The Princess’ Shadow Guard – Chapter 68
by Little PandaAfter all, I love you so much
The lingering affection between Ming Qin and Murong Yan only increased and did not decrease with time, and had already caused ineradicable spiritual damage to Song Shuqing, who was a single dog1.
If she were not still somewhat terrified of Murong Yan’s eye-knives2, which were double standards3 to the extreme, the woman whose eyes were about to be blinded by the flashiness would have long ago spoken up to complain about the little two mouths4 who were as sticky as rubber candy.
Taking advantage of Murong Yan having left the room to call for someone to bring snacks for the peckish Ming Qin, Song Shuqing wrote the large character 『dog』 on the hand of the person beside her, causing her own shimei to have a completely baffled expression.
“Shijie, let me ask you something.” Ming Qin looked at Song Shuqing, who was holding her hand, and lowered her voice to ask quietly, “Tomorrow is Yanyan’s birthday. Shijie, what do you think I should give her? It seems like Yanyan doesn’t lack anything, does she?”
“I’ve already been flashed so much I’m about to vomit blood, and you still dare to come and stab me again?” Rolling her eyes dramatically, Song Shuqing palmed her forehead and wrote helplessly on Ming Qin’s hand.
『You little lovers can give anything. If you just kiss her a few more times, she will also be very happy』
Ming Qin gazed at her palm with a confused expression, “What are ‘little lovers’?”
Song Shuqing felt a stomachache, but seeing the person beside her’s expression that was thirsting for knowledge, she explained with compromise.
『It means lovers』
“But I don’t know if Yanyan and I are lovers, are we lovers?” Ming Qin tilted her head to think, the roots of her ears turning a little red. “So in shijie’s eyes, we are lovers…”
“Are you an idiot?!”
Her eyes wide, Song Shuqing had a look of disbelief. She wanted to shout but remembered the person before her could not hear at all, so she could only swallow her shock and write hurriedly.
『You’re not going to tell me you haven’t confessed5, right』
“What is a confession?” Frowning, Ming Qin tried hard to figure it out.
『It means to pour out one’s heart’s feelings』
『You donkey head』
Song Shuqing was cursing in her heart, her finger heavily poking her shimei’s head. In that instant, she felt that her responsibility was immense.
『I know what you need to do tomorrow』
『You’d better remember, tomorrow you…』
With extreme speed, she explained on Ming Qin’s palm. Before Murong Yan returned to the room, Song Shuqing had already thrown all of her suggestions to her donkey-headed shimei.
Qinqin, you idiot.
Shijie can only help you this far.
I just hope that the flowers and cards, which could be called the standard package for romance in the 21st century, will also be of some use in this era…
On the day of Murong Yan’s birthday, the weather was extremely good.
Ming Qin was being secretive early in the morning. Before the sky was even light, she was holding her chains and cat-walking back and forth in the room, making the light-sleeping Murong Yan feel that something was a bit strange.
After the midday meal, Ming Qin said somewhat sheepishly to the woman who was reading a book in her embrace, “Yanyan, can we go out today?”
“Ah Qin, you want to leave the palace?” Putting down the reading material in her hands, Murong Yan’s voice was low as she raised her hand to write.
『Where do you want to go』
『Who are you seeing』
“No, no! It’s not to see anyone…”
Shaking her head in a flurry, Ming Qin explained, “There’s a place I want Yanyan to go with me, okay?” She took the woman’s soft fingertips with a reverse grip, kissing the back of her hand as if pleading.
Seeing her beloved person acting like this, Murong Yan’s heart softened. She called for someone to prepare the horses and, with some struggle, undid the iron lock on Ming Qin’s right foot.
She stared in a daze at the empty chains on the floor, feeling an inexplicable panic in her heart. It was not until Ming Qin draped an outer robe over her and gently took her hand that Murong Yan returned to her senses.
“Shall we go?” Ming Qin tilted her head to ask, smiling, patiently waiting for the woman to take the first step.
Murong Yan took a deep breath, tightened her grip on the thinly callused hand of the person beside her, and walked out of the room and outside the palace.
Even after they boarded the horse carriage, it was still Ming Qin who was quietly muttering with the coachman. The wheels rolled on, and Murong Yan still did not know where their destination was.
It was not until the horse carriage stopped on Changshou Street and Ming Qin opened the door panel and jumped down that the woman realized they had arrived at the Cangyue Tower.
“Yanyan, come.” Extending her hand, Ming Qin took Murong Yan’s somewhat ice-cold fingertips and carefully helped her down from the carriage.
Murong Yan gazed at the entrance of the Cangyue Tower, her heart feeling somewhat inexplicably complex this time, being here with Ming Qin.
Towards this place that had imprisoned her for many years, the place where she first met Ming Qin, the place that had nearly killed her, Murong Yan always had a kind of indescribable feeling that she could not clearly articulate.
Looking at the excited person before her, Murong Yan sighed helplessly, ordered the remaining servants to stay behind and wait, and obediently allowed Ming Qin to carry her, ascending the high tower taking two steps at a time.
The room no longer showed any signs of its previous mess. Although it had clearly been uninhabited for a long time, it was spotless, as if it had been meticulously cleaned; all the furnishings were just as they had been originally.
“Wait a moment, Yanyan.” Ming Qin placed the woman in her arms on the familiar bed, then stood on the windowsill biting her lip, fumbling for something towards the outer wall. “…Ah, got it!”
Happily raising an eyebrow, Ming Qin pulled back the arm she had extended out the window, bringing with it a bouquet of flowers wrapped in oil paper.
“Yanyan, today is your birthday.”
She crouched on the windowsill, just as she had two years ago when she climbed the wall and ascended the tower day after day, grinning with a somewhat embarrassed smile. “I asked shijie, and shijie said that you would be very happy if you received flowers and a greeting card, but I can’t see clearly, and I still can’t write, so I can only say it… “
Nimbly jumping down, Ming Qin came before the bed, half-knelt, and handed the bouquet to Murong Yan, scratching her head as she organized her words. “Um… Yanyan, I… I’m always told by shijie and shifu that I’m stupid and clumsy, that I only know how to be foolishly happy every day… Besides eating good food every day, I can’t figure out what it is I really want.”
“I don’t like glory and riches, nor do I like overwhelming power. When I was a shadow guard, I watched those people fight until their heads were broken and bleeding for the things they wanted, and because they couldn’t get them, they were in unbearable pain. I really don’t understand… I’m sorry, I’m too stupid.”
Taking a deep breath, trying hard to sort through the surging emotions in her heart, Ming Qin spoke again, “But now I think I understand… no, I already completely understand that feeling. That kind of desire, like walking in a desert praying for an oasis; that kind of urgency of an empty heart, eager to be filled…”
“Yanyan, my heart’s wish is you…”
Not realizing that the breathing of the person before her had suddenly quickened, Ming Qin was simply immersed in her own thoughts, trying to say everything she wanted to say clearly at once. “Um… I don’t mean that I want Yanyan to become my possession…”
“I hope you are happy, I hope I can accompany you forever. Yanyan, you deserve all the beautiful things in this world, you deserve to soar freely… wuwu, I’m not saying you’re a bird! If Yanyan were a bird, then you would be the most beautiful bird…”
“I want to protect the you who is like that, I want to be with you always…”
Speaking to this point, Ming Qin somewhat blamed herself for being clumsy with words. Her voice grew lower and lower, and she somewhat regretted not having secretly rehearsed beforehand. “…Although I’m not as formidable as I was before, I’m still very good at fighting. I can carry Yanyan and climb up and down, we can go anywhere… so… so…”
For the first time, the slow-witted shadow guard seemed to understand the meaning of the fear of loss.
“Let me stay by your side… okay?”
Ming Qin raised her head, her throat a little dry. Against the light, she could not see the expression of the person before her, and could only blink her eyes forcefully.
“Yanyan… let me be with you, oka—oof!”
Before she could finish speaking, Ming Qin felt her neck being firmly encircled. The next second, she felt a weight on her body, and she tightly hugged Murong Yan, who had thrown herself forward.
“Yanyan! What’s wrong?” Noticing that the woman’s body lying on top of her was trembling and that she was panting rapidly, Ming Qin couldn’t help but panic. “Is it that you don’t like it here?”
“Let’s go home, okay? Don’t be afraid.”
Annoyed at her own recklessness, Ming Qin knew of the woman’s occasional nightmares. She had once discovered that on one or two occasions while sleeping together, Murong Yan would break out in a cold sweat and murmur in a low voice about the Cangyue Tower where she had been imprisoned for many years.
The originally simple-minded shadow guard had only wanted to take this opportunity to cover the old memories with more beautiful ones for the woman she cherished, but she had not expected that Murong Yan, far from being happy as anticipated, would instead tremble slightly.
Inwardly blaming herself for being stupid, she lifted the woman in her arms horizontally, preparing to get up and go downstairs, but found her collar being tugged. Murong Yan was leaning against the hollow of her neck, shaking her head nonstop.
“Yanyan doesn’t want to go? Yanyan isn’t afraid?” she asked worriedly, but Ming Qin did not get any other reaction from the woman. She held Murong Yan and sat down on the couch, rocking her lightly in a comforting manner. “Then we’ll stay a little longer, just a little longer.”
One hand clutched the shadow guard’s collar, while the other tightly gripped the exquisite bouquet. Murong Yan pressed against Ming Qin’s shoulder, continuously repeating something with her mouth.
Ming Qin could feel the breath on her collarbone, but being unable to hear the sound, she felt extremely troubled. Never before had she resented her lost hearing so much.
She tilted her head and blinked. In her vision, which had unexpectedly become clear, appeared the bronze mirror used for grooming, and reflected within it was the silhouette of the two of them snuggled together.
In the silent world, Ming Qin stared fixedly at the woman’s mouth opening and closing in the mirror, her body stiffening.
As if unable to understand the shape of Murong Yan’s mouth, or perhaps wanting to imprint that image in her mind, Ming Qin tilted her head and watched in disbelief for a long time.
It was three words.
What Murong Yan’s mouth was repeating was only three words.
But it was enough to make her heart-flower6 seem to bloom.
It was a quiet world, yet it was as if she heard the roar of a torrent, and as if she heard the sound of fireworks exploding.
They were clearly incomparably unfamiliar words, yet they made Ming Qin’s always-slow heart turn scalding hot.
It was those words that allowed her, so clumsy with her mouth, to find the most perfect interpretation to pour out her wave-like emotional tide and endless attachment to the woman in her arms.
Feeling the blood rush to her head, Ming Qin opened her mouth and responded.
“Yanyan… I love you, too.”
With a lump in her throat, she did not dare to look down at Murong Yan’s expression at that moment. She just kissed her hair, saying it over and over again tirelessly, as if to fill the time the two had missed and to make up for the time the woman had waited because of her own ignorance.
Until she felt warm tears soaking into her collar.
“Why are you crying?” At a loss, Ming Qin hurriedly took out a handkerchief7 and gently wiped the woman’s face, which was streaked with tears. “Don’t cry, okay?”
“…Ah Qin, you can see clearly now?” Raising her head docilely, Murong Yan looked at Ming Qin’s no-longer-unfocused pupils, suppressing the convulsions in her chest.
Nodding her head haphazardly, “I can see clearly, so don’t cry, Yanyan.”
Ming Qin glimpsed the crimson beneath the eyes of the person in her arms and said in a soft voice, “It makes me feel bad to see it… Today is still Yanyan’s birthday, you should be happy.”
“…Is it because today is my birthday that Ah Qin is saying this to make me happy? As a birthday gift.” Murong Yan loosened her tightly clenched hand, her eyes still holding tears, and lovingly touched Ming Qin’s slightly reddened left ear as she spoke word by word.
“I’m not saying it to make you happy…”
“The birthday gift is the flowers, but Yanyan can have whatever she wants.” The straightforward Ming Qin pressed against the woman’s hand, her expression incomparably sincere. “As long as Yanyan wants it, I can give anything.”
Whether it be flowers, treasures, or people, as long as she had it, she would give anything.
“Then… I want Ah Qin.”
Pressing her forehead against the shadow guard’s, feeling their breaths intermingle, Murong Yan, in this space that had once made her feel hatred, felt her always-calm heart fill with ecstasy. “Every single year, I only want Ah Qin.”
Her red lips opened and closed, murmuring in a low voice.
“Okay.”
“Everything I have is for Yanyan, only for Yanyan.”
Facing such a simple request—or rather, one that was precisely her own wish—Ming Qin promised without hesitation, her tone still solemn despite it all.
Unconsciously looking at the moist lip rouge before her, the shadow guard’s eyelids trembled lightly, and she hesitated somewhat. “Then Yanyan… can I also…”
The two’s breaths intertwined.
“Can I…”
She inexplicably felt a wave of hunger, but it was not her stomach acting up; rather, it seemed to be a clamor from the depths of her soul.
“Hm?” Dotingly, she tidied the stray hairs on the forehead of the person before her, and Murong Yan hummed lightly as if in encouragement.
Subconsciously licking her lips, Ming Qin was somewhat unaccustomed to the strange, inexplicable impulse that had suddenly arisen in her heart. She spoke hesitantly, “The rouge on your lips, I want to touch it.”
She wanted to devour the person before her, to fill the emptiness.
“But Yanyan just applied it… it will be ruined, it will be eaten.”
“Even so… is it okay?”
The person who had spoken stutteringly had a slightly red face, and she obediently bit her lower lip, enduring as she waited for her beloved’s permission.
Surprised at the direct desire for herself that the person before her was revealing for the first time, Murong Yan blinked her eyes and sucked in a slight breath.
She hooked both hands around Ming Qin’s neck, bringing the shadow guard who was always obedient to her leaning backward. “Ah Qin can do whatever she wants…”
“After all, I love you so much.”
After all, our love is mutual.
The author has something to say:
Hmm…
The two of them didn’t come downstairs until almost two shichen (4 hours) had passed
The coachman was very confused and didn’t know what happened, but he didn’t dare to ask
The author is very gratified and also knows what happened, but she cannot say
The readers are in pain and happy because the divine wood8 has finally blossomed, but the specifics they have to imagine for themselves
LP: Re-translated on September 16, 2025
Basically, they f*cked
Footnotes
- 单身狗 (dānshēn gǒu): Literally “single dog.” A popular and self-deprecating internet slang term used to describe a single person, humorously highlighting their loneliness, especially in the presence of couples.
- 眼刀 (yǎndāo): Literally “eye knife.” A slang term describing a sharp, fierce, or cutting glare, as if one’s eyes could physically stab someone.
- 双标 (shuāng biāo): A slang term short for 双重标准 (shuāngchóng biāozhǔn), meaning “double standard.” It refers to the act of applying different principles or rules to different people or situations unfairly.
- 小两口 (xiǎo liǎng kǒu): Literally “the little two mouths.” A colloquial and affectionate term for a young couple, particularly newlyweds or those in a close relationship.
- 告白 (gàobái): Literally “to announce plainly.” The modern term for confessing one’s romantic feelings to someone.
- 心花 (xīn huā): Literally “heart-flower.” A metaphor for a feeling of joy, happiness, or elation. The phrase “心花怒放” (xīn huā nù fàng), meaning “heart-flower in full bloom,” is a common idiom describing a state of extreme happiness.
- 帕子 (pàzi): A small piece of cloth, similar to a handkerchief or kerchief, used for wiping one’s face or hands. It was a common personal item in historical Chinese settings.
- 神木 (shén mù): Literally “divine wood” or “sacred tree.” In this context, it’s likely a metaphorical nickname for a character who is slow to understand or react to romantic feelings, similar to calling someone dense or wooden. The “blossoming” signifies that this character has finally had a breakthrough in their emotional development.
I feel ya, the arc before this was just so dark as heck. Hoping only lsweet chapters ahead
Aww that’s so cute, she finally confessed!
Aww that’s so cute, she finally confessed!
God, this has been traumatizing me for a bit, but I’m glad everything is okay again
I feel ya, the arc before this was just so dark as heck. Hoping only lsweet chapters ahead
God, this has been traumatizing me for a bit, but I’m glad everything is okay again