Big thanks and a shout-out to biki for sending me a laptop so that I can translate LWSL more conveniently!
Wu Qianqing politely replied to the person who had spoken: “Yes, this is our first time participating in Lord State Tutor’s birthday banquet. There are many things that we’re unfamiliar with, I hope you won’t take offence.”
“I just knew it was your first time!” The person raised their head with a bit of arrogance: “Then someone like me who has attended many times will explain the blessings prayer to you. When Lord State Tutor stands within the array and chants spells, he’s inviting the deity of fortune. After he has successfully invited the deity of fortune, everyone will once again sincerely pray for blessings. If we are able to move the deity of fortune, then the deity of fortune will bestow blessings to the Longevity Star1According to Baidu, the Longevity Star is considered a deity as well, but contextually, it seems like a thing rather than an individual/entity., and the blessings bestowed every time are different. It can allow the Longevity Star to increase one’s lifespan, but it can also allow the Longevity Star to increase one’s spiritual energy. It can also recover a few year’s of youth like it did just now. Not every blessing can be successful.”
After saying this, this person looked around in every direction, then lowered their voice and said: “Out of ten blessing prayers, if it is successful even once, then that’s already a very good result. Otherwise, everyone wouldn’t be this happy about it succeeding either.”
Wu Qianqing cupped his fist in his other hand: “Thank you, Senior, for explaining everything to us.”
When that person heard Wu Qianqing referring to him as ‘Senior’, he happily and repeatedly said a few ‘no problem’s.
At this moment, a woman wearing pink, elaborate robes walked up the steps, walking towards Wu Chenzi. The gold accessories and ornaments on her head swayed along with her footsteps, swinging left and right, looking extremely beautiful.
Wu Chenzi put a hand onto this woman’s hand, turning his body to face the crowd. Everyone looked towards the both of them. This woman’s appearances were gorgeous; her snow white skin was like jade resin, her arched eyebrows were thin and long, her pair of phoenix eyes were attractive and lovely, her nose was elegantly prominent, her jade-like cheeks were faintly blushed red, her lips were delicate and alluring. On top of that, she emanated self-confidence and and an air of haughtiness. In her eyes, everyone was as tiny as ants and no one could catch her attention.
Wu Ruo’s gaze darkened slightly.
The woman that Wu Chenzi was holding hands with was his most precious granddaughter, Wu Yuxue.
In front of everyone’s gazes, Wu Yuxue boldly looked directly at Hei Xuanyi, and even took a provoking glance at Wu Ruo.
A few days ago, once she knew that Wu Ruo hadn’t died yet, and that he was the ‘woman’ that was even better looking than her, she wanted so badly to make mincemeat out of Wu Ruo. However, she endured it. Afterward, she thought of a way to send Wu Qianqing an invitation card, inviting their entire family to participate in the birthday banquet. Otherwise, with Wu Qianqing’s status, how could he have the opportunity to come to this place?
When Wu Yuxue thought of this, her gaze flashed with ruthless resolution. The man who had stolen her man must be eradicated.
Her gaze turned back to Hei Xuanyi, looking at this unparalleled handsome beauty, her eyes flashed with a hint of infatuation. Today, she had especially dolled herself to the nines for Hei Xuanyi, wearing luxurious robes that were only worn to enter the royal palace. This was all so that she could show Hei Xuanyi the most beautiful image of her. It was a pity, but Hei Xuanyi couldn’t be bothered to look at her. All of his attention was on the man next to him. She was so angered that her desire to kill Wu Ruo was all the more intensified. She viciously wanted to immediately ask her grandfather to order someone to kill Wu Ruo right where they stood.
Wu Ruo laughed coldly; from just a few of her glances, he could already tell that she had fallen for Hei Xuanyi.
He glared at the man next to him and snorted lightly: “A beautiful man is the source of all troubles.”
“…” Hei Xuanyi didn’t understand; what had he done again to make his furen upset with him?
Wu Chenzi gestured to everyone that they could take a walk around inside of the temple grounds. Some people immediately ascended the pagoda, some people went to the front yard to offer incense to Buddha, and some walked around idly in the vicinity of the temple.
Wu Ruo, Hei Xuanyi and the others went to the front yard to offer incense, hanging around in areas that were full of others, and never wandering off elsewhere.
After Guan Tong was done offering incense, she gestured at a group of young men in the distance and said: “Qianqing, look, isn’t that Wu Yu?”
Wu Ruo and Wu Qianqing looked over in that direction. Wu Yu was currently chatting cheerfully with the person next to him; they were getting along very harmoniously.
Wu Qianqing frowned: “We’ve only left Gaoling City for a few months, but he’s already getting along so familiarly with the young people from the main family…”
Wu Qianqing didn’t feel that this was any sort of good thing.
Wu Ruo narrowed his eyes and immediately assumed that his dage‘s disappearance, like in the previous lifetime, had something to do with Wu Yu. In a while, after they left this place, he would have to get Hei Xuanyi to assign someone to closely watch Wu Yu.
Wu Xi snortedly coldly: “They still don’t know Wu Yu’s true colours, if they were to know the moral character of a person like him, we’ll see if they still dare to hang around with Wu Yu.”
Wu Ruo laughed coldly in his heart.
The Wu family disciples in Huangdu City were much more vicious than the Gaoling City ones, and they had much more schemes as well. If they weren’t making use of Wu Yu, or if they didn’t have preferences like Wu Yu, would they bother getting so close to Wu Yu?
Wu Yu seemed to realize that someone was looking at him, and looked towards them. The moment he saw Wu Ruo and the others, he seemed slightly shocked, but he showed no intentions of walking over to greet them. He turned away, and continued chatting amicably with the Wu family disciples.
Wu Xi pursed her lips: “His relatives have all died, but he’s still laughing so happily.”
Wu Qianqing quietly chided her: “Xiao-Xi.”
Wu Xi stuck her tongue out.
Hei Xuanyi saw that there were people forming groups to go down the mountain, so he said: “Let’s descend the mountain.”
Wu Ruo nodded in agreement, and took the lead with Hei Xuanyi to leave the temple first.
After they were a distance away from everyone else, Wu Ruo asked in a soft voice: “Hei Xuanyi, just now during the blessings prayer, did you see a gold light circulating inside of Lord State Tutor’s entire body?”
“I didn’t,” Hei Xuanyi held onto his hand, not letting him trip.
Wu Ruo thought that it was strange, then why had he seen it? Or was it that only Wu family members could see it? He would have to find a chance later to ask Xiao-Xi.
Hei Xuanyi saw that Wu Ruo had gone quiet, so he asked: “You saw it?”
Wu Ruo nodded: “Maybe I made a mistake2He literally says ‘saw it wrongly’, but it feels awkward in dialogue, so I modified it slightly..”
Hei Xuanyi frowned and didn’t say anything else.
When everyone had descended the mountain, they immediately boarded their horse carriages and headed to the Wu estate. When they alighted from their carriages, they didn’t directly enter the estate, but all waited outside for Wu Chenzi’s arrival. After that, they separated into two neat lines to welcome him back to the estate. This sort of power and prestige was comparable to the Emperor himself.
With Wu Yuxue’s support, Wu Chenzi alighted from the horse carriage, and walked to passageway between both lines of Wu family members3夹道 (jia dao) refers to a ‘narrow passageway’. In the context, it’s referring to the space between the two neat lines that the Wu family members have separated themselves into. It makes sense in the original Chinese, but without a bit of explanation in English, it can be a bit confusing, so I’ve decided to put the context into the translation itself instead of just plopping it into the footnote..
At this moment, the sun was already hanging high up in the sky, causing the two of their shadows to be casted long and thin, and even casted onto the people standing on the right.
In the moment that Wu Ruo came into contact with Wu Chenzi’s shadow, there was suddenly another thread of spiritual energy in his body. It was as though he had siphoned it over from somewhere else, the spiritual energy directly tunneled into his body, it revolved around him, for his usage.
He had no idea what exactly was going in, so he was internally anxious and shocked, and immediately assumed that someone wanted to harm him. However, there wasn’t any abnormality with his body. On the contrary, he felt extremely comfortable.
At this same moment, Wu Chenzi, who was walking past in front of Wu Ruo, suddenly felt his legs go numb. The rest of his body followed after and slumped down. If it weren’t for Wu Yuxue who was supporting him on his left, and the magical staff in his right hand, he almost would’ve fallen flat like a dog eating shit in front of everyone4Turns out “eating shit” is a universal expression used in multiple cultures. In this case, it means he would’ve fallen face first, flat into the ground..
Everyone else looked at Wu Chenzi with faces of bewilderment.
Wu Yuxue quietly asked: “Grandfather, what’s wrong?”
Wu Chenzi looked a little wretched, his stern gaze sweeping across everyone present, and he shook his head no. He hurriedly entered the Wu estate with his granddaughter, and summoned the Wu family’s clan leader5<EDITED> 族长 (zu zhang): previously this term was translated as ‘head clan elder/head elder’ here because I wasn’t sure about the power hierarchy within the Huangdu City Wu family, but this has since been clarified in a later chapter. For the Huangdu City Wu family, there is a clan leader, but Wu Chenzi is most likely the highest authority figure within the clan and the clan leader has to defer to him., as well as five other elders to the main hall for a discussion.
The clan leader and other elders entered the main hall, and looked uncertainly at Wu Chenzi who seemed weighed down by worries: “Lord State Tutor, today is your esteemed birthday6寿辰 (shou chen) refers to the birthday of an elderly person. To differentiate it from a regular birthday, I’m referring to it as ‘esteemed’ here., you should be celebrating it joyfully, but why have you summoned the few of us for a discussion? Could it be that something urgent has come up?”
Wu Chenzi said: “Just now when I was entering the Wu estate, didn’t my7Again, Wu Chenzi is using the title that is commonly translated as ‘this venerable one’. body slump for a moment?”
Everyone nodded.
Wu Chenzi’s expression darkened: “Someone siphoned away my spiritual energy.”
He explained what had happened just now once over, and the expressions of the head clan elder and the other elders changed.
“How much spiritual energy was siphoned away?”
“Is there any effect on your body?”
“Could it have been done by Mo clanspeople?”
Wu Chenzi frowned: “I currently can only sense that the other person siphoned away spiritual energy, but it can’t be counted as a lot or a little. It could very possibly be the actions of Mo clanspeople; if it’s truly so, then it’ll be too frightening. To be able to siphon away spiritual energy without my detection, this person’s capabilities may be above mine.”
The clan leader said a little anxiously: “You’re already at the 9th level of spiritual energy, and there could be a Mo clansperson who is stronger than you? Then doesn’t it mean that we have no power to fight back?”
“I’m only making some guesses, there’s also the possibility that someone else used some kind of equipment to siphon away my spiritual energy. In any case, today, we must increase our manpower. There must not be any accidents.”
The elders immediately responded: “The Emperor and Empress will be present here tonight. Naturally, we will deploy more manpower.”
Wu Chenzi waved his hand, signalling for them to leave8退下 (tui xia) is more accurately, ‘to retreat’ or ‘to step down’, but I didn’t like the phrasing for both so I rephrased., but internally, he was still unsettled. He couldn’t help but think of the omen of catastrophe that Wu Bofang had once mentioned to him.
Currently, the Gaoling City Wu family had turned out like the premonition. The huge majority of them had encountered this disaster, could it be that this time it was going to be their Huangdu City Wu family’s turn?
When Wu Chenzi thought of this, he hurriedly took out his Eight Trigrams chart to conduct a divination. However, he divined multiple times in a row, but he still couldn’t divine a conclusion. This simply made him anxious to bits.
Wu Ruo was also anxious. There was suddenly another thread of spiritual energy in his body, and he didn’t know whether it was a good or a bad thing.
When everyone dispersed, he hurriedly pulled Hei Xuanyi to a corner without anyone else, and he told Hei Xuanyi about the strange incident that had occurred to him just now.
Hei Xuanyi examined his body, but didn’t discover any abnormalities: “Does your body reject that thread of spiritual energy?”
Wu Ruo shook his head no: “It doesn’t reject it, it’s even melded together with the spiritual energy in my body.”
Hei Xuanyi frowned.
At this moment, Wu Qianqing walked over and suppressed his volume, quietly saying: “Xiao-Ruo, Xuanyi, I saw that the two of you have been hiding from us to discuss matters privately since the Wu family temple. Have you gotten some information about Xiao-Zhu, but are unwilling to tell me?”
Originally, he hadn’t wanted to probe, but seeing as they kept avoiding him to speak, he couldn’t help but ask it aloud because he was currently worried about Wu Zhu’s matters.
Wu Ruo was stunned: “Dad, there’s nothing. If we really discover anything, we will definitely tell you.”
As he spoke, he walked out of the corner, and saw Guan Tong and Wu Xi in the distance chatting. His gaze flickered, and he walked towards them with quick steps: “Xiao-Xi.”
“Erge.” Wu Xi smiled at him.
Wu Ruo once again related the matter of seeing the golden light within Wu Chenzi’s body; Wu Xi shook her head no: “No, I didn’t.”
“Is that so?”
Wu Ruo internally felt that this was even stranger. He thought to himself, could it be that the rays of sunlight had fallen on Wu Chenzi, yet he had seen it as golden light?
Suddenly, someone pinched his arm.
Wu Ruo felt the pain9The original phrasing was ‘to eat (the) pain’., and turned his head to look at Guan Tong who was standing to the side.
Guan Tong glared at him.
Wu Ruo’s expression was baffled. He was just about to ask his mother why she pinched him, but before he could speak, the flesh on his arm was pinched again.
After this second pinch, he finally understood that his mother didn’t want him to ask why she pinched him.
However, Wu Ruo couldn’t understand what was up with that first pinch?
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