[Tian Ya Ke (Re-)Readalong] Chapter 2+3

[rekishi]

This post is based on the sparkingwater translation. I may switch for next week to the xuxunette translation next week. I wanted to but haven't gotten around to reading over these two chapters. -.-

Also, I apologize in advance if I'm not as chatty this time around as usual, I got my second vaccine shot today and we'll see how that goes.

Chapter 2 – Chance Encounter
Chapter 3 – Abandoned Shrine

Zhou Zishu starts wandering, gets mistaken for a beggar, treated to some wine by a young lady and we meet a mysterious stranger who obviously is our antagonist. Three chance encounters change the course of Zhou Zishu's wandering.


Chapter 2

• "But if you did one every three months, letting the body adapt to the nails until you couldn’t tell them apart on your body — even though death would still be inevitable in three years and there would be an excruciating eighteen months of pain — you would retain at least half of your core strength and could still behave like a completely normal person.
  
  The method was said to drive people crazy with agony; but Zhou Zishu merrily found out that the rumor was unfounded after all. Not only was he still sane, he also felt like there was no other time in his life that he was this happy and at peace."


• "After those ten days he looked even worse, his appearance wretched and face evidently ill. The emaciation, the wine-reeking clothes and the untamed bird’s nest hair completed his beggar look."


• "He had thrown away his freedom to serve royalty in the dark; his life in a never-ending circle, anything he ever owned had to become compensations for the acts he had committed. Now he was just a loner with empty hands, having racked his brain for a triumphant escape plan that put his life at risk. He even thought it was so smart of him to have succeeded.
  
  He suddenly pitied himself, feeling like the most foolish man even in the most foolish world."


• "Zhou Zishu couldn’t help but raise his head. On the second floor of the tavern facing him were a pretty young lady in purple leaning over the balcony and a man sitting next to her dressed in gray. The latter had a wan complexion, dark eyes seeming like they could swallow all brightness, features very distinct; he actually did not look too human. Zhou Zishu met his eyes the moment he looked up."


• "The girl in purple was still staring at him up and down with her bright eyes. After a good while, she could no longer suppress her curiosity, informing the accompanying man about something then jumping downstairs excitedly, strolling to Zhou Zishu, “Hey mister beggar, how about I treat you to a meal?”"

Chapter 3

• "Even if I die right here, it’ll be worth it, Zhou Zishu mused.
  
  The idea had crossed him before — back when he was in the middle of climbing the Mountain of Immortals in Penglai. But then he remembered that he hadn’t visited Jiangnan and all of its natural beauty; so down south he had gone and again had the thought resurfaced at this place. An unknown emotion surged up inside him."


• "The pair whom old man was watching was definitely not ordinary either, seeing that they made him this on guard."


• "It was jianghu after all; ambiguity was one of its staples. If the royal court was a battleground for fame and power, jianghu was a battleground between white and black."


• "The moment he opened his mouth, his words were a never-ending stream. Zhou Zishu smiled, eating his pie with more vigor, feeling a little shameless."


• "Staring at the boat sailing further away from sight, Zhou Zishu deliberately muttered a regard of absolute literary excellence, “Fuck you.” [你娘的, ni niangde]<"/li>
  
• "Three silhouettes appeared at the shrine’s door with the apparent smell of blood, prompting Zhou Zishu to open his eyes and frown."


• "The boy bit his lips. He pulled out the sword tied around his hip, throwing himself at the man in black, “I’m gonna kill you!”"


• "What a roll he was on today, seeing that half of the people gathered here was someone he had run into beforehand."

A few linguistics things first:

At least in this chapter, Gu Xiang calls WKX "公子" (gongzi, [young] master) rather than 主人 (zhuren) as she does in SHL and doesn't have the same connotation of ownership. 公子 is a polite address (you'll have seen it thrown around aplenty in wuxia and xianxia). Interestingly, towards the end of this encounter, the narrative does refer to him as her 主人 (She seemed crestfallen, no longer daring to make any rash decisions in front of her master [主人].)

The translation here uses the jianghu (江湖) term. We'll see this translated as 'pugilist world' later, which is...not semantically wrong, but when I see the term 'pugilist' I think of boxing.

Zhou Zishu, trained by the Emperor to be a master of all trades for the position of Tian Chuang’s leader, [...] the verb here is 扶植 (fuzhi; full string is "周子舒,昔日荣嘉皇帝一手扶植的天窗首领") which means "foster, prop up, support", so literally "ZZS [周子舒] [in] former days [昔日] Rongjia Emperor [荣嘉皇帝] without outside help, one handed [一手] support [ 扶植] [attributional 的] Tian Chuang leader [天窗首领]" and deepl makes out of this "ZZS, the former leader of Tian Chuang who was handpicked by Emperor Rongjia" which really makes more sense than me trying to puzzle it out; in case you didn't know: I'm terrible at translating (especially languages I don't have full fluency in)! (一手扶植 in this case being 'handpicked' which I find interesting and none of my dictionaries knew)

We learn more of the nails, and how ZZS (and a few others(?!)) know that there is a way not to end up a living corpse. Which, to be honest, doesn't sound very pleasant and I'm not sure excruciating pain is that much preferable. But what this tells us: ZZS is crazypants and has an insane pain tolerance and martial arts of a level you probably don't want turned against you. It also gives us more hints as to why he chose the nails (the slow erosion I mentioned last week), and I'm thinking about taking notes about this since this might be something useful for fic, but that would possibly be too introspective.

ZZS perving a bit on A'Xiang should probably be...weird? Especially since she's 14 at the start of this story, but life at the Imperial Court was not all fun and games - we get some idea in Qi Ye but also later on in this novel - and I'm probably giving him more leeway here than I should. I don't think he would have forced anything even given the opportunity, but now on the second read it does stand out a bit. I don't think I was bugged by it the first time around.

We are introduced to...the antagonist? xD Though he and ZZS don't actually interact with each other, there is a definite vibe there. That gets only stronger when the boatman stops swearing to watch them. One wonders, does the boatman know more?

Regardless, it's a delightful exchange both between A'Xiang and ZZS about the wine and his sunbathing as well as between ZZS and the boatman, who is obviously more than a boatman. There is a certain naivety with A'Xiang, which is understandable considering her life experiences so far, but she is clearly the counterpart of the "sickly looking, emaciated" figure of ZZS. However does she strike you as 14?

ZZS is a little shit anyway and him discovering he also has a potty mouth gives me great joy. It's interesting that we are told he spent "most of his life" among the cultured. In his late 20s, and knowing he spent the past decade or so at court, that gives us a wide open field of about 20 years of time that is unfilled. We do get some background later on, but that would still put us in jianghu. Granted, many of the jianghu folks would still be considered gentry, although as Cao Weining will later point out they're not well read, but for me it still raises the question of what, exactly, was the position of Siji Manor back in its halcyon days?

Unfortunately though, ZZS is also an old hand at death, so when a few people show up smelling of blood that can't be good news. It's just not his day when not only the boatman shows up, with a probably lethal wound on his back, with a boy - who has more bravery and face than anything else - and an old woman in tow, but also his wine-benefactor from earlier that day.

This is where we leave ZZS for now, tune back in next week (July 6) with chapters 4+5 where we meet new old faces and sell ourselves make promises.