My White Moonlight Took Off His Women’s Clothes — Chapter 1

It was the twenty-third day of the first month, and the first snow had finally cleared. 

The pattering of fireworks had sounded incessantly since dawn, melting away the snow on the long avenue. Blue smoke rose into the air, and a fine horse and carriage stepped over the red and gold scattered across the ground. They stopped in front of the door of the Anping Marquis’s mansion, draped in vibrant colors. 

The chilly spring wind blew by, and the lanterns above the door, pasted with the 囍 character for double happiness, began to softly sway. 

Dressed in splendid attire, a noble family were welcomed at the mansion door. Soon afterwards, came gift after congratulatory gift, tied with red string. 

The seats at the wedding banquet stretched from the main hall to the front courtyard. A feast of rare delicacies lay before the eyes. The male guests sipped tea in the east wing, while the female members talked and laughed, standing in the hall. Pearls and jade glittered, and in their silk and carefully-done makeup, the ladies glowed like the immortal concubines by the Jade Lake in the Temple of Heaven. 

A layer of white frost covered the red plum trees before the courtyard, yet they bloomed passionately under the clear azure sky, like waves of rolling red clouds. 

“Look at these plum flowers, brilliant as gold. They really deserve to be called cinnabar plums!” A young woman sighed. “I’ve long since heard of the new breed the palace cultivated this winter, and today, I’ve finally seen them.” 

“I heard that when the emperor awarded the young master with the rank of general, he gifted him with the Xiuchun sword, a qilin coat and a hundred cinnabar plums in congratulations. He really is generous beyond measure.” Another woman said with a smile.

“The young master captured eighteen Longxi cities for us, and chased the Tujue barbarians past the Jade Gate. No matter how large the reward, he deserves it!” A madam wearing a jade and pearl crown laughed and said, arm in arm with the lady in the center of the room. 

“The bitter times are over, and the sweet times are just beginning for you, my lady.” 

A wave of whispers broke out among the women surrounding them. 

The lady looked no more than eighteen years old. She had on a rabbit fur scarf below her golden crown, and she wore a simple dress. The smile on her face was calm, but her gentle eyes were lifeless as she stared straight ahead.

 She was the young master’s widowed sister-in-law, the only woman in the household, Song Zhaojin. 

Six years ago, the day that the young master was called to the battlefield, was the day that her father and brother died one after another at Tigerfold Pass. 

Everyone in the capital knew that back then, Song Zhaojin had cried herself blind. 

“It’s my brother who has worked hard.” Hearing the sighs of the people around them, Song Zhaojin smiled lightly and said mildly. 

The woman with her arm in hers hurried to laugh. “I deserve to be beaten, what am I talking about this for on a happy day like this?” 

“That’s right! Isn’t it Aunt Zhongshun who feels unwilling at heart, since she’s long wanted to have a daughter marry into the marquis’s family? But she didn't expect that the young master was bent on marrying the princess, putting an end to the lady’s ideas!” A woman said to the side, amused. 

The lady heard her words and scolded her with a smile: “Now you’ve got a sharp tongue! When the young master returned in victory, riding into the capital, who didn’t see how handsome he was? Could it be that only I remember it?”

The surrounding family members laughed. 

As the women talked and laughed, the faint sound of suonas and drums drifted over. In the hall, a servant announced: “The marquis and his bride have arrived!” 

“So fast?” Someone said.

The servant gave more detail. “Our marquis is gifted in both literature and the art of war. None of the nobles at Hanlin Academy could stop him!”

The crowd sighed in admiration, and the women flocked around Song Zhaojin, talking and laughing as they walked toward the mansion door.

The sound of drums drew closer. They could faintly see the guard of honor made up of internal officials. The officials were dressed richly, and they held incense burners and jeweled fans. The crowd flooded around their path as they threw out gold coins, laughing and shouting. The guard of honor found that a road of only half a mile seemed to stretch on endlessly, until the golden Cannanite incense curled from one end of the street to the other. Only then did the crowd see the figure sitting astride a horse, before the palanquin lifted by thirty-two men.

He shone like the moon and the Milky Way. 

His red and gold wedding garments made him shine like a tree of jade, and his handsome face was as radiant as the jade of his crown. He sat astride a fine horse as red as fire, his posture upright.

The red and gold wedding colors shone in his eyes, and the golden shadow of a smile showed in them, bright as a prince’s.

Behind him was overflowing joy and ten miles of red finery, like the endless sky at dawn behind a golden crow.

***

Fang Linyuan had never even dreamed of this kind of scene. 

The woman he had fallen in love with in a single glance and admired for more than ten years, the woman whose memory sustained him when he curled amid corpses in the night wilderness holding an ice-cold spear, the woman who his father told him not to give up on as he held his hand on his deathbed, was now sitting in the bridal sedan behind him. 

Fang Linyuan had ridden a horse for more than ten years, but at this moment, his hands trembled faintly around the reins. 

Everyone was enthusiastically discussing his feat of asking for the princess’s hand in marriage in the palace, and there were not a few people mocking him for currying favor with royalty as well. 

But he wasn’t that brave, nor that calculating. In Heavenfirst Hall, when the emperor asked him what reward he wanted, there was only one thing on his mind.

Ten years ago, he had followed his father into the palace to say their farewells before they left for the border. By the Greatwater Pool, he saw her for the first time. That day, a thick layer of snow had fallen. The third prince and the fourth princess were sitting in the pavilion, holding hand stoves, while they told her to pick the highest branch of flowers on the tree. 

The wind and snow were fierce, yet she was wearing thin clothes. The third prince said, “As long as you say, ‘That slut in the cold palace should die a thousand deaths,’ we won’t ask you to pick that branch of flowers.” 

But from beginning to end, she never made a sound. She was such a small girl, yet with sweat sticking her hair to her face, she reached, trembling, for that branch of wintersweet. 

Snow had fallen on her brows and eyelashes, shimmering faintly. 

His father had said not to meddle in the affairs of the royal family, but Fang Linyuan couldn’t move his gaze away. He stubbornly waited by the pool, and an hour went by. 

He watched her pluck the wintersweet, but the fourth princess threw the flowers on the ground with a casual motion of the hand, telling her maid to trample it. 

The vivid wintersweet fell into the snow. She left silently, and not a person noticed her. 

She met Fang Linyuan around the corner. She was shivering violently, and her hair was wet, like a bird that had fallen from the snow. 

Fang Linyuan quietly took off his cloak and draped it around her. 

She shrank away for a moment, her lowered face almost covered by blown feathers of snow. But after a moment, she took off the cloak and threw it back into Fang Linyuan’s arms. 

“This is for you…” Fang Linyuan said. 

“It’s yours.” 

She lifted her head, an unnatural red flushing her pale face. She looked at him silently, cold and resolute. 

The girl’s slightly hoarse voice resounded in Fang Linyuan’s ears. He didn’t move, while she bowed her head, brushed herself off and left. 

Fang Linyuan looked back at her, and saw a small figure walking alone into the depths of the wind and snow. 

The shining gold palace was like an indifferent god. It was majestic and warm, but it stood by silently, letting her be swallowed by the snow.

At that moment, Fang Linyuan made a decision. 

He wanted to save her from the layers of palace walls, against a sky of endless snow. 

***

The sound of the suona gradually drew Fan Linyuan’s thoughts back to reality.

The endless sky of snow in his memory slowly became the air full of thrown bronze coins and red silk. The procession slowly stopped before the mansion door. Before the door, crowds of people rustled in their finery, guests flooding through the gates. The eunuch overseeing the ceremony had a red rope wound around his waist. In a high voice, he called, “Let down the palanquin.” 

Fang Linyuan dismounted and took up one end of the length of red silk. He saw a palace maid lift the palanquin curtain and help the woman inside down.

Zhao Chu. 

She had grown a great deal, and was taller than the women around her by quite a bit. When she straightened up, she seemed like she was as tall as him. 

The men of his generation preferred petite, delicate women. Her height was something she was often criticized for. Everyone said that Princess Huining was a vivid flower of the Imperial City, and that her appearance outshone the moon, but she just so happened to be even taller than the average man. It was really a flaw in a piece of bright jade. 

But Fang Linyuan didn’t care at all. In the depths of the palace, she was an orphan without anyone to lean on. If she was soft and delicate on top of that, how would she have survived? 

The kind of person he loved wasn’t someone like a dodder vine, that depended on the tree it twined around to live. 

He carefully lifted the red silk, and amid the sound of drums and fireworks, he took her hand and stepped forward, over the ground scattered with red. 

When she was mounting the saddle, she hesitated a little. Fang Linyuan knew that she couldn’t see the road clearly from behind her veil, so he hurried forward and took her hand. 

Her hand wasn’t as soft as the average woman’s. The bones of her hand were longer, and the quality of her skin was like jade. When he held it in his hand, it felt hard—almost, for a moment, like a man’s hand. 

It must be because she had suffered trials in the palace that other people had never undergone, Fang Linyuan thought.

“Careful.” His low voice unconsciously softened a little. 

Zhao Chu paused for a moment, then steadily mounted the saddle with his support. 

Fang Linyuan slowly tightened his grasp on her hand. 

He wouldn’t let her brave the wind and snow on her own anymore. 

Holding her hand, he passed the mansion door and walked into the entrance hall. Passing by congratulatory gazes of the guests that filled the hall, he never let go of her hand.

***

Wedding banquets were always a complicated process. 

After they bowed to the heavens, the earth and their parents, Zhao Chu was sent to the bedroom, and Fang Linyuan stayed behind to entertain the guests. By the time all of the guests left the hall, it was almost midnight. 

He had toasted everyone and drank a few more cups on his own accord. When he came to the door of the Holdlight Pavilion, his sight was a little blurry. 

The maids and servants were waiting at the door, as well as a few palace maids and eunuchs with serious expressions. They must have followed the bride from the palace.

When he met their gazes, Fang Linyuan couldn’t help but feel that their eyes held cold wariness. 

Yet it made sense, Fang Linyuan thought. The servants Zhao Chu was willing to bring out of the palace must be loyal and protective ones. 

“Marquis, the princess is inside.” When she saw him arrive, the head maid at Holdlight Pavilion, Hanlu, came forward to meet him.

Fang Linyuan made a noise of affirmation and said, “You’ve prepared some refreshments for the princess?”

“You ordered us to before, so we immediately sent some in.” Hanlu said. “But the princess was modest and didn’t shed her veil, nor did she touch the fruit and pastries we sent in.” 

It was already midnight. After tossing about all day, she must be starving.

Fang Linyuan nodded and dismissed them, entering alone.

This was the bedroom he had lived in for many years. Now it was draped in red finery, and red candles cast their flickering light. The vibrant 囍 double happiness character hung quietly before the window. He passed the front room, wove through layer after layer of red curtains, and finally saw the woman sitting below the red canopy.

She sat upright, completely silent. The red candlelight flickered softly on her scarlet cape, and her long pale hands were placed on her lap.

The cold and resilient girl who had suffered humiliation a decade ago was now officially his wife.

“I had to go through a lot of social niceties. I’m sorry you had to wait so long.” He stopped before Zhao Chu, his voice a little hoarse from wine and emotion.

Under the red candlelight, there was no one else there but them. There was less than a single step of distance between them. Fang Linyuan was a little nervous now that he was so close to his dream. His hands trembled at his sides. 

He cleared his throat and kneaded his palms, looking down on himself for being so cowardly before the act.

He should take off the veil first, he thought. He turned around and lifted the golden rod on the table.

But just when he reached out his hand, the rustling of cloth came from behind him. At the next moment, Fang Linyuan keenly felt a burst of wind coming from behind him. 

Who was there?!

He was a little sluggish from the wine. Fang Linyuan felt something small, sharp and cold against his neck, right against his pounding pulse. 

It was a knife.

Right after that, he heard an unfamiliar voice sound behind him.

“Make a sound, and you’ll die without a whole corpse.” 

It was a man’s voice, indifferent and cold as mountain snow. 

***

The author has something to say: 

This should be highlighted:

The princess isn’t a good person in the early stages, but it’ll be fun later on. There’ll be a rather long portion where only one person’s heart is moving. I hope you enjoy this internet novel. Bon appétit~

***

cela’s notes

So I’m back again with a new novel. I was translating This Official Is So Weak, but there was another translator who I suspect was going off of my translation posting at the same time (they stopped posting as soon as I did???), and I realized I really wasn’t excited about the novel. I was really excited about this author because I got addicted to I Became the Older Brother of the Heroine in an Abusive Novel, but once I started reading the Chinese version, I got bogged down again ╥﹏╥ So I don’t know if I’ll stick with this novel. It only has a million points on jjwxc, and I’m not really into the whole “pretend to be a woman” trope. But we’ll see. I do like the more poetic style of the writing, with the ancient Chinese setting. 

2 hours and 27 minutes for 2,556 words, or 5.8 minutes for every 100 words. A total of 3 hours for 3,176 words, or 5.7 minutes for every 100 words. I’m amazed I translated so fast, considering the language was so ornate. 

If you appreciate this translation, please consider encouraging me on Ko-fi! 💛

　

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