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Confused? See the ToC linked below, read it well.
Prev | ToC and Character Guide
Previous Life : Helian Yi
Memory was like a withered piece of wood filled with holes. It appeared like many things were getting absorbed into it, but in reality, time would swipe across it, and those invisible things were easy for one to forget. A human’s lifetime was longer than a morning shroom’s, longer than a cicada’s — they always walked their journeys, and got lost on them.
Only when they abruptly saw something would those years of recollections be stirred up and shaken out. Struck with the brand of old times, one’s thoughts would not stop.
[…]
The translator says: Thus, things come full circle. Thanks for reading to the end.
Lord Seventh is, overall, a rather melancholic work. Suicidally valorous people, missed opportunities, wasted time and effort, obsession, mistakes that can’t be fixed, cruel deaths in the name of the greater good… if it weren’t for the main couple, there would be little true happiness here.
To support the author, please consider buying the novel on jjwxc (RAWs, buying guide here) and leaving a nice review on NU. For updates on my own future/pending projects, follow me on twitter, @chichimaera.
…Also, I just want to note that the term ‘Shamanet’ was supposed to be a placeholder until I could think up of something better. Spoilers: I never thought up anything better.
Chichi's Dives 
Thank you so much for this wonderful translation of the novel and I really liked this book which I couldn’t put down.♥️
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Thank you so much for translating this novel. I enjoyed it a lot!!
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Thank You for Translating! What you said at the end was Exactly Right😊
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Thank you so much for the translations!
I have enjoyed it a lot, and I can say that I absolutely adore XiYuan as a couple ♥
There’s still something that I don’t quite understand, and it’s connected with TYK as well… I’m guessing that Zhou Zishu helped Wu Xi in some way so he could take Beiyuan with him? because otherwise, I can’t understand how Zhou Zishu knew they were alive in TYK 😕
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Zhou Zishu prolly put a mask and disguised a corpse as Jing Qi.
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Thank you for translating this book! I really love your translation.
After reading this now I need something fluffy to recover my heart.
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thank you for your hard work. i really like this book. great job!😚
i’m happy for wu xi and beiyuan’s happy life. after all those reincarnations and being hurt again and again. beiyuan deserves happiness.
for helian yi, serves you right😤
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Thank you for the wonderful job of translating. You are amazing!
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So if you think about it, in the timeline that Jing Beiyuan dies, Zhou Zishu dies too. because JB never meets wu xi and zishu won’t have a friend to go look for before he dies. poor wen ke xing is going to be left all alone. *sad*
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Thankyou!!
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Apparently this extra was included in the pre-ordered book according to priest during one of her comments in Tian Ya Ke. Maybe it’s a print special if it wasn’t included in the main site <//3 but who knows really!
Thank you so much for this translation!! I love how you translated this very well, the reading was smooth and not that tough to process through. ❤️
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Thank you so much for this beautiful translation! This story was griping with the way it used the themes of power vs humanity, responsibility vs freedom, duty vs desire, to make complex characters, and infusing it all with a delicate melancholic feeling.
That’s why I’m not sure I understand why some people seem to read Helian Yi as a “bad guy”. Maybe the strong POV from Jing Beiyuan in the novel? But there doesn’t seem to be villains here, just different people having to deal with different responsibilities.
Helian Yi is the one with the heaviest duty: he has to rule the country. And this is clearly presented as his duty, not his personal desire, contrary to his brothers who represent two different facets of wanting power: Helian Zhao is in there for personal glory (he is the military guy, and likes to have people coming up to him for help) and Helian Qi wants luxury (he accumulates treasures and beauties). Helian Yi is marching the road to power because it’s his role (he is Crown Prince) and because he is the best choice for the country, it’s his duty to be Emperor. And faced to this overwhelming duty, his personal desire weights nothing, and even have to be stifled. He is always repressing it either through denial (in the previous life) or consciously (in the new life).
Power, in that sense, is never represented as freeing in this novel, but as a prison that demands the sacrifice of your personal desires and therefore your humanity. The closer you are to it, the more impossible it is to escape it. Zhou Zishu escapes at the unenviable cost of self-mutilation. Helian Yi can’t even do that. In the end, he accomplishes his duty but has to literally selfless and renounce his freedom, his dreams, hopes, and friends.
In that aspect, he is the perfect opposite of Wu Xi, who is the outsider, removed from power and has (for the duration of the novel) zero duty, which leaves him room to “be himself” (he is described as honest and blunt). He has room to find his desire (be with Jing Beiyuan) and then the ability to just act on it. He appears that way like a breath of fresh air compared to the other character because he is completely unconstrained by responsibilities.
It’s interesting to note that the power he has in Nanjiang (being the Shamanet) is the cause of his imprisonment (hostage situation). But Nanjiang is so removed, geographically, temporally and thematically from the narrative, that those duties and responsibilities do not impact the character.
Jing Beiyuan and Zhou Zishu are two other configurations of this struggle between duty and desire, power and freedom. Like Helian Yi, they are also trapped in their duty to power, but are more peripheral to it, and therefore can find ways to escape: a painful one for Zhou Zishu (the nails) and a drastic one for Jing Beiyuan (his fake death).
The fascinating thing with our Lord Seventh, is that, in his first life, he pursued power because of his desire for Helian Yi, and that led to his death. In the new life he pursued power for duty and desired freedom, and that led him to finally live happy.
I don’t think that makes “villains” and “heroes”, just people struggling with what they want and what they have to do.
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I really appreciate your perspective of the characters. I wholeheartedly agree with your evaluation of Helian Yi— that he is not a villain. I do not want to minimize all of the reproachable things that he has done, neither will I ignore his merits. After Beiyuan’s rebirth, I cannot bring to mind any incident where Helian Yi wrongs Jing Qi and leaves lasting damage (though that is also because Beiyuan had been actively avoiding death flags). He is overbearing, yes, and is oftentimes forceful but can we as fujoshis say that none of our favorite MCs and MLs are somewhat like that, too? Even when he learns that Beiyuan had dragon blood and can possibly vie for the throne, the ever-suspicious Helian Yi does nothing. Even if in his heart, he wants Jing Qi by his side, he gives Jing Qi an out and makes an imperial edict ordering Jing Qi to leave with Wu Xi to Nianjing. He may not necessarily be a good person, but deplorable he is not.
I also didn’t realise that Wu Xi is such a refreshing character because he isn’t duty-bound, thus he does not need to entangle himself with complicated matters concerning most of the cast. He actually has it the easiest out of all of them, lucky him!
Oftentimes, I become disappointed when others get carried away by being uber-sympathetic with the main character that their automatic response to reject any and all things that get in the MC’s way. I understand that in most cases, the very nature of being a main character is for the audience to be supportive of and empathetic with them. It takes a certain amount of effort to step back and analyze the characters’ motives and actions based on the context of the plot. Topics like war and court intrigue have more grey areas than black and white. It makes me glad that there are other readers who also do not take everything at face value.
Cheers!
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I agree and disagree with you though. I have never denied that HLY makes a great Emperor. He was born for it. His entire personality was shaped around that position. However, the way he treats MC is why I don’t like him. He is not sincere enough for me. He let power distort the only sincere feelings he had in his life. Maybe that is because he wasn’t taught how to love properly. Maybe it is because he sees so many insincere relationships that he has no idea how to have a sincere one. But the fact is that he betrayed the person who dug his heart out to dedicate to him. I cannot accept him wallowing in his ‘great love’ while finding a stand-in who is greatly beneath MC both in status and character. I find his betrayal for a woman of such dubious nature very ironic. It’s like a silent mockery of MC’s dedication. All of MC’s sweat and blood for Helian Yi’s agenda are worth nothing more than a couple songs from a similar looking woman. Is that how cheap MC’s feelings are in Helian Yi’s view? This is why it doesn’t matter to me what he did in his previous lives, even in this life, I cannot accept a person like Helian Yi as a love interest. He is a great leader to dedicate your life to, maybe. But definitely not a great love interest. If the war hadn’t ground his suspicions to a halt, and forced him to make a decision, of course he had to re-examine his feelings. However, if this was to happen when he was a few years older, when he was in power and things weren’t so pressing, I’m not sure his decision would be the same. In the last life, he took MC’s sincerity for granted. This life, he himself made his feelings cheap by being utterly insincere. A cheating man is a cheating man. There’s no excuse. His duty as an Emperor didn’t force him to betray and put to death a perfectly dedicated comrade. Even if Helian Yi killed him, he also dumped all the dirty things he made him do on JBY because he couldn’t accept having to do so many dirty things to get to his position. It’s hypocritical to such an asinine level that he deserves to die alone in such emptiness.
I also have to disagree about Wu Xi having no duty thus having free time engage in love. For a person in his position, if he slackens his discipline, he would be reeled into the glamorous life of Da Qing. Wu Xi was the person who was most pressed with duty. He had to remember his clansmen every second of every day for fear that he would go astray by looking at this colorful nation. To put it another way, he had to disregard his duty and position to a large extent to fall in love with a person of nobility of Da Qing. It’s the exact opposite of a good potential relationship. He had to gingerly find a way to balance his position and make space for his love. I also disagree that it is his lack of duty that lets him ‘be himself’. To be honest, Wu Xi would have died a dozen times without MC covering him because his nature was to be so blunt and honest that it makes people want to kill him. Especially when he disregards his own position as a hostage. I think Wu Xi as a character, made it look so easy to be stoic and unfazed about sticking to his beliefs in the face of temptations and falling in love with a Prince of enemy nation that we forget it is not easy to do so without enough sincerity and trust. How much sincerity does one need to show to make an enemy nation’s Prince love you? How much trust do you need to have to stake your country’s future on a gamble? What if they lost that war despite joining? Everything he did could’ve gone so wrong if he believed in the wrong person. But thankfully, our Wu Xi-gege had good eyes. Jing Qi, on the other hand, had his sincerity fed to the dog.
None of these people are black and white. Even our main characters have done so many sordid things. Hence, it is not a matter of villain and hero or second male lead. It is a matter of principles. It is a matter of sincerity that leads me to not like Helian Yi. To a certain extent, Helian Yi is responsible for his own misery. He is just a man who doesn’t know how to love like most Emperors. His position makes it hard for him to do that.
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Can someone help me to understand this. Bai wuchang mistakenly hooked one woman soul. Who is she? Is she Su Qingluan? And if she’s not, how does she relate to Jing Beiyuan being killed by Helian Yi? I’m so confused. And one more thing, why Helian Yi wants to kill Jing Beiyuan? Is it because they’re half brother?? Help me 😭 I’m so confused.
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It was Su Quigluan. He mistakenly took her soul ,which resulted in HY and JQ separating from each other cuz HY thought that it was JQ’s fault that she died.
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In the previous life, Helian Yi was already very suspicious of Jing Beiyuan and then fell in love with Su Qingluan. Bai Wuchang mistakenly made her death faster by hooking her soul at an inopportune moment. Previous life, there weren’t any indicators that Helian Yi knew they were possible siblings. It was entirely due to suspicion and SQL’s untimely death. Maybe in the original track, SQL was supposed to be revealed as a spy and Helian Yi repents and thus stay with his fated lover? Idk, but such insincere feelings are not worth it IMO. But anyway, Jing Beiyuan’s death in first life is mainly because he was unfathomable while easily understanding Helian Yi. It is taboo for an Emperor to have a person like that exist and Su Qingluan just happened to die when he was at the height of his suspicions. So it got JBY killed via betrayal.
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I’ve read through all of this, and can I just say this book consumed me for a few days. I’m so so pleased I read it, and your notes are gold. Pure gold. Thank you for not only translating this, but for sharing a few of your personal thoughts and comments with us. I’m tempted to read more of your translations just to keep reading in your style! And I’ll need to donate to you as well. Thank you again. Much love!
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I need some clarification, Wu Xi was the soul hooker, and the soul hooker was a person who happened to see Jing Qi at the bridge of helplessness, while doing his business. His past action changed the fate of many?
Please correct me if I got things wrong.
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Yep. That’s exactly it. His death as the Soul Hook Envoy and, possibly his strong desire to be recognized by this “Lord Seventh” in a “next life” (which was shown in this extra), added one more “mortal” soul into the timeline. And thus, things moved. Just like how things changed when one woman died by mistake and caused a series of unfortunate events, this time having a “new addition” of mortal in the timeline moved some elements unpredictably…
With that explanation, when we think about it, it really does seem like it was the Soul Hooker’s fault for disrupting the Helian Yi x Jing BeiYuan love affair… But then I remembered, JingQi reincarnated into many unfortunate lives after that mistake of
Soul Hooker taking SQ’s soul. And still, nothing good came out of it. The only time JingQi actually had a non-tragic life was when WuXi finally entered the picture. So safe to say, the Soul Hooker (Wuxi)’s disturbance in the timeline was what did a fortunate change for him.
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No, it is not Bai Wuchang’s fault that Helian Yi’s love for MC can’t stand the test. His feelings were so paper thin compared to MC’s. He just enjoyed all the care and then offed MC once he squeezed him of value. I think that is why MC feels that Bai Wuchang was stupid for sending him back in time. Because he has seen how shallow and insincere the love Helian Yi had towards him. Even a picture, a similar woman, slightly promising behavior, etc can make him doubt MC. Why should fate let MC endure such cheap feelings? You know, Helian Yi reminds me of those men who can’t handle that his wife is stronger than them. He is too insecure.
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Thank you so much for translating the book and for all of your comments. It was a very enjoyable read and I am glad I was able to experience it through your translation. I have been in a reading slump for the past few months and this is the first book that has managed to drag me in and keep me there so thank you for translating and sharing. ❤
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I really enjoyed reading this so much. I especially loved how the MC wasn’t a “saint fighting off evil”. Helian yi’s character was really a challenge one for me,because I couldn’t like him either dislike him but rather I felt soooo much pity for him, how his own choices ruined himself, I cried for him at that last extra…he’s so untrustful that he can’t hold onto anyone and later on he won’t even spare Zishu the nails (from TYK)
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