ATLAS TRANSLATES

When Lu Xian woke up after each dream, his body would feel unwell. The severity depended on the length of the dream.

The good thing was that when Lu Xian first started having these dreams, he would either have a fever or fall seriously ill.

Now his body seemed to have adapted — after dreaming, he only suffered from splitting headaches and fatigue, with no major issues.

This time, after having a confusing and instinctively worrying dream the previous night, Lu Xian called in sick and rested at home.

Lu Xian spent the morning pondering his dream, feeling increasingly uneasy, like he had misunderstood something. Before noon, Lu Yun returned home unusually early. Though he hadn’t yet figured out his dream, Lu Xian still went to find Lu Yun — perhaps Lu Yun’s reaction could tell him something?

At Lu Yun’s courtyard, before announcing himself, Lu Xian first saw a man and woman talking under the eaves. Standing at the courtyard’s moon gate, tree shadows dancing on the ground in bright white patches like raindrops, the clear-minded Lu Xian stood behind a tree, experiencing a moment of déjà vu—

Under the cool shade of the eaves, the lady sat leaning against the railing, lips slightly pursed, face resting on her arms. An ordinary mortal, yet with extraordinary grace. Even with furrowed brows and an unhappy expression, her dress trailing on the ground, cloudy hair adorned with flowers, she was as beautiful as a siren.

The handsome and elegant young lord placed his hand on her shoulder, lowering his head to speak with her, gently coaxing her. But the lady was being stubborn, twisting her shoulders away, not letting him touch her. No matter what he said, she turned her face away, ignoring him.

After talking for a while with no response, Lu Yun dropped his hand.

He stood behind her for a moment, his face cold: “Luo Lingyu, when given a chance, take it gracefully, alright?”

Luo Lingyu immediately jumped up as if her tail had been stepped on, unable to hide her fury, her eyes red with anger and voice raised: “How dare you say that to me?! Who exactly…”

As she turned around angrily, the expressionless Lu Yun quickly caught her by the waist. The young lord who had just been full of impatience now smiled as he pulled her into his arms, lowering his head to tease her: “Alright, don’t be angry anymore. I was wrong, forgive me, sister, hmm?”

The young lord’s husky, drawn-out tone caught her heart, bringing tears to Luo Lingyu’s eyes: “You jerk…”

Lu Yun held her close, constantly comforting her, kissing her face and joking with her. His face was buried in her neck, his nose touching her skin. Lu Yun’s voice grew softer and softer until it could no longer be heard, but the thorny lady could be seen growing docile under his comfort. The lady was held in his arms unable to break free, her fingers trembling as they clutched his sleeve, head lowered as she sobbed continuously.

Lu Yun laughed again: “Yingying, using this trick again…”

Luo Lingyu: “Who are you calling ‘Yingying’?! You’re not my parents, don’t give me random nicknames!”

Lu Xian’s thoughts wandered. Although he knew from his dreams that his third brother and cousin Luo had growing feelings for each other, in reality, he rarely saw Lu Yun and Miss Luo being so intimate. The two exchanged meaningful glances, their feelings subtle yet present, but aside from that day when they had a huge fight and the “marriage proposal” incident happened at Old Madam Lu’s place, they rarely showed their feelings so openly.

Lu Yun and Luo Lingyu seemed to have reservations, unwilling to display their feelings openly or let others think they were definitely a couple. Until everything was settled, neither Lu Yun nor Luo Lingyu fully admitted their feelings.

This reserved attitude was different from the openness of the entire Southern upper-class gentry.

Lu Xian sighed: No wonder these two younger siblings were attracted to each other. They both had somewhat peculiar temperaments.

Having always been pampered, receiving all the family’s resources and having his parents pave every road for him, Lu Xian couldn’t understand that it wasn’t peculiarity. It was insecurity, uncertainty. Fear of the vague future, fear of being unworthy.

Though they appeared outstanding to others (whether man or woman), when it came to feelings, they could never be confident. The lack of stability from losing their parents early showed not in other areas, but when it came to emotions, Lu Yun and Luo Lingyu were essentially the same.

Perhaps because they were in Lu Yun’s own courtyard, Lu Yun and Luo Lingyu were more at ease, ending up embracing as they talked… Lu Xian stood dazedly watching at the courtyard entrance for a while, the two completely unaware. It wasn’t until a maid coming out from behind a curtain saw Lu Xian at the entrance and coughed heavily that Lu Yun and Luo Lingyu looked over.

Lu Yun and Luo Lingyu calmly separated and each greeted Lu Xian. Lu Yun was thicker-skinned, his expression normal; Luo Lingyu tried to act normal, but her beautiful eyes looking at Lu Xian still held some shyness.

Lu Xian sighed.

Luo Lingyu tilted her head in confusion: Why did Second Cousin sigh? Could it be he didn’t like her being with Lu Yun? But she clearly heard Lu Yun say…

Seeing Lu Xian, Lu Yun felt somewhat complex, because when he paid respects to Old Madam Lu this morning, he learned that he had misunderstood his second brother all along.

Second Brother had never liked Luo Lingyu; his care for her was mostly for Lu Yun’s sake.

Lu Yun bowed, his long robe touching the ground, making a deep bow: “Grandmother told me that regarding Lingyu and me, Second Brother spoke up for us. I’ll follow Second Brother’s advice and go to Nanyang to help Lingyu break off her engagement with the Fan family. Thank you for helping us, Second Brother.”

Lu Yun glanced at Luo Lingyu, gesturing for her to come thank Lu Xian as well. Luo Lingyu smiled, pressing her lips together as she moved forward.

Lu Xian: “…”

Lu Xian said quietly: “If… I say I regret helping you two with the marriage proposal? Could Third Brother pretend not to know about this?”

Luo Lingyu, who had just prepared to make a deep bow, froze: “…”

Lu Yun raised his eyebrows in surprise: What did Second Brother mean?

Lu Xian slowly nodded, his tone even more melancholic: “You can’t, can you? I knew it, I did a bad thing with good intentions. I’ve never been good at chess, my grasp of the big picture and strategy far inferior to yours. The one time I try to make a move, with grand ambitions, I find I can’t understand the whole board, black and white pieces fighting everywhere, with gaps I can’t fill. Why didn’t heaven just let you make the move? It’s your own business after all. Could it be because you have a fatal predicament to face, while I don’t?”

“I was meant to be a man of mountains and waters, why does heaven toy with me so?”

Lu Xian felt grief in his heart, thinking if Third Brother Lu Yun could dream and foresee the future himself, it would be much better than him. Lu Xian truly felt powerless; he loved mountains and waters, casual conversation, writing poetry and prose. His life’s wish was merely to travel mountains and waters, find one or two kindred spirits, and have a beautiful companion. With a third brother who had been a prodigy since childhood, Lu Xian had long accepted that his looks and talents were inferior to Lu Yun’s, and his sensitivity to political affairs and world situations was far behind Lu Yun’s… Perhaps he was only luckier than Lu Yun. Should someone with good luck bear this responsibility? Regardless of whether he had the ability?

Lu Yun lowered his eyebrows, looking thoughtfully at his second brother.

Luo Lingyu felt slightly uneasy. The current Lu Xian was completely different from the quiet, reserved Second Cousin who always had a stern face when teaching his younger brother when she first met him.

Lu Xian spoke as if in a trance: “Since I cannot complete the game, why did heaven let me play? Moreover, why should others’ marriages matter so much to me? I haven’t even seen my own fate, yet in my rare glimpses of heaven’s mysteries, why do I always see others’ destinies…”

Why did he always dream of his third brother and Cousin Luo?

And always with tragic endings?

Marrying the Prince of Hengyang led to a tragic end, marrying Lu Yun also led to a tragic end… Did Cousin Luo have to marry him instead? Or should he find someone else entirely?

Lu Xian was nearly driven mad by his dreams.

While in reality, this time, even the usually perceptive and people-pleasing Luo Lingyu hesitated for a moment before cautiously suggesting: “Second Cousin, perhaps you’re too tired. Should we call for a physician to prescribe some calming medicine?”

Lu Yun: “…Sister Lingyu makes a good point.”

Luo Lingyu sighed: “May heaven protect the worthy. I hope Second Cousin recovers soon.”

Lu Yun responded absent-mindedly: “…Mm.”

He had always been sensitive and was now aware of Lu Xian’s strange behavior. However, his earlier probing had revealed nothing.

He could only put this matter aside for now.

First, he had to worry about how to explain to the Lu family elders about his plans to go to the border.

Three days until departure… Lu Yun looked back at Luo Lingyu, who humphed and turned her face away.

…

Due to concerns about his dreams, Lu Xian felt uneasy about the Southern Kingdom’s final outcome. Better safe than sorry — after much hesitation in reality, Lu Xian still didn’t reprimand Lu Yun about going to the border. He watched the family elders take turns having heart-to-heart talks with Lu Yun all day, while Lu Xian himself neither supported nor opposed it.

Old Madam Lu didn’t even have the heart to ask about Lu Yun’s marriage anymore.

Lu Xian neither reminded nor had people watch his third brother, forcing him to marry first before allowing him to leave.

Noble family marriages were always complicated. Even if Lu Yun went to handle breaking off the engagement with the Fan family in Nanyang now while the Lu family began preparing for the wedding, it would still take at least half a year until Lu Yun could marry Luo Lingyu. This meant that if the northern war didn’t ease up, the Southern Kingdom would fall within half a year.

After spending a day thinking, he only figured out this dream’s timeline. Lu Xian felt it was meaningless.

And as he expected, when he didn’t try to change the dream in reality, when he didn’t have people guard Lu Yun, when Lu Yun had the possibility of going to the border, that night, Lu Xian’s dream changed again.

…

He dreamed of another version of the two blurry dreams.

The dream where Cousin Luo trudged through snow searching for his third brother.

This dream became clearer, and Lu Xian saw more details in it.

Thick fog covered the mountains, snow everywhere, with no visible borders or future. The people searching in the snowy fog were scattered sparsely, and on Luo Lingyu’s side, she walked on difficulty alone. The fog at her feet dispersed; looking down, she saw corpses by her feet, blood everywhere, men in ordinary clothes appearing continuously, dying at Luo Lingyu’s feet.

She had to turn over every corpse to look.

The moisture on her eyelashes had frozen into fine frost, her cheeks pale and desolate. In red cloak and white clothes, originally an extremely beautiful woman, now pale and haggard. She called out loudly, her voice echoing in the vast emptiness: “Lu Yun, Lu Yun—”

At one moment, her voice suddenly caught in her throat.

Lu Xian, wandering like a ghost in the dream, followed her gaze, and suddenly felt his chest tighten, breathless, his eyes instantly becoming wet.

As the fog slowly dispersed, leaning against a rock, that incomparably handsome young lord sat with his head lowered, his waist and abdomen covered in blood. Three or four arrows had pierced through his clothes and into his body. His breath had already ceased, maintaining only that sitting posture against the rock, with snow covering his shoulders and robes. His face was still characteristically handsome, like snow and jade, like the purest ink painting in heaven and earth.

Even in death, he was so beautiful.

Mountains and rivers stretched far, heaven and earth were desolate, only the howling of wind and snow could be heard. With difficult steps and weak legs, Luo Lingyu walked over step by step, kneeling before him. She looked up at him, reaching out to brush away the ice and snow from his eyebrows and eyes. Lu Yun’s delicate, beautiful black eyebrows and eyes were revealed.

Though the young lord had clearly died, his face after death was the same as when he was alive, with that kind of spirit, that kind of charm, unique in all the world. Luo Lingyu stared in a daze, quiet and silent. She pressed her lips together, the flesh of her cheeks trembling slightly. While searching everywhere she had cried uncontrollably, but upon seeing him, she didn’t cry.

Then she lowered her head, gripping his frozen hand that rested on his knee. Seeming to feel something was wrong, she opened his curved fingers, seeing something lying quietly in his palm.

It was a well-embroidered pouch.

To Lu Xian, it looked similar to the pouches embroidered by maids that he usually wore.

But Luo Lingyu’s expression changed suddenly. The pouch was already open, with a corner of the yellow talisman paper inside showing. When Luo Lingyu opened his hand, she looked down and saw the crumpled talisman paper. This talisman had been through much, both losing water and accompanying its owner to the battlefield. Finally, as heaven and earth were filled with wind and snow, when Luo Lingyu opened Lu Yun’s hand, the talisman paper in the pouch was blown away by the wind.

But Luo Lingyu didn’t raise her head to chase after that talisman. In her eyes, that talisman didn’t have much use. Her proof of Lu Yun’s heart was actually on the pouch. As the lady lowered her eyes to stare at the pouch, it was when her gaze went further down that she saw slight bloodstains in the snow.

Gently brushing away the traces in the snow, the dexterous Luo Lingyu would never fumble at such times, destroying the secret buried under the snow. After brushing away the thin layer of covering snow, those characters written in blood with fingertips, soaring in the sky, graceful and unrestrained, were revealed.

Lu Xian recognized it; his third brother was a scholar, a calligraphy master, and this was the style he most commonly used. These two lines written in blood read—

“Through the ages I return one word to you. Love unchanging as mountains.”

…

Love unchanging as mountains.

…

He was dead, and love became eternally unchanging.

…

It was at this moment in the dream that Luo Lingyu finally broke down. She began crying loudly, embracing the young lord who had already died. She held his cold, stiff hand, pressing her face against his.

She cried out loudly: “You saw it, didn’t you? You saw it, didn’t you?”

“I wish you hadn’t seen it—”

“Brother Xuechen, you must have been so sad then. I didn’t want you to be sad…”

What she had wanted was his love, for him to love her, for him to not change his heart, for him to marry her.

She hadn’t wanted to discover this secret after his death.

The lady held the dead young lord and cried, crying until her voice was hoarse, crying until her whole body shook. Wailing loudly, completely different from her usual performative sobbing. She only truly loved him, only shed genuine tears before him.

But originally, this wasn’t something worth being happy about.

…

In the dream, after Lu Yun’s death, the northern war also ended. Lu Yun achieved a bitter victory at the cost of his life, ultimately winning an opportunity for the Southern Kingdom. The one who came to the border to receive them was Prince Chen, who had personally requested the mission. His Highness Prince Chen looked as if he had aged ten years, his face weathered, expression greatly pained, seemingly not much better than the dazed Luo Lingyu.

Afterwards, Luo Lingyu returned to Jianye with Prince Chen.

The war between North and South stopped, and the Northern and Southern kingdoms began negotiations.

Everything started developing in a prosperous direction.

Lu Yun died for a worthy cause, becoming a hero of the Southern Kingdom. But for those who cared about him, this meant nothing.

Living at the Lu family residence and having already started discussing marriage with Lu Yun, Miss Luo Lingyu had already broken off her unfavorable engagement. She had broken it off to marry another, but after that person’s death, breaking the engagement seemed like a joke.

Fan Qingchen, the young lord of the Fan family from Nanyang, personally came to Jianye to find her, wanting to reconcile and asking her to marry him.

Cousin Luo’s reputation in Jianye was great – the reputation she had built over a year made many young lords in Jianye want to propose to her at this time.

Lu Xian didn’t know how much Luo Lingyu despised poverty and loved wealth, didn’t know this cousin would only marry into wealthy families.

Because in the dream, what Lu Xian saw was Luo Lingyu gracefully declining all marriage proposals. She left Jianye with her younger sister, and when the Lu family wanted to send her back to Nanyang, she refused that too.

…

She had no fixed residence, and eventually the Lu family lost contact with her.

The dream no longer knew where she had gone.