V1C12

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It’s hard to draw the heart and the bone¹

Hai Lan trembled and turned, only to see a young woman standing at the entrance of the mourning hall.

Her face is bright and beautiful, but grief and bitterness are shown in her eyes.

The mourning hall suddenly became quiet. There was a slight strangeness in the doctor’s eyes, and the Qin family looked at the woman. At the end, Qin Baichuan whispered: “Go in and see him, he must be waiting for you too, his eyes have not closed yet.”

Lin Siwei whispered, “Lin Yu, you are back.”

As a matter of fact, even without Lin Siwei saying it, Hai Lan already had the perception of who this girl in front of her was, and strangely enough, she seemed to have seen her somewhere before.

Lin Yu glanced at her, smiled bitterly, and stared at the black and white photo in the middle of the mourning hall.

She covered her eyes tightly with one hand but tears still streamed from her fingers. Finally, she slowly knelt down and choked, “Uncle, auntie, allow her go in with me. Please don’t blame her; it has nothing to do with her. Qin Ge actually died for me.”

The husband and wife glanced at each other, and Qin Ge’s mother asked in a daze, “Xiao² Yu, what are you talking about?”

Lin Yu hunched down, her lips trembling, gibberish words coming out, as if the words she can only hiss the words from her throat.

Hai Lan knew that Lin Yu is also in pain at the moment. She didn’t know how to react properly to this woman, nor could she understand her words. Her heart was like Lin Yu’s lips, trembling fiercely, but Lin Yu said fiercely: “Four years ago, in the excavation of the Tang tombs, the the professor leading the archeological team sent my grandfather a piece of artifact from the tomb. He asked him to help appraise a blue-and-white porcelain that had a unique craftsmanship which was believed to not belong in the Tang Dynasty. After further research, it does not seem to belong to any dynasty.”

“One night, I went to my grandfather’s Institute and saw this porcelain. A moment of curiosity made me take a look at it, but I accidentally broke the porcelain. At first, I thought bottle inside was hollow, but upon checking, there is another layer of entrepot and inside is hidden a formula for ancient poison-gu called the King of Heart Gu³.

“I have been studying medicine for many years, and this ancient prescription from a thousand years ago immediately aroused my interest. According to the formula, this King of Heart Gu initially need a female and a male to have a sexual intercourse⁴ to be able to enter the human body of the target. But it was later improved and no longer needed any medium for its transposition. The King of Heart Gu is also called the Twin Gu⁵, for its double potency. The twin gu are planted into the body of two people, and if there is no antidote, these two people have will experience suffering and even death together. If one person is in pain, the other will also feel the same. If one person dies, the other will also die.”

“The gu, I’ve heard of it so many times, but have never seen it in person. I don’t even believe there will be such a strange poison in this world. I desperately wanted research more about it, and even intended to make it the subject of my master’s thesis. After having success with a variety of animals, I wanted to test the drug on myself, but since it was twin poison, I was short of a companion. My medical school classmates refused, saying I was crazy. I knew that if anyone else in the world was willing, it would be Qin Ge, but I… I dare not gamble with his life. Later, I found a withdrawn student in my grandfather’s institute, and I… quietly planted the gu on her.”

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Note:

repeating the explanation of the title 画心难画骨 (hua xin nan hua gu) came from this full idiom 画龙画虎难画骨，知人知面不知心 (hua long hua hu nan hua gu, zhiren zhi mian buzhi xin) which literally means it’s easy to draw dragons and tigers but not their bones; as easy as knowing the faces of the people but not their heart ~~ Basically, one cannot judge another’s heart just by the surface

小 (xiao) or little, a term of endearment

心蛊王 (xin gu wang) literally Heart Poison King, as 蛊 is literally a kind of strong poison in the ancient times so I will retain the pinyin for gu because it’s not interchangeable

MY GENTLE TYRANT SPOILER: I’m not sure if some of you have finished Tyrant, but this was how Long Feili was poisoned by Long Xiuwen. It needed to be transferred via intercourse so he placed the poison to the bridge who was Nian Xuanji. Later, when they made love, the gu finally made its way into his heart. It was the only time his guards weren’t up so Ah Li was poisoned then, and was the reason of the whole execution arc of Xuanji– because knowing that Ah Li and LXW was connected via this poison, she would not allow Ah Li to know that LXW is the one who r*ped her and was the father of her baby because he would kill LXW (or die of heart pain (whichever comes first); which actually happened anyway. He did really had a heart attack when he found out about it.

ANYWAY I’M DROPPING A LOT OF TYRANT SPOILERS, TELL ME IF I’M TELLING TOO MUCH

Actually, the other term for the heart gu is the 子母蛊 (zi mu gu) or the child-mother gu, but I would rather translate it as the twin gu it easily depicts how it works

T/N:

I absolutely love how Mo Wu Bi Ge played with the gu as a plot device for Tyrant and here in Qingcheng. You know how it was the only reason why Xuanji did not tell Long Feili that it was not Bai Zhanfeng who is her baby daddy but she was actually r*aped by his brother Long Xiuwen, because she knew that if Long Feili finds out he will kill Long Xiuwen, and with the twin gu, if Long Xiuwen dies, Ah Li will also die as the other end of this twin gu (mother and child gu) and you know in the narration, it was only the most important for Xuanji– for the emperor to live and establish a good reign.

She even used this element as an angst-inducing plot device because as far as we now know, Qin Ge seems to be have only protected Hai Lan was because of the Gu. I love how she viewed such device from different paradigms and different levels of pain. I love love love her.

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