Chapter Three: I’m pregnant with a pea.

Tang Yuan didn’t hear that sentence because he had already passed out. By the time he woke up, it was already the next day.

After waking up, he found himself in an unfamiliar room. But he didn’t have time to think about it before someone knocked on the door and entered the room. It was the man who saw him pass out, the man he had met named Xie Yu.

This was the third time that he had seen Xie Yu. Like in his memory, Xie Yu was extremely good-looking. Tang Yuan was stunned at the sight of him. Xie Yu’s temperament was very mild and his smile was also gentle. Seeing him, Tang Yuan didn’t feel nervous at all.

“I’m sorry. In order to take care of you, I brought you straight back to my home,” Xie Yu spoke up first.

“It’s okay,” Tang Yuan smiled, “I should thank you for it. Thank you for helping to save me yesterday.”

Xie Yu smiled and shook his head, “It’s what I’m meant to do.”

Tang Yuan’s mind was filled with questions, so he couldn’t help but ask, “Are you a tianshi1? Do you know why I was hunted by those ghosts?”

Xie Yu nodded. “I am a tianshi. I also know why you were being chased by the ghosts. That’s why I was there.”

Tang Yuan showed an expression of surprise. He’d been haunted by ghosts for half a month and it had been really unbearable, but he hadn’t known why and had no method to use. “Tell me, please, tell me, what the hell is going on here?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you. But right now, you should go eat something first.”

After Xie Yu finished speaking, he took him to the dining hall. Following in Xie Yu’s footsteps, Tang Yuan observed Xie Yu’s home. Xie Yu’s family had to be very rich, because the house was decorated both tastefully and luxuriously and the house was very large. They had to walk for a while before reaching the dining hall.

Along the way, the only member of the household he saw was Xie Yu, but he did see four or five servants, both men and women, who were all extraordinarily beautiful.

The strongest impression for Tang Yuan was a maid called Tao (peach), because this maid looked really plump and was really as cute as a peach. But, though Tao looked cute, her character was cold and she was polite and alienating towards him.

Xie Yi’s dining hall was also very large. When he ate, a servant stood not far from him. Tang Yuan knew that this was for the convenience of serving him. If he was in a normal mood, this might have been strange to him, but right now had a lot of problems on his mind. He ignored all that and just stared at Xie Yu, trying to encourage Xie Yu to talk sooner.

Xie Yu lowered his gaze and ate seriously. He seemed to be in a good mood, so his mouth was upturned the whole time.

“If you don’t eat enough, I won’t tell you what you want to know,” Xie Yu said softly. He wasn’t deliberately keeping him in suspense, he just wanted Tang Yuan to get a little nourishment.

Tang Yuan ate obediently and, after taking a few bites to ‘finish’ his meal, he said with a smug expression, “I’m stuffed.”

“Pft,” Xie Yu couldn’t help but laugh. His gaze softened a little. He put down his utensils, letting the others take the things away, and then whispered, “Do you remember the scene of our first meeting?”

When he asked this, both of them blushed a little.

“I remember.” He had a strange illness at the time and threw the man down and ruthlessly took liberties with him.

“Just over half a month ago, I caught a lust demon, but the demon escaped. Later, the demon ran into you and wanted to possess you, so you suffered seven days of lust. Because of this magic, you became……” Xie Yu didn’t finish the sentence, because both of them are well-aware.

He went on to say, “On the seventh day, I finally found the lust demon’s hiding place, that place being your home. I was forced to break into your home and perform a spell to capture the lust demon. The demon ended up seriously hurting me and then you woke up……” Xie Yu wasn’t able to continue again. They both felt embarrassed.

“*Cough cough*.” Xie Yu took a deep breath and continued, “After that time, you became pregnant. I didn’t know at first, until the day of the ZhongYuan Festival2, that is, yesterday. The ghost qi was surging in an unnatural way, so I figured out that someone was pregnant with a spiritual fetus. And then I found that the one pregnant with a spiritual fetus was a man.”

“The man who is pregnant with a spiritual fetus is me?” Tang Yuan asked calmly. After encountering ghosts, he wasn’t going to be surprised by something that couldn’t be explained with science right now, but would analyze it coolly and calmly.

“Yes,” Xie Yu nodded affirmatively. He hadn’t expected Tang Yuan would be so calm.

Tang Yuan asked another question, “So I was hunted by ghosts because of the spiritual fetus and it’s also because the spiritual fetus that I can see the ghosts and also the spiritual fetus is the medium that connects me to the yin and yang, right?”

“Mhm.” Xie Yu smiled. “Yes, the spiritual fetus is not like a normal fetus. It has accumulated a great spiritual aura around itself, so you can see through it things that ordinary people can’t see. But, because it has accumulated this spiritual aura, it is a supplement for all evil things.”

Tang Yuan nodded. Now it had all been said. “That spiritual fetus is just because we kissed, is that correct?”

When the question was spoken, the faces of the two people flushed a faint red. It could estimated that they would feel embarrassed and ashamed for a long time over this kind of thing.

Despite his shame, Xie Yu said firmly, “No, it takes an intersection of fundamental divinity (divine essence/shenyuan) to give birth to a spiritual fetus.”

He explained what the divine essence was. This divine essence was from a person who cultivated the Tao. If he cultivated to a certain level, he would produce something similar to the soul. People call it divine essence. The divine essence could be separated from the body by the owner’s mind, to provide energy to the owner as the owner’s second life.

That night, his will wasn’t strong and he released his own divine essence. Who could have known that Tang Yuan actually had a divine essence, so……

“I understand.” It was their divine essence that applauded together for love3, but he didn’t say this, after all, it was very embarrassing.

“After all that, what even is a spiritual fetus? Can you explain it to me?” Thinking of himself as pregnant with a little one, Tang Yuan felt uncomfortable, but it had already happened, so he couldn’t change it. He could only try to accept it.

“The areas in which the spiritual fetus is different from an ordinary fetus are that its growth cycle is uncertain and that it does not use uterine gestation and a birth canal passage.”

As Xie Yu spoke, Tang Yuan took a look within at the location of his own dantian4. He saw a little pea and that pea seemed to be delighted by Tang Yuan’s gaze, jumping around inside his dantian.

Tang Yuan felt an unprecedented closeness to this pea. This feeling made his heart move just a bit. He found that it was incredibly clear, this pea was his family.

“So what am I supposed to do now?”

After seeing the pea, Tang Yuan couldn’t say anything to fight against this situation. However, the pea was within him, so he would always be in danger and he could only ask Xie Yu to show him a clear path forward.

Xie Yu smiled and said softly, “Marry me and give birth to the child.”

Tang Yuan was stunned. Did I mishear that? Xie Yu said to marry him?

“If I marry you, it will be easier to protect you because, apart from ghosts, some people are even more terrible,” Xie Yu said and then paused. He then continued, “My Xie family spells can’t be passed on to outsiders, but if you’re a Xie family member, I can teach you spells and let you develop some self-protection ability. After the child is born, if you want a divorce, I can give you some money to guarantee your safety and food so you’ll have nothing to worry about, but the child must stay.”

When he finished saying that, Xie Yu added, “You and I are the fathers of the child, so I can’t recognize you as a younger brother or……a son.”

(t/n: as in, adopting him into the family register to teach him instead of marrying him)

“Pft,” Tang Yuan couldn’t help but laugh, “I understand.”

When the two men finished talking, Xie Yu sent Tang Yuan back home after instructing Tang Yuan to think it over. As a result, Tang Yuan called Xie Yu that same night and accepted Xie Yu’s proposal.

After all, a pair of green eyes appeared outside the window that night, making Tang Yuan too afraid to sleep.

Although this matter had been discussed, to get married, Tang Yuan still needed to know more about this guy, Xie Yu, after all.

The Xie family was a very rich and famous family in the tianshi community. However, when Xie Yu was a teenager, the Xie family suffered a major accident and of the Xie family, the only person left was Xie Yu.

Tang Yuan didn’t dare to ask him how he propped up the Xie family house alone, because he knew that it would remind Xie Yu of that pain.

When he asked about Xie Yu’s age, Tang Yuan was surprised, “You’re twenty-eight years old this year? Ten years older than me!” It seems impolite to call him by name, should I use Shushu6?

Xie Yu took an arrow to the knee.

The two chatted about a bunch of things. Tang Yuan wanted to visit the Xie household, but it wasn’t that Tang Yuan was in a hurry to stroll around the Xie family mansion, but that he wanted to hang out in the courtyard. The yard of Xie Yu’s household was very large. If Xie Yu allowed it, he could ride a horse in the yard.

Xie Yu wandered around with Tang Yuan, listening to Tang Yuan’s chatterbox mouth. His smile grew more and more gentle and there was a strong sense of expectation in his gaze, but who knew what he was expecting.

Tang Yuan is an orphan and Xie Yu was a loner too. Neither of them had to worry about their family, so once they came to an agreement, marriage was a matter of course.

So they set the wedding date for two months in the future.

With the wedding booked, Tang Yuan began to learn spells with Xie Yu. Xie Yu gave him a lot of weapons and also masked the scent of his spiritual fetus for him, so that average ghosts wouldn’t be able to find him anymore. From then on, Tang Yuan finally resumed a quiet life.

After ensuring these safeguards for his safety, Tang Yuan returned to his ordinary life. Time flashed by until it was September, time for him to report to university. After just a few days of military training, Zhao Zheng took leave. Tang Yuan didn’t find out until he asked, but it turned out that Zhao Zheng’s father had been hospitalized and the doctor had said that the situation was not optimistic.

Tang Yuan was a little worried about him, so as soon as the military training ended, he went to the hospital to see Zhao Zheng’s dad. Zhao Zheng’s dad’s illness seemed to be really serious, his face had turned blue and they were afraid that he wouldn’t last long.

Tang Yuan chatted with them for a while and then Zhao Zheng took him home. Tang Yuan didn’t know if it was because he was sensitive or if it was some other reason, but when he entered Zhao Zheng’s home, he found that the temperature in Zhao Zheng’s home was a bit low.

He thought that Zhao Zheng’s home had the air-conditioning on, but after taking a look, he found that the home really didn’t have it on.

He sat on the sofa and drank the water that Zhao Zheng brought him. He wanted to ask Zhao Zheng what was going on, but surprisingly Zhao Zheng said first, “Rice ball, are you really going to marry a man?”

Tang Yuan nodded, “Yes, the wedding’s scheduled for next month, remember to come.”

Zhao Zheng’s expression went a bit strange. There was a slight eerie sense that his home-grown cabbage had been dug out by a pig6. He was about to speak when he heard Tang Yuan say, “Why do you have a lipstick mark on your collar? Do you have a girlfriend?”

This made Zhao Zheng’s face go pale and his body shivered uncontrollably.

—

Footnotes:
1. Tianshi (天师), commonly translated as Celestial Master; like a cultivator, someone who follows a combination of Taoism and Confucianism ↩
2. ZhongYuan Festival (中元节), Ghost Festival on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month, when offerings are made to the deceased ↩
3. applaud together for love (为爱鼓掌): euphemism for sex, aka to make the “papapa” sound ↩
4. Dantian (丹田), place two inches below one’s navel where their qi resides ↩
5. shushu (叔叔): uncle, specifically father’s younger brother; I’ll be using this instead of “uncle” because I think it sounds cuter! ↩
6. cabbage dug out by a pig (白菜被猪拱): if you’ve read MDZS, you’ll recognize this; a saying about a father’s beautiful daughter being snatched away by a no-good guy ↩