Chapter 17 Part 1: Family

Jiang Bing Ji’s sentence made Jiang Li’s situation awkward.

Tong’er who was standing at the side wanted to defend her mistress with a few words, but at this time, it wasn’t the place for her, a servant, to say anything.

Jiang Bing Ji reminded the people present how vicious Jiang Li was before. Such a girl who could plot to harm her own blood relatives, in the end it would only make people fear her.

Jiang Li merely seemed as if she didn’t hear Jiang Bing Ji’s words, her smile wasn’t reduced in the slightest. She faced Jiang Bing Ji and spoke: “So this is younger brother? I didn’t expect that coming back I’d see him already so tall and very cute.”

Her compliment didn’t seem fake. However, when heard by Ji Shuran, it seemed to harbor malicious intent. Before she opened her mouth, Jiang Bing Ji shouted loudly: “Who’s your younger brother? You are a murderer!”

What he had spoken the first time could be ignored, but the second time was somewhat ugly in the ear, especially since Jiang Bing Ji raised his voice high. Jiang Yuan Bai’s face sank and he said: “Who taught you to speak like this?”

Jiang Bing Ji shrunk his neck, apparently he was somewhat afraid of his father and no longer spoke.

Old madam Jiang patted Jiang Bing Ji’s back to appease him. She glared at Jiang Yuan Bai: “It’s just talking, why are you angry towards a child?” Then she turned to see Jiang Li and faintly spoke: “Second girl, meet your uncles and aunts.”

Jiang Li complied and raised her eyes towards the rest of the people.

Aside from the first branch’s Jiang Yuan Bai, there was also the second branch, Jiang Yuan Ping and his family, and the third branch, Jiang Yuan Xing and his family, who lived in the Jiang residence.

Jiang Yuan Ping was Jiang Yuan Bai’s younger brother from the same mother. Nowadays, he was Yanjing’s third rank official. His wife was Chengwu Minister’s di daughter, Lu Shi. In terms of family, they were a well-matched pair.

Jiang Yuan Ping had a pot belly and looked very different from Jiang Yuan Bai’s trees-and-wind appearance. He beamed while looking at Jiang Li, totally amiable. Lu Shi was the typical noble lady of Yanjing who paid careful attention to her appearance. Jiang Li briefly swept her eyes over her; clothes and hairpins were all inlaid with precious stones. She probably didn’t lack silver and loved to dress up. Lu Shi looked tender and beautiful; however, her gaze was astute. They really complemented each other. She took off a string of jasper beads from her wrist and gave it to Jiang Li as their meeting gift as she spoke: “It’s good to come back”, while sizing her up.

Jiang Li received the gift readily.

As for the third branch, Jiang Yuan Xing, he was old master Jiang’s son from his concubine, a shu born. Despite being a shu born, he got along well with the other two branches and they lived together harmoniously. However, old madam Jiang wasn’t particularly fond of the third branch, so her treatment towards the third branch was always faint. Jiang Yuan Xing from the third branch was delicate and frail, with a bashful appearance. His wife, Yang Shi1, was a person with a forceful temper. Apparently, she was Deputy to the Chancellor’s2 shu daughter. Even though she was shu born, no matter what, the deputy to the Chancellor compared to Jiang Yuan Xing, a secretary, he still ranked much higher. Probably because of this, Yang Shi always considered herself to have married down and she totally suppressed Jiang Yuan Xing.

For the meeting gift between Jiang Li and the third branch, Yang Shi gave Jiang Li a pair of pearl earrings. The pearl earrings looked worn, it was unknown whether the third branch was poor or whether it was Yang Shi being stingy. Anyway, it was not worth mentioning when compared to Lu Shi’s jasper bracelet.

This was precisely Jiang Li’s second uncle and second aunt as well as her third uncle and third aunt. Beside Lu Shi, two young men were standing. The eldest looked to be 16-17 years old, his face resembled Jiang Yuan Ping, chubby and all smiles. The younger one was almost at the same age as Jiang Li. He resembled Lu Shi with his magnificent appearance, and he had been staring fixedly at Jiang Li. When he saw Jiang Li looking over, he immediately moved his gaze away.

Jiang Yuan Bai spoke: “These are your eldest male cousins, Jing You and second older cousin, Jing Yui.”

So they were second branch’s two di sons.

Uff for some reason this one took so long to edit >.< damn official titles, really! I also updated the Character List and Ancient China & Pinyin Glossary, damn there’s so many characters mentoned already… and still many more waiting to be introduced >.<

Footnotes:

1: Shi (氏). Married women were called by their maiden family name, so shi is like ‘Mrs.’ but keeping their maiden name instead of adopting the husband’s family name. I tried using Mrs. instead of shi but it sounded weird, so we’ll be sticking to pinyin.:leftwards_arrow_with_hook:

2: Deputy to the Chancellor (司直郎), we got the translation from here. This site has a large list of Chinese official/militar/others titles, together with a broad explanation of the system (which I did not read). It might be helpful if you’re reading or translating from Chinese and got a headache with the innumerable titles… or it might be useless, that depends on your luck xD :leftwards_arrow_with_hook: