Chapter 71: The Love-Brain Female Lead Awakens 14

Yi Chen’an: “I wouldn’t dare, I wouldn’t dare. But I really have benefited greatly from Miss Sang’s theoretical instruction and subsequent hands-on demonstration.”

The smile in his eyes was practically spilling over.

“Oh my god, you’re totally laughing at me. You’re not allowed to laugh!”

“Mm, I won’t laugh, I won’t laugh.” But the way she was flustered and embarrassed only made him laugh harder, his shoulders shaking.

Sang Ruo tried to salvage her dignity. “Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. I’m just not good at sports.”

Yi Chen’an stopped laughing too and put on a serious face to coax her. “Right, exactly. Miss Sang isn’t good at sports, but she’s willing to challenge them. Admirable courage.” His tone was earnest and solemn, but the smile at the corners of his eyes refused to stay hidden.

She thought again of her tragically short-lived five-kilometer run. Every moment of it had been humiliating, so she decided to ignore this man who kept making fun of her for now.

Another group of aunties, walking and singing as they went, passed them and generously offered a few words of guidance for the younger generation.

“Young people need to exercise more.”

“You can’t sit down. The more you sit, the weaker you’ll feel.”

“Ah, kids these days. Back when Auntie was young…”

They’d been looked down on again…

Sang Ruo turned to look at Yi Chen’an. Who would’ve thought that this man was being especially awful today? Not only had he laughed at her, now he even said, “Don’t even think about it. I won’t carry you.”

“Who said I wanted you to carry me? I just wanted to ask what fruit you brought. Maybe we should eat it and lighten your load.”

The man clearly didn’t believe her. Slowly, he took off his backpack and handed her the cut fruit sealed in a fresh-keeping container. “Then I really should thank you.”

“No need, no need. Helping others is a traditional virtue.”

The morning temperature wasn’t high, and the fruit still carried a faint chill from the refrigerator. There were peaches, honeydew, strawberries, and blueberries, packed into a large container. The two of them sat by the stone steps and ate. The steps were fairly wide, so they weren’t blocking anyone passing by.

A woman carrying a back basket saw them resting and asked if they wanted bottled water. Five yuan a bottle, and supposedly even more expensive up on the mountain. Since there was no road leading up, the only ways up were the mountain path and the cable car, so most small vendors had to carry supplies up by manpower.

As she spoke, she set down her basket. It was packed full, and she tried hard to make a sale.

They had brought their own water, so they didn’t buy any, but Yi Chen’an bought two fresh, tender cucumbers from her, still with blossoms and prickles on them. It was obvious they had been picked not long ago. The total came to twelve yuan.

What a rip-off. She watched Yi Chen’an stuff the cucumbers into his backpack.

“Do you want to eat one now?” the man asked.

Not at all.

The transaction completed, the woman hoisted her basket full of supplies onto her back and slowly continued up the mountain.

Miss Sang, who was carrying absolutely nothing, felt too embarrassed to keep resting. She got up, patted off her butt, and followed behind at a slow pace, stepping on the stone stairs the woman had just climbed.

Recharged by both the woman and the fruit, Sang Ruo felt that in her current state, she could take down a bull.

Actually, the more you rest while climbing, the more tired you get. If you grit your teeth and keep going, once you get past that rough patch, it gets easier to keep climbing slowly.

This was a brand-new mountain-climbing insight Sang Ruo had just developed, and she generously shared it with the man beside her, only to receive a perfunctory agreement.

“Right, right, right. Miss Sang is truly an expert at mountain climbing,” the man teased.

“Hmph…” She was angry.

They moved slowly, and by the time they reached the summit, it was already close to nine o’clock.

A layer of golden light spread over the mountain and shone into the clouds halfway up the slope, open and far-reaching. Through the filter of having climbed the mountain herself, Sang Ruo felt that the scene before her was no less magnificent than the Golden Summit of Emei.

Sang Ruo wasn’t the least bit grudge-holding, and she tugged on Yi Chen’an again as she sighed in admiration.

“It’s a pity we got here too late. Otherwise, we could’ve heard Faren Temple’s morning bell.”

Faren Temple was the only temple on Liyun Mountain. It had a long history and was a national 4A scenic site¹. She explained to Yi Chen’an, “It’s said that Faren Temple once produced many eminent monks. Every blade of grass and every tree in the temple is imbued with the Zen spirit from their cultivation, and the temple’s evening drums and morning bells can clear and purify the heart.”

Then he ruffled her hair, his voice very gentle. “No need. Coming now is good too. Arriving early has its advantages, and arriving late has its own scenery.” At least he had finally stopped laughing at her.

“Hahaha, are you praising me for being smart?”

“I’m praising you for not thinking too much. You don’t need evening drums and morning bells,” the man said unhurriedly.

“Hey!”

Seeing that she was getting a little prickly, he didn’t keep teasing her and instead asked, “Want to go offer incense?”

“Sure.” Since they were already here.

Faren Temple was thriving with incense offerings. The Mahavira Hall² was impossible to enter, packed with lay worshippers lining up to kowtow before the Buddha. Outside the main doors, many people were also holding incense and praying devoutly.

Sang Ruo was infected by the solemn atmosphere as well. The two of them each received three sticks of incense from the guest monk.

She stood in the courtyard, gazing from afar at the kindly golden statue of the Buddha. Holding the incense high, she closed her eyes and made her wishes with utmost sincerity.

She prayed for her parents’ health, for Yi Chen’an’s smooth and peaceful life, to grow old together with this man, and for all the disasters from her dream never to happen.

She had many wishes, and the Buddha was surely busy. Sang Ruo understood that, so she would also work hard herself to strive for what she wanted and stop what needed stopping.

After placing the incense into the large burner in the courtyard, she saw that beside her, Yi Chen’an still had his palms pressed together at his brow. Who knew what wish he had made? He was even greedier than she was.

And the fact that he actually believed in this sort of thing was rather surprising.

If Sang Ruo hadn’t gone through that dream, she wouldn’t have come in to pray either. Before, her attitude toward these unknown forces had been one of disbelief mixed with reverence. Whenever her younger sister ran into a Daoist temple or Buddhist monastery, she would walk around it.

After the warning she received in that dream, who knew which god or Buddha had taken pity and shown a miracle.

Yi Chen’an still hadn’t finished praying, so Sang Ruo wandered around the courtyard. She observed the people worshipping around her, which ones were truly devout, which ones were simply following the crowd, and which ones had come in out of curiosity to gawk… To a detached observer, it was all perfectly clear. She looked toward the monk standing beneath the corridor, coolly watching all the people of the world, and wondered how people like them appeared in the eyes of those who had left the secular world behind.

Among the worshippers, the most eye-catching was a man standing beneath the wall on the right, holding a string of prayer beads. His hair was cropped so short that only a layer of stubble remained, and he had already been bowing there for quite a long time.

Looking away, Sang Ruo noticed the place behind him where Everlasting Lamps³ were offered. Something stirred in her heart, and she walked over.

She thought of the child from her dream, already formed, yet gone from her.

If everything in that dream had truly happened somewhere, then other tragedies, like what happened to her parents and Yi Chen’an, might still have a chance to be changed. Only that child would never again have a chance to come into this world. If reincarnation truly existed, then she hoped he would be reborn into a happy family and live a smooth, blessed life.

Though Faren Temple was an ancient monastery, the price of its Everlasting Lamps was not especially high.

Even the most expensive one was only 999 yuan.

A monk led her to the side room where the lamps were kept. Inside, row upon row of Everlasting Lamps flickered, packed so densely they seemed endless.

It made one realize that all living beings suffer.

On her way out, she ran into the short-haired man holding prayer beads as he donated money for incense oil. She heard the monk recite a Buddhist blessing to him and say, “I hope your daughter recovers soon.”

So he was here for a child too.

Such is the love of parents everywhere.

Sang Ruo had been delayed for a while, and when she looked up, she saw Yi Chen’an glancing around the courtyard as if searching for her.

She quickly gathered herself and ran over to ask what kind of wish could possibly take him so long to make.

He responded by patting her on the head again.

It was such an intimate gesture that sometimes Sang Ruo honestly couldn’t tell, in his eyes, whether she was a younger girl who needed looking after or a young woman in full bloom.

“Why aren’t you leaving?”

He reached a hand toward her, then drew it back again.

All at once, Sang Ruo really wanted to ask what he was actually thinking. Taking her in, bringing her out to have fun, was it really just because she was a friend’s child and he was looking after her?

Still, she managed to hold back. With incense smoke curling all around them, this was, after all, sacred Buddhist ground, not the place to talk about worldly matters of the heart.

Besides, she was afraid of scaring him off.

So it was better to go eat the vegetarian noodles she had been looking forward to all night.

The vegetarian noodle shop on Liyun Mountain was incredibly famous. If the mountain weren’t so high and so hard to climb, it definitely would have become one of Y City’s hottest check-in spots.

The noodle shop was set up in a small house outside Faren Temple. The storefront was narrow, and the tables and chairs were all arranged in the open space outside. The ones cooking the noodles were monks from the temple. It was said that in the beginning, these vegetarian noodles had simply been free food from the kitchen for visiting worshippers, but because they tasted so good, more and more people came just for them. To avoid disrupting the order inside the temple, the abbot had specially set aside this place outside the temple gates. The monks who cooked here were not full-time kitchen staff either. Any of the younger monks in the temple would take turns working here, treating it as another form of cultivation.

So no one really understood how the flavor could remain so consistently good year after year.

There were only two kinds of noodles here: soup noodles and mixed noodles.

The soup noodles were made with a vegetarian three-delicacy broth as the base. If diners lifted the lid off the pot, they could see the ingredients simmering below, all prepared by the monks themselves each morning with sugarcane, bean sprouts, radish, and mushrooms.

The mixed noodles were built on a base of mashed potatoes. The mash was stir-fried first, with bits of chopped lemon leaf mixed in, giving it a uniquely fragrant aroma that could drift for dozens of meters.

The toppings available year-round were greens, bean sprouts, and shiitake mushrooms, along with short-lived seasonal vegetables.

Since the mountain sat at a high altitude, Sang Ruo was delighted to find she had just barely caught the tail end of bamboo shoot season. Today, one of the toppings was diced stir-fried bamboo shoots.

Still, bamboo shoots were better in soup noodles. In mixed noodles, they were a bit lacking. Sang Ruo’s indecision flared up. She wanted the bamboo shoots, but she also couldn’t let go of the mashed potato base in the mixed noodles, and to top it off, she still wanted the shiitake mushrooms too.

The shiitake topping was truly something special. The thick slices were pan-fried to a rich golden color, thoroughly soaked in oil, and every bite was ridiculously satisfying.

In the end, she reluctantly chose the bamboo shoot soup noodles. After all, once the season passed, she’d have to wait another year.

Yi Chen’an said nothing. He simply stood there watching her struggle, then ordered a bowl of shiitake mixed noodles and an extra bowl of three-delicacy soup⁴.

When the food was brought over, Sang Ruo ate from her own bowl while gazing longingly at the one across from her.

Unable to hide his smile, Yi Chen’an mixed his noodles thoroughly, then nudged the bowl toward the middle of the table.

That meant she could eat some, right? Right?

After getting confirmation, she eagerly found a small bowl, scooped out a portion, and pulled it over in front of herself.

One bite in, and there were only two words for it: pure satisfaction.

As she chewed, she thought, The man sitting across from me has to be interested in me, right? No matter who you asked, this was not how someone would treat a child.

Ah, the birds in the mountains really did sing beautifully.

They finished both bowls of noodles down to the last strand. They were a little pricey, but the taste absolutely justified the 38 yuan per bowl.

Sang Ruo was stuffed, but Yi Chen’an still seemed a little unsatisfied.

“Let’s make our own version at home tonight.”

She had watched the cooking process. The steps really weren’t complicated at all. What mattered was the fresh ingredients and their natural flavor.

If these noodles were made with animal fat, they’d probably be even more fragrant.

In her mind, Sang Ruo had already run through the entire cooking process, including what ingredients and seasonings to buy and what kind of dishes to use.

What she got in return for her suggestion, however, were two looks of doubt.

It seemed Sister Sang’s standing in the martial world of the kitchen still wasn’t solid enough. She didn’t argue with him then and there. Instead, she thought to herself that once the finished dish was set in front of him, he’d have no choice but to admit it.

Translator’s Notes