LWSL Chapter 22

Notes: Ruan Zhizheng’s name was mistakenly written as Yuan Zhizheng for the first couple of chapters. This error has been corrected!

Shi Yuan, who was on night watch by the door, reprimanded in a low voice: “The madam is currently resting, if you have anything to say, you can wait until after the madam to wakes up.”

The servants of Shuqing Garden replied anxiously: “B-but, something’s happened with Young Master Ruan. If we wait until after the young master to wakes up, it’ll all be too late!”

Wu Ruo, who was inside the building, heard the servant’s words, his lips quirking up, and he lazily opened his mouth to ask: “What’s going on out there?”

Shi Yuan faced the building and immediately responded: “Madam, the servants of the estate say something’s happened to Young Master Ruan.”

Wu Ruo used a worried tone of voice to ask: “Zhizheng? What’s happened to Zhizheng? Shi Yuan, come in and help me change my clothes.”

“Understood.”

When Shi Yuan opened the door to enter, the servant of Shuqing Garden took the opportunity and hurriedly told Wu Ruo who was inside: “Young Master, last night when Young Master Ruan was going back, who knows what happened to two of his personal retainers, but they ended up in the second mistress’s¹The “mistress” here doesn’t mean the third party in an affair, but is meant to be the respectful way to refer to one’s female master. I opted not to translate it as “Lady” because the noble titles don’t translate as well. Also, this is referring to Ruan Lanru. She’s the 二小姐 (erxiaojie) second mistress. Accordingly, 二爷 (erye) Second Master is Wu Qianli. quarters. They even molested the second mistress’s personal maids-in-waiting. Now, Young Master Ruan is being questioned by Second Master, he says he wants to punish Young Master Ruan.”

Wu Ruo replied angrily: “This is such an urgent matter, how could you only report this to me now? How are Zhizheng’s servants?”

“I heard that they’ve already been beaten half to death.” The servant protested: “Young Master, we also just received the news and immediately came to inform you.”

“I’ve got it, I’ll hurry over now and take a look.”

After the servant left, Wu Ruo instructed Shi Yuan who was helping him to dress: “There’s no need to dress me so neatly.”

Shi Yuan understood what he meant and put the robes on for Wu Ruo in a sloppy fashion, causing Wu Ruo to look as though he was very hasty and anxious.

With Shi Jiu and Shi You’s support, Wu Ruo hurriedly walked out of Shuqing Garden.

Because he had no intentions to plead on behalf of his personal enemy, so he slowed down his footsteps once he reached the empty alleys. He only pretended to be in a hurry once he was about to reach Shuli Garden.

From afar, Wu Ruo could already see Ruan Zhizheng’s two other personal guards, Ruan Sheng and Ruan Ying, being held back outside of Shuli Garden’s main entrance, anxiously pacing back and forth.

They saw Wu Ruo approaching and hurriedly ran over: “Young Master Ruo, we’re begging you, please save our young master.”

Wu Ruo panted breathlessly, pulling a handkerchief out of his sleeve to wipe the sweat at his forehead: “Ex-exactly wh-what happened?”

His current state wasn’t a pretense. Lugging his stupid fat body along such a long way, he really was tired out.

Ruan Sheng and Ruan Ying saw that Wu Ruo was a whole mess, and felt moved in their hearts. Young Master Ruo was worthy of being called the young master’s good friend. After receiving the news, he’d hurried over without even wearing his clothes properly.

Ruan Ying said: “Last night, after we left Shuqing Garden, we immediately headed towards the Southern side gates. Yet in the end, only Ruan Sheng and I were supporting the young master out. At that time, we also didn’t really bother. We thought that Ruan Yīng²Okay, so the author clearly didn’t intend for this story to be translated or for any reason be written in pinyin. The four guards’ names are: 阮胜 Ruan Sheng, 阮勇 Ruan Yong, 阮赢 Ruan Ying, 阮英 Ruan Ying. So for the Ruan Yings, their names are written differently in Chinese and not a problem to differentiate. Not so much the case when their names are written in pinyin. Thankfully, both characters have different tones, so I’ve indicated the tone on 阮英 Ruan Yīng. For reference, the pinyin for 阮赢 is Ruan Yíng. and Ruan Yong had just stopped over by the road because they were too drunk, so we left in the carriage with the young master first. We left Ruan Yong and Ruan Yīng to ride back on the horses themselves. Who knew, in the middle of the night, the guards from Shuli Garden came to our Ruan estate, saying that Ruan Yong and Ruan Yīng snuck into Shuli Garden’s Second Mistress’s quarters and molested the second mistress’s maids-in-waiting. So, without any further discussion, they apprehended our young master to Shuli Garden for questioning.”

Wu Ruo asked: “When coming out from Shuqing Garden, the side gate is just on the left. Turning right heads in the direction of Shuli Garden and the other main gardens. How did Ruan Yong and Ruan Yīng end up walking to Shuli Garden?”

Ruan Sheng pulled a long face: “We also don’t know what happened. At the time, the five of us were clearly headed towards the side gates together. Later on, I don’t know what happened, as we walked, Ruan Yīng and Ruan Yong just disappeared.”

“Both of you shouldn’t worry, I’ll go in and take a look at the situation.”

Just as Wu Ruo finished speaking, Shi Jiu said: “Madam³in the original text, the author actually has Shi Jiu uncharacteristically refer to Wu Ruo as 少爷 (shaoye) young master. I think this is a typo, since the next part of the sentence mentions 阮少爷 and I think the author got the terms mixed up. Normally, all the Hei Manor staff refer to Wu Ruo as 夫人 (furen) as explained in a previous chapter. It’s unlikely that Shi Jiu actually meant to refer to Wu Ruo as shaoye, so I took the liberty of editing it as “Madam” instead., Young Master Ruan has come out.”

Notes: so at the beginning of the chapter, I said I’d messed up Ruan Zhizheng’s name. Here’s my excuse: his name is written 阮峙峥. I normally read the names once and then every time I encounter it thereafter, I’m kind of skimming and not actually reading the names in detail, just enough to recognise who the author is referring to.

The first time I read Zhizheng’s name, I read it as 院峙峥 and I’d also written his name like that in the character list. While writing the names of the four guards in this chapter, I was checking back that I’d written the characters for their names correctly, and abruptly came to the realisation that I’d been mistaking 阮 Ruan as 院 Yuan.

So, in my defence, the characters are pretty similar and my brain had kind of assumed his family name was Yuan and I never properly took a second look at it until today. My apologies for the error and I’ll be sure to be careful about reading the characters’ names properly.

It’s harder to screw up the rest of the words in a sentence/the general content since they’re usually not standalone characters and if it seems weird in a phrase, I do notice that (plus the author occasionally makes some typo errors in the original Chinese as well). So please be assured that the rest of the story content is still correct.

Also, as an aside, I tend to draft up chapters ahead of time and then retroactively go back to edit them before posting. If some changes are enacted and then explained later on, like with Zhizheng’s name, it’s because I started retroactively correcting it during edits but only had the explanation written out in a later chapter like this.

• 1
  The “mistress” here doesn’t mean the third party in an affair, but is meant to be the respectful way to refer to one’s female master. I opted not to translate it as “Lady” because the noble titles don’t translate as well. Also, this is referring to Ruan Lanru. She’s the 二小姐 (erxiaojie) second mistress. Accordingly, 二爷 (erye) Second Master is Wu Qianli.
• 2
  Okay, so the author clearly didn’t intend for this story to be translated or for any reason be written in pinyin. The four guards’ names are: 阮胜 Ruan Sheng, 阮勇 Ruan Yong, 阮赢 Ruan Ying, 阮英 Ruan Ying. So for the Ruan Yings, their names are written differently in Chinese and not a problem to differentiate. Not so much the case when their names are written in pinyin. Thankfully, both characters have different tones, so I’ve indicated the tone on 阮英 Ruan Yīng. For reference, the pinyin for 阮赢 is Ruan Yíng.
• 3
  in the original text, the author actually has Shi Jiu uncharacteristically refer to Wu Ruo as 少爷 (shaoye) young master. I think this is a typo, since the next part of the sentence mentions 阮少爷 and I think the author got the terms mixed up. Normally, all the Hei Manor staff refer to Wu Ruo as 夫人 (furen) as explained in a previous chapter. It’s unlikely that Shi Jiu actually meant to refer to Wu Ruo as shaoye, so I took the liberty of editing it as “Madam” instead.