Love from the Male Protagonist's Harem

Chapter 21-Cutting Class to Go Drink Part 1

Translated by Snowfall77

The elder waved a hand: “Recently it has been Lingxi that has been suffering from a shortage of young and able disciples, all while the Demon sect is growing restless……Peijiu, if you have any good seedlings suited for the sword, please send them to Jianfeng.”

“Yes.”  Gu Peijiu bowed her head and agreed.

“If there are no other matters, this meeting is finished.”

After walking out of the council hall, Gu Peijiu contemplated the flourishing red hydrangeas blooming at the doorway, her black eyes eerily calm.

Lingxi Sect was indeed suffering from ‘yellow not reaching the green,’ their crop of new disciples not yet ready.

Danfeng, Jianfeng, Shoufeng.  Of the three peaks, only Danfeng and Shoufeng currently had a formally declared ‘great disciple.’

Worse, Danfeng was waning.  While there were new disciples learning liandan, very few had any real potential.  She herself had become Danfeng’s senior disciple with just a word from the master.  Baili Qing, Shoufeng’s great disciple, had relied on his extraordinary natural ability for taming beasts, subduing every kind of animal at the Shoufeng summit, thus distinguishing himself from his peers and becoming the senior disciple.

And Jianfeng was the most ‘special case.’

Jianfeng’s inner disciples were generally the pride of their clans.  Most having studied martial arts since childhood, the whole lot of them tending to be cocky and arrogant, especially the up-and-comers.

Therefore, Jianfeng disciples naturally all fought like mad for the top position, the competition between them raging fierce, the selection process particularly severe.

The inner disciples of Jianfeng had to participate in the triennial 【Jianfeng Wenling】, the peak’s most important criterion for selecting the best disciples.

The inner Jianfeng disciple who won three consecutive times would become Jianfeng’s ‘great disciple.’  A disciple who won two consecutive times or even just once was eligible to be an alternative ‘great disciple.’

Chang Lan was one who had won 【Jianfeng Wenling】three times in a row and was currently acting as Jianfeng’s senior disciple.  Still, Chang Lan had initially refused the position at behest of his family, choosing instead to join [Order].

But that had left Jianfeng a ‘host of dragons without a head.’  At the request of the master, Chang Lan had agreed to be Jianfeng’s temporary senior disciple until the next one could be appointed.

The master of Lingxi Sect was always selected from the three senior disciples of the three peaks.

Just it was usually the Jianfeng senior disciple who was chosen.

Furthermore, Jianfeng had a brilliant new talent, one who was rising up above all others.

Bright sunshine streaming down, the young lady in white and red dress calmly gazed at a nearby mountain peak, her expression indifferent.

In the six years since Chang Lan had left, only one inner disciple had won【Jianfeng Wenling】twice, also becoming the only one qualified to act as Jianfeng’s alternate great disciple.

Chu Yao, a proud daughter from the Chu family of Chang’an.

After Chang Lan, no one had been able to stand against that girl’s cold sword.

If everything went as expected, after the next 【Jianfeng Wenling】that dazzling child of heaven would walk into Lingxi’s council hall as the senior disciple of Jianfeng.

Chang’an, the Imperial City of legend.  Chu, the surname of an emperor a hundred years past.

A noble, respected clan with royal blood running through their veins, inviolable arrogance bred in the bone.

Gu Peijiu softly murmured to herself: “The eldest daughter of Chang’an’s Chu family……”

Chu Yao.

Three days later—

Suxi was the modest river that spilled down from the apex of Danfeng.  Overflowing with qi, a very small pavilion had been constructed beside it.

Because of the abundant mountain qi, working in the pavilion enabled highly successful liandan.  Only Danfeng inner disciples could go there, and even then, they had to request and get approval before they could use the Suxi Pavilion.

Warm sunbeams filtered through the forest, carved into innumerable flares by dense tree leaves, then scattered down onto the clean grass.  Or they flitted on the crystal-clear water, where along the bottom the fishes’ scales glimmered amongst multi-colored pebbles.

Gu Peijiu was wearing her white Danfeng dress, delicately embroidered red maple leaves adorning her cuffs, with her long black hair pulled back by her red ribbon, softly draping against her snow-white neck.  She gazed thoughtfully at a Wutong tree in front of the Suxi Pavilion.  A summer cicada was laying a tree branch, dispiritedly vibrating its wings and faintly emitting its distinctive buzz.

Noon was already past.

The person who should have come had still not arrived.

Gu Peijiu’s porcelain-fine face stayed expressionless as she simply waited, still and silent before the pavilion’s blazing vermillion door.

Moreso than most, Gu Peijiu was very patient.

However, it appeared that no matter how willing to wait, some people were not willing to come.

The scorching sun slowly descended behind the mountains, the chirp of cicadas gradually becoming more enthused.

Standing at the pavilion door for a long, long time, Gu Peijiu’s fine black eyelashes were tinged with night frost.

—Not coming.

Will not come.

With a wave of her sleeves, Gu Peijiu left.

青黄不接qīnghuángbùjiē

lit. yellow does not reach green (idiom); the yellow autumn crop does not last until the green spring crop / temporary deficit in manpower or resources / unable to make ends meet

【Jianfeng Wenling】general gist-asking the sword spirit

光斑[guāng bān]

flare; light spot; facula; plage

A facula /ˈfækjʊlə/ (plural: faculae /ˈfækjʊliː/), Latin for “little torch”, is literally a “bright spot”. The term has several common technical uses. It is used in planetary nomenclature for naming certain surface features of planets and moons,[1] and is also a type of surface phenomenon on the Sun’s photosphere. In addition, a bright region in the projected field of a light source is sometimes referred to as a facula, and photographers often use the term to describe bright, typically circular features in photographs that correspond to light sources or bright reflections in a defocused image.