The Half-Spirit Princess - Chapter 1

The beginning of my parents’ romance sounded like a painfully clichéd love story.

At first, the leading man wasn’t even my father.

Two hundred years ago, before Mother could take human form, she accidentally fell into a hunter’s trap. A kind local gentleman rescued her and released her into the mountains.

Two hundred years later, Mother had gained human form. She decided to find that gentleman’s reincarnation and spend a lifetime in love with him.

In this life, the gentleman was called Qiao Yun. He was a poor scholar with nothing to his name but two thatched rooms and a widowed mother.

When Mother learned this, her eyes darted about. Wasn’t that the standard setup for the hero of a romance?

So she pretended to be injured and sat in the middle of the road Qiao Yun had to use, weeping and waiting for him to rescue her.

Passersby saw the tiny wound on her leg and a woman crying smack in the middle of the main road. Assuming she was mad, they walked around her.

Only Qiao Yun noticed her and carried her home on his back to tend her injury.

On the way, Mother invented a tragic past: plague had wiped out her village, both her parents were dead, and she had begged her way here. A poor orphan with tears streaming down her cheeks, and so forth.

She made it up as she went along, talking herself into the most pitiable creature alive.

Qiao Yun was so moved that his eyes reddened.

Mother looked at his handsome, refined face and realized how easily fooled he was. She was delighted.

He took her home, carefully treated her wound, and gave her his room after cleaning and repairing it.

He made a bed for himself in the woodshed.

As the days passed, Mother imitated the heroines in her storybooks, displaying her gentle manners, quiet grace, thrift, and housekeeping skills like a peacock fanning its tail.

By the end of her performance, it wasn’t just Qiao Yun singing her praises. Even his mother pulled off the jade bracelet handed down through the Qiao family and slipped it onto Mother’s wrist.

Soon Mother got what she wanted and married Qiao Yun. After a simple wedding, they settled into married life.

Things were fine at first. Newlyweds tend to like whatever they see in each other. Poor as he was, Qiao Yun was tender and attentive. He taught Mother to write, guiding her hand in his, and occasionally composed a little love poem for her. His eyes were full of affection whenever he looked at her.

Unfortunately, within six months Mother began to feel she couldn’t go on.

Qiao Yun was a scholar with ambitions for an official career. His mother wouldn’t allow him to touch the housework and did everything for her son herself.

Once Mother married into the family, his mother suggested that she share some of the chores.

At first, the two women divided the work, and it wasn’t too exhausting. Somehow, though, every last chore ended up on Mother’s shoulders.

Worse, the old woman liked to watch her work. Mother couldn’t even sneak in a spell. Day after day, she had to wash clothes, cook, carry water, chop wood, sweep the yard, empty and scrub the chamber pots, repair the house…

She was so tired she nearly reverted to her true form several times.

And as time went on, Qiao Yun’s faults began to show.

He was desperate to keep up appearances. Even when the family rice jar was nearly empty, anyone who asked him for help would receive a brimming bowl of rice. He had to look generous, while his wife and mother went hungry.

Whenever Mother and her mother-in-law had a disagreement, Qiao Yun always sided with his mother against his wife, infuriating her.

Most importantly, Qiao Yun was poor. Unbearably poor.

Poor and obsessed with appearances.

One day, he suddenly decided to play host again and told Mother to prepare a feast.

Prepare it with what money?

Before marriage, Mother had been an ordinary little fox spirit.

After marriage, she was starting to consider theft.

For that feast, she actually went stealing—and was caught red-handed. In her panic, Mother forgot that she was in human form and scrambled around the kitchen on all fours. Everyone present stared, dumbfounded.

Fortunately, the household she’d stolen from belonged to members of the same clan in the village. They dragged Mother to Qiao Yun, demanded an explanation, then let her go without making too much more of it.

From that day on, however, the village was full of gossip. People vividly reenacted the ridiculous sight of Mother running around on four limbs after being caught, slapping their thighs with laughter.

When Qiao Yun and Mother walked past together and heard it, he instinctively glanced at her.

The disgust in that glance hit Mother like a bucket of cold water. She came to her senses at once.

She didn’t want to be Qiao Yun’s wife anymore. She wanted to return to the mountains and be a carefree fox, and never touch this fucking nonsense called love again.

She would burn every last romance, too. Those books were what had ruined her brain.