zhao looked at Huo Qing Ran, whose face had turned pale, and the hand hidden under his long sleeve clenched into a fist, “Please return this king’s royal concubine to this king, and this king will bury her in the imperial tomb with the rites of a proper concubine.”

He emphasized this king’s concubine twice in a row, not to mention Feng Yue, but Qing Ran, who was an outsider, couldn’t help but feel amused.

When he was torturing Huo Qing Ran, how could he not have thought that she was the Royal Concubine of Wang Rui, how could he not have thought that she was the Royal Concubine of Wang Rui when he left her to go out for a drink on the wedding night, and Si Rong had only spoken a few words when she crossed over and made him change his attitude towards Huo Qing Ran?

Feng Yue shared Qing Ran’s thoughts and raised an eyebrow with an unconcealed glint of mockery in his eyes.

In the beginning, he was willing to stay at Wang Rui’s wangfu because he was in possession of many court treasures for him to study, and because at that time he felt that Wang Rui was a friend he could make.

Now it seems no better.

“Didn’t Wang Rui once let it be known that your Royal Consort would only be a woman of virtue and talent?”

“The people of the world say that Huo Qing Ran is brutal and capricious, that she is a daughter who does not know filial piety, that she is a wife who is jealous, and that she is an insult to Wang Rui as his Princess.”

“Could it be that Wang Rui has forgotten what he once said?”

Xuan Yuan Zhao’s face hardened a little. As Feng Yue carried Huo Qing Ran and brushed past him, Xuan Yuan Zhao’s gaze always followed the pale face of the woman in Feng Yue’s arms, as if he was trying to find that same familiar look from back then.

Before the news of Huo Qing Ran’s death broke out, Huo Si Rong was placed under house arrest by Xuan Yuan Zhao in the Wangfu. She was only a concubine, and although she had a few skills, they were only called skills if Xuan Yuan Zhao was willing to let her skills come into play. After Xuan Yuan Zhao tightened the control of the wangfu, Huo Si Rong did not even know about Huo Qing Ran’s death, which was a big deal outside.

But as a cross-dresser, such a predicament was not enough to drive her to the brink of death, and soon a man claiming to be the Palace Master of the Demon Palace broke through the blockade of the wangfu and took Huo Si Rong away.

But as a cross-dresser, such a predicament was not enough to drive her to the brink of death, and soon a man claiming to be the Palace Master of the Demon Palace broke through the blockade of the wangfu and took Huo Si Rong away.

Huo Si Rong also thought the same way, she thought that as long as she escaped Xuan Yuan Zhao’s pursuit, it would be a simple matter to be with the Devil Palace’s Palace Master, even if she could only stay in the Devil Palace at that time, she would be satisfied to be with someone who really loved her.

But on this occasion, Xuan Yuan Zhao acted as if he had no regard for his own face at all, and without hesitation announced the news of Huo Si Rong’s elopement with another man the day after Huo Qing Ran’s burial, and released the portrait of Huo Si Rong and the Palace Master of the Demon Palace, putting out a reward for the whole world.

The imperial court and the martial world, although seemingly separate, are inextricably linked. In the past, as long as the people of the Demon Palace did not slaughter people at their discretion, the court did not care about the fights with the Jianghu people. The balance between black and white in the martial world was what the court would like to see, because whichever side was dominant would indirectly or directly affect the stability of the court.

Originally, the Devil’s Palace and those so-called sects representing righteousness in the Jianghu were already at odds with each other, and even the content of the upcoming Martial Arts Conference was a crusade against the Devil’s Sect, and as soon as Xuan Yuan Zhao’s announcement was released, it set off an uproar in the Jianghu.

Huo Si Rong herself only knew a little bit of everything, which might have been much better compared to the average lady in a boudoir, but on her way to escape with the Demon Palace Master, her physical fitness became the biggest drag.

The two of them escaped Xuan Yuan Zhao’s pursuit with great difficulty and returned to the Devil Palace’s main camp. However, as soon as they stepped through the gates of the Devil’s Palace, the people who were crusading against the Devil’s Palace chased after them and seemed to know the territory and the distribution of people in the Devil’s Palace very well. Before the people of the Devil’s Palace had time to put up any resistance, the Devil’s Palace, which they had always considered to be as solid as gold, was taken over by the Jianghu people.

The Devil’s Palace Master took advantage of the chaos to escape with Huo Si Rong, and when the Devil’s Palace was destroyed, the two of them had nowhere to go but to find a place to live in seclusion, where they could only eat wild vegetables and fruits and live in a cave each day. However, when the Devil’s Palace was attacked by the righteous faction, he was seriously injured in a battle with others and died in just two or three years.

Huo Si Rong has already been terrified by the endless pursuit of Xuan Yuan Zhao, and the organisation she created has long since fallen apart and ceased to exist under the deliberate suppression of the Xuan Yuan brothers. Without the blessing of Xuan Yuan Zhao and the others, it was almost impossible for her to walk alone in ancient times. When she could easily think of a way to earn money, it was always taken away by someone more powerful. In the end, she was beaten and sold to the mountains to become a tool for childbirth.

Day after day of torture, year after year of hardship, the ambition she had when she first came to ancient times was little by little consumed. She no longer believed herself to be the heroine of a crossover novel, and little by little she began to resign herself to her fate, not thinking of escaping from the mountains, or even being assimilated by the mountain people, and began to supervise other women who had been trafficked.

She hadn’t forgotten her former glory, her days of brocade, only that since she had escaped from the Rui Wangfu, it seemed that everything had become different.

The martial arts lord, who had admired her, had doubt in his eyes when he learned that she had committed adultery with another person and escaped; the top assassin, to whom she had given the gift of saving her life, eventually died of serious injuries while trying to help her escape; and the master of the Demon Palace, who loved her dearly, gave up his years of accumulated wealth for her, only to end up being buried in the mountains ……

What about the days before she left the Rui wangfu?

She crossed over to ancient times at the age of six, and after the initial panic, there was a lot more excitement. She was confident that she was the heroine of a crossover novel and had crossed over to ancient times just to be able to do something big for herself.

This is why she single-handedly established the Qing Yi House, the largest intelligence organization in the Xuanyuan Dynasty. When she learned that Xuan Yuan Zhao was going to marry her first sister, Huo Qing Ran, she felt upset, but more than that, she thought that she was heaven’s favorite, destined to be surrounded by beautiful men, and that Xuan Yuan Zhao, a vain and pretentious scum, was destined to regret missing out on herself.

After entering King Rui’s house as Huo Qing Ran’s companion, she became a concubine, but all she could think about was how she could escape from this place and make her way to the wider world, so she ignored all the guilt and love she felt for King Rui, which made Xuan Yuan Zhao sense the differences in her, and became increasingly fond of her.

When she went out on business, she met the Emperor Xuan Yuan Zhi, the Idle King Xuan Yuan Cheng …… The person she most preferred was Xuan Yuan Cheng because he was handsome enough, he was noble enough, and he did not have the usual burdens of royalty, plus she had heard him say himself that he wanted to meet the love of his life and promise her One life, one pair – that was exactly what she wanted.

Only in the end, it all came to nothing ……

“Someone, Er Gou’s mother-in-law has fallen into the river-“

When Huo Si Rong’s figure disappeared into the river, the image in front of Qing Ran’s eyes was suddenly frozen and then faded a little to black and white.

“If she hadn’t been greedy and vacillating between so many good men, she wouldn’t have ended up in this situation.”

Qing Ran’s mission was to tell the three brothers of the Xuan Yuan family not to fall in love with her, but it did not specify that other men could not. Although it was a little ungenerous to directly vilify her as a demon, if they didn’t do so, the countless people of the entire Xuanyuan Dynasty would face greater hardship.

The screen lights up again, and Feng Yue, dressed in plain clothes, appears. The vermilion mole on his brow is still enchanting, but his watery eyes are tinged with light sorrow.

He walked in the Jianghu and hung around to help the world, and it would be hard to say that Huo Si Rong’s downfall was not facilitated by him.

There is a certain place in the Valley of the Healing Gods where love flowers are planted, and every time they bloom, the fiery red flowers seem to set the whole valley on fire, and it is here that Huo Qing Ran’s tomb is laid.

The last image of Feng Yue was framed by a handsome man with a head full of white hair, leaning on an unmarked grave, having lost his breath a little.

The fiery red flowers were swaying with the wind around him, and a tear from the corner of his eye fell into the mid-air just in time to reflect the crystalline light.

Qing Ran closed her eyes, suddenly feeling that the scene before her was a somewhat burdensome one. She for Feng Yue, in addition to his own merit and virtue to be able to alleviate her pain, more than necessarily did not use the heroine’s aura to compel him, for the sake of Xuan Yuan Zhao because the heart is intolerant to Huo Si Rong mercy, he is able to better help Qing Ran to complete the task.

She was not in love with him, or rather, she had been preventing herself from falling in love with anyone in an assignment.

“Host, is it necessary to extract your emotions?”

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DRINK 花酒    (huājiǔ): drinking party with female entertainers

wangfu 王府     : prince’s mansion

virtue and talent 才华出众 (cáihuáchūzhòng) : outstanding talent (idiom); incomparable artistic merit

martial world 武林 (wǔlín):  martial arts (social) circles

separate 泾渭分明    (Jīng Wèifēnmíng): as rivers Jing and Wei separate clearly (idiom) / to be entirely different

inextricably linked 千丝万缕 (qiānsīwànlǚ): linked in countless ways

Jianghu 江湖 (jiānghú): in late imperial times) world of traveling merchants, itinerant doctors, fortune tellers etc / demimonde

everything  三脚猫     (sānjiǎomāo): jack of all trades

difficulty 千辛万苦     (qiānxīnwànkǔ): to suffer untold hardships (idiom); trials and tribulations / with difficulty / after some effort

died 撒手人寰 (sāshǒurénhuán): to leave one’s mortal frame (idiom) / to die

fallen apart 分崩离析 (fēnbēnglíxī): to collapse and fall apart (idiom); to break up / falling to pieces

impossible 寸步难行 (cùnbùnánxíng) : unable to move a single step (idiom) / to be in an (extremely) difficult situation

One life 一生一世    (yīshēngyīshì): a whole lifetime (idiom)

Er Gou : so, basically calling her a bitch i think, “second dog” is the literal translation

greedy 贪心不足 (tānxīnbùzú):  avaricious and insatiable (idiom); greedy and never satisfied

hung around to help the world 悬壶济世 (xuánhújìshì): practice medicine or pharmacy to help the people or public

brocade 锦衣玉食 (jǐnyīyùshí): brocade garments, jade meals (idiom); a life of luxury / extravagance