Chapter 5
Early this morning, Yaoying had a cup of cane syrup and cheese cherries1. She reclined on the fabric woven mat under the veranda, leaning against a soft cushion, looking through the account books sent from various places.
The breeze was smooth, and the veranda was filled with colorful flowers.
From deep in the corridor suddenly came a rush of footsteps.
A maidservant from the Noble Consort Xie’s palace hurriedly came over.
”Your Highness, Her Lady is having another attack!”
Yaoying immediately put down her account book, stepped on her wooden clogs, and hurried down the long corridor to rush to the main hall’s bedchamber.
Just as she passed through the winding corridor, chaotic voices came from up ahead. A middle-aged woman with disheveled hair and a thin and haggard face came directly toward her, staggering as she crookedly stumbled along.
Seven or eight palace maids gathered around her, wanting to help but afraid of scaring her.
Yaoying walked up quickly, her eyebrows knitted slightly, and said softly, “Aniang2, it’s me.”
Her voice was like the spring breeze, so gentle that it could drip out flower dew.
Noble Consort Xie brushed her loose hair away haphazardly. Her eyes looked bewildered and she showed a confused look: “Ming Yue Nu*……where’s erlang? He said he was coming to see me today…..”
Yaoying gently supported her arm, her voice soft: “Aniang, elder brother wrote back saying there was a delay on the road. It will take two more days to return.”
Noble Consort Xie froze and very cautiously asked, “Really?”
Yaoying held her mother and guided her back, patiently coaxing, “Really, elder brother would be back in two days.”
Noble Consort Xie’s eyes drifted, and her mouth continued to repeat over and over again: Erlang, come back.
Yaoying very patiently assured her, “Second brother will come back.”
After coaxing, she sent Noble Consort Xie back to her bedchamber.
A palace maid brought the freshly decocted medicine.
Yaoying washed her hands, took a comb and combed Noble Consort Xie’s long hair, helping to make her presentable, and fed her the medicine by hand.
The medicine was sweetened with sour plums.
Noble Consort Xie obediently drank the medicine, then suddenly reached out and touched Yaoying’s cold wrist.
The weather was getting warmer and Yaoying didn’t like the heat. Today, she wore a pomegranate ruqun3 with an open collar with a small clusters of scattered flowers design. The light top had wide and loose sleeves and the outer brocade short coat covered half her arm. Raising her hand made the sleeve slip down, exposing her white wrist like congealed frost.
Noble Consort Xie tenderly asked, “Ming Yue Nu, are you cold?
As she spoke, she grabbed a shawl from the other side of the couch, covering her daughter’s shoulders.
Her mouth repeatedly urged: “Don’t catch a cold…. Ming Yue can’t catch a cold…. you must take medicine every day…..”
Gentle and loving, it felt like the past.
Yaoying felt slightly sore at heart, shaking her head: “Aniang, I’m not cold.” She continued to feed Noble Consort Xie medicine.
Even when deranged and crazy, Aniang still remembered to care for her.
……
The year when Noble Consort Xie and Tang shi fought and Tang shi died, Li De took his anger out on her. She was so disheartened that she fell ill.
Soon after the Xie family protected the common people to cross the river, they died defending the empty city, the whole family full of martyrs.
Noble Consort Xie lost her blood relatives, and also her only support. Li De’s attitude toward her turned even more cold. From then on, she turned unstable and foolish.
She never had the intention to harm Tang shi. It had come to such a situation, but Li Xuanzhen still did not feel pleased.
Until she committed suicide by swallowing gold, he still said to the people around him, “Even death cannot erase this poisonous woman’s crimes!”
……
Li Yaoying waited until Noble Consort Xie fell asleep and walked out of the bedchamber with a light frown.
These years, Noble Consort Xie would have her good and bad periods. She visited all the famous physicians under the sky for Noble Consort Xie. Although there was some improvement, Noble Consort Xie’s illness was ultimately a heart disease4.
Many years ago, Noble Consort Xie relied on the love of her elder brother, Uncle Xie, to insist on marrying Li De.
Uncle Xie had no choice but to send her to get married, giving all the power the clan had to assist her husband.
In the end, it came at the cost of the whole Xie family.
What she got in return was a cold look from Li De.
Yaoying sometimes thought, Noble Consort Xie’s illness was not necessarily a bad thing.
Li Zhongqian also thought so.
The two siblings never mentioned in front of Noble Consort Xie their uncle Xie who died as a martyr long ago. Noble Consort Xie thought the Xie family was still alive in the world, and simply did not want to deal with her.
The imperial physician arrived in a hurry to check Noble Consort Xie’s pulse and wrote a new prescription.
The palace maid fanned the stove to make tea, and Yaoying invited the imperial physician to the veranda to sit and have tea.
The aroma of tea drifted. The imperial physician looked at the snow-white tea froth in the glazed ceramic teacup, deliberated for a moment, then said to Yaoying: “Your Highness, I am of humble talent and shallow learning. I cannot bear Your Highness’s trust.”
Yaoying smiled and straightened up, solemnly bowing towards the imperial physician: “Esteemed physician exaggerates. My Aniang‘s illness is really a heart disease. I am grateful to esteemed imperial physician for your kindness in taking care of my Aniang these years. Elder brother and I have not yet thanked esteemed physician.”
The imperial physician was flattered by the favor and did not dare to accept Yaoying’s bow, so he prostrated down and waited for Yaoying to finish her salute before he dared to return to his seat.
After discussing a few words about Noble Consort Xie’s condition, the imperial physician remembered one thing: “The famous physician from Tianzhu that Your Highness asked me to inquire about last time has arrived in the capital and is now staying at the Daci’en Temple in Jinchang Square.”
Yaoying had a happy expression.
At the end of the former dynasty, the world was in turmoil, so in order to escape from the war, the monks of the Central Plains fled to Shu, which was relatively peaceful.
After Li De ascended the throne, he sent soldiers to Shu to persuade the senior monks to return to the capital.
One of them was a senior monk from Tianzhu, who was said to be not only proficient in Buddhism, but also a divine physician with excellent medical skills. He took the sea route from Tianzhu to Guangzhou, traveled through half of the Central Plains before returning to Shu, and would return to Chang’an together with other Central Plains seniors monks this time.
Yaoying had long heard of that senior monk’s fame and looked forward to his upcoming entry into the capital.
The imperial physician added: “If Your Highness wants to ask him to look at Noble Consort’s pulse, it would be better to do so as early as possible. Some people heard that he was in a hurry to go to the Western Regions. This trip to Chang’an, he only came to look at the Buddhist relics enshrined in Daci’en Temple.”
Yaoying thought about it. Sending off the imperial physician, she ordered her servants to prepare the carriage and horses, and decided to leave the palace immediately.
The Daci’en Temple was built under the order of Li Zhi, Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, in memory of his mother, Empress Zhangsun. Senior monk Xuanzang had presided over the temple, organized the translation of scriptures, and promoted Dharma (the teachings of Buddha). Xuanzang and his disciples started the Vaishnava sect of Chinese Buddhism, so Daci’en Temple was considered the ancestral temple of Vaishnavism.
To welcome the senior monks returning from the north, Daci’en Temple had been renovated with magnificent temples, majestic pavilions and rebuilt the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda standing majestically on the bank of Qujiang River.
The first group of monks from Shu arrived and the temple was busy.
The overseer had not slept all night, so busy that his feet did not touch the ground. When he saw the receiving monk5 entering the room, he frowned lightly.
When the receiving monk handed over a post, the supervisor took it and looked at it for a few times, immediately put down the work in his hand and stepped out of the main courtyard.
Just after stepping out of the threshold, there was a rustle of footsteps in the corridor.
Several personal soldiers in short-coat robes surrounded a young girl with a striking appearance and were coming over.
The girl had bright eyes and white teeth, a heavenly beauty. The light gauze was flowing, her sleeves fluttering, as if the extremely beautiful and charming venerable female from the temple’s mural had come to life.
Wherever she passed, the young samanera could not help but look up. The older bhikkhu beside them glared several times and they busily lowered their heads to recite scriptures.6
Author’s Note
Zoroastrianism: The state religion of ancient Persia. (TL: I forgot that people might not know what Zoroastrianism is, I guess I did learn something from WHAP)
Vaishnavism: * It was more profound, required a high level of initiation, and was simply too difficult to be practiced by many people; it declined a few generations after Xuanzang and his disciples.
* The author reiterated some stuff that was already mentioned + went more in depth which I didn’t want to/couldn’t translate.
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I wanted to reiterate: don’t worry, you don’t need to know much about history, geography or religions as it looks from these past chapters. I could understand just fine what was going on without background knowledge while reading in Chinese. Also, Buddhism doesn’t play a huge role in this novel as it may seem (thankfully, I already had trouble on this chapter). I apologize in advance if I described anything about Buddhism wrongly!
1 I searched it up and it seems to be this delicacy.
2 Aniang: the address for the women in the harem.
3 ruqun: this type of dress.
4 heart disease: similar to a mental illness sorta. In Chinese, this phrase is used to describe when people became sick because they were overcome with emotions.
5 Monk responsible for receiving guests.
6 samanera: novice male monks. Bhikkhu were more senior monks. Senior monks would be on top of them. I might just drop these technical terms later on.
* Actually, she called her 明月奴 which means Bright Moon slave? I’m assuming the ‘slave’ part at the end has a secondary meaning that’s like a nickname. Sometimes Chinese children had childhood nicknames so Yaoying’s is Ming Yue.