Chapter 237 Crystal Meat – Spiritual Leopard Version (n)

Translated by Gumihou

Edited by Gumihou

 

Some words from Gumihou:

This chapter reminded Gumi of a scene in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Where a young man named Dorian Gray sold his soul to the devil for eternal youth. After ruining the lives of many people and he wanted to turn over a new leaf and was priding himself for having done a ‘good deed’ until the moment he saw the hypocrisy clearly displayed on his portrait…

One of the readers, Hamster-san, mentions that getting MC to do ‘charity work’ is one of the ways authors try to make them seem less vicious and greedy.

I believe this is true as Shiyu showed many (uncharacteristic) thoughtful instances here. These characteristics went against regulations of the newly established SPOOCS (Society for the Prevention of Out Of Character Shenanigans).

Gumi has one of two choices here, either let AutoGumi do her thing or conduct Major Editing.

Gumi cannot bear to witness Feng Luo commit character suicide without doing anything.

 

After leaving the side room, [1] Shiyu flitted through the other rooms in the house. The mundane people within the house were unable to see her thanks to Chasing Clouds & Moon. She eventually found herself in the couple’s room. There were a lot of little wooden chests piled at the foot of the bed.

She came over and opened one. Silver pieces and promissory notes spilt out. From the estimated amount, Shiyu guessed there had to be about a million silver taels in this room.

Considering the weak medicine found in the girl’s meridians and the stacks of silver here… there could be no misunderstanding about what must have happened.

Shiyu closed the lid and stared at the other chests stacked on top of each other for a long time.

Then, she left.

 

Back at the Villa, she found there was only Feng Luo and Lin Fan there. She sat them down and told them all about what she had found out. The expressions on the two young men were very solemn.

One was a favoured young heir of an important family while the other dedicated himself to his Cultivation. Neither had ever troubled themselves over the lives of the mundane.

“If it’s you, what would you do?” asked Shiyu.

“Return the silvers,” said Feng Luo immediately. [2] “That is, as long as someone kept an account. Did you find any?”

Shiyu shook her head.

[2] “I guess trying to call people out to reclaim their money would just invite more trouble,” Feng Luo mused. “How about giving money to the poor?”

“I guess,” said Shiyu. “But what about the little girl? The money was meant to save her, but her parents…”

“The matter is simple. Save the child’s life, take away the money. That family loses no extra money and the purpose of the people’s donation is achieved. Nobody takes a loss.”

Shiyu nodded, “The family would lose nothing, but how can the hearts of those people who donated the money be calmed after this. Once the truth of the matter is revealed and the fact that those horrible parasites are fattened up by their generosity. Would they be willing to help people the next time? [3]”

[4] Feng Luo frowned. He was silent for a long time. Then, he said, “I thought… you said there are people gathered at the alley and cursing those couple?” He tilted his head, “Doesn’t that meant they already know?”

[4] Shiyu, “… …”

[5] Lin Fan quickly jumped in to rescue Shiyu from the awkward situation, “If it were me, I’d just kill the couple. Make it look like someone came to rob the family.”

After all, the world is populated by more than just nice people. It is human nature to be greedy. However, many are restrained by society’s rules or fear of endangering their lives for money.

Feng Luo smirked, “Well, that’s a fairly cruel but efficient solution.”

Shiyu was very [6] grateful for the change of subject, but “Wouldn’t those children be orphaned? They are innocent and who would take care of them later? You’ll have to hide the matter forever and send them somewhere to be raised.”

[7] “And what if they find out it’s you who killed their parents? They might come after you on a revenge spree,” quipped Feng Luo.

Lin Fan, “… …”

[2] “You might even be the one to send them to meet their parents!” Feng Luo dramatically gasped and clutched his chest.

“… then, what do you suggest?” Lin Fan refused to look at the cackling Feng Luo and turned to Shiyu instead.

“I don’t know,” Shiyu shook her head slowly. “I just think that we must think through our actions properly before doing anything. We must take our time and assess our actions and all the consequences… otherwise, the wrong move could make life too hard and too tiring to live.” [8]

“If that’s the case there’s no need to worry too. As long as you do the right things for the right reasons, then it is right. It is natural for human beings to encounter conflict. Their suffering could be the result of karma. Therefore… thinking too much about cause and effects will only disturb your heart. It’s better to live life without regrets.”

[8] When Lin Fan said this, the gloom hovering over Shiyu suddenly disappeared.

That’s right, as long as it is right and just, why should she not do it boldly? The most important thing was to have a clear conscience.

As expected of the Male Lead!

Shiyu give him a thumbs up, “Too right! Ah, but when talking about a clear conscience, I suddenly recalled someone.”

“Who is it?”

“Haha, you won’t know him. His name is [9] Han-gang, a brilliant scholar and his speciality is, heh, overturning the chessboard.” Seeing that Lin Fan was starting to frown she flapped her hand frantically and continued, “Anyway, I do believe in karma. Since those parents behaved so terribly, I think they would not have a good end.”

After all, she, Shiyu, was not the reincarnation of justice. There was no need for her to intervene in this kind of matter. She got involved in the first place because she thought the girl was too pitiful and ended up helping her.

Who would have thought that she would uncover this pile of shit beneath what was supposed to be a straightforward issue? Even if she wanted to get involved, she was in no position to do so. After all, if she had not known about it, it would not have troubled her. Now that she knew about it, well, there’s no way to turn back time so the only option was to move forward!

Lin Fan’s words woke her up and made her realise that the most important thing was to live with a clear conscience! She had gotten muddled trying to unsee something she could not and this made her confused.

Shiyu patted her chest and thought: Well, this attitude of trying to see the future from the past is not good. Let’s just continue to be careful and do good with a clear conscience and avoid bad deeds, ba!

Her entire body felt very light after this enlightening thought.

Shiyu jumped to her feet and said cheerfully, “Alright, I shall return to work now!”

There are more things to life than one little girl’s health. She has plenty of problems on her hands now. Well, it’s not like she was just going to watch as that little girl die. She just doesn’t have the time to spend thinking about her now. It’s better to let things be and see how they develop. Hopefully, those parents won’t become too crooked in the future.

Now that her mental issues had been set aside, Shiyu entered her space again. She brought everything she needed to cook and process the Nascent Formation Leopard. Who knows what would happen if people caught wind that she actually has such a thing in hand! Better to keep a low profile on this. Low profile!

Once she was inside the space, she breathed in deeply to calm her mental state. Only then did she took out the beast core and blood essence. The blood essence was a deep red colour and seemed to throb with life. In contrast, the beast core was a brilliant golden amber. Just looking at it made her feel like she could lose herself by staring into the golden orb.

In addition to the beast core and blood essence. She also has a portion of the meat [10]. All the impurities had been removed and she needed this small portion today.

After preparing everything, Shiyu took out her three-legged cauldron once more.

She did not have any proper Spiritual cooking tools and could only make do with these first. She had collected quite a lot of different types of ores the last time she went to the market and thought about asking a master to make some for her.

If none was available, she would just have to make them herself [11].

 

[Gumihou: They are making a mountain out of a molehill to make Shiyu appear more intelligent and thoughtful. Except she can’t even recognise an oyster at first glance. Also, this is an easy to solve incident, foster the child to someone else, use the money to heal her and get someone to safekeep the extra money for her future.

Or.

The Crown Prince could use this incident to further his political mileage by using the money to establish a free hospital and people could donate there instead. Poor parents with very sick children could visit this free hospital and this way it solves the curse of ‘Cultivators helping’ by averting the ‘personal help’ to ‘state funded help’.

Naturally, both solutions have their own problem, especially if the people in charge of the hospital embezzle the money, but at this point, Shiyu is basically ‘looking for bones in an egg’ and being a pessimistic wet blanket for the sake of it.

In short, Gumi is not impressed by Shiyu’s attack of conscience or sudden enlightenment. The entire conversation is stupid and did not deserve the solemn air author-san gave. Made it hilarious instead.]

 

Gumihou is keeping track so that you don’t have to ~

 

凝氣	Condensation Stage	Stage 1
化丹	Core Transformation	Stage 2
凝丹(46)	Core Condensation	Stage 3
化神(52)	Divine Transformation	Stage 4
成嬰	Nascent Formation	Stage 5
合體	Unification	Stage 6
返墟	Revert Decay	Stage 7
歸真	Original Purity	Stage 8
成仙	Become immortal	Stage 9

 

[1] Adjusted Details for Logistic Purpose: Describe the going instead of saying the going.

[2] Shiyu’s too mature and philosophical dialogues passed over to Feng Luo, the actual heir to a large and important clan.

[3] Ah, girl? ‘When people found out?’ They are already talking about it in the streets dear, and people are thronging the Hai’er Alley cursing the family. What do you mean ‘When people found out?’ Got Feng Luo to point this out.

[4] You know what? Feng Luo is not the type who would be shy about speaking his mind, in the original text, he ‘stayed silent because he’s not a fool’. Dude, you created a naggy Feng Luo! Naggy Feng Luo is canon! Gumi can’t take it anymore, show Shiyu her idiotic thought!! Don’t pull a Tsukino Usagi, “Eh? What should we dooo~~~~” sketch with Lin Fan!!!

[5] Gumi sewed up the dialogue by getting Lin Fan to rescue Shiyu instead of playing Tuxedo Mask ( ͠ ͠° ل͜ °) to Feng Luo’s Sailor Moon ٩(♡ε♡ )۶.

[6] Deleted text: ‘Shiyu did not refute Lin Fan’ because she’s holier than thou. Whatever, Dorian Gray! Dorian Gray vibes! Hypocrite!

[7] Originally, the ‘But when the two children grow up, you look back and find that you killed their parents? What should you do then?’ is implied. More like, spray painted onto the elephant in the room. Decide to let naggy Feng Luo blurt it out cheerfully. Considering his nature and his naggy mom attitude, FL is the best at throwing these remarks out. To Gumi’s eyes, he’s treating the matter like an interesting intellectual exercise, while Shiyu played the pessimistic wet blanket and Lin Fan the low EQ muscle.

[8] Ah, so Shiyu is merely trying to justify her actions for her conscience. How refreshingly selfish. Will play this up.

[9] Can’t find out about this ‘韓岡’ (Han-Gang) person aside from the name being clearly Korean.

[10] （￣□￣；）That’s a surprise. Shiyu, you never said anything about the meat, only going on and on about burning the giant Leopard into a fist-size blood essence. This is a continuity error, but you know what, Gumi doesn’t care. I guess the meat came from that miracle place (your ass) where you kept your butter. Also, what happened to that ‘mung bean size’ golden liquid?

[11] I know the ending was supposed to be strong, but the thought of Shiyu making her own cooking tools only gives Gumi the Cringe. （ー△ー；）

 

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