Lanke Chess Edge
Chapter 32: The Whole Story

The outer building of the temple covered an area of ​​about half an acre, with three stories and a roof with eaves covered with glazed tiles. It was a famous dining and tea restaurant in Ning’an, and the food was also considered to be some of the best in the county.

Ji Yuan walked into the outer temple building with the City God of Ning’an County. The inside hosted ten tables, and nine of them were already full, so the room was very lively.

As soon as he entered the restaurant, the a waiter came up to them and enthusiastically asked.

“Two guests, please come in. There are private seats on the second and third floors. The second floor is lively and the third floor is quiet. Which floor would you prefer?”

The waiter had a discerning eye. Of these two men, the older man wore luxurious black robes, and his appearance was clean and tidy, with silver hair. Although the younger man next to him was dressed relatively simply in a wide-sleeved green robe, and his hairstyle was a bit messy at first glance, the more he looked, the more harmonious his appearance felt.

“If you would like, please take us up to the third floor. My surname is Song. Someone has already ordered refreshments for me.”

“Oh, oh, you are finally here. The shopkeeper has asked me three times today. Please come with me. The refreshments are ready!”

The waiter hurriedly invited the two of them upstairs, leading the way.

The Old¹ City God and Ji Yuan smiled and followed.

In the seats on the first floor, everyone was chatting and joking, laughing happily. Overall it seemed very noisy.

As soon as Ji Yuan stepped onto the stairs, the sounds from the second floor became more pronounced.

“…speaking of those 9 knights, all of them were young, handsome, virtuous and extraordinary. Their only shortcoming was their young age; they were weak in experience but already strong in martial arts, including the heroine, who is certainly not inferior to the men… They soon uncovered the Ning’an County government bounty list, and made some preparations. Together, they climbed up Niu Kui Mountain, but that night, a storm came…”

“Oh…”

“How bold!”

“No!”

…

The voice of the storyteller on the second floor and the voices of exclamation from down below sounded one after another.

As Ji Yuan and the Old City God followed the waiter up the steps from the second to the third floor, they heard the storyteller begin to spin the tale of the tiger hunt.

“… Hero Du slashed at the tiger with his saber, and a flash of blood burst out of the slash wound. Hero Lu’s fists and palm strikes fell from the sky, and a strike that could break stone struck square on the white tiger’s head!”

“Oh!”

“It’s really exciting!”

….

Hearing these words, Ji Yuan, who was already halfway up the stairs to the third floor, couldn’t help but smile, and shook his head.

“It seems that Mr. Ji is interested in this storyteller’s tale?”

The Old City God asked him with a smile. In fact, he had also gone to see the white tiger skin along with other underworld agents. It was indeed majestic, but there were no knife wounds on it. Storytelling was the art of the common people,² similar to the drama, and it was normal to embellish a story.

“Hahaha, I’m not very interested. I just happened to hear something that caught my attention.”

There was no way this story was true, those nine young heroes were so frightened in front of Lu Shan Jun that they didn’t even dare move a muscle.³ It was such a strong contrast with this story.

The Old City God was thoughtful, but he didn’t ask any further questions.

The three of them arrived at the third floor together. It was obviously much quieter and less crowded. People were either drinking tea and chatting, or gazing at the scenery outside the building.

“Come on, our two distinguished guests, this is your table. We have bean paste cake, millet cake, fragrant fruit cake, rice porridge, pickled fruit, and candied fruit, as well as this pre-rain tea.⁴ Please help yourselves, and feel free to call if you need anything!”

The waiter said as he pointed out the various refreshments.

“Okay, thank you, little brother!”⁵

“Thank you!”

Ji Yuan and Old Chenghuang thanked him almost at the same time, then they both smiled and took seats opposite each other.

As the waiter walked off, he scratched his head and thought: these two guests were really polite!

After the waiter left, the City God turned back around and spoke.

“Mr. Ji, please try the tea from this outer temple building, the taste is quite good.”

After doing physical work early in the morning and walking such a long way, Ji Yuan was already quite hungry, so he didn’t hesitate to pick up the millet cake and take a bite.

The taste was not too heavy, it was crunchy as he bit into it, and there was an aroma of fresh rice and a slightly sweet taste.⁶

“It’s delicious! It’s really delicious! Lord City God should also try it!”

“As long as Mr. Ji likes it. I am a small City God in a remote county, and this form is just a clay sculpture that has turned into a spiritual incarnation, not a physical body.⁷ With a physical body, mortals can enjoy food to satisfy their cravings, so it’s a bit of a waste to only consume the energy.”

No physical body? Was this an avatar in front of him?

Ji Yuan didn’t know what else to say, so he could only continue eating by himself. Fortunately, drinking tea didn’t seem to have any effect on the other party.

After drinking a bowl of rice porridge and eating a few cakes, Ji Yuan stopped for a bit. The Old City God merely put down his tea up, and turned his attention away from the scenery outside the building.

“Mr. Ji helped our Ning’an County get rid of a serious problem this time…”

The Old Town God recalled and continued.

“Seven years ago, the Earth Dragon of Desheng Prefecture turned over⁸ and an evil spirit leaked out into the spiritual veins of the earth.⁹ Initially, it was nothing much to worry about; regardless of whether the sun continued to shine, or it thundered and rained, the evil spirit would naturally dissipate. Unfortunately, there was also a strong evil energy flowing along the underground water veins…”

The Old City God spoke, and then sighed.

“Underground water veins are inherently yin, and this evil spirit rushed out from a mass grave in the western part of the county. It was empowered by the yin energy of death and turned into this murderous creature. As the City God of this county, I was naturally aware of this. I personally led the subordinates of my various divisions to suppress it. Unexpectedly, this evil thing was very strange. I don’t know whether it had swallowed some Yin spirit, or if there was some other cause, but it actually gained awareness…”¹⁰

As the Old City God slowly explained, Ji Yuan gradually understood the cause and effect of these events.

The evil spirit born from the earth seemed to have been incredibly powerful. The ghost that had gained awareness and intelligence actually pretended to be ignorant to deceive the City God, and at a critical moment, it swallowed up the Chiefs of the Reporting Department and the Yin and Yang Department, and detonated its evil energy, seriously injuring the City God’s physical body.

Fortunately, although the Old City God suffered a big loss, old ginger was still spicy.¹¹ When he was attacked by the earthly evil, he decisively consumed his incense essence and golden body and fought back fiercely, severely damaging the evil creature’s nascent enlightenment.

Although the evil spirit managed to escape after that battle, the Lord Cheng Huang sacrificed the Crown of the City God, sealing all of the evil energy inside of it. With the help of this tool, he found where the evil spirit was hiding: in the well of Ju’an Pavilion. He used all of his strength to lock the spirit’s Yin with his Yin, and temporarily sealed it in the depths of the well, so that the City God could recover from his injuries before finally eradicating it.

This tale made Ji Yuan break out in a cold sweat. Although the Old City God didn’t state it clearly, Ji Yuan’s understood that if this fierce evil thing were allowed to escape at that time, then Ning’an County would be in serious trouble. It might even have had a snowball effect, and an even greater disaster would have occurred.

As for the residents of Ju’an Pavilion, the accidents of the first two households were actually due to their natural fate, not the influence of evil spirits. By the time the third resident, the scholar, had moved in, the evil had most likely recovered, and was able to briefly escape to the soul-lock. The scholar, who was found not far from the well, was frightened to death.

Earthbound spirits like the City God also had their own constraints. Although they could protect one party, they could not directly affect the living world.¹²

Therefore, ever since then, the City God used dreams and other methods to spread rumors that it was unsafe to live in Ju’an Pavilion. As expected, it succeeded in preventing anyone from staying there, but he hadn’t expected that Ji Yuan would move in and come across the spirit again.

As this was a rare opportunity, the Old City God couldn’t wait any longer. He dispatched capable subordinates, and took up his post in the temple, mobilizing the accumulated incense in the temple. He put all of his efforts into fighting and finally destroyed the evil spirit. It was a big triumph for Ning’an County.

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T/n: HOLY FLIPPING GUACAMOLE this was a tough chapter. First they make me cry because I want that food so badly, then they make me cry because the translation makes no sense TT_TT

1. “Lao,” commonly-used honorific that means old, more on the casual side (which is kind of strange to use when addressing a God, but who am I to criticize JY’s willful ignorance?) ↩︎
2. Lit: “Reciting stories is a doorway to the common people’s art.” I find this saying quite poetic. ↩︎
3. Lit: “let out a fart” ↩︎
4. Pre-rain tea refers to tea picked at the second harvest. The earlier tea is harvested, the higher the quality, since the leaves and the vitamins stored in them are fresh. The first harvest is pre-Ming or Ming Qian, which refers to a tea harvest that was picked before the traditional Qing Ming festival (April 4-6th) – pre-Ming is SUPER high quality, so much so that it’s usually reserved for the government to use as diplomatic gifts. Next is pre-rain, which is from Qing Ming to Gu Yu (aka the spring rains, April 19-20th), which is still very high quality but slightly less outrageously expensive than pre-Ming.

   TL;DR: pretty high quality tea there ↩︎

5. Not his actual little brother, but an honorific reference again ↩︎
6. T/n: TT_TT can I just… reach into the screen… and take some… ↩︎
7. T/n: Ok, I keep hearing about the “golden body,” so I naturally had to go look it up. The golden body is apparently a state of spiritual transformation where an individual perfects (some sources say transcend, it’s very confusing) their body, making it stronger, more resilient, and in balance with itself and nature. Although it doesn’t fit with the exact definition, I’m going to simplify it to “spiritual incarnation” since based on the context here that’s what they seem to be using the term for, but you’ll probably see it left as-is in the future.. ↩︎
8. Dilong, Earth Dragon. Based on context, I understand this sentence as saying that there was an earthquake, which unearthed some of the mass grave (as we’ll see in the next paragraph) and gave birth to an evil spirit. ↩︎
9. Ley lines, channels of energy flowing through the world – see also Dragon veins ↩︎
10. Lit: “gained spiritual wisdom” ↩︎
11. From the Chinese idiom: “姜还是老的辣” Lit “old ginger is spicier than young ginger,” which could also be translated as “the older the wiser.” Experience counts, and the older you are the more experience you have, so the more tricks you have up your sleeve. ↩︎
12. Lit: “Yang world,” or world of the living, as opposed to the “Yin world,” commonly translated as “underworld,” but in fact is the world of all spirits and ghosts, not just the dead ↩︎