Chapter 31 He Wants to Devour Her Whole
Nine months ago, at Zichen Pavilion.
Lin Yuan had finished reading the ritual text and began to look at the silk painting of the Classic of Mountains and Seas again.
Would you like to see the poem?
She glanced at the scrolls of poetry that Xiao Xun was pointing to and shook her head.
"You don't like poetry?"
The tone carried obvious disappointment.
She quickly replied, "No, I like it, so I've read so many of them in the past that I can recite them by heart."
“You can recite them?” Xiao Xun said with a smile. “Then recite a few for me to hear.”
Which songs would Your Majesty like to hear?
“Memorize some that touch people’s hearts.” He paused, then added, “Something interesting.”
He wanted to hear her recite poetry.
The love poems she recited were so beautiful, they surpassed even the sound of Lü Qi's zither.
"My heart is pleased with you," the five notes of the pentatonic scale (Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng).
Each note and melody caressed his ears and plucked at his heartstrings.
The clear, melodious sound of the zither caressed every inch of his body. When he uttered the words, "It should be me who says these words," his mind was exceptionally clear, and he especially longed to harmonize with her through music.
Then, I clearly heard her talk about the Yue people and Lord E, Longyang and Anling.
That day, the spring breeze entered the house, bringing with it a single word from Lin Yuan, a word that came from her lips after a moment's thought, tinged with shyness and a heart full of tender emotions: "Good."
Xiao Xun sat upright, gazing intently, and heard:
"Big rat, big rat, don't eat my millet."
"Cough cough."
He choked on his saliva, picked up his teacup, and said, "Let's change to another one."
Lin Yuan nodded in agreement.
“Owl, owl, since you have taken my child, do not destroy my house.”
Xiao Xun's teacup lid expressed his dissatisfaction.
Do you find this poem moving? Interesting?
"..."
Lin Yuan readily agreed and quickly said, "I'll choose another one to memorize."
It must be because she hadn't slept enough for several nights in a row while sewing Xiao Xun's belt; her mind was foggy, and she lacked her usual sharpness. She thought dejectedly, "Why did I even think of owls? And find them amusing?"
She had been terrified of owls since childhood, so much so that she dared not cross the yard to use the latrine at night. Fortunately, Lin Yu started school late, and she would only go back to sleep after getting up once around midnight.
One winter night, Lin Yu was waiting for Lin Yuan by the pigsty with a lantern when she recited this poem.
Thirteen-year-old Lin Yuan rubbed her sleepy eyes and asked, "Do owls also destroy people's houses and eat children?"
"We don't eat children," Lin Yu said. "We eat adults, and older children too."
She became even more frightened and threw herself into Lin Yu's arms without washing her hands.
Lin Yu opened his fur coat and wrapped it around little Lin Yuan, who was enveloped in warmth.
Lin Yuan covered her head, but through her clothes, she could hear the "ah-woo ah-woo" sound getting closer and louder until it filled the night.
"Ouch—Lin Yu! You! You're so mean!"
Xiao Xun certainly wouldn't like owls.
As soon as Lin Yuan finished speaking, he gave a soft "hmm".
Lin Yuan switched to a truly humorous one.
The tone of his voice also changed, becoming more varied and melodic.
"Even a rat has skin, but a person has no manners! A person has no manners—"
Xiao Xun's face was so gloomy that she choked on the words "What's the point of not dying?" and instead let them turn into a weak, self-deprecating laugh.
...
"—Why don't you die quickly?! I'll kick you to death!"
Lin Yu turned to the side and grabbed Lin Yuan's ankle.
Because he imitated the cry of an owl, Lin Yuan was so frightened that she couldn't sleep well for several days. That day, she dreamed that an owl pecked open the roof of her bedroom, and the next day she dreamed that it landed on the top of the tent and opened its blood-red mouth at her.
Just as she was about to dream of an owl tearing her apart and devouring her, she pulled Lin Yu over.
"Who told you to scare me? Ah Yu! You have to make it up to me, stay with me! You'll sleep right here with me!"
She slammed her fist on the other side of the bed.
Lin Yu's heart pounded for a moment: "This isn't a good idea."
It's really not very good.
"Awoo awoo" was originally Lin Yu's voice.
Finally, the owl in the dream transformed into Lin Yu's face.
Lin Yuan was startled and opened her eyes. In the darkness of the night, Lin Yu sat on the edge of the couch, covered with a moonlit veil, staring intently at her.
She then broke out in a cold sweat.
He kicked Lin Yu down.
Many, many years have passed.
She dreamed of the owl again, but it didn't devour her.
Instead, he gently licked her, enveloped her lips, and parted her teeth.
Moist, soft, and warm, it lingers and lingers, from between the teeth to the tip of the tongue.
She was no longer afraid. She hadn't been afraid for a long time.
The taste was sweet, like a piece of candy she had eaten when she was five years old. She lingered over it, responded to it, and kissed it.
She opened her eyes hazily and saw Xiao Xun cupping her face in his hands.
His eyes were closed, and his eyelashes trembled slightly.
Just as he was about to lift his eyelids, she closed them again.
Was it a dream? It must have been a dream.
A long, nourishing, springtime dream.
She was so tired. Even though she was thirsty, she was too lazy to wake up.
During the two years she served in the Zichen Pavilion, she learned to endure thirst. But in her dream that day, she happened to drink intoxicatingly sweet rain.
She didn't want to wake up.
The moon rises bright, and a beautiful woman appears. Her figure is graceful and alluring, yet my heart is troubled.
When she was thirteen, she kicked fifteen-year-old Lin Yu off the bed.
"What are you doing staring at me in the middle of the night! It's terrifying!"
He seemed stunned by her kick, standing there, bathed in the thin moonlight, motionless for a long time, muttering these words.
Lin Yuan didn't understand, but felt a chill run down her spine.
She bowed to the heavens and the earth, and prayed in all directions: "Heavenly spirits, earthly spirits, Lord Owl, Emperor Owl, please, please don't secretly haunt me! I'm a good person, please stay away from me!"
After so many years, she finally understood it in a spring dream.
This is also poetry.
It was a line from a book of poems that she read while lying down before she fell asleep, and that Xiao Xun recited.
Just as she abruptly stopped reciting the poem "The Rat," Xiao Xun suddenly asked out of the blue, "What do your father and mother do?"
Lin Yuan replied, "My father and mother are farmers."
"No more land?"
“There is land.”
Lin Yuan was utterly puzzled; why would he ask such a question? Those who had lost their land were refugees, not farmers.
"If you have land and fields, what chance do you have against famine, drought, bandits, exorbitant taxes, or tyrannical extortion?"
She shook her head in bewilderment.
"And what about their relatives? Have they been unjustly imprisoned? Suffered abuse? Died a violent death? Have they been wronged and unable to seek justice?"
A string of unlucky words made Lin Yuan gasp and frown.
The idea that the emperor is the father and mother of the people is merely the wish of those corrupt scholars.
Uncorrupted scholars, such as Lin Yu, disliked this sentence in the Hong Fan (a classic text on literature).
He once scoffed, saying that if the emperor couldn't even be a good parent to his own blood relatives, how could he talk about being a parent to the people?
Xiao Xun had no children, and naturally, he didn't seem to have the slightest bit of the loving demeanor of a parent.
But we can't just not even bother to say it, can we?
Asking such a frank question, why can't you just hope for something better for your people's families?
"No." She replied dejectedly.
Xiao Xun looked even more resentful.
"So you think I'm rude, uncouth, and lack the manners of a ruler?"
Lin Yuan was stunned.
"Why do you specifically choose to recite these poems in front of me?" Xiao Xun took a deep breath.
Lin Yuan stammered, "Didn't His Majesty ask me to select some interesting and moving poems to recite for you? Aren't these the kinds of poems you hear?"
"That's all?"
"And then there are some things that are neither interesting nor moving." She searched her muddled mind with difficulty. "For example, 'Without clothes or coarse garments, how can one survive the year?' Or, 'What a gentleman wears is what a petty person looks at.' And, 'Without sowing or reaping, how can one obtain three hundred sheaves of grain?'"
After she finished speaking, she belatedly realized that Xiao Xun had asked a rhetorical question.
She then realized that there must be more than just these.
Therefore, working day and night is truly misleading.
If it weren't for Xiao Xun working tirelessly day and night, why would she have stayed up all night doing needlework, only to get up before dawn the next day to serve at Zichen Pavilion? Now that the moon is high in the sky, who knows how long she'll be stuck here?
At this hour, shouldn't the oxen in the pen and the horses in the trough be resting?
Xiao Xun suspected that she was using poetry to satirize him. If she really wanted to offer a satirical remonstrance, she should have recited the poem: "Before dawn, clothes are upside down. Upside down, they are summoned by the Duke."
—Oh dear, I was so confused just now, why didn't I remember this poem? How interesting.
Lin Yuan couldn't help but feel regret.
Xiao Xun almost vomited blood: "You said before that you learned from your father, and that your father only taught you these poems?"
Lin Yuan quickly distanced herself from her father: "No. My father only knows a few characters. How could he possibly know poetry?"
She chuckled ingratiatingly, but after she finished laughing, she realized that it hadn't softened Xiao Xun's stiff expression at all. So she composed herself and said seriously, "I found a book on the road one day, and these poems are written inside."
"You picked it up on the road?" Xiao Xun asked with a suspicious look.
"Yes, at that time His Majesty was promoting the Imperial Academy and the National Academy. Even in the countryside, farmers admired poetry and books. With more people reading, you could often find poems like these in the market."
A flash of inspiration struck Lin Yuan's muddled mind, and she said this.
Although her words tarnished the noble quality of "not picking up lost items on the road," what is more important than a ruler?
She flattered Xiao Xun's good governance, so she did not lack "the way of being a ruler".
Upon hearing this, Xiao Xun curled the corners of his lips into a smile.
Unfortunately, despite working tirelessly day and night, only Lin Yuan was harmed.
He was in excellent spirits, with bright, shining eyes, clearly having taken a midday nap.
Although he couldn't tell at all how tired or exhausted Lin Yuan was, he could find a flaw in her self-satisfied words.
His knuckles tapped lightly on the desk: "Copied into books and then discarded throughout the market, what was the purpose of the person who copied these books?"
How could Lin Yuan possibly know what their intentions were?
She had asked Lin Yu before: "'The Book of Songs consists of three hundred poems, which can be summed up in one sentence: 'Pure thoughts.' Brother, why did the sage say there are three hundred poems? The poems you gave me seem to be only about a hundred. Are there two volumes missing?"
"The scroll I gave you contains some of the best and most important poems," Lin Yu said.
Looking into Lin Yuan's eager eyes, he smiled and said, "If you want to learn more, I'll copy down the other two hundred poems for you to see. You can memorize them slowly. There's plenty of time."
Lin Yuan saw herself reciting the poem with a furrowed brow and felt a sense of foreboding. She hurriedly stopped Lin Yu's hand, which was about to pick up the pen, and said repeatedly, "No need, no need: I've learned more than a hundred poems. I can apply what I've learned to other poems. It's equivalent to learning three hundred poems!"
Lin Yu reluctantly put down her pen, having been persuaded by her.
Lin Yuan breathed a sigh of relief at her own cleverness and ate two extra sesame cakes that night, each bigger than her face.
After all, she saved a full two hundred poems, enough for two or three volumes of books and a thousand bushels of grain.
Besides, she has a lot to do tomorrow.
Lin Yuan's neighbor, Ade, came to visit her, wanting to invite her to go butterfly catching in the stream in the woods the next day.
He insisted that the butterflies I caught were the prettiest.
Seeing Lin Yu's suspicion, she took a big bite of the flatbread, wiped the crumbs off her chin, and said, "He said his eyesight is bad; he can only see gray moths, not those colorful butterflies."
"If your eyesight isn't good, it's best to avoid contact with others. If you accidentally fall into a stream, choke on water, or drown, it will be disastrous."
Lin Yu blew on the steam rising from the white soup and said leisurely.
These words won the approval of the ever-cautious and cautious Qin.
Ade is tall and strong, already sixteen years old. If he really fell into the water, even two Lin Yuans couldn't save him.
Lin Yuan also hummed in agreement twice.
"I don't have time to deal with him. Tomorrow I'm going hiking with Ah Yin and her cousin."
"Climbing mountains? Didn't you climb enough when your family was still growing mulberry trees a few years ago?"
Lin Yu reached out and scraped away the glistening oil residue from Lin Yuan's nose.
“That’s different. We’re not climbing that mountain.” Lin Yuan swallowed a sesame seed cake and said vaguely, “We’re going to find Emperor Wang.”
Lin Wu's expression changed drastically, and he jumped up from beside the food table: "Looking for the Emperor? Are we going to climb Dragon Head Mountain?!"
Lin Yuan pulled the soup that Lin Yu had cooled down to her side, gulped it down, and finally managed to swallow the biscuit stuck in her throat. "—Wang Di and Du Juan."
"Slow down, slow down." Lin Yu patted her back. "I'll take you horseback riding another day. Why bother climbing mountains to find flowers and birds?"
"It wasn't me. It was A-Yin's cousin. He's in love with azaleas. I was actually too lazy to go myself, but A-Yin has come to me four or five times already, saying that if there are more people, more flowers can be picked. I'm starting to suspect that he's going to open some kind of flower shop."
The next day, Lin Yuan returned with a flushed face. She went to Lin Yu's room and paced around for a long time.
She said shyly, "Brother, I told Ah Yin and the others this morning that I didn't want to climb the mountain. So I didn't go."
Lin Yu put down the book in her hand and gave her a knowing smile.
“Ah Yin’s cousin was particularly disappointed; his eyes even dimmed considerably.” Lin Yuan grinned and jumped in front of him, saying, “I told Ah Yin’s cousin that my brother can ride a horse, and I can take him to pick flowers on horseback another day.”
Lin Yu's eyes darkened, and her smile froze on her face.
"But then he said he didn't like azaleas anymore, and suddenly thought peach blossoms were quite nice too."
Lin Yushu let out a sigh of relief, buried her head back into her book, and casually remarked, "People who get bored with things so quickly are not worth associating with."
In Lin Yuan's eyes, liking this kind of flower and liking that kind of flower were pretty much the same, so she didn't take it to heart.
She sat by Lin Yu's desk, fiddling with the hem of her new dress: "So, we went to the market together afterward."
Lin Yu forgot where she was in the book. After a while, still not finding a clue, she heard Lin Yuan say, "A Yin's cousin took us to the music bureau and we listened to some beautiful music."
"What? A piece of music?" Lin Yu snapped the book shut and stood up from the table.
Lin Yuan tiptoed and whispered in Lin Yu's ear, "The mountain has trees, and the trees have branches; I love you, but you do not know."
Lin Yu's expression froze upon hearing this.
Lin Yuan was at a loss for words under his gaze: "Brother, didn't you ask me what song I listened to? Tell me, is this song well-written or not?"
Lin Yu crossed her arms and said softly, "Do you know what story this Yue folk song tells?"
Lin Yuan said, "Isn't it about one person liking another and then confessing their feelings to her?"
"Yes. However, it was a boatman who rowed the boat and said it to E Jun Zixi. He was in love with Zixi."
"Oh." Lin Yuan nodded, then suddenly exclaimed, "Huh?"
Lin Yu patted Lin Yuan on the shoulder: "So, don't recite poems like that casually in the future. It wouldn't be good to make a fool of yourself in front of others, right? And don't go to the Music Bureau either."
He returned to his desk, sat down, and casually said, "Ah Yin's brother took you to a place like this. He doesn't seem to be a decent person. Stay away from him."
Lin Yuan blushed, deeply agreeing, and added to herself, "No wonder, songs like this wouldn't be included in the poems compiled by sages."
Lin Yu handed him the scroll with the poems he had copied: "Why don't you take a look at these poems?"
*
“Look at these poems. These few.”
Xiao Xun opened the poem, and Lin Yuan, having gathered her scattered thoughts, sat down and looked in the direction he was pointing: "The ospreys cry, on the islet in the river," and "A quiet and beautiful maiden awaits me at the corner of the city."
In the poems compiled by the sages, such poems and songs, like the spring breeze that seeps in through a half-open window, gently brushed past her eyes.
Finally, it stopped at one place.
"The moon rises bright, and the beautiful one is there."
Xiao Xun patiently pointed to the sentence above and explained to Lin Yuan, "It means that the moonlight is bright and clear, and a beautiful woman is by your side."
He sat close to Lin Yuan, turned his head to look at her, and whispered in her ear, "I think this scene is extremely beautiful."
As he spoke, Lin Yuan looked out the window. The moon was already halfway up the sky, casting a silvery glow on the floor beneath the windows.
Her heart skipped a beat.
This scene is just like that night when I was thirteen.
"Would I have deliberately tried to scare you? I'll be right here watching you sleep. Not to mention owls, even mountain lords and lions wouldn't dare to come near you. Don't forget, your brother can fight, shoot arrows, and use a sword."
Amidst the shimmering silver light, Lin Yu grabbed the fire tongs from the charcoal brazier and performed a sword dance for her.
Next, in Lin Yuan's chaotic dream, in addition to the owl, there were also mountain lords and lions.
The mountain lord swallowed the owl whole.
Lin Yu pierced the mountain lord with his sword.
Upon hearing the commotion, the Suanni took off running and disappeared into the distance. Lin Yu chased after them on her crimson flying sword, but they all vanished from her dream.
She then slept soundly for the first time in several days, until the sun was high in the sky.
I opened my eyes and found myself on the desk in the Zichen Pavilion.
Lin Yuan felt dizzy and couldn't remember when she had fallen asleep.
She vaguely remembered that yesterday, Xiao Xun was reciting poetry to her.
He spoke eloquently and beautifully, especially the lines "Shu Yao Jiu Xi, Lao Xin Qiao Xi," which she heard conveyed a sense of sorrow and lament, as if there were truly a beautiful woman under the moonlight, and he was confessing his feelings to her.
His poems were written in a dreamlike and ethereal style, and his voice was just as dreamlike and ethereal.
The following lines are—her memory of last night, like this poem, ends abruptly here, completely forgotten.
She rubbed her forehead, wondering how long she had actually slept on this table.
She only remembered having a long, sweet dream that made her sleepy, as if someone was feeding her sweet dew and honey water. Even after waking up, she was still thirsty.
My feet are sore, my hands are numb, my neck is sore, and my back hurts.
Even my lips are numb.
My face went numb because I was thinking about that spring dream.
She covered her face.
Fortunately, Xiao Xun wasn't here.
The doors of the side hall were tightly shut.
The jade cup on the table had long since gone cold. He had probably gone to the morning court session.
So she must have fallen asleep after he left, right?
The morning court usually begins at sunrise, and judging from the water clock now, it is about mid-morning.
Yes, that must be it. Otherwise, how could Lin Yuan have so peacefully slept at her desk until now? Wouldn't she have been woken up by Xiao Xun with his pen, then ridiculed, her face already covered in spittle?
Thinking of this, she sneezed twice loudly and rubbed her nose.
not good.
I slept like this for two hours fully clothed, and then collapsed without even putting on a coat or blanket. I'm probably catching a cold.
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Author's Note: My brother's little secret... [Let me see!]
The younger sister's budding romantic feelings were shut out by her older brother.
Lin Yuan: It's really not that I have rainbows in my head. That's how my teacher taught me!
Writing this chapter was so much fun! I really love the brother-sister pairing, hahaha. Leave a comment and I'll send you a red envelope! [kissing emoji]
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