Chapter 6 – Yue Bing in Black
Translated by: Shiroyukineko
On the afternoon the next day, the servant girl who would usually quietly withdrew after serving his meals, suddenly spoke out, “Master San, the madame has asked you to come out for lunch.”
Yue Yang followed her out to the residence hall and saw the beautiful woman sobbing endlessly, embracing a girl covered with black clothings.
The usually mischievous small girl acted well-behaved for once, sitting on her chair quietly eating her food. Her little hands held her chopsticks unsteadily as she tried putting grain by grain of rice into her small mouth, sprinkling the rice all over the table and her mouth. Yue Yang saw that the girl in black was actually still young-looking, around 14-15 years old. Her features were a little similar to the beautiful woman’s, but hers were a little more childish.
Her doe eyes were a little red as tears poured down her pale white cheeks.
When she saw Yue Yang, she immediately wiped her tears and covered her face with a black veil.
“…” Yue Yang sighed in his heart.
In the Soaring Dragon Continent, other than the rarely seen female robbers or assassin, the only other type of women who wore black veils to cover their faces, could only be: widows.
This girl in black should be the beautiful woman’s first daughter, Yue Bing.
She ranked seventh amongst the nine younger generations in the Yue Clan, barely surpassing her sister Shuang-er and the Second Branch Family’s youngest, Yue Feng. She was a talent in the Yue Family, having successfully contracted a grimoire at the age of 8 and a half. It was a pity that the Soaring Dragon Continent valued males more than females, as they regarded that females would only be taken as daughter-in-laws or concubines. Sooner or later they would be married off to another family. Thus, although the Yue Family would still raise her with love, she would never compare to the First Branch eldest son Yue Tian or even the other sons in the family. Furthermore there were indeed a little more talents in this generation of Yue Family. The First Branch eldest Yue Tian contracted the grimoire at the age of 10 and had excellent martial arts skills and Spirit Beasts. The fourth-eldest son Yue Yan contracted the grimoire at the age of 11, while the sixth-eldest son Yue Bao contracted the grimoire at the age of 12.
The weaker ones would be the second eldest daughter Yue Yu and fifth-eldest son Yue Ting, they both contracted the grimoire only at the age of 15.
Thus, comparatively, Yue Bing, who came from the Fourth Branch, was not really that outstanding. Furthermore, her martial arts and Spirit Beasts were the Plant-Type that were not very popular in the summoning world. Amongst the Four Great Sects, only the Immortal Spirit Pavilion Sect who only accepted female disciples expressed interest in evaluating her, the other three did not even respond.
But because there were so many talents in the later generation of the Yue Family, when the Third Branch and his wife died and the pitiful guy ended up being raised by the Fourth Branch, he could not help but be labelled as a loser when he still failed to contract a grimoire even at the age of 19. Yue Yang thought, it was no wonder that the Xue Family’s daughter would ask to cancel the engagement. If she entered into such a talented family yet married a loser for a husband, how could she take the burden?
Getting compared to others continuously really took its toll. After the cancellation of his engagement, the pitiful guy could finally take it no more and drowned himself.
However, Yue Bing who was as unlucky as he was, did not commit suicide.
Certainly, she wasn’t rejected by a failed engagement. She married the talented son from one of the Four Major Clans, the House of Feng, through proxy marriage. However, three years ago during his Spirit Beasts training, he was unfortunately killed off by a wild Golden King Beast, turning Yue Bing into a widow before she even joined his family.
The people in the Soaring Dragon Continent were superstitious, and they immediately thought that Yue Bing was a jinx that would bring misfortune to her husband.
That’s why, although she was a member of one of the Four Major Clans, House of Yue, nobody wanted to marry her. Everybody treasured their own sons after all, nobody was willing to risk asking her hands in marriage and got their sons killed for nothing.
“San-ge, congratulations.” Yue Bing whispered softly as she slowly let go of her mother’s embrace. Then, she stood up, intending to go back to her room.
“Your San-ge is not a stranger. Bing-er, don’t eat in your room, let us all eat together as a family here.” The beautiful woman pulled Yue Bing back to her seat.
“Yes.” Yue Bing hesitated a little but pulled off her veil in the end. Holding her bowl and chopsticks, she slowly ate her food mouthful by mouthful. Suddenly, she asked Yue Yang, “San-ge, what kind of Guardian Spirit Beast did you receive?”
“It’s the element-type, ‘Mist’.” Yue Yang realized that every word from his mouth was a lie ever since he was teleported here.
“Element-type… I’m not that good with it. I’m just a part-time student in my school, so I’ve only studied the fighting-type. I don’t know a single thing about the element-type.” Yue Bing was silent for a while, and then she continued, “Otherwise, I could teach you basic summoning skills to summon a Spitting Thorny Flower, but that would waste one page of your summoning grimoire.”
“That’s okay.” Yue Yang knew his own capabilities. He had a Guardian Spirit Beast [Phantom Shadow] which could be summoned for up to ten days and the [Innate] skill, [Invisible Sword Qi]. Losing a few pages in the summoning grimoire and the number of Spirit Beasts wasn’t that important to him.
But since this lady wanted to teach him, he wanted to learn from her.
He could fulfil the beautiful woman’s wishes and be more familiar with all kinds of summoning skills. Who knows, he could even use the Spitting Thorny Flower during battles in the future.
Yue Bing wasn’t a talkative person. She quietly nodded and finished the food in her bowl. Then, the little girl suddenly stood on her chair and reached out her chopsticks to take the smoked fish that was located furthest from her. Looking at her, one hand trying to stretch out her chopsticks and the other hand balancing herself on the table, Yue Yang couldn’t help but feel afraid that she would accidentally fell. The beautiful woman hit her hand lightly and scolded her for not having manners. The little girl trembled with shock, but she had still managed to take a big piece of smoked fish. Chest puffing up, she smiled with a pleased expression, then turned her body towards Yue Yang and stuck her tongue out.
Who would knew, she was so pleased with herself that she forgot she was still standing on the chair. The chair shook a little and her legs lose their balance, causing her to fall on the ground as she shouted out, “AH!”
Yue Yang immediately put down his bowl and used the kind of catching technique to save a basketball from being out of bounds. He reached out his two hands to support her head and her bum before the small girl fell flat on the ground.
The sudden movement and weight caused his body to produce a few cracking noises as he caught her.
Luckily his hands was still stable and the small girl did not slip off from his hands.
“San-gege is so cool!” The small girl was so shocked that her whole face turned white, but in just a moment, she had forgotten the whole spectacle of her falling from the chair. Instead, she climbed onto Yue Yang’s body, latching on to him like a koala, giggling happily.
The beautiful woman snapped out from her shock and stood up angrily, intending to scold this little imp.
The small girl didn’t wait for the scolding and quickly ran away.
“San-er, are you injured?” The beautiful woman reached out her hands to help Yue Yang up.
“No, I’m okay,” Yue Yang couldn’t show his weak side to her, and quickly got up from the floor himself… Actually, he wasn’t injured at all, he simply blanked out for a moment just now, shocked at his own reaction speed. He was a NEET with slow reaction time, when did he became so agile? Could it be that this is the effect of training the [Innate] Invisible Sword Qi skill? But he had only been training for a few days.
This [Innate] Invisible Sword Qi was indeed awesome!
Yue Yang was extremely excited, yet he pretended that nothing had happened and quietly sat down on the dining chair, continuing his lunch.
Yue Bing who was frozen as she stared at Yue Yang, finally snapped out of her daze and asked, “San-ge, did you practice martial arts? I also practiced martial arts sometimes, but I couldn’t react fast enough just now. San-ge, if you manage to contract a strengthening-type Spirit Beast in the future, with the addition of your ‘Mist’ element-type Spirit Beast, your fighting power will definitely be greatly increased. Looks like it is a ‘Mist’ with an attacking ability. It is indeed suitable for San-ge’s growth.”
When the beautiful woman heard this, she felt extremely proud of San-er who had been diligently training by himself, but she was a little worried.
This is because in her eyes, martial arts were only meant for soldiers, while summoning skills were the most important skills for one to have a bright future.
She gave Yue Yang a delicious smelling piece of pork ribs and said, “San-er, it has been hard on you trying to hide your martial art training from us. You don’t have a summoning grimoire last time, so there was nothing that could be done about it. However, now, you already have a summoning grimoire, so you should place more importance in improving your summoning skills. You could still train sparingly, but don’t train so much that you hinder the progress of your summoning skills.”
Actually, the one who secretly train his martial arts skills was the pitiful guy, not me… These words, Yue Yang did not say it out loud. Instead, he simply nodded and acknowledged the beautiful woman’s words.
He also knew that in the Soaring Dragon Continent, people place more importance on summoning skills training rather than martial arts training.
Those that trained martial arts were like those people who could not graduate from junior high school and became farmers or blue collar workers, while those who trained summoning skills were like those graduates from esteemed universities. Even if they both entered the same company and did the same work, they would receive totally different treatments.
After lunch, Yue Bing followed Yue Yang to the courtyard in his residence, as she prepared to teach Yue Yang, the fake San-ge, all the knowledge she learnt in her school…