Love from the Male Protagonist's Harem

Chapter 76- Fate of Monarch Eyes Part 2

Translated by Snowfall77

“So what ended up happening to Empress Chu?”

Chu Yao glanced at Xia Ge, indifferent: “Died.”

——Who wouldn’t die?!  Of course someone who’d lived hundreds of years ago was dead.  No bullshit.

Frowning, Xia Ge tried again: “Right……how did she die?”

Chu Yao recited: “Giving her body as a sacrifice to the departed, Empress Chu’s throat was slit with one stroke of a knife, she killed herself in front of a nameless grave.”

Xia Ge: “Sacrifice to the departed……she committed suicide?”

Chu Yao nodded: “Yes, she cut her throat with her own knife.”

Wasn’t the Chu family Yimei called {sacrificial knife}?!

Wait, just wait a minute……

Xia Ge was having a hard time believing what she was hearing: “Suicide?  But she’d become the empress.  She’d accomplished her goal.  Why commit suicide when you’ve united a country and are ruling over it?”

Chu Yao cast Xia Ge another sideways glance: “Go ask her yourself.”

Xia Ge: “……”  How did Chu Yao expect Xia Ge to respond to that?

Then Xia Ge suddenly thought of the mural she’d seen in the Lingxi ancestor’s tomb.

Could Chu’s ancestor……have anything to do with Lingxi’s ancestor?

On the other hand, nothing Chu Yao had said about her ancestor related to Lingxi’s ancestor.  So perhaps there was no connection between the two.

Sipping at another cup of wine, Chu Yao murmured: “Before Empress Chu died, she left her last words, dismissing the royal family and having [Order] rule over the common people.  The major families each went their own way, as they continue to do now.  Since then, the qi of a monarch has dissipated and cultivators don’t dare interfere with worldly fate.”

Pondering Chu Yao’s words, Xia Ge interjected: “Erm, let me ask this……did Lingxi’s ancestor have anything to do with your Chu family?”

Chu Yao gave Xia Ge a look: “What does it matter if there were?  And how would I know?”

Xia Ge: “……”  Thanks.

“Humph.”  Chu Yao drank some more, her eyes showing her intoxication, “To tell you the truth, all I ever heard at home was how brilliant and powerful Empress Chu Shi was.  How great she was in battle.  How perfect her life was.  The best adjectives I’ve heard in this world were all learned by me listening to others praising her.

Xia Ge: “Isn’t that good?  That your family has such a glorious ancestor?”

“But every time I did something wrong, I was made to kowtow to her rotten clothes and admit my faults!”  Cheeks flushed red, Chu Yao was very irate, “Sometimes I felt I was in the right, but my father did not!  So I had to kneel to her old clothes!”

Xia Ge: “……”

“Did she never make any mistakes?!  Was she perfect?!  Why should I have to kneel when I obviously wasn’t in the wrong?!”  Chu Yao thumped her cup down on the table, making everything rattle, “I know the family’s secret history!  No matter how great she was, wasn’t she also a former bandit chief?!”

Xia Ge: “……”

“Fine, even if I wasn’t wrong, I had to kneel to her.”  Chu Yao raised her cup to her lips, her round, light brown eyes full of drunken defiance, “Her words calmed the whole country, her martial abilities united the whole country.  She is my ancestor.  Kowtowing to her is nothing.  After all, I too admire her very much.”

Calmly listening, Xia Ge thought to herself that Empress Chu Shi clearly held a very sore spot in Chu Yao’s heart.

“Runt, have you ever heard of……”  Chu Yao paused for a second, then went on, “The ‘fate of monarch eyes.’

Xia Ge honestly shook her head no.

“Empress Chu’s eyes were light brown,” Chu Yao’s voice hoarsened, “These kinds of eyes are called the ‘Fate of Monarch Eyes’ by the Chu family.”

“According to Chu family lore, only those who have ‘Fate of Monarch Eyes’ have the ability to be acknowledged by the Chu family Yimei {sacrificial knife}.”

“And for hundreds of years, besides Empress Chu, I’m the only other person to have ‘Fate of Monarch Eyes.’”

“But……”

Chu Yao’s hands slowly moved to cover her eyes: “I’m not her……”

A little startled, Xia Ge suddenly felt she understood.

——A child who, from birth, had been treated as the second coming of ‘Empress Chu.’

Burdened with insanely heavy expectations, treated like the resurrection of a great ancestor, set up on high, yet forever living under the weight of that dead person’s glory, unable to free herself.

“Do you know what they like to call me?”  Chu Yao put her hands down and clasped her cup, staring out the window.

Xia Ge shook her head again.

Sneering, Chu Yao enunciated each word carefully.

“Empress Chu reincarnated.”

Cool breeze wafting, the young lady with light brown eyes stared fixedly out the window, hand gripping her cup tight and her teeth clenched: “……I don’t accept it.”

The Chu family loved to say——

The moment you opened your eyes, you had everything.

Never mind that it meant all Chu Yao’s successes only contributed to the brilliance of that distant ancestor.  Because that was the way it should be.

“Mmm.”  Xia Ge thought for a minute, before abruptly standing up with a laugh.

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Startled, Chu Yao looked up at Xia Ge: “Why are you laughing?”

Slowly putting her cup down, Xia Ge next reached out towards Chu Yao’s eyes.

Although Xia Wuyin was obviously a teenage boy, Chu Yao couldn’t help noticing how soft and pale his hands were.  Like a girl’s.

Gentle fingertips brushed across Chu Yao’s eyelashes on their way to move aside the hair on her forehead, leaving her eyes completely exposed to the other.

Body stiffening, a wide-eyed Chu Yao took in Xia Wuyin’s soft expression.

The youth with the red ribbon wasn’t quite tall enough.  But, kneeling on the table, he leaned close, his black eyes shining like midnight stars, and he had a smile on his lips: “Because I still think your eyes are pretty.”

自刎zìwěn

to commit suicide by cutting one’s own throat