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This chapter read out loud by Rogue (no download required): https://vocaroo.com/1khygbIjxqRi
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Chapter 2: Paper Man (II)
Doctor Jiang's medical practice sat on Yanchao Alley. The wooden foundations of the compound had been mostly destroyed in the fire three years ago, and today, only part of the western wing remained standing. There was enough left of the building to shield against any wind or rain, but it was by no means fit for human habitation. It was, however, a good place to shelter a ghost.
This was how Doctor Jiang's son, Jiang Shining, a young man of not yet twenty, managed to dwell in the ruins of his family home: as a lonely, wild ghost.
It took a great deal of effort for Jiang Shining to slip his way through the cracks of the compound wall, but his mouth did not stop jabbering.
"Is there an ocean between the front door and the west wing or something?" asked the bright voice impatiently.
As soon as Jiang Shining spoke, he rolled his eyes. After a pause, the dark voice responded, "I'm inside now, but the food box is still outside."
He sneered to himself. "Admirable."
The other voice replied sarcastically: "You're too kind."
Jiang Shining: “...”
His face, bathed in the blue glow of the moonlight, seemed tired of this charade. He no longer wanted to speak at all.
He trudged across the courtyard. The three decrepit walls of the west wing had been painted black by the fire, and the north-facing window was nothing more than a hole. There was still no daylight at this hour, only a crescent-shaped smidge of moon casting a faint, cool light into the room. There was a figure sitting beneath the window. Half of its body sat in the light, while the other half was hidden in darkness.
The figure was a man who wore robes as dark as night. Beneath a handsome brow were two pools of shadow from which black eyes shone. Even as a silhouette, the man looked beautiful... but under the moonlight, his skin glowed deathly pale, and his wrists stuck out at strange angles. He had a strong air of sickness about him.
He did indeed have a sickness –– he couldn't stand, nor could he walk.
The cause of the sickness? Who the hell knew. He had been at the Jiang compound for four days, but apart from the fact that his name was Xue Xian, Jiang Shining knew nothing about him.
"Could you please change your position? Your posture is so terrible, I wouldn’t be surprised if you paralysed your upper body too," Jiang Shining said as he shoved the heavy food box into Xue Xian's lap. He had been a hardworking scholar in his time, and just seeing Xue Xian's lazy demeanor made his eyes hurt.
"I won't become paralysed just from leaning back a bit. I'm not like you," Jiang Shining shot back at himself in the bright voice, even as he turned his back on the sitting figure.
“...” The scholar Jiang was thoroughly annoyed. Enraged, he turned back to Xue Xian. "I'm already back in the room. Zuzong [a], can't you use your own mouth?"
Xue Xian pried open the food box. His eyelashes fluttered as he took in the scent of the meal. Finally, he deigned to open his own mouth. "Fine. I'll burden myself, as a token of thanks to you for bringing the meat. Do you want some?"
Disgruntled, Jiang Shining replied, "Would you burn it for me?"
"In your dreams."
"Just eat!" Jiang Shining refused to speak to Xue Xian anymore. He ambled to the corner of the room, where his entire body promptly collapsed in on itself, transforming him into a thin sheet of paper cut in the shape of a person. He slid down to the floor, exhausted –– he could only be active for a short period of time each day, and needed to rest now.
Whoever had cut this paper man was clearly a… genius. The silhouette was ugly and jagged, as if it had been gnawed by a dog. There were some haphazard dots of ink on the face that could be said to approximate Jiang Shining's face in life. He looked creepy, but his cheeks still had those greasy patches of red, which added an idiotic flair.
After a pause, the paper man couldn’t hold back his snobbishness [b] anymore. He sat up from the ground and looked over at Xue Xian. "This has been bothering me for the past two days. Why can't you even hold chopsticks properly?"
Xue Xian looked up at him nonchalantly. "It’s like you were saying before. My upper body was also paralysed for a long time. I've only become able to sit up recently, and I'm not used to using chopsticks yet."
Then, impatiently, he threw an object that hit Jiang Shining in the middle of the forehead, and the paper man fell to the floor again.
Jiang Shining angled his head to see what was weighing him down: Damn, a chicken bone!
The paper man was quiet for a while, and then began to struggle against the weight. "Hey, can we talk? Tomorrow, could you not draw these red cheeks on me?"
Xue Xian reached the peak of laziness with his one-word response this time: "No."
Jiang Shining: “...”
Jiang Shining knew that he should be more polite to the man who'd saved his life. If Xue Xian hadn't made him that body out of paper, he would still be floating aimlessly somewhere, unable even to touch the ground.
But this was precisely what Jiang Shining couldn’t figure out ––
Huizhou Prefecture was huge, with no lack of empty homes. Any old building could be a good place to stay while recuperating, but Xue Xian had somehow chosen Doctor Jiang's burned-down pile of rubble. What was wrong with him? Besides, on his first day, Xue Xian had told Jiang Shining that he had urgent business to attend to. But four days had gone by, and the only thing Xue Xian had done, apart from eat, was to casually make this paper body for Jiang Shining.
Surely the urgent business hadn't been to make a paper body?
After some time lying on the cold, hard floor, Jiang Shining began to struggle again.
Xue Xian was already in a bad mood after having been interrupted twice. This time, he said, "If you try to speak again, I'll get a pair of scissors and cut away your mouth. Can't it wait 'til tomorrow?"
Hurriedly, Jiang Shining said, "Just this one thing."
Xue Xian glared at him. "Just listening to you gives me a headache. You know what would actually paralyse me further? Having to talk to you. Shut up."
"Just now, as I was coming back, I think I was followed. When I slipped through the compound wall, I glanced back, and it seemed to be a monk, with a copper coin pendant hanging off his hip. In my opinion, he must have reached the front doors by now." Having said this, Jiang Shining fell back to the ground, immobile.
He had used up all of his energy for the day, and could no longer move nor speak until nightfall –– the most he could do now was observe.
Xue Xian: “...”
What would a monk follow a ghost for?
What would a monk with a copper coin pendant hanging off his hip follow a ghost for?
Why had the bookworm not fucking told him this earlier –– was he planning to keep this vital information to himself until new year's?!
Xue Xian was furious. If he’d had all his faculties, he would’ve sent Jiang Shining straight to heaven right then, along with his entire stupid house. Instead, all he could do was lean against the window, expressionless, and watch as the compound doors were pushed open with a creak by someone on the outside.
Recently, Xue Xian had run into no small number of jianghu scammers who hustled and cheated their way to their next meal. Some of these conmen did know a couple of small tricks –– whether or not they could actually get the job done depended on how much experience they had. Usually, the older the person, the harder they were to deal with.
That was why, when the monk took a step into the ruined compound, Xue Xian let out a small sigh of relief –– the newcomer was extraordinarily young. He clearly wasn't completely stupid, but there was no way he was the real deal either. Xue Xian took a peek at the monk’s copper coin pendant, and relaxed further.
The mightier the person, the more demons they'd defeated with their copper coin pendant. Thus, even from afar, the coins on their pendant looked completely different from normal money. There would be a brightness to the coins' surfaces, as though they were covered in a thick layer of oil. Although some conmen had other ways of making their coins appear shiny, this could only trick ordinary people, and would never fool Xue Xian.
This young monk at the door –– he wasn't even trying to fake his pendant. Not only was there no shine to his coins, but the copper engravings had almost completely rubbed off. He had probably never used the thing in his life.
So how did this grifter survive? Just by his handsome face?
Xue Xian scoffed. Calmly, he put the food box down and casually cast a simple hiding spell, transforming the meal into a charred wooden log.
Silently, he leaned back into his chair. In the blink of an eye, his slender body had folded itself into a thin sheet of paper, too. Except his paper body had a far smoother outline than Jiang Shining's, and with far more detail to the face, which also did not have the two ugly red patches on the cheeks.
Jiang Shining, confined to the floor and unable to move: “...”
This one must've been in love with a fly in his past life: piece of shit. [c]
Xue Xian's delicately-crafted paper man form slid lightly from the chair onto the floor, landing right next to Jiang Shining. In the blink of an eye, Xue Xian had cast another spell onto the two paper men, so that they appeared to be a patch of moss gripping onto the muddy ground. Thus camouflaged among the ruins of the compound, the two could no longer be seen at all.
Had this been just half a year ago, Xue Xian would never have needed to go to such lengths. No matter which nosy bastard barging into his home, he would’ve sent them directly to the grave. Now, though, he had no choice but to lower himself and cast layer after layer of spells.
He had only recently managed to heal himself from full paralysis to half paralysis. Every movement took inordinate amounts of effort, and this paper body could only channel so much magic. Having managed to stay alive this long was already impressive.
Fortunately, the monk that had appeared today was as powerful as an embroidered pillow: the only thing he had going for him was his pretty face.
By Xue Xian’s estimate, the monk would simply take a look around the wing and, seeing that no one was here, decide to return to his temple.
The white-robed young monk took a few steps into the main courtyard and cast a disinterested eye around the place.
Back in the day, Doctor Jiang's compound had been made up of three main wings, three side wings, and a front wing for the medical practice with its own set of doors. It would have taken some time to look inside every room. In the three years since the fire, though, the place had become a wasteland. The monk only needed to cast a quick glance to see it all...
The monk began walking toward the west wing, unhurriedly picking his way through the rubble and detritus.
As he took a step into the room, his finger, hidden in the folds of his sleeve, involuntarily jerked. He absent-mindedly thumbed the ridges of the copper coins on his hip, then frowned, and let go.
Jiang Shining, hidden beneath the moss spell, was staring at the monk's boots, terrified that the monk would decide to come into the room for a look, and accidentally step on his body. Xue Xian, on the other hand, was completely calm, and paid no attention to the monk.
Just as Xue Xian had thought, the dilapidated shack that was the west wing needed only a cursory glance. The monk didn't even step inside: he merely stood in the doorway for a bit, then moved on.
Xue Xian stifled another laugh.
But soon, Xue Xian had to stop laughing… the monk was coming back!
This time, he held a white cloth in his hand. By the looks of the hemp material and size, this was a piece ripped from the monk's own robe. With the clean white cloth in one hand and a copper sheet that he'd found somewhere in the rubble in the other, he calmly walked over to where Xue Xian was. Then, with a swish of his robes, he knelt down, and shovelled up Xue Moss from the ground.
Xue Xian: “...”
And the worst part was that, as Xue Xian was being shovelled up, the monk’s brow seemed to crinkle a little. Unless Xue Xian was mistaken, that appeared to be a slightly disgusted expression.
Xue Xian: “...”
Fuck, this bald donkey finds me dirty!
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The author has something to say:
Oh, I forgot to mention, these days I’ll be able to update in the evenings between 8pm-9pm. Daily updates, kiss kiss!
PS: Yesterday someone asked me if by ‘angst’ I meant a love triangle. Hahahahaha, there won’t be a triangle.
Xuanmin tops, Xue Xian bottoms, don’t get it wrong~
[Acknowledgments to people who gave points on JJWXC]
To have received such a warm welcome on my first chapter is so lovely. I will work hard! Thank you!
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Translator’s notes:
[a] Zuzong: see glossary.
[b] Musuli used 君子病 (jun1 zi3 bing4), “junzi’s illness”, where Jiang Shining is the educated, genteel junzi driven crazy by Xue Xian’s lack of decorum.
[c] Musuli phrased this as: “This one must’ve had a soft-shelled turtle as its zodiac animal in its past life: he was a pure 王八蛋 (wang4 ba1 dan4; turtle’s egg).” 王八蛋 is a very common insult that has a close meaning to ‘asshole’ or ‘piece of shit’ in English. The sentence overall is quite hard to translate in a way that sounds as smooth as it did in Chinese, so I changed it to a metaphor of my own that might make more sense in English: a piece of shit attracts flies.
just starting to read this book. now i can't stop😆 thank you for the translation!😘😘😘
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