The Abandoned Wife’s Rebirth - Chap 18
Note:
there’s no title for this chapter. Instead, the author wrote “Long chapter, please support”. At the time of publishing, the author was participating in some kind of competition and was looking for the support of the readers. On average, the past chapters have been 1000 ~ 1400 Chinese characters long (aside from chapter 1, which was 3134 characters), and this chapter is 3030 characters long. We’ll drop back to 1000~1500 characters on average again, until we hit the paid chapters from chapter 60 onward.
By the time Hei Xuanyi returned to the rooms to rest, Wu Ruo had already fallen asleep.
He walked forward and sat down on the bed, reaching out with his hand to gently rub Wu Ruo’s stomach. Then, he pushed a thread of spiritual energy
into his stomach.
Wu Ruo could feel that it was Hei Xuanyi in his sleepy haze, so he didn’t bother to open his eyes just in case, like yesterday, he woke up and couldn’t fall asleep again.
Yet when he woke up from his sleep, there was no one by his side, even the blankets were cold. Instead, on top of the pillow were two black-silver bangles
.
Wu Ruo curiously picked them up to take a look. The surface of the bangles were encircled with carvings. After some detailed scrutiny, he realised that the rune carvings on the bangles were meant to conceal the spiritual energy of a body.
If he hadn’t guessed incorrectly, it was probably meant for him to use. As long as he had it on, even his
taiye
Wu Bofang would not be able to sense the fluctuations of spiritual energy from his body.
Wu Ruo hesitated for a moment and didn’t put it on immediately. It was better to clarify things after seeing Hei Xuanyi before doing anything, otherwise, things could get awkward.
He called Shi Yuan over to assist him in washing up and changing his clothes, then he headed to the main hall to eat breakfast. However, Hei Xuanyi was not there.
Wu Ruo asked Hei Xin: “What about Hei Xuanyi? Where’s he gone?”
Hei Xin said: “Yesterday night, Master left the city. He wanted this old one
to inform Madam, he will probably only be back in 5 days.”
Wu Ruo furrowed his brows: “Left the city? Do you know where he’s gone?”
In his previous lifetime, when he’d woken up after getting injured
, Hei Xuanyi had been in the manor. Although Wu Ruo had been unwilling to see him, Hei Xuanyi had still come over to take a look at him every now and then in the middle of the night. He’d even almost gotten frightened to death once by Hei Xuanyi’s face full of fish scales.
However, in this lifetime, how come he had suddenly left the city?
“Master did not say.”
Wu Ruo felt that his reincarnation had led to some rather big changes in this lifetime, and didn’t linger any further on Hei Xuanyi’s matters. After he’d eaten breakfast, he put on the bangles, then said to Hei Xin: “I have some matters these few days so I will stay at the Wu estate first, if Hei Xuanyi comes back, send someone to the Wu estate to inform me.”
“Understood.”
Hei Xin saw Wu Ruo to the door.
Wu Ruo worried that the low-grade corpse servants would bring him trouble, so he only brought Shi Jiu and the rest to the Wu estate to visit his dad and mum.
When he arrived at the Wu estate, the carriage stopped at the Wu estate’s Southern main entrance.
The bodyguards on duty at the entrance saw that the person alighting the carriage was Wu Ruo, and one by one their faces filled with expressions of shock.
In the past, whenever Wu Ruo went into or came out of the Wu estate, he would always go by the side entrances. Even on the day of his first visit home
, he had also gone by the side entrance. Because going by the main entrance, he would often bump into a lot of people who looked down on and jeered at him. In the course of time, it gave rise to the desire in his heart to hide away. However, the him now was no longer the him from his previous lifetime.
Under everyone’s gazes, with a coolly indifferent expression, he let Shi You and Shi Jiu help him stride forward past the threshold of the Southern main entrance. He ignored everyone’s whispering and snickering, heading towards Shuqing Garden.
The Wu estate had a total of 1500 courtyards, divided into the East, South, West, and North main gardens.
Back then, after the clan leader Wu Bofang left the Huangdu Wu family’s main clan following after his father Wu Chenzhan, they settled down in Gaoling City. Both father and son were considerably skilled and competent, so they had carved out a reputation for themselves very quickly, building up another side branch of the Wu family. And so, the Wu family’s large residence kept expanding and growing bigger, building one more courtyard after another.
That was how, in current day, they came to have such a sprawling estate with four main gardens in the shape of the cardinal directions
. Afterward, Wu Bofang married the Huangdu Yao family patriarch’s second son’s daughter, of a concubine, Yao Shuyuan. They bore four sons and two daughters, named: Wu Xuanyun, Wu Xuanran, Wu Xuanjun, Xu Xuanyu, and Wu Xuanmeng, Wu Xuanyin. Of them, Wu Xuanran was Wu Ruo’s paternal grandfather.
After Wu Xuanran married Yinluo City’s Mu family patriarch’s daughter, of an official wife
, Mu Xiuwan, they had five sons and one daughter, so Wu Bofang let them move into the Southern main estate. Then, when his sons got married, Wu Xuanran split the Southern main estate into six main compounds: Xuanwan Garden, Shujing Garden, Shuli Garden, Shuqing Garden, Shubin Garden, and Shutong Garden. Wu Xuanran and his own wife lived in Xuanwan Garden, and divvied up the other gardens to his five sons.
So, the Wu family population was large and varied, and was very difficult to survive among. Just look at Wu Ruo’s father, Wu Qianqing, who belonged to the “Qian” character generation
. Not everyone who was from the same generation as Wu Qianqing could have the “Qian” character in their name, and they wouldn’t necessarily be written into the family register. They had to undergo strict examinations and internships
, before they would be bestowed the “Qian” character, be written into the family register, and have a longevity plaque carved to be consecrated in the Hall of Longevity. After they died, their plaque could be transferred to the Wu family ancestral hall.
If there were people who were not written into the family register, then they wouldn’t be recognised by the Wu family as part of the Wu family. Additionally, they would be chased out of the Wu family, forever unable to take even half a step into the Wu estate.
Wu Ruo’s generation was the “An” character generation. Currently, there weren’t many people from the younger generation who had been bestowed with the “An” character. This was due to the fact that most of them had not reached the full 20 years of age, so they weren’t able to go for their internships. Those who were the full 20 years of age and had gone on their internships had yet to return back to the Wu family. Therefore, in the Southern main estate, only Wu Ruo’s
dabo
Wu Qianjing’s oldest son, Wu Anqi, and
erbo
Wu Qianli’s oldest son, Wu Anyi, had been bestowed the generational character.
“
Xiao
-Ruo, how come you’ve come back?” Guan Tong heard the servants saying that Wu Ruo had come back, and hurried out from the house to support her own son.
Wu Ruo saw his own mother, and a sliver of gentleness appeared on his expressionless face.
He lowered his voice and said: “This morning, Hei— ahem, Xuanyi
gave me a prescription for treating Dad’s health. After I finished breakfast, I immediately hurried to deliver it over here.”
Actually, he’d written this prescription yesterday. Because it required the use of a lot of rare medicinal herbs, so he’d brought the prescription over to let his dad and the others gather the ingredients.
Guan Tong sighed with relief: “Well, then that’s alright. I was just afraid that you had suffered over there with the Hei family.”
Wu Ruo asked: “What about Dad?”
“He’s in the study.”
“Let’s go and look for him.”
“Alright.”
Guan Tong supported him towards the residential quarters.
Inside the study, Wu Qianqing who had just been practicing his calligraphy saw that his youngest son had returned, and was especially pleased in his heart. He could also faintly guess the reason for his youngest son’s return, so he told the servants in the room to stand guard by the outer yard gates.
Guan Tong also left the study room to prepare some tea and snacks for them.
Wu Ruo explained the purpose for his visit, then he gave the prescription to Wu Qianqing to take a look: “Dad, we have to quickly gather the herbs in this prescription, and then soak your body with these herbs that have spiritual energy. After soaking for a complete 49 days, you should be able to recover your cultivation field, otherwise, we will look for another way.”
He didn’t want to speak too complacently, fearing that he would let his dad be happy for naught in the end. However, in his previous lifetime, he and his master had researched the method for treating his dad’s health, so, he still had a 70% guarantee of healing his dad: “It’s just that some of the herbs are really not too easy to find, even if we can find them, we might not be able to obtain them.”
“Let me see.” Wu Qianqing received the prescription and skimmed through it once: “We have all the ingredients written on this prescription.”
“All of them?” Wu Ruo looked at him with shock: “Our family had such rare ingredients? How come I didn’t know about this?”
“You must’ve forgotten. Xuanyi sent a whole stack of precious herbs the other day.” Wu Qianqing smiled slightly: “He was quite considerate. Knowing that my cultivation was ruined, he sent so many precious herbs over, and some of them can’t even be bought with money.”
“…” Wu Ruo’s feelings were extremely complicated, he couldn’t for the life of him understand why Hei Xuanyi was being so nice to him. Could it merely be because Wu Ruo was Hei Xuanyi’s male wife?
He was quick to reject this explanation.
It wasn’t that he wanted to think despicably of honest intentions
, but ever since his reincarnation, he was unable to believe that others were only purely being nice to him and his family members. He always held the suspicion that the other party treating them well had ulterior motives. Just like his reason for being honest to Hei Xuanyi about certain things, that was also because he wanted to receive some help from Hei Xuanyi.
Wu Qianqing kept the prescription properly, and said sternly: “
Xiao
-Ruo, in these few days since you’ve married into the Hei family, have you come to an understanding about what kind of person Hei Xuanyi is? Do you know why he can come up with so many precious herbs and rare ingredients at once?”
Even if it was the major families in Huangdu, they wouldn’t be able to so generously produce so many rare presents, so, this son-in-law’s background definitely couldn’t be simple.
Wu Ruo furrowed his brows.
In his previous lifetime, he’d lived with Hei Xuanyi for over ten years, and still only knew that Hei Xuanyi was from the Siling clan. Allegedly, Siling clanspeople were not their compatriots. As for where they were from, he really didn’t know.
Now that he thought about it, he really didn’t know much about Hei Xuanyi at all.
Which was about right. In his previous lifetime, it was barely enough for him to avoid Hei Xuanyi. If anyone even spoke of Hei Xuanyi, he wouldn’t listen or talk to them. To the him at that time, where Hei Xuanyi was from, or what kind of background he had was none of his business.
Wu Qianqing saw that he couldn’t respond, and sighed: “Well, you’ve already gotten married to him, so you’re spouses that have been tied together on one string. No matter what kind of background he has, you must stand by his side. And what’s more, this is a marriage arranged by the clan head, other people wouldn’t dare to suddenly turn hostile, then turn around and pretend they didn’t do it.”
Hei Xuanyi was of dubious background, even Wu Qianqing’s paternal grandfather, Wu Bofang, didn’t know his background. So that’s why he was worried that Hei Xuanyi might one day stand against their Wu family and cause Wu Ruo to be caught in a dilemma
.
Wu Ruo laughed coldly in his heart, the Wu family was even willing to kill them, would they even care if someone did or didn’t admit to being hostile to them?
He changed the topic: “Dad, in three months time,
dage
will be 20 years of age, and by then he’ll have to leave the manor for his internship. You have to prepare more weapons
for
dage
, it’s so dangerous outside, if he doesn’t bring more weapons to protect himself, how can we be at ease?”
Wu Qianqing nodded his head: “I will know how to prepare.”
Wu Ruo looked at him, and narrowed his eyes: “It’s been quite a few months since
dabo
and the rest borrowed those weapons…”
Wu Qianqing’s expression turned dazed, as if lost in thought.
At this moment, Guan Tong personally brought over the tea.
Wu Ruo saw her, and thought of the matter about his longevity plaque, and so spoke up: “Dad, since it’s still early, why don’t you go look for and gather the herbs?”
“Alright,” Wu Qianqing left the study room.
Guan Tong asked: “The both of you are done chatting?”
Wu Ruo sensed that there was no one nearby eavesdropping, then pulled her to sit down: “Mum, I received a congratulatory gift from Grandfather
.”
Guan Tong was stupefied, and only after a long while did she understand who he was referring to when he said ‘Grandfather’. Abruptly, she stood up, agitated: “He came to look for you?”
Wu Ruo shook his head: “No, he sent someone to send it over.”
Guan Tong hastily grabbed his hand, and asked: “So what did he send you?”
Wu Ruo observed the changes in her expressions as he spoke: “A longevity plaque.”
“Longevity plaque?” Guan Tong was dumbfounded again, “Why would he send a longevity plaque?”
“Because the longevity plaque was the seal to my spiritual energy.”
“Ah?”
Wu Ruo rubbed his eyebrows: “Mum, you didn’t know about this?”
渡 (du): means to cross a body of water, or to ferry across. Fun fact, Chinese characters are usually split into the radical and a phonetic component.
The radical tells you what the character means and the phonetic component gives you an idea of how it’s read. The radical in
du
here means “water”, and we can see that pop up in the definition of the word! Very interesting. But that also implies the author considers Wu Ruo’s blood/body liquids a body of water and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Instead, I opted for “pushing” the energy, which is a lot less creepy for me.
I think silver is more commonly referred to as a colour now, rather than a material, and it’s almost always just left in its original colour rather than painted over. In this case, the author means it’s a black coloured silver material bangle. Probably something like
, but with a different pattern engraved on it.
I’m just super impressed Chinese manages to squeeze “paternal great-grandfather” into two short syllables like 太爷 taiye and I just wanted to share that with anyone who reads this.
老奴 (lao nu): literally means “old slave”. It’s a very common way in the past for older servants to refer to themselves. I hear/see it used a lot more for servants of the royal family, but I think it’s also used for noble families like the Wu family.
Quick recap, in the previous lifetime, Wu Ruo fell on his butt after the carriage crashed and was passed out for 3 days, though he remained bedridden for 1 month after.
Throwback to the term 回门 (huimen) from the earlier chapters. If you’ve forgotten, it refers to the custom of brides returning to their maiden homes on the 3rd day after their wedding to offer tea and to pay their respects to family elders with their husbands.
规样 (gui yang): actually more like a phrase that means “looks like the four compass directions”.
Long footnote ahead: the word for “daughter” used to describe Yao Shuyuan and Mu Xiuwan are different. Yao Shuyuan is a 庶女 (shu nv), which indicates that she was the daughter of a concubine, and Mu Xiuwan is a 嫡女 (di nv), which indicates that she was the daughter of an official wife.
These are all indicated in the text, so why the footnote? I just wanted to mention that the status of children born by concubines and official wives are different. Children born by official wives are more legitimate, they are usually treated better and favoured more.
Children born by concubines are still technically legitimate, since Yao Shuyuan was able to take on the family name, which indicates that she was probably on her family register. However, in terms of material goods and the opportunities she received, it was most likely less than say, her half-siblings born from her father’s official wife. Her mum is probably not listed in the family register either.
Being listed in the family register is important because these are passed down through the family and future generations will recognise you as their ancestor, if you were in the register. As mentioned in text, being listed in the register isn’t done automatically at birth or marriage into the family either.
For people born of the family, they usually have to have some kind of accomplishment or have been a respectable member of the family to officially be added into the register in adulthood. For members marrying in, typically only official spouses are added in. How does one decide whether a spouse is official or not? That’s decided before the wedding, on what kind of arrangements the marriage will have.
The first spouse is not necessarily always the official spouse, although it is more common for people to marry an official spouse first, then take on concubines later. So, why is any of this background cultural information important? Because all of this affects status, as mentioned before, and status is a
huge
thing in Chinese culture.
There’s a lot of hierarchy and difference in treatment depending on the circumstances of your birth. All these might not be relevant to the characters Yao Shuyuan and Mu Xiuwan later, but it will add some cultural depth and nuance to how you might read the rest of the story.
Another long footnote: generational characters are not that complex. As explained in the story, they’re a single character per generation in the name that gets “earned”. So what’s the purpose of a generational character in a name? It’s a quick way to recognise hierarchy.
With such a huge family and so many generations, you’re bound to run into someone that you don’t recognise that well. If you know their name, you know whether you need to treat them as an elder/better or if you can chill a little with the formalities.
And it’s unreliable to depend on age as an accurate indicator, because someone from one generation and someone from the previous generation may be close in age because their parents either gave birth fast or slow.
I’ve seen people whose uncles and aunts are younger than them cause their grandparents are virile. In Chinese culture, generation is more important than age. So if someone is your uncle, but you’re older than them, you still have to show them the appropriate amount of respect as an “elder”/better.
It’s not as strict nowadays with the younger generation or Chinese diaspora families, but back in the vague time period the webnovel is set in, this is pretty important and significant in affecting how people interact with each other.
历练 (lilian): a verb meaning “to gain experience, or temper oneself”. It has been modified in text to suit the sentence structure in English, and will be referred to as “internships” when it needs to be in noun form for English purposes. Also otherwise referred to as ‘experience training’.
大伯
dabo
means Wu Qianjing is Wu Ruo’s father’s first older brother, 二伯
erbo
means Wu Qianli is Wu Ruo’s father’s second older brother. Why didn’t I just translate it into “first uncle” and “second uncle”? Because the word for “uncle” when they’re older or younger than your father is different, and the words for your paternal uncles and your maternal uncles are also different.
As well, the number prefixes on the terms indicate absolute birth order and don’t switch based on the number of uncles or aunts you have, relative to you. So for Wu Qianqing, he’s third in terms of absolute birth order.
His older brother’s children will call him
sanshu
, because he’s younger than their fathers, but his younger brother’s children will call him
sanbo
, because he’s older than
their
fathers. When they call him
sanbo
, he’s literally their third uncle, but when they call him
sanshu
, he’s not the third of three younger uncles, he’s actually either the first or second of the younger uncles. Confusing? Yeah, confusing.
Imagine being a 2-year-old kid who can barely talk and having to learn which form of address to use for which person, with every person having their own very specific way of being addressed. RIP.
I don’t know if I footnoted this the last time it happened, but Wu Ruo is really funny. In his head, he refers to Xuanyi as Hei Xuanyi, every single time. When he speaks to the Hei Manor staff, he also refers to Xuanyi by his full name, but that doesn’t really matter cause he’s the boss there and no one’s gonna call him out for shit.
However, calling someone by their full name is a distant, impersonal way of addressing someone and also pretty rude. Normally, for family members, you’d have a very specific way of addressing them (as discussed in footnote 11), and for other people you interact with, it’s common to address them by their profession tacked onto their family name (e.g: Doctor Chen, Master Liu, etc).
In front of his mum, Wu Ruo is definitely not supposed to be calling his husband “Hei Xuanyi”, because it’s disrespectful as heck and it reflects poorly on his mum if he has bad manners so she’ll probably school him on it. So every time he almost slips up and calls Xuanyi “Hei Xuanyi” in front of his parents, he covers it up with a cough. This is comedy gold, honestly.
以小人之心度君子之腹 which literally translates as: “using a nasty person’s heart to measure a gentleman’s heart” where the characters used for “heart” are different. The character for “nasty person’s heart” is
xin
, which is the more commonly used word for “heart”. It refers to a person’s physical heart, but also refers to their feelings and thoughts.
The character for “gentleman’s heart” is
fu
and refers to their physical abdomen/belly, but also refers to their metaphorical heart and mind. I’m not sure about the exact etymology of the words and why two different characters referring to the “essence” of a person is used, but this is just some fun language breakdown in case you’re interested.
In case it was confusing, this paragraph is from Wu Qianqing’s POV, which is why Wu Bofang becomes a grandfather instead of great-grandfather. I love that Wu Qianqing is having these thoughts because it becomes all the more tragically hilarious when the rest of the story progresses.
法器 (fa qi): enchanted/magical weapons or equipment. Also, just a reminder, the ‘internship’ just means going out into the “wild” and gaining experience in practical usage of the skills they learn in the family academy. Also referred to as ‘experience training’.
祖父 (zu fu): this is a somewhat neutral term for ‘grandfather’ that can refer to either your paternal or maternal grandfather. But it is mostly used to refer to one’s paternal grandfather. I’m assuming Wu Ruo is using this ambiguous term to deliberately confuse, just in case anyone might be listening in.