[ILivestreamDivination] Chapter 44 — The Ever-Burning Lantern

The man in the mural was proficient in music, chess, calligraphy and painting, while the woman had a beautiful face and elegant temperament.

In the exquisite mural, the emotions of the two people were so lifelike that the audience seemed to be able to see through them. In the mural, they saw an ancient couple who truly loved each other.

[I wish to win the heart of one person and stay together forever. I wish to grow old as a couple together.]

[Wow, it’s so sweet. Their love is engraved on the mural. This will become a precious archaeological material and may be passed down through the ages in the future.]

[I suspect that I ate a bowl of expired dog food, and I have evidence.]

For some reason, An Rugu frowned slightly, feeling a little strange, the mural took up an entire wall. It was unlikely that it was just to showcase the trivial life of a loving couple. Maybe there was something else that she hadn’t discovered.

So she took a flashlight and illuminated the mural next to it.

In the fourth mural, the man and the woman played the instrument in harmony, and they were very loving. The atmosphere was as harmonious as before.

Immediately afterwards, the light illuminated the fifth mural, and the content of the mural changed subtly.

The man had disappeared from the picture.

The woman was holding her belly, crying, and there were many people in front of her. The expressions of impatience and disgust of the elders were portrayed very realistically.

Audience: “???”

[Suddenly there was an unpleasant feeling. The host said this was the Ruyi Longevity Lock Feng Shui Array. Longevity Locks are generally for children to wear, was the woman infertile?]

[Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism prevailed in the Ming Dynasty, and women’s status suddenly declined. There are three types of unfilial piety. The greatest is not having children. If you can’t give birth to a child, you will be divorced.]

[Damn, why is the good dog food suddenly mixed with glass slag?]

[I won’t complain about the dog food anymore, can you return the food to me? I am willing to eat it, but I don’t want to eat it with this knife.]

In the fifth scene, the figure of the man in blue robe finally re-appeared on the screen.

He sat on the stool, hugged the woman, and stayed close to her, as if to comfort her, but the woman’s eyes were tired and her face was full of resistance.

The sixth scene, for some reason, the man lay down on the bed, surrounded by attendants and the woman. The servants were cleaning his body and giving him medicine.

In the seventh scene, a funeral procession appeared on the screen. The man was put into the coffin. The woman and others were wearing mourning clothes, kneeling down and crying.

In the eighth scene, a bunch of people were carrying two coffins into the underground tomb and placed them together. Next to the larger coffin, a celadon lantern was placed.

The audience in the livestream channel: “???”

What kind of strange direction is this?

Some people with sharp eyes and strong reading skills have already learned from the murals and guessed everything.

[After they got married, the woman couldn’t have children, but the man suddenly fell ill. Could it be that the woman killed her husband because she didn’t want to be divorced?]

[What a cruel woman, I like it.]

[I’ll be promoted and make a fortune if I kill my husband, and I’ll be an old madam from now on. It’s so cool.]

[Ah… no matter what, killing is wrong!]

After An Rugu finished looking at the mural, she picked up her phone and glanced at the barrage. She shook her head and said, “It’s not a situation where the woman killed her husband. If you look carefully at the previous murals, in fact, in each mural, the man’s figure is relatively slender.

“At first, I thought it was a problem with the painting style, but he was different from the other men that appeared behind him.

“The others were broad-shouldered, round-waisted, and strong. But the man felt fragile, maybe he has some physical problem.”

As soon as she finished speaking, the audience suddenly recalled the mural they had just seen. Some people who could even took out the screenshots they made and checked them over and over again.

[I just looked through the screenshots, and it is indeed the case. In the first mural of the man playing the guqin and courting love, there was a gilt medicine jar with curved ears on the right hand side. In the sixth mural, a maid was feeding the man medicine, and this jar was placed next to them. I suspect that not only was he in poor health, but he was also the reason why they could not have children.]

[Good guy, you can look at it with a microscope.]

[So, the man was in poor health and infertile and died early. Later, after the woman died, the two were buried together. The front part is sweet, but the back part can’t tell whether it’s BE or HE1. I’m numb.]

[They clearly promised to grow old together, but the man walked away, leaving the woman walking alone and crying. ]

[Speaking of which, when I think about the many women’s jewelry I just looked at, the man was really nice to the woman. ]

[Yes, in the penultimate mural, the only people who came to pay filial piety was the woman. It is possible that they were monogamous and he had no concubines. In ancient times, if a man with some money did not accept 8 or 10 concubines, he was considered ascetic. Monogamy was really rare.]

[Wow, this reminds me of the monogamous emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Both these persons were nobles, but they were equally affectionate to just one woman, which is so touching.]

An Rugu closed her eyes and thought deeply. The man built a gold house for the two of them and buried them together in the longevity lock feng shui array. He hoped that the two of them would be rich and noble in the underworld and have children and grandchildren.

It seemed like they were a truly inseparable couple.

It was just that fate played tricks on people, and the mirror broke2. The two parted in life and death. Feng left, leavinghuang alone3—leaving only the woman to live alone in the world.

Fate was unpredictable!

Just as she was sighing, something strange appeared suddenly.

The underground palace was dark, and originally only the lights from the mobile phone and her flashlight were illuminating things.

However, at this time, there was a rustling sound in the distance, and the mural they were looking at was suddenly covered with a layer of soft yellow light. The originally dark places were illuminated and became clearly visible.

Audience: “???”

[When did the host light candles?]

[No, I didn’t hear the host take out anything.]

What the audience didn’t see was that since hearing the noise, An Rugu’s eyes had sharpened, as if facing a formidable enemy. She shook the five-emperors coin from her wrist, and then gripped her backpack with her other hand.

There was a sudden noise in the underground palace: it was either an evil thing or a wild beast. The five-emperors coin could resist evil objects, and the sword in the backpack could temporarily resist wild beasts.

In the blink of an eye, she had turned around and glanced in the direction of the noise.

When she saw the scene in the distance clearly, the movements of her hands paused, and deep doubts flashed in her eyes.

In the center of the underground palace, off in the distance, there were two golden nanmu wood coffins placed side by side; one was larger than the other. A celadon lantern sat next to the larger coffin.

The base of the lantern was a shallow plate. There was a cylinder in the center of the shallow plate. The cylinder supported a small lotus-shaped plate above it, and a twisted short tube that was the lantern holder.

The lantern was casting a faint light, illuminating her face.

This seemed to be the scene shown in the last mural.

She looked at the lantern in the distance and suddenly realized that it was a celadon ever-burning lantern.

Ever-burning lanterns were standard lighting fixtures in ancient tombs. It was said that—as its name suggested—the ever-burning lamp would never go out but, in fact, after the tomb was sealed and the oxygen content gradually decreased, the ever-burning lamp would still eventually go out.

For example, there was a large celadon vat in the main hall of Dingling tomb. There was a lot of lantern oil in it, with the wicks inserted in. It may be that the hope was for it to never go out, but judging from the remaining oil, it could be seen that the ever-burning lantern went out soon after the tomb chamber was sealed.

However, the ever-burning lantern in this tomb was extremely strange.

When she first came in, she obviously didn’t see anything bright, so the celadon ever-burning lantern must have been extinguished before.

If that was the case, why did it suddenly light up now?

The viewers in the live broadcast room were frightened out of their wits when they saw the lantern next to the coffin lit up.

[Help, I’ve only heard ghosts blow out lanterns, but I’ve never heard of ghosts lighting lanterns.]

[Ah ah ah ah, host, kowtow three times quickly, say sorry to the owner of the tomb, and run away quickly!]

I Livestream Divination to the World translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com


T/N: Additional note about the fenghuang. Originally, they were a pair of birds: male and female. But then through history they somehow merged into one entity and only retained the female aspect. The female fenghuang was now paired with the dragon, which is traditionally always male. So when you see translations about dragon emperor and phoenix consort, that’s actually the fenghuang.

Speaking of romantic pairings *ahem* I have  a bunch of romance c-novel translations going on. I feel like I haven’t promoted for a while haha. Please go check them out and let me know if you enjoy them:

From the Day the Engagement was Broken.
Marriage First, Love Later.
If It’s Wrong, Then It’s Wrong.
Seventh Year of My Secret Love For You.

I also have a dad-raising-bun translation: Serve As Contrast Team in a ‘Dad with Baby’ Show. Very cute 🥰

FOOTNOTES:

  1. Bad Ending or Happy Ending. ↩︎
  2. Broken mirror is a metaphor for a broken marriage that cannot be reconciled anymore. ↩︎
  3. The fenghuang are a pair of mythical birds usually translated to ‘phoenix’ but the feng is actually male and the huang is his female counterpart. There is a famous ancient love song titled ‘Feng Seeks Huang‘ but in this case, feng left huang alone. ↩︎


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