Mountains layered, waters overlapping, uncertain if there is a path; Willows dark and flowers bright; once again a village! It was from Lu You’s <Visit Shanxi Village>
The reason why Yue Xingwen filled in these two lines of poetry was because everyone’s current situation was indeed very similar to ‘Mountains layered, waters overlapping, uncertain if there is a path’, and the artistic conception of this poem could just break through the mist and found a new way out.
Secondly, the exploration of the maze had reached 55%. Since it was a ‘Poetry Maze’, there were poems, there should also be words, and the remaining unlocked areas were likely to be Song Poems.
Sure enough, after Yue Xingwen wrote two lines of poetry, the answer box flashed with a soft light effect, the clouds and mist in the mountains gradually dispersed, and a beautiful mountain village appeared in front of him.
There was a man in ancient costume standing in front of him, followed by a prompt popping up in the hovering box——
New Character Unlock: Lu You.
Courtesy name, Wuguan, referred to himself as Fang Wen, a well-known patriotic poet in the Southern Song Dynasty.
Please continue to explore the maze by following Lu You’s footsteps.
Exploration 60%.
Yue Xingwen breathed a sigh of relief, looked at his teammates, and said with a smile, “Luckily, I guessed correctly.”
“Lu You appeared, it seems that we have opened up the Song Dynasty part!” Ke Shaobin looked at the NPC in front of him curiously, and said, “Who’s in his circle of friends?”
Yue Xingwen said, “The most famous is Xin Qiji, and the two of them are considered to have forgotten their years of friendship.”
Lan Yarong said, “I like Xin Qiji’s words very much when I was in high school, and I can still recite them.”
Qin Miao said, “I like Lu You very much. These two are people who cherish their family and country, but unfortunately they were born in chaotic times, and ultimately failed to realize their ambitions. In their later years they could only rely on writing words to express the bitterness of their hearts.”
Xu Yishen smiled and said, “I remember Lu You’s ‘Listening to the spring rain all night in the small building, selling apricot flowers in the deep lane in the Ming Dynasty’, as well as Xin Qiji’s ‘In my drunk, I turned on the lamp to watch the sword, and dreamed of blowing the horns back to the camp’. However, these poems are all too well-known, and the exam questions in the library shouldn’t be so simple, right?”
Ke Shaon said seriously, “Anyway, we have a university top student, Xingwen, no matter how difficult it is, it’s very simple for Xingwen.”
Yue Xingwen: “…”
Xin Yan glanced at him and said lightly, “Have your rainbow fart skill upgraded again?”
Ke Shaobin then said, “Xin Yan, you are very handsome today. Although you don’t talk much along the way, but a handsome-looking person is a landscape just by standing there.”
Xin Yan: “……”
Other students turned their heads one after another.
Isn’t this rainbow fart too much? Ke Shaobin, you’re not afraid of twisting your tongue!
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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The answer box was next to the plum blossom, with a total of four lines on an erected wooden sign. Lines 1 and 3 were two sentences of five-word spaces, and lines 2 and 4 were two sentences of 7-word spaces. Although there was no hint, there was no doubt that the long and short interspersed Song poems, also related to plum blossoms, must be Lu You’s famous poem <Ode to the Plum Blossom>.
“Outside the post-house, beside the broken bridge.
Saddened by her solitude in the falling dusk, she is now assailed by wind and rain.
Let other flowers be envious! She craves not Spring for herself alone.
Her petals may be ground in the mud, but her fragrance will endure.”
Yue Xingwen picked up the brush next to the wooden sign and quickly filled in the answer.
Answering the question correctly, and the plum blossom separated, revealing a wide road.
Lu You continued to move forward, and after walking for about 5 minutes, he passed by a garden. They saw the word ‘Shen Yuan’ written on the door, and the back of a woman appeared in the pavilion of the garden, and when she heard Lu You’s footsteps, she turned around, and then both of them looked at each other from afar. Immediately after, Lu You picked up the brush and wrote a sentence on the garden wall——
“Crisp pink short-bread, a flask of yellow wine, the city bright with spring, on palace walls a willow line. An east wind, a fierce wind, has worn the rapture fine, my heart is bound with sorrow round, parrted, the many years too long. How wrong it was, how wrong!”
The second half was empty, and Yue Xingwen immediately followed with his brush and wrote: “Spring’s the same as ever, vain longings waste and wear, my silken handkerchief is soaked, there’s blood in every tear. Peach blossoms scatter round, the lake and buildings bare, though solemn oaths still bind us both, it’s hard to trust a message, so, it’s no, forever no!”
After he finished writing, he looked at Jiang Pingce and said, “This is Lu You’s <Phoenix Hairpin>. He and his cousin Tang Wan were originally very affectionate, but unfortunately, shortly after their marriage, they were forced to separate due to his mother’s strong opposition. Many years later, after a coincidental encounter in the Shen Yuan, Lu You wrote this poem.”
Jiang Pingce frowned slightly. “In feudal society, it’s true that parents’ orders and matchmakers’ words are important, and it’s difficult to achieve freedom of love. Fortunately, we were born in an enlightened era.”
Yue Xingwen nodded. “En. The tragedy of being forced to separate by our parents won’t happen to us.”
Ke Shaobin stood next to him and listened carefully to Xingwen’s explanation, and the more he listened, the more he felt that it was wrong, what did it mean that ‘it won’t happen to us’, both of you? What’s wrong with both of you? He adjusted his glasses in confusion, always feeling that something was off about Xingwen’s words.
Yue Xingwen saw that Ke Shaobin kept staring at himself and hastily coughed lightly to change the topic. “Go on.”
After saying goodbye to Tang Wan, Lu You continued to move forward.
As the scene around him changed, his hair turned white at a speed visible to the naked eye, and his back was hunched. The originally high-spirited young man gradually turned into a dying old man with gray temples, and everyone followed Lu You through this journey, as if they had experienced his life.
The elderly Lu You finally came to a remote mountain village to live in seclusion.
He wrote many poems during his later years in seclusion. The exam question encountered this time was the more famous <Telling the Innermost Feeling>, of course, it was not difficult to defeat Yue Xingwen.
“Alone I went a thousand miles long, long ago, to serve in the army at the border. Now to the fortress town in dream I could not go, outworn my sable coat of cavalier. The foe not beaten back, my hair no longer black, my tears have flowed in vain. Who could have thought that in this life I would remain, with a mountain-high aim, but an old mortal frame!”
After answering the poem, a new character appeared—— It was Xin Qiji mentioned by Yue Xingwen before. Xin Qiji was more than ten years younger than Lu You, although the two had not met, but they had long heard each other’s names, and Xin Qiji made a special trip to visit during Lu You’s seclusion, so they became friends for years.
New Character Unlock: Xin Qiji.
The original courtesy name was Tanfu, later changed into You’an, nicknamed Jiaxuan, a well-known proud poet of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Please continue to explore the maze by following Xin Qiji’s footsteps.
Exploration 65%.
Yue Xingwen followed Xin Qiji and walked forward, and after walking for about 5 minutes, he saw a pavilion appear in front of him, called ‘Beigu Pavilion’ and Yue Xingwen knew what the exam question was at a glance.
——One of Xin Qiji’s masterpieces <Forever in Happiness – Reminiscing the bygone days on the Beigu Pavilion at the capital’s entrance>.
Sure enough, the opening prompt was the familiar: “Overlooking the eternal presence of rivers and mountains, never discovered again is the heroism once seen in Sun Zhongmo.”
Yue Xingwen quickly filled in the following content: “Those waterside dancing halls, singing podiums, and places of romantic interest have long been destroyed in storms. At sunset, the verdure, trees and ordinary alleyways and paths, describe the locale where they say slaves once resided. Back in the days of armoured horses and metal halberds, imposing was their vigour that could thousands of miles prance like a tiger…”
This poem was one of Xin Qiji’s masterpieces, and he memorized it in high school, so it was naturally not difficult.
After writing the entire poem, a new answer box appeared next to it.
Everyone was stunned—— The scene did not change, the words hadn’t changed, but the title had changed. The word ‘Forever in Happiness’ just now had changed to ‘Nan Xiang Zi’.
Yue Xingwen explained, “Xin Qiji wrote two poems at the Beigu Pavilion, and this one is <Nan Xiang Zi – Airing My Feelings upon Climbing Beigu Pavilion of Jingkou>.”
“Where could I see the land of the central region? Beigu Pavilion affords an eyeful of scenery.
History has experienced many rises and falls, but over time. The immortal river keeps flowing.
Sun Zhongmo led an army of ten-thousand men at youth; At wartime, he was lord of southeast territories.
Who was his match of all the mighty in the nation? Maybe Cao/Liu; a son born should be as good as him.
Yue Xingwen filled in the entire words, and Xin Qiji continued to move forward as if activating the mechanism.
As the exploration of the maze was related to the unlocked range of the mists, Xin Qiji’s exploration here only increased by 3% to 68% even though he had answered two of the exam questions.
Xin Qiji walked forward for five minutes, and the sky gradually darkened, and a lantern market suddenly appeared in front of him.
Countless lanterns of different shapes were hung on the side of the road, and colorful fireworks bloomed in the sky, decorating the entire night sky as bright as day. The streets were crowded, and many young men and womens met together to guess lantern riddles and visit the night market…
The grand scene of the Lantern Festival in front of them made everyone involuntarily stop.
Xu Yishen smiled and said, “I will answer this question, is it the one Xin Qiji wrote about the Lantern Festival, <Green Jadeite Bowl – On the First Night of a New Year>?”
Yue Xingwen said, “It should be by looking at the scene.”
As soon as the words fell, the answer box popped up, and sure enough, it was <Green Jadeite Bowl – On the First Night of a New Year>
“Easterlies of the night call to bloom blossoms of a thousand trees. As if blowing adrift stars that drizzle like rain. Precious horses and lavish carriages go by leaving a scented trail. Phoenix flutes music perform as the timekeeper witnesses the turning of hours, throughout the night lanterns in the shape of fish and dragons dance and gyrate.”
“Golden are willowy tassels of her butterfly hairpin. Among giggles and chatters her scent is fading away. In the crowd I look for her presence everywhere time and again. Suddenly I turn around, and I see her there, where lights are dim and faint.”
This question did not need to be answered by Yue Xingwen, most of his teammates present remembered it. Everyone worked together and quickly found the corresponding words from the dictionary and filled them in.
—— Exploration 70%.
In the hovering box in the upper right corner, the Exploration had been increased by 2 points.
Everyone waited for a moment, and found that Xin Qiji stopped in place, and there was no hint of a new character appearing, and the scene remained still.
Everyone couldn’t help but look at each other. “What happened? He’s not moving?”
Ke Shaobin couldn’t help but say, “It can’t be that there’s a bug and the NPC got stuck, right?”
Xin Yan said lightly, “No, if the library can randomly bug and jam NPCs, then we will be stuck countless times already.”
Yue Xingwen said, “It should be for us to find the next NPC by ourselves. In the crowd I look for her presence everywhere time and again. Suddenly I turn around, and I see her there, where lights are dim and faint, this is an obvious hint.”
The lantern market was very lively, and it was crowded with people. How to find the next NPC among so many people?
Yue Xingwen frowned for a while, and walked towards the shadow at the end of the street without light—— Compared with the bustling lantern market, there were people waiting for Xin Qiji in the dark corners of the ‘where lights are dim and faint’.
This poem, on the surface, said that he was waiting for someone, but in fact it was a metaphor for his unwillingness to go along with those who were in power. He wanted to be a man in the light, who, though in darkness and loneliness and coldness, retained his own pride and nobility.
Everyone followed Yue Xingwen, ignoring the crowds coming and going, and walked quickly through the bustling lantern market.
When they came to the shadow at the end of the lantern market, they saw a figure hidden in the dark corner, and it was difficult to find his existence if they didn’t look carefully.
As Yue Xingwen approached him, a prompt popped up in front of everyone——
New Character Unlock: Su Shi.
It was actually Shu Shi, who was known as ‘Su Xin’ along with Xin Qiji!
The two major representatives of the Song Dynasty, although born in different eras of the Northern Song Dynasty and Southern Song Dynasty, had never met in history, but in the Poetry Maze, the two ends of the street of the lantern market, through this way across time and space had crossed paths.
This maze sequence is so creative! Thanks for the chapter!
I like this, I hope someday I can read something like that with my native literature
Thank you for your translation 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
Everyone thank Ke Shaobin bc he’s the reason that Xin Yan even speaks at all