Chapter 127: 216 chapters, I also love you, but now I still cannot marry you

216 chapters, I also love you, but now I still cannot marry you.

216 chapters, I love you, but now I still cannot marry you…

――Liu Guozong exposes the scandalous secret history of Dream of the Red Chamber, chapter eighteen.

Jia Yucun, whose boss burned squid, had no money to rent a house, so he temporarily stayed in a ruined temple, barely making a living by writing small articles for others to earn a little money. This temple has an interesting name: Hulü miao—a temple shaped like a gourd.

Next to Hulü miao lived a small boss surnamed Zhen. Zhen Xiaolaoban was decent; although he had a little money, he never acted arrogantly toward the poor, his conscience was intact, and he looked down on no one lacking money.

On the night of the fifteenth of the eighth month, the moonlight was fine and bright. Jia Yucun read until his head swelled. He felt lonely, a bit annoyed, and stifled.

Just then, Jia Yucun suddenly heard a woman's cough outside the window. He stepped out to look. A woman was plucking flowers in the moonlight. As the moon shifted and the flower shadows swayed, it seemed as if a fairy had arrived――

Ah, this woman under the moon is too beautiful: you see her eyebrows are clear and her eyes lovely, her bearing is not ordinary.

Her slender willow waist swayed in the moonlight, so alluring.

Jia Yucun stared, dazed.

The slender-waisted little woman plucking flowers in the moonlight, flower in hand, was about to leave. She looked up and saw, not far off, a young man with a tiger back and bear waist, staring blankly at her in the moonlight.

The flower-plucking woman was first startled, thinking she had been targeted by a ruffian. Upon a second look, it was not a ruffian but the poor, failed scholar living in the ruined temple, the unlucky Jia Yucun.

The pretty little woman plucking flowers in the moonlight was a maid in the Zhen Xiaolaoban household. This little maid was a village girl come to work, kind-hearted. She had long known that a poor scholar lived in Hulü miao, sharing the same fate, both forgotten souls at the ends of the earth.

Zhen's pretty little maid often wanted to whisper a few words to the poor scholar to relieve his sorrow and loneliness, or to give him some spare change she had saved. But how could a young lady feel comfortable speaking to a strange man?

So, the pretty little maid could only hide her pity, sympathy, and inexplicable love deep in her heart.

Now the opportunity has come: the destitute scholar, under the moonlight, stares blankly at her. Is he intentionally planting flowers, or unintentionally inserting willows?

The beautiful little maid, thinking this, could not help but feel ecstatic: 'Could this poor scholar have fallen in love with me?'

The little maid couldn't help but glance back at Jia Yucun once more.

Jia Yucun looked at the little beauty under the moonlight, she glanced at him once, then again. His heart swelled with joy beyond bearing: 'Could this little beauty plucking flowers in the moonlight have fallen in love with me, this poor scholar?'

But how could that be possible? I am now a penniless wretch; only a fool would love a penniless wretch. Yet if that little beauty under the moon has no other intention toward me, why does she keep looking back at me repeatedly? With such a high rate of return, Jia Yucun is experiencing this for the first time. Jia Yucun thinks: 'I am a poor scholar with no career; if someone loves me, am I not just making them share my suffering? I must study hard, write well, earn money, and wait until I have a future…'

After many storms and springs and autumns, that former poor scholar, after a struggle, after effort, after many red sunsets, even swapped his bird gun for a cannon――and became a big boss.

Having become a big boss, Jia Yucun led a convoy through the streets, glorious. Boss Jia looked out from the carriage window and saw a young, beautiful woman standing at the roadside—wasn't she the little maid who plucked flowers in the moonlight beside Hulü miao back then? After all these years, are you still waiting for me? Do you still remember that backward glance?

"I am still waiting for you, hoping for you, longing for you—I will marry no one but you. And you?" said the little maid who plucked flowers in the moonlight back then, her eyes brimming with excited tears.

"I... I cannot put it into words for you..." Originally Jia Yucun, ever since being looked at by that little maid under the moonlight, has redoubled his efforts. After making something of himself, he returned to the old place to seek that moonlit beauty, yet that moonlit beauty

has gone unknown whereabouts.

After Jia Yucun sighed, felt emotion, and was disappointed, he then married the little secretary beside him.

Now, encountering an old acquaintance in this foreign land…