Wu Qianqing was stunned, and abruptly stood up, asking agitatedly: “Is that true? I really have hope to recover my cultivation field and continue cultivating?”
Wu Ruo lowered his voice, replying: “Dad, lower your voice. About the issue of recovering your cultivation, it’s better if fewer people know. Even dage and xiaomei1大哥 (da ge): ‘ge’ means elder brother, with the ‘da’ prefix making it ‘oldest elder brother’. 小妹 (xiao mei): ‘mei’ means younger sister, with the ‘xiao’ prefix making it ‘youngest younger sister’. Wu Ruo is referring to Wu Zhu and Wu Xi., don’t tell them for the time being.”
If the people in the Wu family knew about this, Wu Ruo feared that even before his dad could begin to nurse his health, the Wu family would already find all kinds of ways to stop his dad from recovering his cultivation, or they might even kill his dad.
The most infuriating thing was that the Wu family people were far too good at pretending. In front of him and his dad, they acted like good people. In the past, as long as the Wu family bought new fabrics, they would send the best fabrics to Shuqing Garden first. If there was something delicious, they would also send it over to Shuqing Garden first. Now, if he wanted to tear away their facades, there needed to be evidence. Otherwise, it would be difficult to convince his family2 爹娘和大哥小妹: literally translates to dad and mum, and big brother and little sister. He literally lists every member of his family, so I simply translated it to “his family”. that the Wu family were such hypocrites.
If he wasn’t careful, they might think that he was dissatisfied with his marriage arrangement and venting his resentment on the people of the Wu family.
Wu Qianqing looked doubtful: “Why?”
This was good news, why shouldn’t he tell everybody?
Wu Ruo lied: “Xuanyi doesn’t want to let people know that he knows medicine, so I’d like to trouble Dad and Mum to keep this a secret. If we wait until after Dad’s health really does recover, when it’s impossible to hide, it won’t be too late to tell people then.”
Wu Qianqing nodded.
Right now, whether he could recover his cultivation was still an unknown. If they let the cat out of the bag, and he couldn’t recover his cultivation field, then wouldn’t he be ruining his son-in-law’s3男婿 (nanxu), which is a little unusual. Normally, the term is 女婿 (nvxu) which refers to your son-in-law by your daughter, hence the nv character. Here, since Wu Ruo is their son, the term is changed to nan instead of nv. reputation?
“Dage and xiaomei are almost back, regarding your treatment, I will discuss it in more detail with Xuanyi after I go back.”
Wu Qianqing looked at Hei Xuanyi with gratitude: “I’ll be troubling you.”
At the thought that her husband4Guan Tong uses 丈夫 (zhangfu) to refer to her own husband. I mentioned before this is still used in modern times, and the word itself also simply refers to “a man”. However, she uses 夫君 (fujun) which is the dated term to refer to Hei Xuanyi. I don’t know if there’s any particular nuance the author intended here, but I just wanted to point out that the terms for “husband” used were different. could recover his cultivation, Guan Tong’s eyes filled with tears of happiness and she felt that although this husband of Wu Ruo’s was a little bit ugly, he wasn’t so bad. As long as he treated Xiao-Ruo well, his appearance and status didn’t matter.
Not long after, Wu Zhu and Wu Xi returned.
They had already discussed beforehand because Wu Zhu was older, he would address Hei Xuanyi directly as Xuanyi. Wu Xi was Wu Ruo’s little sister, so she would call Hei Xuanyi “Yi-ge“.5So, Wu Zhu may or may not be older than Hei Xuanyi in terms of their actual age, but Chinese customs don’t care about that. Because Wu Zhu is older than Wu Ruo, and Wu Ruo and Hei Xuanyi are a married couple, Hei Xuanyi still has to defer to Wu Zhu as an “elder”. This is usually the rule of thumb unless, for example, Hei Xuanyi is a lot older than Wu Zhu, then things get slightly complicated. In this case, I don’t think Xuanyi is actually older or much older than Wu Zhu. As for Wu Xi, again, whether she is younger than Xuanyi or not, because she is Wu Ruo’s younger sister, she has to refer to Xuanyi respectfully. They’ve chosen to just take the last character of his name and stick a respectful “ge” to it. Technically, it’s “older brother Yi/brother Yi”, but it doesn’t sound so good translated so I’ve left it as is.
Hei Xuanyi didn’t have any objections and ordered his subordinates to bring in the gifts that he’d prepared. Following that, they watched as one car after another of gifts were delivered into Shuqing Garden, stuffing the whole yard full.
Wu Xu received the gifts list, looked at the names on the list, and his hands couldn’t help but tremble. On the list were all expensive magic weapons, medicinal ingredients, and the like.
When the Wu family people knew of this, they were filled with regret and only barely avoided beating their chests and stamping their feet. How could they have been so stupid to refuse to go to Shuqing Garden for tea6Referring again to the Chinese wedding tea ceremony tradition, where elders receive tea from the married couple and offer their blessings/red packets to the newlyweds., and miss out on such a great opportunity for nothing?
Wu Ruo was also shocked silly at the number of gifts that were no less than his betrothal gifts.
In his previous life, Hei Xuanyi did not gift so many presents. After offering the tea, he had only given his family members one gift each and left.
Wu Ruo couldn’t help looking towards Hei Xuanyi by his side.
It seemed that during the trip home in his previous life, he’d offended this man, otherwise, he wouldn’t have given so few presents.
Ah!
Wu Ruo had thought that this person had no temper to speak of, as it turned out, he just didn’t show it on his face.
Hei Xuanyi noticed his gaze and turned to look at him questioningly.
Wu Ruo looked at car after car of gifts, lost in his thoughts, and said: “When we get back, give me the list that was made of the betrothal gifts sent to me.”
He felt that the Wu family’s people had taken a portion of his betrothal gifts behind his back, otherwise, the betrothal gifts couldn’t possibly be less than the number of presents in front of his eyes.
