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Chapter 262: Gu Tingye, Your Ancestor Calls You for a Chat (1)

Translator: Iris

After Gu Tingye hesitated for a while, he nodded. Then Gu Tingyu stood up with difficulty. Seeing that, Madam Shao put away her handkerchief used to wipe her tears and stepped forward in a hurry to help her husband. After that, the couple walked to the door right away. As Gu Tingye was about to leave, he seemed to remember something. Then he turned to Minglan and said in a flat tone, “Come with me.”

Minglan let out a sigh of relief inwardly and stood up immediately. After that, she bid farewell to the other women with a standard polite look and followed Gu Tingye and the couple slowly.

The place they were heading to was at the west end of the mansion. Luckily the Peaceful Hall was on the west side, so after they had gone through two flowery gates and walked along a path in the flowering shrubs, they arrived at their destination at once.

Minglan raised her head to take a look at this place. Then she lowered her head with her mouth curled, thinking, ‘That’s not creative. I’ve already guessed out.”

The building in front of her which had towering ridge of the roof and upward eaves was Gu’s ancestral temple. The yard was surrounded by large fences with black paint, inside which were five houses arranged in two rows face-to-face. The room in the north was the main hall surrounded by three Baosha(T/N: The house which surrounded the main house) and had a viewing platform. The hall in the south was a side room beside which were two small wing-rooms. There were four enormous luxuriant junipers in the yard which stood at the east, west, south and north corner. It was said that those trees had been planted on the day when Marquis Ningyuan was ennobled, which stood for the numerous descendants and prospering future of the Gu family.

The moment Minglan walked into the yard, she couldn’t help but lower her head with a serious look on her face, being influenced by the solemn atmosphere. For the moment, no one said anything.

The ancestors of the Gu’s family had been ordinary people who lived a normal life in the Qing City like other ordinary folks. However, the age they lived in happened to be the end of the last dynasty. At that time, wars broke out everywhere, the farmlands were all deserted and the citizens were forced to leave their hometowns. What was more, the Qing City was a place of strategic importance, so lots of the men in that city joined the army.

During the hardest times, Gu Shande, the ancestor of the Gu’s family, died for protecting the emperor. His two sons were promoted to be the young commanders. After the two young men had been fighting bloody battles in the army for over twenty years, they made lots of contributions to the country because of their braveness and intelligence. Then both of them were ennobled. That was how the Gu family had become so thriving and prosperous.

After that, the people of the Gu’s family intended to repair their ancestral temple, so several generations of their family members had been sent back to the Qing City to start their own careers and families there. That was why the Gu family in the Qing City was already very prestigious. Later, the people from Marquis Ningyuan’s mansion came into conflict with the people of Marquis Xiangyang’s mansion because of the inheritance matter. At last, the Gu family decided to set the main ancestral temple in the Qing City and two clan temples in each of the two mansions. Moreover, both families had the right to expel their family members or divide up family properties.

As they arrived at the middle of the yard, Gu Tingyu suddenly said to his wife, “You and our sister-in-law should stop here. I’ll go in there with Second Brother.” While saying this, he pushed away Madam Shao’s hand. Then the maid who followed them handed him a walking stick right away. Gu Tingyu chuckled as if he was sneering at himself and then took the walking stick. After that, he tottered toward the room on the north with his hand holding the stick tremblingly.

Gu Tingye turned around to look at Minglan and then followed his brother.

There were only Minglan, Madam Shao as well as the maid in the yard. Madam Shao looked in the direction where Gu Tingyu had walked with a worried look. Then she turned to Minglan and gave a reluctant smile, saying, “Sister-in-law, why don’t we drink tea in the wing-room?”

Minglan knew that Madam Shao was worrying about her husband, so she replied smilingly, “This place is pleasantly cool without too much sunshine. We can sit in the yard for a while to wait for them. What do you think, Eldest Sister-in-law?”

Madam Shao who had been staring at her husband’s back wasn’t willing to leave anyway. Hearing Minglan’s words, she let out a sigh of relief right away and said, “That’s great. Shiwen, I want you to...” Then Madam Shao gave some orders to the maid.

The maid left at once. After a while, she brought back two wooden foot-stools and a small table and put them under the tree. After that, the maid went to prepare for tea and snacks.

Seeing the anxious look on Madam Shao’s face, Minglan really wanted to comfort this woman but didn’t know how to organize her words. Meanwhile, Madam Shao said with a deep frown, “... I don’t know if they would have a chair to sit on or some tea to drink there.”

Minglan got dazed for a second, finding herself unable to answer that question either. Then she could only say in a hesitant tone, “Well, I don’t know either. I’ve only been there once.” On the second day after her wedding, she had worshiped the ancestors of the Gu’s family and added her own name to the Gu’s family tree in the ancestral temple. That was also the only time she had been there.

Seeing Minglan being like a child who couldn’t answer the teacher’s question with a frustrated look, Madam Shao, no matter how sad she was right now, couldn’t help but smile, “I’ve only been there twice.”

According to the rules of the prestigious families, women couldn’t enter the ancestral temple randomly unless there were great events in the family, because men and women should not be too close in the family if they weren’t couples. Even when the family members had to worship their ancestors on every festival and New Year’s Day, men and women would still be engaged in the worshiping activity separately in the ancestral hall on the south and north.

After the women had chatted for a short while, they heard a light sound. It turned out an old servant in charge of guarding the ancestral hall had closed the door of the hall on the north.

Inside the spacious hall, there was only darkness except for a few glimmers of dim light by the tall windows.

“Please light a candle,” Gu Tingyu said, “I don’t have the strength to do that.”

Gu Tingye stepped forward and took out the fire stone and the leading thread which had been wrapped by layers of oil paper from under the third layer of the wooden shelve on the left of the incense table. Then he turned around quickly and lit the two huge candles on the brass candlestick without needing to find the direction. It seemed that he was quite familiar with this place, because he didn’t slow down his action in such dim light during the whole time.

Seeing him putting back the fire stone without any difficulty, Gu Tingyu couldn’t help but chuckle, “Speaking of this ancestral temple, you are the most familiar with this place among our brothers.”

Gu Tingye hesitated for a short while and then sneered at himself, “Of course. I was the one who got punished most frequently among all of us at that time, so I had to kneel down in front of our ancestors here very often. When I was still not allowed to go out after it got dark, I could only find the fire stone by myself because I was afraid of the darkness as a little kid.”