To Get Married - Chapter 22.1

Chapter 22.1

Lu Yudong saw Manzhu hesitating for a long time over the cake, searching for an angle but still unable to bring herself to cut it. She couldn’t help but laugh as she took the plastic knife and sliced down.

The cartoon snake drawn with red jam instantly had its head cut off.

“That’s so cruel,” Lu Yudong confessed, a bit embarrassed. “I was just thinking it was your birthday, so I had them draw this little red snake… I didn’t think about the cutting part.”

Manzhu chuckled, taking the slice of cake Lu Yudong had cut for her. “I just thought it was really cute, and I was a little reluctant to cut it.”

Lu Yudong was thrilled: “You really think it’s cute?”

“I do, it’s especially cute,” Manzhu said, looking down at the dress she was wearing. She said softly, “The dress is beautiful, too.”

Lu Yudong lowered her gaze, pursing her lips. The slight upward curve of her mouth was full of the joy in her heart.

Manzhu liked the gift she gave her.

Even though the dress and cake together only cost about three hundred yuan, which was trivial compared to everything Manzhu had given her, she had finally celebrated a birthday with Manzhu and given a gift that wasn’t disliked.

That afternoon, Manzhu, who had never worn modern clothing, wore the dress Lu Yudong gave her and, holding Lu Yudong’s hand, went to Not an Old Acquaintance.

The moment Manzhu pushed the door open and walked into Bu Shi Gu Ren, the young demons who were cleaning all stared with wide eyes, completely unable to believe what they were seeing.

Especially Gou Hongjie, who stared straight ahead until he heard Xiao Zhi clear his throat nearby, which made him guiltily avert his gaze.

“Sister Manzhu, you look so beautiful today!” Huan Xi ran over from a distance, circling her to observe. Her gaze held a mix of envy and jealousy. “When you first walked in, I almost didn’t recognize you!”

“Why wouldn’t you recognize me?” Manzhu smiled faintly. Lu Yudong was holding milk tea in one hand and Manzhu’s arm in the other, her eyes full of smiles.

“I’ve never seen you dressed like this!” Huan Xi said. She seemed to realize she needed to save face and quickly added with an abundance of survival instinct: “I didn’t mean that you don’t usually look good! I’m just saying that today you’re very special, a completely different kind of beauty than usual!”

Manzhu happily accepted Huan Xi’s flattery. Just as she was about to lead Lu Yudong inside, she heard a familiar voice from upstairs.

“Well, look who it is! A modern city lady?” It was Mu Chensan, walking down from the second floor. He walked over to Manzhu, sizing her up and down in surprise. “Tsk tsk, did the sun rise in the west? When did you start accepting new things? When I told you to wear something normal before, didn’t you say you didn’t like it?”

“Yudong gave it to me,” Manzhu raised an eyebrow, elegantly spun around in the dress, and asked with a curved smile, “Does it look good?”

Mu Chensan gave Lu Yudong a thumbs-up: “The little girl has quite mature taste! Very nice, it suits you perfectly, Sister Manzhu.”

Lu Yudong smiled widely at the compliment.

“You have good taste,” Manzhu tossed her long hair, then led Lu Yudong inside.

Mu Chensan called out from behind: “Honghong, you should just wear this from now on. Stop making it look like you’re going to some Hanfu festival every day.”

Manzhu shook her head and replied: “I only have this one dress like this.”

Mu Chensan said: “You’re a woman. Don’t feel like you can’t spend money on clothes for yourself.”

Manzhu turned back to look at Mu Chensan and smiled: “If Yudong hadn’t given it to me, I wouldn’t like it and wouldn’t be used to wearing it.”

The words were full of indulgence, and Lu Yudong couldn’t help but blush.

It turned out Manzhu didn’t just like the dress itself. Her willingness to wear it had nothing to do with whether it looked good or not; it was purely because… it was a gift from her.

Thinking this, Lu Yudong’s heart swelled with even more joy.

“Honghong, seriously, you look really good in this. It’s not strange at all, and habits can be cultivated,” Mu Chensan followed Manzhu, nagging like a mother. “Even an old relic dug up from the ground has to adapt to the air of the new era, right?”

Manzhu stopped, turned around, and retorted: “You’re in no position to tell me that. Modern men don’t keep long hair.”

Mu Chensan threw up his hands: “Isn’t this ‘my body, skin, and hair are given by my parents’?”

Manzhu heard this and asked coolly: “Oh? Do you even remember which mountain your parents came from?”

Mu Chensan was instantly speechless. After a moment of silence, he rolled his eyes, turned, and walked away, no longer interested in making a fool of himself.

Lu Yudong looked at Manzhu in confusion and quietly asked: “Do demons forget their relatives and hometowns because they live too long?”

Manzhu pulled Lu Yudong to a seat, stroked her head, and said: “Demons are different from humans. A demon’s parents might not be demons. They could just be ordinary creatures without sentience and a short lifespan. Even if they had the heart to care for a demon child who could live for thousands of years, they wouldn’t live that long. Plus, there are those who give birth and don’t want to raise them.”

Manzhu said that most demons were the same. Before they were fully grown, they had already begun their solitary journey. Kinship, for them, was merely the most distant and hazy part of their long past. Once they grew old, they naturally forgot all about it.

Manzhu remembered Mu Chensan saying he had no feelings for his parents. They were non-sentient and abandoned him when they saw he was different.

Mu Chensan was not originally a demon from Shennongjia. He arrived there before he could even take human form.

At the time, the large, gruesome scars on his neck hadn’t fully healed. If he encountered a particularly struggling prey while hunting, the wounds would tear open. He didn’t know how to treat the injury, so he could only grit his teeth and endure the recurring pain from the increasingly worsening wounds.

The injury was very close to a vital area, and the repeated tearing caused infection and pus. The pain made him progressively weaker. The result was that despite having a powerful racial advantage, he spent most of his time hungry and hiding, acting incredibly timid.

Later, Yan Zhaomu, who had once narrowly escaped his jaws, stumbled upon him barely alive. Manzhu didn’t know what possessed him, but he dragged Mu Chensan back to his own dwelling and carefully looked after him.

At the time, the other small snakes in the mountain were all terrified by Yan Zhaomu’s action. The creature he rescued was an outside king cobra—the kind rumored to particularly enjoy eating its own kind.

Looking back now, it was a sigh-inducing tale.

Two thousand years ago, who could have imagined that such an aggressive-looking king cobra would actually be a harmless, big coward?

Manzhu recalled that she had actually advised Yan Zhaomu not to get involved. He was just an outside king cobra, unrelated, who cannibalized his own kind. It would have been better to kill it while it was weak than to save it.

Fortunately, Yan Zhaomu saved him in the end. And thankfully, he was saved. Otherwise, who knows who would be signing their paychecks today?

“Little Uncle Mu seems to have suffered a lot when he was young,” Lu Yudong couldn’t help but sigh.

“In the deep mountains and wilds, it’s eat or be eaten; that’s normal,” Manzhu said, gently patting Lu Yudong’s hand. She smiled: “Although I don’t know what injured your Little Uncle Mu so badly, the wound gradually healed. But because the injury was on his neck, he had a crooked neck for a long time after taking human form. He was laughed at by everyone in the mountains for quite a while before he slowly corrected it.”

“What about Little Master? Was his speech always like that?”

Manzhu nodded: “He was carried back by an eagle and has never been a big talker since childhood. It’s actually much better now. Before, he wasn’t just a slight stutterer; he was practically a little mute.”

“Don’t eagles eat snakes?” Lu Yudong’s eyes were full of curiosity.

“They do. But that eagle became a spirit and had somewhat picky taste. It wouldn’t eat anything raw; it insisted on cooked food. I happened to run into him when he was starting a fire and setting up a pot,” Manzhu said. “I couldn’t very well let a bird spirit cook and eat my own kind right in front of me, could I?”

Lu Yudong burst out laughing. So even the demons in the deep mountains had such high standards.

An eagle preparing cooked food over a fire! If the nature documentaries had ever captured footage like that, it would have surely shocked the entire internet.

“Then, are there still demons in the mountains now?”

“Yes, but not many. These days, the young demons all want to run outside the mountain when they grow up,” Manzhu said, shaking her head and laughing self-deprecatingly. “I never understood it before. It wasn’t until I met you that I realized human cities really are much more interesting than the mountains.”

Lu Yudong thought for a moment, tilting her head: “You’ve told me so many stories. Every one of them is interesting. You must have a lot of feelings for that place, having lived there for so long, right?”

Manzhu said: “Not bad, but there’s nothing particularly worth missing.”

“Could you take me to see it sometime?”

“If you’re not afraid.”

“You’ll protect me,” Lu Yudong said, raising her index finger. A small water sphere easily condensed at the tip, and she smiled: “Maybe I’ll even be able to protect myself by then.”

Manzhu smiled knowingly: “Then, when you grow up—hmm… after you graduate from university, I’ll take you back to see it.”

“Mhm!” Lu Yudong nodded heavily.

Vacations are always fleeting, and time quickly sped to the start of the school term.

For Lu Yudong, the Wenhai High School campus was quite far from home. It required a ten-minute walk to the subway station, a half-hour subway ride, and then another ten-minute walk after exiting the station.

If she took the bus, she would need to transfer, and without traffic, the time would still be about an hour.

To save the two hours of daily round-trip travel time, Lu Yudong became a boarding student, going home once a week. She would leave school after class on Saturday afternoon and had to return before the Sunday evening self-study session.

The day Manzhu accompanied Lu Yudong to register at the school, she deliberately wore the dress Lu Yudong had given her.

One reason was that Lu Yudong was always happy when she wore that dress. The second reason was that she hoped Lu Yudong wouldn’t receive too much special attention from her classmates because of her own “unusual attire.”

After all, three years ago, the first time she attended Lu Yudong’s class parent meeting, it had caused Lu Yudong considerable trouble.

The style of clothing she was accustomed to wearing was fine in a traditional-style bar, but it was certainly too eye-catching on a school campus.

Lu Yudong was in a good mood while queuing to register, because Zhang Ziyun, her best friend for three years of junior high, was once again assigned to the same class. The two planned to pick up their dorm keys together after registering, so they could also be in the same room.

Zhang’s mother saw Manzhu and came over to greet her.

They had met at every parent meeting for three years, but this was the first time Zhang’s mother had seen Manzhu dressed so normally, which briefly surprised her. The two then began exchanging pleasantries.

Seeing the two parents chatting and queuing, Lu Yudong pulled Zhang Ziyun aside and whispered: “We’re in the same class—did you ask Zhang Hao for help?”

“Yeah, I just casually mentioned it, and he actually made it happen,” Zhang Ziyun was beaming with excitement. “This is great! You’re boarding too, so not only can we be in the same class, but we can also be in the same dorm.”

“Is Zhang Hao in our class too?” Lu Yudong asked again.

“He actually is. But who cares about him? It’s just the two of us together, right?” Zhang Ziyun said.

Lu Yudong nodded, saying no more.

During the three years of junior high, Zhang Hao tried to show kindness to Zhang Ziyun at every opportunity. Although he never confessed, everyone in the class could tell he was trying to pursue her.

Zhang Ziyun didn’t like him, and Lu Yudong could see that. That was precisely why she didn’t think it was a good idea to ask Zhang Hao for help with this kind of thing.

“Hey, is that the dress you bought this summer on your sister?” Zhang Ziyun gently nudged Lu Yudong’s arm with her elbow.

Lu Yudong snapped out of her thoughts and nodded blankly again.

“It looks even better than the seller’s pictures,” Zhang Ziyun said, winking and giving a thumbs-up.

Lu Yudong chuckled: “You’re so good at giving compliments!”

Zhang Ziyun took out her phone and whispered: “I’ll sneak a photo of the big beauty in your family. I promise not to share it. Is that okay?”

“I can’t stop you anyway,” Lu Yudong said.

After taking the photo, Zhang Ziyun sighed with admiration and turned back to ask: “When can you send me some photos of those two handsome guys from the bar?”

“What for? I don’t have any.”

“It’s just nice to look at handsome men and beautiful women,” Zhang Ziyun said. She then suddenly looked up, frowning as she scrutinized Lu Yudong up and down.

Lu Yudong was a little flustered by her gaze: “What are you looking at me for?”

Zhang Ziyun made an exaggerated “Woah” sound, then clapped Lu Yudong on the shoulder and laughed: “I haven’t seen you all summer. How come you look prettier?”

“W-where, where am I…” Lu Yudong instinctively lowered her head.

Zhang Ziyun laughed: “Why are you shy? Girls change as they get older. Don’t you believe me? Ask your sister!”

Manzhu, who was not far away, seemed to hear their conversation. She glanced over for a second, just as Lu Yudong was secretly looking up at her.

After a moment of eye contact, Manzhu gave her a gentle smile and a nod, her expression so soft.

Lu Yudong couldn’t help but bite her lower lip, fighting back the joy in her heart.

No one had ever complimented her on her appearance since she was little. This was the first time, and it was approved by Manzhu.