Seeing the Gentleman - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Gu Yu kept putting me off, saying he was busy, and refused to let me go looking for him.

Even Big Yellow at the village entrance could have guessed what he was doing. He wanted to cut ties with me.

Even when introducing me, he insisted we were siblings.

Well, I refused to let him have his way.

These past few days, I had been busy visiting the elders of the various sects to see who would be willing to take me as a disciple.

The extra condition I attached was that they give Gu Yu a little bump in standing.

I wasn’t asking for him to enter the inner sect. At the very least, he shouldn’t have to do menial chores.

Beast Taming Valley, Talisman Sect, Cangqiong Sword Sect, Snow Forest…

I went to them one by one.

The first three elders were all visibly tempted at first, waving their hands with great enthusiasm, only to grit their teeth and turn me down in the end.

When I went to Snow Forest, that elusive elder who was almost impossible to find actually happened to be there.

Nan Yanhui was floating on the water, with several beavers pushing at her shoulders.

“Push east. We have a guest. Can’t you see?”

The beavers made a turn and pushed her toward the bank.

I stared, dumbfounded.

She rose to her feet and stood in the middle of the river as if walking on solid ground, ripples spreading beneath her feet.

I followed her into the pavilion at the heart of the river, where a cold fragrance filled the air.

“So you’re the seedling that bastard Yuan Bocang has his eye on?”

Nan Yanhui lounged sideways in the main seat, raising a brow as she looked me over. She lit a pipe and took a draw.

White smoke drifted through the air, its scent faint and sweet.

“I’ll be blunt. Yuan Bocang was born and raised in the depths of the palace, and he trusts love and sincerity least of all. You rejected him for a man, and he’s very angry. He won’t allow us to take you in. If you go apologize now, you may still have a chance to enter his tutelage.”

I cupped my hands. “Thank you for telling me, Elder Nan.”

“Well?” She narrowed her eyes with a smile. “Have you decided to go to Taixu Palace?”

I shook my head. “I’m going home to feed the chickens.”

Nan Yanhui choked hard on her smoke and coughed until her face turned red.

“Hahahahahaha…”

Clutching her chest, she laughed so hard she could barely speak. “Is your brother really that wonderful? With your aptitude, if you stay, you can have as many handsome men as you want in the future. You’d even receive Yuan Bocang’s personal instruction. You’d better think this through.”

A beauty laughing in delight was truly a sight for sore eyes.

Before I realized it, I was smiling along with her. I pressed my lips together.

“Of all the waters in the world, I only want one ladleful.”

My father died early.

Mother was ill and bedridden all year round.

The villagers hated my mother, and they thought I was unlucky too.

The thing I heard most often was abuse.

“A little whore born from a big whore. Who knows whose bastard she is!”

Mother never said anything to me, but the truth was, I knew it all.

Before Father died, he had been sick for years.

To support the family and buy his medicine, she had sold herself on the side.

The women in the village couldn’t control their husbands, so they hated her to the bone instead.

From the age of eight, I helped sell chickens and eggs for our family.

Children of all ages would gather around my little stall, pointing at me and laughing.

“She kind of looks like Goudan. Hey, Goudan, did your dad fuck someone and give you a bastard older sister?”

Children knew nothing of good and evil, and they had never bothered to hide their cruelty.

But Gu Yu never despised me.

That day, he was out riding in a carriage. For some reason, he ordered it to stop, then jumped down beside my stall.

“Where’s your father? Why is he making you watch the stall?”

I had just been cursed at. The moment I heard that, I burst into loud, wailing sobs.

He panicked and clumsily started taking apart his money pouch for me.

“Why… why are you crying? I’ll buy them! I’ll buy everything. Is five taels of silver enough?”

I cried even harder.

He stood there blankly for a while, at a complete loss, then apologized with red-rimmed eyes.

“What are you crying for? If you keep this up, I won’t be able to sleep tonight!”

Only after the yamen runners hurried to coax me did I learn that he was the county magistrate’s young son.

My first meeting with Gu Yu was utterly haphazard.

I took his silver.

And left him five chickens and a basket of eggs.

The next time I set up my stall was half a month later.

Who would have thought he would come again? He even said he wanted to help me sell.

Even after I scolded him, he refused to leave and simply sat off to the side.

I pretended not to see him and called out for customers as usual.

But I was clumsy with words. After sitting there for an entire afternoon, hardly anyone stopped.

No one bought eggs. Only a well-fed little tyrant swaggered over to make trouble.

I had bottled up a bellyful of anger, so I gathered all my strength and cursed him out.

But the people surrounding me only laughed, as if they were watching a tiny sparrow peck at someone.

Once they had laughed enough, they reached out to take my eggs.

Gu Yu’s face went stern, and in a clear, forceful voice, he shouted, “How dare you!”

He was a few years older than me, and at least a head taller.

He was slim and delicate, yet standing before that pack of spoiled young lords, his presence did not falter in the slightest.

A fireball flicked from his fingertips. It was quite intimidating.

The oldest boy in the lead recognized Gu Yu, and all his bluster vanished.

For the first time, I didn’t take a beating.

After Gu Yu scared them off, he turned back to look at me like a little puppy, as if waiting to be praised.

I couldn’t bring myself to scold him anymore.

But I couldn’t lower my pride enough to apologize either, so I shoved two eggs into his hands, packed up my stall, and ran.

From then on, every time I set up my stall, I would run into him.

He was good-looking, and the son of the county magistrate besides. Everyone was willing to give him face.

When the young master started hawking my goods, he worked even harder at it than I did.

One day, he came very late.

I waited until dusk was nearly falling before I finally saw him hurry down from a carriage, his hand curled in tight.

When I pried his fingers open, his palm was covered in marks from bamboo switches.

“Someone from the Huo Family called you a bastard, so I wrote insults about him at school. A lot of our classmates joined in. Father said I was learning all the wrong things at such a young age, doing nothing but forming factions and attacking outsiders.”

He sat beside me, terribly aggrieved.

I didn’t understand anything about forming factions and attacking outsiders. I only knew that he had avenged me in public.

The sky was truly growing dark.

He untied his purse and gave it to me, telling me to hurry home.

Carrying my little basket, I looked back. He stood beside the carriage, waving and waving.

In the dusk, his shadow stretched very long.

Just like the place he held in my heart.

Mother passed away when I was fifteen.

I was the only one left in the house.

Breaking the funeral basin, smashing the bowls, carrying the coffin to the grave, hosting the relatives and friends, bidding farewell to the departed soul.

I did not know how to do any of these things.

When the pallbearers saw that I was an orphaned girl who had lost both parents, none of them wanted to take the job. They were afraid of getting tainted by the bad luck of a household with no descendants.

I had no relatives, and the neighbors did not come either.

With no kin or friends to send her off, even dignity after death was impossible to manage.

Dressed in mourning clothes, I stared at the thin coffin, lost and helpless.

But Gu Yu came.

He came in mourning robes, bringing guards in black.

He laid out the funeral feast, raised the white banners, offered incense before the memorial tablet, and kowtowed.

By then, someone from the Gu Family had passed the imperial examinations and entered court as an official, favored by the emperor.

If Gu Yu wished, he could move to the capital at any time.

He also possessed a spirit vein.

Rumors spread everywhere, saying he had the makings of an immortal.

So when word got out that the young master of the Gu Family had donned sackcloth and mourning, the county officials had no idea who had died, but still came rushing over in a neat stream to offer condolences.

I knelt behind the funeral drapes and watched him receive guests and see them off until deep into the night.

That funeral was held with the utmost dignity.

All around us was quiet. Only I could not stop crying.

These were things a son-in-law should have done.

Since he did them, I acknowledged him as mine.

Before the disciples of Lushan Sect came to take Gu Yu away, he was still watching my stall for me.

He reviewed his books while keeping the accounts.

I was cooking chicken wontons, and I ladled him a hot bowl.

He had barely taken a few bites when the news came.

A few days earlier, his spirit vein had been tested, and Gu Yu had been chosen.

Immediately after, several cultivators arrived.

Holding his registration papers, they told him to pack his things and leave at once.

Gu Yu gripped his book, his hand trembling.

I fanned his wontons cool for him and told him to take one more bite.

The cold wind blew until my eyes burned. Suddenly, I was pulled into his arms.

His eyes were red as he asked if I could wait for him.

Of course I could.

I waved my hand.

It wasn’t a refusal. It meant there was no need for more words.

Gu Yu had turned down marriage proposals from court officials, rejected noble young ladies from the capital and beauties from the Wu region. From childhood to adulthood, he had guarded me like a dog biting onto a rope and refusing to let go.

When he suddenly left, I was very unused to it.

He was gone for eight years without returning. Only money was sent back.

I had many complaints.

The deepest grievance I held was that when he left, his embrace had ended almost as soon as it began, leaving me with too little even to remember.

Now that we had met again, there was absolutely no reason for me to be fickle, to abandon affection at the sight of profit.

The smile on Nan Yanhui’s face gradually faded, and she set down her pipe.

“So you’re saying you truly intend to go back and live your life as a farm girl.”

I nodded, cupped my hands, and took my leave.

I did not see that another person had appeared in the pavilion behind me, his face frosted with cold.

Holding her pipa, Nan Yanhui burst into laughter. “Yuan Bocang, did you hear that? If I hadn’t brought up her lover’s share of the stipend, she would have happily gone back to feed chickens! No one has ever loved you like that, has anyone? If you don’t want this seedling, then get lost. I like her very much.”

The man did not reply. His eyes were dark and heavy.