chapter 26 - The Wind Moon Precious Mirror, Qin Keqing! (2/4)
All good things must end, the painted beams of spring fall to fragrant dust!
From inside the [Red Chamber], a mystical voice echoed, so profound it seemed to bend the air. Wu Chi blinked, staring at the woman who had just materialized before him. She was dressed head-to-toe in a ridiculously ornate wedding gown, complete with a phoenix crown that looked heavy enough to give her whiplash.
She is… Qin Keqing? And she showed up in a wedding dress? Is this a bridal banner gacha?
If he remembered his classics correctly, Qin Keqing was the poster child for tragic backstories. Weak-ass husband, creepy father-in-law, ended up killing herself. It was a whole thing. But the girl in front of him looked maybe sixteen, tops. Her makeup was flawless, her eyes sharp, her red lips painted perfectly. She just looked utterly, completely, hilariously lost.
System must be giving her the welcome packet, Wu Chi figured, and immediately pulled up her stats. Because priorities.
…
[Qin Keqing]
Identity: Hero
Race: Human
Quality: Golden Legend
Level: 1 (0/200)
Bloodline: [Taixu Fairy] +1
Bond: "The Twelve Beauties of Jinling"
Constitution: 110 (Base 10, 1000% Multiplier) (Bonus: 10)
Spirit: 110 (Base 10, 1000% Multiplier) (Bonus: 10)
Description: Holds a magic mirror that lets her see your browser history. No secrets are safe!
…
[Taixu Fairy] +1 (Golden Legend): Recovers Spirit like a champ! Also, she's generally just better at not dying.
Description: A literal fairy from make-believe «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» land.
[Wind Moon Precious Mirror] +1 (Golden Legend): Lets her see enemy weak points. Hitting said weak points results in oodles of extra damage.
Description: She was born with this cheat code.
[The Twelve Beauties of Jinling] (Blue): For every "Beauty" on the team, everyone gets +10 Constitution, +10 Spirit, and +1 Luck.
Current Bonus: +10 to stats, +1 to Luck.
…
“ANOTHER Golden Legend?!” Wu Chi practically drooled.
“Is this entire summoning pool just stuffed with SSRs? Is the pity timer set to one?!” He cackled with glee. Her stats were just as broken as Lin Daiyu's, but while Lin Daiyu was clearly a rampaging berserker, this one seemed more… tactical. A support unit. A damage-boosting, weakness-exposing goddess of a support unit.
“Seeing weaknesses…” his mind raced.
“That’s a sniper’s wet dream! I give her the [Frost Archer] certificate, put her on a tower… Oh, the carnage!”
The fact that they now both had a +1 Luck bonus was just the delicious, overpowered cherry on top. Luck was the god stat. His teacher even had a story about some loser senior who only survived his trial because his enemies, a race of Light Spirits, spawned in a pitch-black zone and got nerfed into oblivion. The kid's only special trait? A bonus to Luck.
"Luck is just skill you didn't have to work for!" his teacher used to say. So true.
Just then, the bride snapped out of it. She stared at Wu Chi, and a voice like tinkling bells asked,
“M-My… Lord?”
“That's me. System get you all caught up?” Wu Chi grinned. “Call me Wu Chi.”
"I..." she hesitated, a bitter smile touching her lips. "I shall address you as 'Young Master.' Reality and illusion... truth and fiction... To think tales of other worlds might be real." She seemed genuinely lost, muttering to herself.
She was way more spun out than Lin Daiyu had been. Amused, Wu Chi asked, “So, you were in the middle of something? When, uh, were you yanked out of?”
"Ah?" Qin Keqing blinked, startled. "The bridal chamber," she finally answered softly.
"It was my wedding day. I was waiting for my… husband… when… well, when you summoned me, Young Master."
(TL note: So, you just met our new hero, the beautiful Qin Keqing, who showed up in a wedding dress looking completely bamboozled! And you might be thinking, "Hey, she seems important!" And you are SO right!
Just like our resident martial arts monster, Lin Daiyu, Qin Keqing is an incredibly famous character from one of the absolute BIGGEST and most important classic Chinese novels ever written, called Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦). This is the book that Wu Chi's [Red Chamber] altar is based on!
In the original novel, Qin Keqing's story is one of the most tragic and scandalous of them all. She is known for being stunningly beautiful, gentle, and very capable, but her life is a mess. She's married into the main family, but her husband is useless, and she's trapped in a deeply inappropriate, creepy relationship with her father-in-law. Her story ends very early in the book when she dies from a mysterious illness, which is heavily implied to be a suicide from all the shame and pressure..)
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