Chapter 12

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

As I was translating this I realized that it’s not Hu Yanlu, but rather Huyan Lu. I’ve gone back and fixed the name in previous chapters.

***

The little Princess’s social practice class.

Cheng Xingfei added another 10% mental compensation raise to Zhuo Yi’s pay. As such, Zhuo Yi transformed from a bodyguard into a childcare-helper gramps.

His everyday tasks were as followed—

9am – 10am, watch over Hua Zhao taking her literacy online classes.

10am – 12pm, supervise Hua Zhao in finishing her homework, which comprised of: the four basic math operations involving numbers below 1000 (at least 20 problems), recitation of English words (at least 30 words), loudly read aloud the news from the newspaper (at least 3 articles).

12pm – 2pm, eat. Lunch break.

2pm – 3pm, the second round of literacy online classes.

3pm – 6pm, teach common sense life basics, including how to use electrical devices, how to read a clock, what red and green lights are, why a car runs…

Hua Zhao had absolutely no idea what was going on with modern society. Everything needed to be taught from scratch.

Fortunately, she was an adult with a normal IQ, and her rate of learning was much quicker than a child’s — no, it wasn’t just quicker! She was even able to extrapolate what she learned to other areas!

The second day she learned how to use facial cleanser, she was able to compare it to all of Cheng Xingfei’s skincare produces, cleverly distinguishing between lotion, skin essence, pre-essence, and essence water.

The second day she learned how to use a kettle, she taught herself how to make herself a bowl of instant noodles along with sausage.

The second day she learned how to use the iPad to go online, she found several online games. If it weren’t for the fact she didn’t have a bank card, she would’ve went to go get herself a string of 648-yuan game gift packs.1

She even learned how to use WeChat, go online shopping, order takeout, browse Douyin…

Hua Zhao’s progress was evident to all. After one month of classes was finished, Teacher Li An wholeheartedly wrote an “Outstanding” on her report card.

The current Hua Zhao would not expose the slightest oddity when she interacted with other people. Other than the fact that her personality was still impulsive and capricious, when she and Cheng Xingfei stood right next to each other, you nearly couldn’t tell the difference between them.

……

In order to help Hua Zhao establish her learned knowledge, Zhuo Yi took Hua Zhao to several outside practical classes after she “graduated” from literacy class.

The first class was shopping at the supermarket.

Hua Zhao wore a face mask and a baseball cap, looked for a time when there weren’t many people, and excitedly went to the supermarket.

In Hua Zhao’s era, she once disguised herself in male clothing and sneakily snuck out of the palace doors with her maid and eunuch to go to the “Lantern Festival.” Other than the numerous different types of paper lanterns at the Lantern Festival, there were also dazzling arrays of food stalls and juggling performances. Hua Zhao once thought that the Lantern Festival was the happiest place on earth, until she got to the supermarket. She finally discovered that the supermarket was a hundred… no, a thousand times more interesting than the Lantern Festival!

The endless displays of snacks, stuffed full of countless crackers, potato chips, candies. In Zhuo Yi’s eyes, these snacks were extremely unhealthy junk foods, but for Hua Zhao, just a glance at the packages made her drool.

Let’s get chocolate, let’s eat crackers, hey, these potato chips are actually mustard-flavored, and what’s mustard? Whatever, let’s take a bag first and then taste it!

What’s this sweet blackish water? Cola? It’s good, let’s get a box!

Wow, there’s actually a freezer in the supermarket, this ice cream looks good for its price, a container of matcha, tiramisu, vanilla, coffee, let’s get all of them!

There were many aunties in the food section of the supermarket in charge of sales. As soon as they saw Hua Zhao come over, they immediately swarmed around her like a nest of bees.

“Miss, try this dumpling? It’s a new type of vegetable and meat filling!”

“Pretty miss, look at these sesame rice balls! These were made two days ago, buy one get one free!”

“Missy, my fruit yogurts come in orange, pear, and grapefruit flavors! This promotion ends tomorrow!”

How could a Princess manage to withstand such an indiscriminate bombardment of promotions by later generations? After someone else invited her to taste for free and she ate it, how could she embarrass herself and say she wouldn’t buy it? She ate from here to there, the pile in the shopping cart growing higher and higher.

Zhuo Yi silently followed behind her the entire time, pushing the cart for her.

When one cart wasn’t enough, he pushed two of them. At the very least, he was extremely strong. Two heavy shopping carts were completely not an issue for him.

Thus an extremely eyecatching scene emerged at the supermarket — in the front, a slender young lady jumped and hopped around and threw anything she saw that tasted good or was fun into the shopping cart; behind her, a tall man wearing a black suit pushed fully-loaded shopping carts, a scar across his forehead and looking especially like he wasn’t to be messed with.

Yet Hua Zhao didn’t know how much she was drawing attention; she was full of the desire to shop while inside the supermarket. She gestured her index finger and led Zhuo Yi up to the cash register.

The cashier finished scanning in the two carts’ worth of goods with the scanner and lazily asked, “How are you paying?”

She finally reached the final exam2 of her practical class!

Hua Zhao took in a deep breath, pulled out a phone from her pocket, and opened up a small green icon — “WeChat Pay, thank you.”

It was quite inconceivable that in this era, other than the fact that you could pay with coins, you could actually also pay with just your phone! Hua Zhao’s phone was something that Cheng Xingfei gave her; the bank card that the WeChat was linked to was also Cheng Xingfei’s secondary card. She could pay by simply entering in the password during payment time.

As long as she finished paying, her practical class today would be completely finished!

How could she know that after the cashier scanned her payment QR, a box would actually jump up on her phone screen — “The balance on your bank card is insufficient. Please select another form of payment.”

Hua Zhao: “????”

At this time, Zhuo Yi finally spoke leisurely. “Did you forget? This bank card has a limit. You can only use 1000 yuan every day.”

This was something Cheng Xingfei had told her when she handed the phone over. Who told Hua Zhao to be so happy about shopping that she went around like the mouse that fell into a rice jar,3 as if she wanted to empty out the supermarket with her? She quickly exceeded the 1000 yuan limit.

Hua Zhao looked at the snacks and drinks she’d chosen so modestly, and grew aware of her wrongdoings.

She thickened her skin and said, “If not, first lend me—”

The two words Zhuo Yi hated hearing the most were “lend money”. “Don’t think about something that’s impossible. Pick out the things you like the most from the shopping cart until you get the total price below 1000 yuan, then put everything else back on their shelves.”

“…” Where did Hua Zhao ever receive such grievances as these? She could only pitifully push the cart back to the supermarket with her carefully-selected snacks — farewell, I shall put you back on the shelves once more.

Without the money to pay for the things she wanted to buy, she was really quite humiliated!

She felt like all of the staff workers in the whole supermarket were staring at her; she was overwhelmed with the desire to transmigrate back to the Hua Dynasty and no longer come here!

When she finally successfully finished paying, Zhuo Yi held two large shopping bags in one hand and followed behind a sulking Hua Zhao.

To tell you the truth, 1000 yuan could already buy quite a lot of snacks. But when it came to the Princess, these snacks suddenly lost their enticing power. When she looked at them, she remembered how humiliated she was just now at the cash register.

Ahhhhh, that bastard Zhuo Yi definitely did it on purpose! Not reminding her beforehand that she didn’t have enough money, wanting to make a fool out of her.

She wanted to complain! She’d complain to Cheng Xingfei as soon as she got back!

Holding the shopping bags, Zhuo Yi drew up to her side and lightly threw her a sentence. “Princess, the ice cream is about to melt. Do you want to eat it?”

“…”

“Want to eat it?”

“…Yes.” Hua Zhao fiercely thought, I shall spare this sly person’s life, bengong will settle accounts with you after she finishes eating!

……

Although she said that she would settle accounts and judge him later, Hua Zhao’s temper came and went very quickly. When evening arrived, she’d completely forgotten that she wanted to complain.

Cheng Xingfei finished work early today. Hua Zhao was extremely happy, and enraptured, she described what she experienced in the supermarket.

She was like a small kindergartener. Everything she saw was peculiar, everything she saw was interesting, and every little thing she experienced in her life had to be shared with her good friend.

Nor did Cheng Xingfei dislike it. She patiently listened to her speak.

Question and answer, near and far, they chatted quite enthusiastically.

Hua Zhao finally grew tired. She took a sip of water and asked, “Why did you come back so early today?”

Cheng Xingfei said, “I was going to say this — tomorrow, I’m flying to Paris early in the morning and I expect to be there for five days, Sister P will come with me. I want to leave Zhuo Yi behind with you.”

Zhuo Yi worked every day from 8am to 7pm. He had already moved out from the History Museum’s living quarters; Cheng Xingfei spent some money to rent a place for him in a neighboring community so that it would be convenient for him to come and take care of Hua Zhao.

As soon as Hua Zhao heard that Cheng Xingfei was going to go overseas, her eyes lit up.

After a month of overcramming, she knew that the world was round and also that modern people could sit on airplanes to go to other countries!

People could fly in the sky — what an amazing thing this was!

Cheng Xingfei said that she was going to fly on an airplane to France… Where was France? Hua Zhao immediately took out a world globe and found where Paris was located.

“So far….?” she mumbled, eyes full of envy. “When can I fly in the air like you do?”

When she said this, her eyebrows drooped, looking like a dejected kitty.

Cheng Xingfei couldn’t keep herself from patting her on the head. “Hua Zhao, I have people dealing with the issue of your identity, but it needs time. When you have an identity in the future, you’ll be able to ride airplanes and trains to another country to play too.”

Last time, Cheng Xingfei told Zhuo Yi that Hua Zhao was her younger twin sister who had been separated from her since childhood, living another life overseas. Although this was nonsense, this identity could truly be used as an idea. It was just that it was extremely difficult to deal with a clean ID certificate. Hua Zhao needed to continue being an invisible child4 for the time being.

Hua Zhao asked, “Are you going to go play this time?”

“No.” Cheng Xingfei shook her head. “I’m going to go work.”

“What kind of work, filming?”

Cheng Xingfei was slightly shocked. “How do you know what I do?” She hadn’t yet presented herself as an actress to Hua Zhao.

Hua Zhao proudly puffed herself up. “Is there anything you can hide from bengong? Not only do I know you’re an actress, I also know that you acted as ‘me.’” She paused, afraid that she would seem like too much of a bootlicker. She quickly added, “Oh, it wasn’t because I’m interested in you, I just saw it because it was there.”

She went to play at the night market before and hastily watched two episodes of “Princess Hua Zhao” in the food stall. After she got back, the itch in her heart had to be scratched and so she poked around a streaming site, became a member, and finished watching the several dozen episodes left all in one go. She wasn’t satisfied after watching it once, so she continued to watch it again a second time, a third time…

Hua Zhao said in admiration, “You really are famous. I went to the supermarket and saw your picture printed on the shampoo boxes. And also potato chips, coffee, lipstick… I didn’t know you’re actually so amazing!”

In truth, before “Princess Hua Zhao” released, Cheng Xingfei’s popularity was not so big. But when this drama became a hit, the number of successive business invitations that came along with it were innumerable.

It was Cheng Xingfei that made “Princess Hua Zhao”. It was also “Princess Hua Zhao” that made her.

The reaction of the market spoke for itself, and the love of the fans spoke for itself. Cheng Xingfei heard the producer say that “Princess Hua Zhao” had already made it to this year’s Golden Awards; Sister P was working hard to help her get an award.

These praises were enough to speak for her success, but, when the Princess herself said “I’ve seen your performance in ‘Princess Hua Zhao’”, Cheng Xingfei’s heart still stopped for a moment.

She fairly understood the feelings of the actors who performed in biopics!

Really, really, really, really really really too shameful!

Cheng Xingfei asked in a small voice, “…Then what do you think about my performance?”

“Your performance was pretty good—” Hua Zhao stopped for a moment, “ —of course, compared to me myself, there’s still a big difference.”

Cheng Xingfei immediately and humbly asked for advice, practically taking out a little notebook to take notes. “Where was the difference?”

Was there not enough power in her expression when she was being savage? Or was her last jump down not brave enough?

Who could imagine that Hua Zhao actually would actually pat her own cheek and regretfully say, “Of course the difference is in my flower, moon-like looks~~”

Cheng Xingfei: “…”

Cheng Xingfei: “……”

Cheng Xingfei: “………”

Cheng Xingfei: “I see, obviously the difference is in your thick skin.”

As soon as Hua Zhao heard this, she immediately cried out in uproar.

“Bold wretch, why aren’t you kneeling down and kowtowing right now, bengong spares you not to die!” Hua Zhao jumped up, baring her teeth and claws to force Cheng Xingfei into apologizing.

The two of them fought on the bed for a good while. Cheng Xingfei didn’t have Hua Zhao’s impressive physical power and after a short while worked up a light sweat, was defeated on the battlefield, and even said, “Princess, spare my life.”

Hua Zhao obtained a completely victory without feeling the slightest like she was using a dirty method to win.

It was already very late. Hua Zhao didn’t want to return to her own bedroom and simply depended on sleeping together in Cheng Xingfei’s bed.

Two similar delicate and charming girls, lying down under the same blanket, making idle chatter.

If you asked Hua Zhao, Cheng Xingfei was the person who saved her from being lost in the fog of a thousand years, her most trusted friend in this era; and if you asked Cheng Xingfei, being able to know Hua Zhao was also the most marvellous experience in her life.

In the dark room, the only light left was that from a dim small mushroom-shaped night light in the corner. The two girls lay shoulder to shoulder, breathing gradually aligning.

Hua Zhao yawned and felt the god of sleep beckon to her.

While she was groggy, she suddenly thought of something. “Right… there’s a problem with the ending of ‘Princess Hua Zhao.’”

Cheng Xingfei was so sleepy her top and bottom eyelids were nearly sticking to each other. “What kind of problem?”

Hua Zhao smacked her lips. “Huyan Lu’s mother was supposedly a Persian tribute dancer, so he had foreign blood mixed in and also a pair of crystal blue eyes. And he was very young, he already received troops to become a war general by the time he was in his twenties. But the actor you people found looks completely too fierce, he doesn’t look like the Hun king’s son but rather like the Hun king’s father.”

Cheng Xingfei thought of the actor who played the role of the Hun general in the drama… yes, it seemed like he truly was a bit old…

Hua Zhao also said, “The main thing is, the last part of the TV drama, when ‘I’ climbed the city gate tower to offer a dance for the troops, what kind of dance was that?!”

When Cheng Xingfei heard this, her sleepy bug completely flew away. Her heart was devoted to how she could continue on improving her acting, so she hurriedly asked, “What is it, did I dance very badly?”

Cheng Xingfei never formally learned dancing. In order to perform the dance well, she specially went to a dancing school to request a classical dance master to privately teach her. After practicing diligently for a long time, she was finally able to create that sorrowful and graceful dance.

When she was analyzing that dance, she fused her feelings completely into it: the pain of the country’s invasion, the compassion for the commoners, the helplessness when facing the large attacking army, as well as the determination to die for the country…

She really imagined herself to be Hua Zhao, dancing while weeping. When the director called “Cut”, she immediately knelt on the ground, her tears falling like rain. It was a very long time before she was able to separate herself from the plot.

And this scene also became the most classic part of the whole drama, moving the hearts of countless fans.

Who would imagine that the part she had placed such thought in analyzing did not receive the praise of Princess Hua Zhao herself?

The Princess yawned, overwhelmed with sleepiness. Her eyelids grew heavier and heavier. “No… you danced really well… but back then my dance wasn’t… it was…”

She hadn’t yet finished speaking when the Princess Piggy fell her way into dreamland.

Cheng Xingfei kept on waiting, until she could wait no more for her answer, and she waited until she heard a long snore.

The ability to fall asleep in seconds was really like a child’s.

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1 A promotional tactic in many online games, where you sign up and follow the game account on QQ, and can buy gift packs to participate in a lottery and win prizes. Supposedly 648 yuan is how much much they cost because at the beginning, popular mobile games were originally foreign ones, and 648 RMB = US $99.90

2 these two words originally in English.

3 A fable that can be summarized as, a mouse once fell into a jar full of rice, and seeing no one around began to eat it, celebrating over its luck. Without the need to go search for food, the mouse stayed in the jar and ate and ate. Finally the mouse finished all of the rice. However, when it tried to jump out of the jar, it discovered that it was now unable to, for the lip of the jar was too far up. Without a way to get out, the mouse eventually starved to death.

4 黑户 lit. “black family”, or black-listed children, referring to children born outside the One-Child Policy. Parents who choose not to report (and register) these children do not pay the fine for violating the One-Child Policy, but the children will not be listed on the family register, do not have ID cards, and for legal intents and purposes do not exist. It’s all pretty sad.

***

Huyan is a Xiongnu surname, the Xiongnu being a nomadic clan whose repeated invasions actually prompted the building of the Great Wall. There is a theory that the Xiongnu tribe were precursors to the Huns, but there’s no definitive proof to back it up.

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