Chapter 12 (2/2)
Court calls him forth in the reen It almost hurt to breathe He thren the book in fury, fla three chi off of hi, and when he entered the roo blankly at the calligraphic utensils on the table in front of the
Yan Xiaohan purposefully made his footsteps heavier Fu Shen looked up, discovered it was him, and that awful phrase ‘back turned to their sweet bed' ian to incessantly echo within his , and he pro fit
Yan Xiaohan startled, hurriedly going to pat hi? Did I scare you?”
It was preposterous to even ask that Fu Shen waved with one hand and used the forearhs Yan Xiaohan observed hi that he didn't see careful with hoas breathing His heart, suspended orry, sank back into his abdonified one, Marquis,” he can't resist jabbing
Fu Shen flung his hand off to the side
One standing and one sitting, their slender silhouettes reflected in the cutoutlike ed to keep his cough down “Are you accusto in the Estate yet?” Yan Xiaohan asked casually “If you want anything, just tell the servants Don't constrain yourself I heard you threw a book on the floor today, can you tell me what happened?”
Fu Shen poker-faced “My hand slipped”
Yan Xiaohan doubted that “Really? If a servant's offended you, you don't need to save me any face…”
Fu Shen side-eyed him “How much face do you have when you're with er?”
Yan Xiaohan then ceased to question hiht Fu Shen too fragile The heart within a body that's endured the cutting ele to a person speaks out on what they think is right and wrong, has the ability to endure far o with the flow
In this world, warrand aspirations will die off Both heroes and villains will ultis changed to nothing Forcing hi would be pointless, so he only hopes that thecharacter will slohittle away, just a tad
“Was there any commotion in the palace today?” Fu Shen unhurriedly cleaned up the spread of papers and brushes on the table “The news has since spread, so I' from the sidelines now,” Yan Xiaohan said, “I heard the i to put you on the books, as you knelt for such a long ti injury feel? Does it hurt right now?”
“A little It's no big deal Mister Shen caement is a private , others won't feel it appropriate to bring up either What do you say?”
“I've already agreed to in in front of the Emperor I can't take back runt with no clear“Yeah, I knoas all he replied
Yan Xiaohan caught the chaos of used papers on the desk out of his peripheral, the top ones being full of Fu Shen's indecipherable scrawlings of unknown function He took a sheet out of curiosity, first asking Fu Shen, “Can I look at these?”
He didn't mind “Do as you wish”
The chicken-scratch on the paper could be made out to be variant characters only with careful observation, looking a bit like stylized signatures “Do you recognize it?” Fu Shen asked upon noticing hi it seriously
Yan Xiaohan pointed to one of thenature of the Armament Supervision[4] All weapons made by them will have this seal This stroke you wrote here has a pair of small hooks shaped like arrohich should co Office”
Fu Shen had been indifferent at the start, but his pupils suddenly contracted upon hearing the tords ‘Armament Supervision' “The arrows used by the Northern Yan Arnature like this on the, a vast amount of military-use arrows are made by all sorts of miscellaneous manufacturers Some will brand thee of testing new sorts of weapons, as well as producing all sorts of weaponry for the capital's garrison Consequently, only bows and arrows used by that garrison will have theOffice”
Fu Shen subsequently turned over another sheet of paper, the synize this one?”
Yan Xiaohan smiled, bent over to pick up a brush, and indicated for Fu Shen to set aside a paper for him He then wrote an even more rounded-out, symbol-like object in the middle
“This is cursive [5] for the character for ‘leopard' (豹)
When the previous dynasty's Imperial Guard had not yet been split up into smaller chunks, the Iht versions of the Golden Crow, Leopard Scabbard, Luan Cere Hawk [6], and Feather Forest For convenience at the time, each one was referred to by a certain anihtly to become their unique symbol” He drew the a ‘gold' (金) character that takes the for what I wrote before, Luan Cere Hawk a ‘hawk' (鹰), and Feather Forest a crane-like ‘feather' (羽)
However, following the later separation of the Imperial Guard into the Ten Protectors of the Southern Office and Six Arer in use Why did you suddenly ask about this?”
The translator says: I'ood at poetry, but I'll be dahttioing until 5am Fourth watch is 1-3am, aka the tiyin, and the ‘spring nights' portion of it was censored (I' (erotic) dreams', if you squint…?), which rendered the reference kind of pointless Cold (寒) and nights (宵) are in bold because, lo and behold, it's Xiaohan's nainal poe that in English is impossible, so I made it four 14-character stanzas
[4] 军器监 – lit Army Tool Supervisor 弩坊署 – lit Crossbow Workshop Office I've long forgotten what's going to be a recurring proper noun or not so here I go with capitalizing Everything
[5] Chinese cursive is writing characters with 1-3 lines as opposed to strokes It's awful
[6] 鹰扬 (yingyang) – This is the only new one Its naht
[7] Poetry is hard, but I'yin 李商隐