Big thanks and a shout-out to biki for sending me a laptop so that I can translate LWSL more conveniently!
Hei Xuanyi ordered the bodyguards to investigate Ruan Zhizheng’s situation, as well as assigned people to surveil Ruan Zhizheng’s every single move. The bodyguards investigating Ruan Zhizheng reported back that after Ruan Zhizheng had fainted in front of the Wu estate’s entrance one year ago, he had been taken in by the Wu family because he’d lost his memories. He was a servant for the Wu family, and only after much effort was he able to slowly climb his way to the position of personal servant of a young master. This was why he was fortunate enough to learn the Wu family’s magic alongside the young master. However, in the past year, no extremely talented people nor any suspicious mysterious figures appeared by Ruan Zhizheng’s side.
The spirit thought that Ruan Zhizheng might be feigning memory loss, so Hei Xuanyi sent people to capture Ruan Zhizheng, and proceeded to conduct a ruthless examination. They realized that someone had erased all of Ruan Zhizheng’s memories, which also implied that they wouldn’t be able to find Ruan Zhizheng’s shifu anymore.
The spirit guessed that it was very likely that the people who had killed him and his family were from the Huangdu City Wu family. Otherwise, why would Ruan Zhizheng have fainted so coincidentally in front of the Wu estate’s entrance. However, the number of times the spirit had come to Huangdu City could be counted on its fingers, but it had never really gotten into contact with many Wu family members. There was even less of a chance that it had offended them, to the point that their hatred had seeped into their bones and there was nothing to do but annihilate the spirit’s entire family. If it had really been done by the people of the Wu family, there was no need to leave Ruan Zhizheng within the Wu family to garner suspicion after wiping out Ruan Zhizheng’s memories. Therefore, the spirit felt that Ruan Zhizheng’s shifu must have deliberately shifted the blame to the Wu family so that it would be more convenient for them to extricate themselves.
No matter what the truth was, there was no way to find Ruan Zhizheng’s shifu anymore, so Hei Xuanyi used all kinds of cruel methods to torture the living Ruan Zhizheng till his death. Even his soul was not let off1They most likely performed some kind of magic that would completely destroy Ruan Zhizheng’s soul, such that it would not be able to enter the cycle of reincarnation anymore. Any hint of the existence that used to be identified as Ruan Zhizheng was exterminated..
Not long after Ruan Zhizheng died, the Wu family used all kinds of excuses to invite Hei Xuanyi to be a guest at the Wu estate. However, they were all rejected by Hei Xuanyi. Still, the Wu family did not give up. They only found out later that Wu Yuxue had fallen for Hei Xuanyi when he was no longer wearing the fake skin.
In order for Wu Yuxue to marry Hei Xuanyi, the Wu family used the excuse that Wu Ruo had already died to arrange another marriage for Hei Xuanyi, so that Hei Xuanyi and Wu Yuxue could get married. Unexpectedly, they had stepped on Hei Xuanyi’s bottom line and he beat the matchmaker straight to death. After that, no one from the Wu family appeared at Hei Manor ever again.
Just when the spirit thought that Wu Yuxue had given up on Hei Xuanyi, suddenly, one night, the arrays on the main entrance of Hei Manor were destroyed and someone slaughtered their way into Hei Manor.
At that time, the spirit and Hei Xuanyi were in their bedroom resting. When they heard the exploding sounds of destruction, Hei Xuanyi and the spirit speedily opened their eyes and sat up.
“You wait here for me, I’ll go take a look at what’s happening.” Hei Xuanyi summoned Hei Yin and Hei Yang to protect the spirit, afterward, he went to the front courtyard to check on the situation.
In the residential quarters, the spirit anxiously paced back and forth, but it wasn’t a good idea to go to the front courtyard and be a burden on Hei Xuanyi, so it told Hei Yang to go take a peek, to see who had come to Hei Manor to cause trouble.
Very quickly, Hei Yang returned and said: “It’s Master’s clan enemies that have come to seek revenge.”
Hei Yin narrowed his eyes: “I think it’s better if we take furen and leave here first.”
Hei Yang agreed, nodding his head: “That’s right, once they really get going, it won’t be a simple matter of a physical altercation. It’s possible that we will also get implicated within the fight.”
The spirit was extremely worried: “Is it okay to leave just Xuanyi2Pointing out here that the spirit has gone from addressing Hei Xuanyi by his full name to just using his given name, which is a lot more affectionate. Even current-Wu Ruo rarely addresses Hei Xuanyi just by his given name, and a lot of the times that he has done so was to present an image to someone else rather than genuinely doing so. to go against those people?”
“Furen, don’t worry, Fourth Young Master3Xuantang, Hei Gan and Hei Xin are helping Master.”
Wu Ruo hesitantly nodded: “After we leave here, where will we go?”
“It’s a pity. You won’t be going anywhere.” Suddenly, an arrogant voice came from the rooftop.
The spirit and the others raised their heads to look. There were eight people in all black clothes4You ever watch a guzhuang and there are people in all black, with black veils across their faces, and it looks more like fitted long sleeved shirts and long pants than the flowing robes that everyone else in the era/setting wears? That’s what these people are wearing. Here’s a link to an example. standing on the rooftop, following that, they threw two top grade magical equipment directly to attack Hei Yin and Hei Yang.
“Be careful, their spiritual levels are at least level 7 and above.” Hei Yin and Hei Yang immediately took out the magical equipment given by Hei Xuanyi to go against the eight people, and they also summoned a large crowd of Gui clanspeople to protect the spirit. But the people that the eight had brought with them were not few either. In the span of a moment, the residential quarters fell into a chaotic battle. Although there were more Gui clanspeople than humans, and they were very quickly able to gain the advantage, but, the goal of those eight wasn’t to go against the Gui clanspeople.
After a bout of fighting, the eight executed the Great Gui Expelling Array that the Gui clanspeople were most afraid of. The moment that the Gui clanspeople displayed signs of retreating, they again very rapidly casted out a magical equipment meant to trap someone’s soul towards Wu Ruo’s spirit.
When Hei Yang saw this, he hurriedly yelled: “Get furen away from here quick!”
The leader, wearing all black clothes, said: “You want to leave? How could it be that easy?”
The soul trapping magical equipment turned into a golden lotus that immediately latched onto the spirit’s body, and the Gui clanspeople around the spirit were sent flying two zhang away because of the golden talisman runes5For visualization purposes: the talisman runes are in the form of beams of light, as if someone’s using a laser to display them in midair. that shot out from the magical equipment.
“Ah—!” The spirit cried out in pain; it was as if its body was about to be ripped apart, everything distorting in front of its eyes.
Hei Yin’s expression changed: “It’s a Buddhist equipment.”
Gui clanspeople were most afraid of meeting Buddhists; they were simply the natural enemies of Gui clanspeople.
Hei Yin didn’t dare to go near, he could only borrow the power of a magical equipment to go against the Buddhist equipment. However, all of them were ineffective.
The leader laughed coldly: “This is the most powerful celestial weapon that our Master borrowed from the Lotus Buddhist Temple. Your equipments can’t do anything to it!”
“Furen!” Hei Yang saw that one of the spirit’s ethereal souls6Quick ancient Chinese philosophy class: a person’s soul is made up of three ethereal souls (魂 hun) and seven physical souls (魄 po). The different souls are responsible/correlate to different aspect of a person, which make up their fundamental beliefs, personality, etc. This isn’t explored in depth within the novel, but it’s interesting context to have for reading guzhuang setting stories. I don’t think this belief is still held in present day, but if you watch enough xianxia/xuanhuan/wuxia, you would have heard about it. was about to be sucked into the magical equipment, and was so anxious that he was just about to rush forward. It was at this moment that a human silhouette suddenly appeared7窜出 (cuan chu): technically means ‘to escape’. It didn’t seem to make sense in this context in English, so I’ve taken the liberty of modifying. and performed magic that effortlessly knocked the celestial weapon away. In an instance, the spirit’s souls returned inside its body.
The leader’s expression changed: “Who are you?”
The newcomer wore a black cloak, their face bore ugly and ferocious features. Once they touched down on the ground, they immediately stood guard in front of Wu Ruo’s spirit, using a Soul Gathering Spell to protect the spirit’s soul. Afterwards, they performed a strange sort of magic, causing the leader and the people that he’d brought with him to fall to the ground writhing in pain.
Hei Yin took advantage of the situation and went forth to rip off the leader’s veil.
Bearing the pain of its body, the spirit strenuously took a look at the leader. The person turned out to be Wu Chenzi’s personal bodyguard, but the spirit only knew that this person’s surname was Yao.
The leader took out a spiritual talisman and cast it towards the mysterious person.
The mysterious person had no intention to murder at all, and let them leave.
The leader and his people quickly took their magical equipment and retreated.
Hei Yang went forth to support the spirit and thanked the mysterious person: “Thank you, Senior, for rescuing us.”
The mysterious person’s gaze fell on the spirit’s body, and a hint of complex emotions flashed across their gaze.
Not long after, the front courtyard’s sounds of fighting also ceased.
Hei Xuanyi brought Hei Xuantang, Hei Xin, Hei Gan and five other people who were dressed like the mysterious person and quickly ran to the residential quarters.
“Xiao-Ruo, are you alright?” Hei Xuanyi quickly took the spirit’s hand, transferring spiritual energy over to it.
The spirit said weakly: “Luckily Senior came to our rescue, otherwise, I was about to be sucked into the equipment.”
Hei Xuanyi thanked the mysterious person.
The mysterious person said indifferently to Hei Xuanyi: “I have something to tell you. Come with me.”
Hei Xuanyi handed the spirit over to Hei Yang: “Help Xiao-Ruo back to the bedroom to rest, I’ll be right back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hei Yang supported the spirit, slowly returning to the bedroom: “Furen, is there anything wrong?”
The spirit shook its head no.
Hei Xuantang looked at the spirit and felt that it didn’t seem like it was alright, and so spoke up to voice his concern: “If you feel unwell anywhere, then you should just let us know. Otherwise, dage will worry.”
The spirit said: “I just feel as if I have no strength.”
As soon as its words were said, its body suddenly turned translucent, as if it was a newborn spiritual soul, extremely weak.
Hei Xuantang was shocked: “Ah! Dasao, your body…”
The spirit lowered its head and saw that it was as if its body was about to disappear, having turned into a translucent state.
It anxiously said: “T-this… what’s happening?”
Hei Yin hurriedly said: “Furen, don’t panic, it’s possible that because your soul has gone through the process of being absorbed by the celestial weapon, causing it to be unstable, that’s why this is happening. I’ll go get Master to come and take a look.”
He disappeared from the room, then very quickly returned back to the room: “Master is coming back now.”
In an instance, Hei Xuanyi and the mysterious person hurriedly entered the room.
The mysterious person was a beat faster than Hei Xuanyi in transferring spiritual energy to Wu Ruo’s spirit. Once the spirit recovered its corporeal body, only then did they say to Hei Xuanyi: “Consider what I said to you just now carefully.”
Once he8Prior to this sentence, there was no indication of the mysterious person’s gender, so I used gender neutral singular they/them. This is the first sentence that uses 他 (ta), which implies that the person is male. finished speaking, he turned around and left the room.
The spirit immediately felt that its body was much better: “Xuanyi, who is that senior?”
Hei Xuanyi embraced the spirit in his arms and quietly said: “He’s a very powerful senior.”
“Is he someone that you know?”
“Hn.” Hei Xuanyi got the spirit to lie down: “Your soul is currently unstable, you need to calm down and gather yourself.”
The spirit tugged on his hand: “The person who wanted to kill me just now was Wu Chenzi’s personal bodyguard, Bodyguard Yao.”
“I know it’s someone from the Wu family.” Hei Xuanyi’s eyes flashed with ruthlessness: “They found out from who knows where that you turned into a spirit after your death, so they wanted to use you to threaten me to marry Wu Yuxue.”
Wu Ruo was confused: “How did you know?”
“It was what that senior said just now.” Hei Xuanyi kissed its forehead: “Right now, I still have some matters to attend to. You just stay here and rest well, I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Hn.”
Hei Xuanyi only came back on the morning of the following day. In his hands, he held all kinds of soul securing magical equipments to help Wu Ruo’s spirit secure its soul.
In order not to make him worry, the spirit obediently followed his instructions. However, it still felt that Hei Xuanyi was laden with anxiety. Although Hei Xuanyi was as expressionless as he usually was, however, after a period of spending time together, the spirit was already able to distinguish whether his mood was good or bad.
The spirit cradled Hei Xuanyi’s face: “Did you encounter something troublesome?”
Hei Xuanyi held onto the hand against his face, calmly asking: “Why do you ask?”
“I feel like you have something on your mind. Is it because you haven’t gotten rid of your clan enemies?”
“Hn.”
“Why do I feel like you’re just placating me?” The spirit kissed his thin lips: “We already agreed, you won’t hide things from me.”
“I won’t hide things from you.” Hei Xuanyi embraced the spirit in his arms.
The spirit leaned against his chest, giggling.
Hei Xuanyi tightened his arms, hugging the spirit even closer.
In the following days, the spirit noticed that Hei Xuanyi recently especially liked to hug it. No matter if they were sleeping or eating or walking about, he would hug the spirit. He even bought the things that it liked. In any case, no matter what it wanted, it would get. He was simply spoiling it silly.
The spirit very much liked this Hei Xuanyi who was being so assertive. This made it clearly feel that Hei Xuanyi really cared about it, really liked it, so, it was very happy. It was so happy that it even tossed the thought of looking for Wu Chenzi to settle scores to the back of its mind.
The people in Hei Manor also became especially nice to the spirit. Every day, they would find all kinds of methods to make the spirit happy or bring the spirit out to have fun. On the other hand, the mysterious man would quietly follow along behind them.
However, although the spirit was happy, but it still realized that everyone was being very strange. But it also wasn’t able to articulate how they were being strange, until its body turned translucent again.
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