The sun has just risen. Duan Ling didn’t get a good look the night before with nothing more than a brief glance, so he’s only now seeing the state that Runan is in — white bones lie beneath the bridge where he used to while his time away, the streets are covered in rubbish, and pieces of paper flutter in the autumn breeze. Crows gather in the back courtyards, cawing wildly without restraint.
Subconsciously, Duan Ling wants to turn to look, but Wu Du covers his eyes with one hand and pushes him forward.
It’s not as though Duan Ling hasn’t ever killed anyone before, but this is his home; in the tea shops, next to the noodle stand, in the shop where they sell oil, near the passing carriages, even around the governmental buildings of the Khitans — from the middle of the marketplace to the shaded rest spots beneath the trees, these all used to be places where he left his tracks.
“Come this way,” Chang Pin turns back and says to the two of them.
“What happened to Runan?” Duan Ling asks.
“Two years ago, the Mongols attacked. Aside from Runan they also attacked quite a few other places, destroying cities and villages all along the way. Here, the city fell and was plundered by the Mongols. The commoners either died or ran away,” Chang Pin replies. “And that’s how it became like this.”
Duan Ling recalls that he’d travel south all the way from the Xianbei Mountains as he escaped into Xichuan that year. There were so many people with their different accents, that perhaps among them there were also commoners from Runan.
Wu Du gives Duan Ling a look, reminding him not to ask too many questions lest Chang Pin should find it odd. Even though Duan Ling very much wants to ask him more about what happened in Runan, he knows this is as far as he should go; otherwise, once Chang Pin starts getting ideas, it’ll bring them nothing but trouble.
Chang Pin takes them into a huge residence. Standing in the courtyard, he says, “Chancellor Mu sent me here to Xunbei on a mission to look somone. I did find him in Anxi, but the old man really is getting on in years, and it was so hot in the summer that I didn’t dare simply take him on a journey back to Jiangzhou.”
Duan Ling and Wu Du don’t say anything and merely listen to Chang Pin as he speaks.
“In the Sixth Month, I wrote a letter and tasked my personal attendant Jin’er to take it back to Jiangzhou. Unfortunately, Jin’er went missing halfway through the trip, and the letter was never delivered. And then, I had no idea why at first, but on the eighteenth of the Seventh Month, the Mongols came from the south and passed by Anxi, raping and pillaging all along the way, killing and taking whatever they saw. The Mongols burned most of the villages behind the Liao border to ashes.”
Duan Ling is staggered momentarily before he replies, “We drove Borjigin Batu across the Xunshui. They must have gone north along the Liao-Yuan border.”
“Precisely,” Chang Pin replies. “The Mongol horde in the south heading north met up with the Mongol horde heading south from the north, and they burned up Anxi until there was nothing left. Right now, they’re attacking Luoyang.”
Duan Ling is quite taken aback.
“The man I’m looking for just so happened to have been in Anxi. That night during the chaos I hired some people to bring him to Luoyang, and we were attacked halfway there, but fortunately, I managed to survive by hiding underneath the carriage. By the time I got back out again, however, I could no longer find him anywhere. I’m still holding out some hope that he’s still alive, so I followed the other refugees to Luoyang. For several days, I looked for him outside the city, but I didn’t manage to find a body. I wanted to see if I could find out what was going on inside Luoyang, but the Mongolian army had surrounded the place, so I didn’t want to head inside without a plan. It would be most unwise for me to die over nothing.”
The longer the story goes on, the more puzzled Duan Ling becomes. Mu Kuangda had tasked Chang Pin to find a particular old man. Why did he do that? And since Chang Pin couldn’t find him, why didn’t he just go back to Jiangzhou? And now, what is he doing in Runan?
“Then you’d better head back,” Wu Du says. “Right now, the two of us are officials of the court. Showing up here is already against the rules, and we were planning to go back within a month. Lots of things are still up in the air.”
“The Lord Chancellor is aware of what you’re doing in Ye. Wang Shan, Wu Du, since I have been following Chancellor Mu for several more years than you have, then I’m afraid I must shamelessly use this seniority to ask for a favour. This man is crucial to our cause, and other people are also looking for him …” Chang Pin falls silent then, hiding the latter half of that sentence.
A deep furrow appears between Duan Ling’s brows. He knows that when Chang Pin tells him that this is “crucial”, that means it’s probably extremely important.
“All I need you to do is to find out what’s going on in Luoyang in my stead and find this person. You can count on me for what you need doing in Ye.”
“We already have enough grain,” Duan Ling replies. “We don’t actually need your help, Master Chang Pin. We’re all smart people here, and you were there as well when I became a part of the estate. Since this is an order from Chancellor Mu, of course, I’m going to do my utmost. But you’ll need to tell me what this is really all about. If for nothing else but to make this task of going into the city and fulfilling this mission easier for me.”
Duan Ling pauses and gives Wu Du a glance. Wu Du is silent, and frowning just as he is. Soon enough, he gives Duan Ling a nod to indicate that he’ll do as Duan Ling wishes.
This seems to truly give Chang Pin pause, and an idea suddenly occurs to Duan Ling — is it possible that the Duans had gone to Anxi and Mu Kuangda had somehow tracked down the “crown prince”’s family history, and he wants to bring someone from the Duan family to the imperial court so that he can prove that this crown prince is an imposter?
“I’m not going to tell you,” Chang Pin ponders for a long time before he says solemnly. “And that’s for your own good. Wang Shan, your prospects are boundless, and once you finish doing this thing, that’s that. You have a bright future ahead of you, unlike me. I’m just a scholar who passed the county level exams. You’re a Tertius Scholar.”
By telling him this much, he has already verified Duan Ling’s hypothesis. All at once, he feels as though his blood has congealed inside his veins.
Chang Pin motions to Chang Liujun, and Chang Liujun opens a door on one side of the corridor in the courtyard.
Chang Pin says, “Allow me to continue before we proceed. Since I couldn’t go into the city, and my mission remains incomplete, I had to at least find out if he was dead or alive; I couldn’t simply go back without knowing. So I waited in Runan thinking that Chancellor Mu would definitely send someone to search for me there.”
This once more verifies Duan Ling’s hypothesis — since Mu Kuangda had sent Chang Pin here to Runan to search for someone, if he should lose touch Mu Kuangda would surely send another to look for Chang Pin. Chang Pin’s first stop had been Runan, so whoever sent to find him would definitely go to Runan first.
Predictably, Chang Pin continues with, “I never imagined that Chang Liujun would be the one to show up, but he can’t just walk into Luoyang either. First of all, security inside the city is extremely tight with the Khitan and Mongol armies in the middle of a war, and second of all Chang Liujun can’t … At any rate, he’s not good at tracking down a person.”
“Second of all, I can’t read.” Chang Liujun says impatiently, “All I know how to do is kill. I can’t read the names on the register, and it’s not like I can go around asking people either. Thirdly, Luoyang’s guard security is really tight. I reckon the Mongols are planning to lay siege to this city all the way ‘til spring. I’m afraid that once it snows a few times, a bunch of people are going to freeze to death. We’ll have to find him as soon as possible. There’s no time to ask around.”
Duan Ling stares at him silently.
Wu Du says, “You want the two of us to infiltrate Luoyang, don’t you?”
Chang Pin nods. “Chang Liujun and I talked about this and thought maybe we should go to Ye first to see you two and see if we can figure out something from there. Just as we were about to leave the city though, we found a couple of Tangut outside, a father and a son.”
Duan Ling looks at him silently.
He has a feeling he knows what’s inside that room. The estate is very quiet, and it doesn’t seem like anyone’s being confined here at all. It’s the exact kind of thing Duan Ling can’t stand to see, and fear immediately surfaces in his eyes. Wu Du also realises what’s going on as soon as he says this, and he frowns.
Duan Ling takes a step back. Chang Pin opens the door all the way, and the stink of blood wafts out of the room. Wu Du takes a sidestep to look through the window, and he sees two corpses sitting next to each other in a darkened room, one big and one small, with dishevelled hair and white underclothes. They’ve clearly not been dead for long.
Chang Liujun brings something out of the room: two sets of Tangut clothing and a travelling cloth bundle. Chang Pin is holding a letter when he says, “These two were fur traders, passing through Liao territory towards Yuan, thinking they’d go through the border at Anxi and go to Luoyang for some trading … But unfortunately, they met with a violent death in the city, leaving their bundle discarded nearby. They’re already dead, so I had an idea. Why not disguise myself as a Tangut so as to infiltrate Luoyang? But the passport this man was carrying on him indicated that they were father and son, and see, I had no idea how I was going to find myself a son …”
While Chang Pin is saying this, scene after scene surface before Duan Ling’s eyes —
— A couple of Tangut, father and son, had come this way from Xiliang. They were passing by Runan and was planning on turning to go north. So before that, they decided to rest for the night, setting up a campfire in this abandoned city to eat some of their dry rations.
Chang Liujun hid outside the courtyard house while Chang Pin walked towards the two of them, starting up a conversation in Tangut. He found out that their destination was Luoyang, and so he asked them to help him find someone.
Maybe when the pair heard that Yuan and Liao were at war they didn’t want to risk going to Luoyang anymore, thus rejecting Chang Pin’s request and deciding to head south instead to Chen.
Unable to get a favourable answer from his request, in order to keep this “crucial” secret, he asked Chang Liujun to kill off the two, since he was around anyway.
“You can speak Tangut,” Chang Pin says, “I heard that when you were in Tongguan, you knew the Xiliang prince, and you’ve become good friends.”
“Yes,” Duan Ling says, “but you don’t look Tangut, Master Chang Pin.”
“I’m not going.” Chang Pin points at Wu Du before continuing, “The two of you can take the passport. Wu Du was your adoptive father … brother to begin with. You two, on the other hand, look the part just right.”
“I can’t speak Tangut,” Wu Du replies.
“Pretend you’re a mute,” Chang Pin says. “The Mongols may have laid siege to the city, making it difficult to get in, but if you really want in we can find a way — just wait for my instructions. Once you’re inside the city, you’ll have to find some way to hunt down a register of names. Everyone who relocated from Anxi to Luoyang should have been registered in a record. Then, you have to find one person in it. I thought about writing this name on a slip of paper and giving it to Chang Liujun so that once he’s in the city he could try to find a match, but he can’t tell the difference between the army register and the civilian entry register. When there are too many names it can also get confusing.”
“I got it,” Duan Ling says, “It’s probably in the hands of a low-ranking official in charge of refugees.”
To track down the man Chang Pin is looking for the way one would look for a needle in a haystack, one by one, would be nigh impossible. There are too many old people; even if he draws a portrait they won’t be able to match it with a face. And Chang Pin doesn’t want to reveal who it may be either. Perhaps he is indeed hiding that for the sake of holding onto this crucial secret.
They’ll need to find the official in charge of Anxi refugees, steal the registry from him, verify that the man is still alive first, before tracking him down.
Duan Ling is extremely curious as to who this man could be. If he used to live in the Duan estate, it’s probably someone he can recognise.
But it’s also possible that he’s simply got the wrong idea, that is, the one Mu Kuangda is looking for has nothing to do with the “crown prince”. Even though this possibility is quite slim, Duan Ling decides to test it anyway.
But … there were no elderly people among the Duans. Also, out of the entire Duan estate, Chang Pin can’t be telling him that only one person had survived?
Wu Du and Duan Ling take the clothes from Chang Liujun. Duan Ling doesn’t want to see the scene inside the room, so he leaves for an abandoned house across the street with Wu Du to change into their Tangut clothing.
Duan Ling is weighed down with his thoughts, but lest the Chang Liujun waiting outside should overhear, he doesn’t dare say too much.
“Are you thinking about your dad?” Wu Du asks.
Well, that’s one thing he doesn’t have to worry about getting eavesdropped upon anyway; after all, everyone in the estate knows about “Wang Shan”’s identity. To outsiders, his family history is that of an apothecary’s child, and before his father died, Wu Du had been entrusted with his care.
“Yeah.” Duan Ling’s eyes have gone a bit red.
In his white underclothes, Wu Du holds up the Tangut robe and stares at it.
“That’s not how you wear it.” Duan Ling is also in his underclothes. He helps Wu Du into the robe. The Tangut wears their outer clothing with the left lapel on top, and there’s a leather belt on the inside that crosses the chest before going around the waist from behind. Once the inside belt-loop has been tied, he put on the trousers for men, and the knee-length animal fur coat goes on last.
Wu Du has finished putting on his clothes, so Duan Ling puts a goose feather hat on for him as well. This Tangut man didn’t have a high standing in life; the goose feather in his hat is brown.
Duan Ling stares at Wu Du. Wu Du is sitting on the daybed. He wraps his arms around Duan Ling, who’s still dressed in his snow-white underclothes, and sits him down over his thigh, where Wu Du looks up into his eyes.
This translation is by foxghost, on tumblr and kofi. I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, it was reposted without permission. Do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
The sun has just risen. Duan Ling didn’t get a good look the night before with nothing more than a brief glance, so he’s only now seeing the state that Runan is in — white bones lie beneath the bridge where he used to while his time away, the streets are covered in rubbish, and pieces of paper flutter in the autumn breeze. Crows gather in the back courtyards, cawing wildly without restraint.
Subconsciously, Duan Ling wants to turn to look, but Wu Du covers his eyes with one hand and pushes him forward.
It’s not as though Duan Ling hasn’t ever killed anyone before, but this is his home; in the tea shops, next to the noodle stand, in the shop where they sell oil, near the passing carriages, even around the governmental buildings of the Khitans — from the middle of the marketplace to the shaded rest spots beneath the trees, these all used to be places where he left his tracks.
“Come this way,” Chang Pin turns back and says to the two of them.
“What happened to Runan?” Duan Ling asks.
“Two years ago, the Mongols attacked. Aside from Runan they also attacked quite a few other places, destroying cities and villages all along the way. Here, the city fell and was plundered by the Mongols. The commoners either died or ran away,” Chang Pin replies. “And that’s how it became like this.”
Duan Ling recalls that he’d travel south all the way from the Xianbei Mountains as he escaped into Xichuan that year. There were so many people with their different accents, that perhaps among them there were also commoners from Runan.
Wu Du gives Duan Ling a look, reminding him not to ask too many questions lest Chang Pin should find it odd. Even though Duan Ling very much wants to ask him more about what happened in Runan, he knows this is as far as he should go; otherwise, once Chang Pin starts getting ideas, it’ll bring them nothing but trouble.
Chang Pin takes them into a huge residence. Standing in the courtyard, he says, “Chancellor Mu sent me here to Xunbei on a mission to look somone. I did find him in Anxi, but the old man really is getting on in years, and it was so hot in the summer that I didn’t dare simply take him on a journey back to Jiangzhou.”
Duan Ling and Wu Du don’t say anything and merely listen to Chang Pin as he speaks.
“In the Sixth Month, I wrote a letter and tasked my personal attendant Jin’er to take it back to Jiangzhou. Unfortunately, Jin’er went missing halfway through the trip, and the letter was never delivered. And then, I had no idea why at first, but on the eighteenth of the Seventh Month, the Mongols came from the south and passed by Anxi, raping and pillaging all along the way, killing and taking whatever they saw. The Mongols burned most of the villages behind the Liao border to ashes.”
Duan Ling is staggered momentarily before he replies, “We drove Borjigin Batu across the Xunshui. They must have gone north along the Liao-Yuan border.”
“Precisely,” Chang Pin replies. “The Mongol horde in the south heading north met up with the Mongol horde heading south from the north, and they burned up Anxi until there was nothing left. Right now, they’re attacking Luoyang.”
Duan Ling is quite taken aback.
“The man I’m looking for just so happened to have been in Anxi. That night during the chaos I hired some people to bring him to Luoyang, and we were attacked halfway there, but fortunately, I managed to survive by hiding underneath the carriage. By the time I got back out again, however, I could no longer find him anywhere. I’m still holding out some hope that he’s still alive, so I followed the other refugees to Luoyang. For several days, I looked for him outside the city, but I didn’t manage to find a body. I wanted to see if I could find out what was going on inside Luoyang, but the Mongolian army had surrounded the place, so I didn’t want to head inside without a plan. It would be most unwise for me to die over nothing.”
The longer the story goes on, the more puzzled Duan Ling becomes. Mu Kuangda had tasked Chang Pin to find a particular old man. Why did he do that? And since Chang Pin couldn’t find him, why didn’t he just go back to Jiangzhou? And now, what is he doing in Runan?
“Then you’d better head back,” Wu Du says. “Right now, the two of us are officials of the court. Showing up here is already against the rules, and we were planning to go back within a month. Lots of things are still up in the air.”
“The Lord Chancellor is aware of what you’re doing in Ye. Wang Shan, Wu Du, since I have been following Chancellor Mu for several more years than you have, then I’m afraid I must shamelessly use this seniority to ask for a favour. This man is crucial to our cause, and other people are also looking for him …” Chang Pin falls silent then, hiding the latter half of that sentence.
A deep furrow appears between Duan Ling’s brows. He knows that when Chang Pin tells him that this is “crucial”, that means it’s probably extremely important.
“All I need you to do is to find out what’s going on in Luoyang in my stead and find this person. You can count on me for what you need doing in Ye.”
“We already have enough grain,” Duan Ling replies. “We don’t actually need your help, Master Chang Pin. We’re all smart people here, and you were there as well when I became a part of the estate. Since this is an order from Chancellor Mu, of course, I’m going to do my utmost. But you’ll need to tell me what this is really all about. If for nothing else but to make this task of going into the city and fulfilling this mission easier for me.”
Duan Ling pauses and gives Wu Du a glance. Wu Du is silent, and frowning just as he is. Soon enough, he gives Duan Ling a nod to indicate that he’ll do as Duan Ling wishes.
This seems to truly give Chang Pin pause, and an idea suddenly occurs to Duan Ling — is it possible that the Duans had gone to Anxi and Mu Kuangda had somehow tracked down the “crown prince”’s family history, and he wants to bring someone from the Duan family to the imperial court so that he can prove that this crown prince is an imposter?
“I’m not going to tell you,” Chang Pin ponders for a long time before he says solemnly. “And that’s for your own good. Wang Shan, your prospects are boundless, and once you finish doing this thing, that’s that. You have a bright future ahead of you, unlike me. I’m just a scholar who passed the county level exams. You’re a Tertius Scholar.”
By telling him this much, he has already verified Duan Ling’s hypothesis. All at once, he feels as though his blood has congealed inside his veins.
Chang Pin motions to Chang Liujun, and Chang Liujun opens a door on one side of the corridor in the courtyard.
Chang Pin says, “Allow me to continue before we proceed. Since I couldn’t go into the city, and my mission remains incomplete, I had to at least find out if he was dead or alive; I couldn’t simply go back without knowing. So I waited in Runan thinking that Chancellor Mu would definitely send someone to search for me there.”
This once more verifies Duan Ling’s hypothesis — since Mu Kuangda had sent Chang Pin here to Runan to search for someone, if he should lose touch Mu Kuangda would surely send another to look for Chang Pin. Chang Pin’s first stop had been Runan, so whoever sent to find him would definitely go to Runan first.
Predictably, Chang Pin continues with, “I never imagined that Chang Liujun would be the one to show up, but he can’t just walk into Luoyang either. First of all, security inside the city is extremely tight with the Khitan and Mongol armies in the middle of a war, and second of all Chang Liujun can’t … At any rate, he’s not good at tracking down a person.”
“Second of all, I can’t read.” Chang Liujun says impatiently, “All I know how to do is kill. I can’t read the names on the register, and it’s not like I can go around asking people either. Thirdly, Luoyang’s guard security is really tight. I reckon the Mongols are planning to lay siege to this city all the way ‘til spring. I’m afraid that once it snows a few times, a bunch of people are going to freeze to death. We’ll have to find him as soon as possible. There’s no time to ask around.”
Duan Ling stares at him silently.
Wu Du says, “You want the two of us to infiltrate Luoyang, don’t you?”
Chang Pin nods. “Chang Liujun and I talked about this and thought maybe we should go to Ye first to see you two and see if we can figure out something from there. Just as we were about to leave the city though, we found a couple of Tangut outside, a father and a son.”
Duan Ling looks at him silently.
He has a feeling he knows what’s inside that room. The estate is very quiet, and it doesn’t seem like anyone’s being confined here at all. It’s the exact kind of thing Duan Ling can’t stand to see, and fear immediately surfaces in his eyes. Wu Du also realises what’s going on as soon as he says this, and he frowns.
Duan Ling takes a step back. Chang Pin opens the door all the way, and the stink of blood wafts out of the room. Wu Du takes a sidestep to look through the window, and he sees two corpses sitting next to each other in a darkened room, one big and one small, with dishevelled hair and white underclothes. They’ve clearly not been dead for long.
Chang Liujun brings something out of the room: two sets of Tangut clothing and a travelling cloth bundle. Chang Pin is holding a letter when he says, “These two were fur traders, passing through Liao territory towards Yuan, thinking they’d go through the border at Anxi and go to Luoyang for some trading … But unfortunately, they met with a violent death in the city, leaving their bundle discarded nearby. They’re already dead, so I had an idea. Why not disguise myself as a Tangut so as to infiltrate Luoyang? But the passport this man was carrying on him indicated that they were father and son, and see, I had no idea how I was going to find myself a son …”
While Chang Pin is saying this, scene after scene surface before Duan Ling’s eyes —
— A couple of Tangut, father and son, had come this way from Xiliang. They were passing by Runan and was planning on turning to go north. So before that, they decided to rest for the night, setting up a campfire in this abandoned city to eat some of their dry rations.
Chang Liujun hid outside the courtyard house while Chang Pin walked towards the two of them, starting up a conversation in Tangut. He found out that their destination was Luoyang, and so he asked them to help him find someone.
Maybe when the pair heard that Yuan and Liao were at war they didn’t want to risk going to Luoyang anymore, thus rejecting Chang Pin’s request and deciding to head south instead to Chen.
Unable to get a favourable answer from his request, in order to keep this “crucial” secret, he asked Chang Liujun to kill off the two, since he was around anyway.
“You can speak Tangut,” Chang Pin says, “I heard that when you were in Tongguan, you knew the Xiliang prince, and you’ve become good friends.”
“Yes,” Duan Ling says, “but you don’t look Tangut, Master Chang Pin.”
“I’m not going.” Chang Pin points at Wu Du before continuing, “The two of you can take the passport. Wu Du was your adoptive father … brother to begin with. You two, on the other hand, look the part just right.”
“I can’t speak Tangut,” Wu Du replies.
“Pretend you’re a mute,” Chang Pin says. “The Mongols may have laid siege to the city, making it difficult to get in, but if you really want in we can find a way — just wait for my instructions. Once you’re inside the city, you’ll have to find some way to hunt down a register of names. Everyone who relocated from Anxi to Luoyang should have been registered in a record. Then, you have to find one person in it. I thought about writing this name on a slip of paper and giving it to Chang Liujun so that once he’s in the city he could try to find a match, but he can’t tell the difference between the army register and the civilian entry register. When there are too many names it can also get confusing.”
“I got it,” Duan Ling says, “It’s probably in the hands of a low-ranking official in charge of refugees.”
To track down the man Chang Pin is looking for the way one would look for a needle in a haystack, one by one, would be nigh impossible. There are too many old people; even if he draws a portrait they won’t be able to match it with a face. And Chang Pin doesn’t want to reveal who it may be either. Perhaps he is indeed hiding that for the sake of holding onto this crucial secret.
They’ll need to find the official in charge of Anxi refugees, steal the registry from him, verify that the man is still alive first, before tracking him down.
Duan Ling is extremely curious as to who this man could be. If he used to live in the Duan estate, it’s probably someone he can recognise.
But it’s also possible that he’s simply got the wrong idea, that is, the one Mu Kuangda is looking for has nothing to do with the “crown prince”. Even though this possibility is quite slim, Duan Ling decides to test it anyway.
But … there were no elderly people among the Duans. Also, out of the entire Duan estate, Chang Pin can’t be telling him that only one person had survived?
Wu Du and Duan Ling take the clothes from Chang Liujun. Duan Ling doesn’t want to see the scene inside the room, so he leaves for an abandoned house across the street with Wu Du to change into their Tangut clothing.
Duan Ling is weighed down with his thoughts, but lest the Chang Liujun waiting outside should overhear, he doesn’t dare say too much.
“Are you thinking about your dad?” Wu Du asks.
Well, that’s one thing he doesn’t have to worry about getting eavesdropped upon anyway; after all, everyone in the estate knows about “Wang Shan”’s identity. To outsiders, his family history is that of an apothecary’s child, and before his father died, Wu Du had been entrusted with his care.
“Yeah.” Duan Ling’s eyes have gone a bit red.
In his white underclothes, Wu Du holds up the Tangut robe and stares at it.
“That’s not how you wear it.” Duan Ling is also in his underclothes. He helps Wu Du into the robe. The Tangut wears their outer clothing with the left lapel on top, and there’s a leather belt on the inside that crosses the chest before going around the waist from behind. Once the inside belt-loop has been tied, he put on the trousers for men, and the knee-length animal fur coat goes on last.
Wu Du has finished putting on his clothes, so Duan Ling puts a goose feather hat on for him as well. This Tangut man didn’t have a high standing in life; the goose feather in his hat is brown.
Duan Ling stares at Wu Du. Wu Du is sitting on the daybed. He wraps his arms around Duan Ling, who’s still dressed in his snow-white underclothes, and sits him down over his thigh, where Wu Du looks up into his eyes.
This translation is by foxghost, on tumblr and kofi. I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, it was reposted without permission. Do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
