Realms In The Firmament

”Regret?” Wenren Chuchu was blank for a while. She understood Bing Xinyue would never leave her behind, so she started to operate every bit of her energy to accelerate the recovery. When she heard Bing Xinyue’s question, she was lost.

”Don’t you understand what I am asking?” Bing Xinyue held her own knees. While staring at the dark sky with a pair of dazed eyes, she murmured as if she was dreaming, ”You are a princess of a kingdom in the lower realm. You used to be elegant and protected. Your position in a kingdom was only below one person. In the lower realm, you had a much easier and better life… Why did you have to come to this world… Qing-Yun Realm… where only the strong will be worshipped… Now that you are almost at the end of your life, do you regret?”

Wenren Chuchu sorrowfully smiled and said, ”Master, why ask? How could I regret?”

Bing Xinyue said, ”For cultivators in Land of Han-Yang, we are like gods. Everybody in this realm is like a god to them… We are powerful; we move like the wind; we travel within seconds; we do everything. However, after experiencing everything in this world, one will learn the cruelty of this world.

”Qing-Yun Realm’s cruelty made it a hundred times more difficult to survive than in Land of Han-Yang. In fact, this world is much less orderly than Land of Han-Yang…

”With your background, you could live a wealthy life. You could spend your life in peace and health. With your power and your wisdom, you can even rule the entire Land of Han-Yang and look down upon all the others in the world. Nothing was impossible. However, you chose to come to this place to suffer. Now you are in this fatal crisis. It is most likely that you will die… Don’t you regret even a bit?”

Bing Xinyue looked at Wenren Chuchu sentimentally. She was taking in a light voice, but heavy words.

”Regret…” Wenren Chuchu bitterly smiled and blandly said, ”Master, you obviously don’t understand what royal life is like. You certainly have no idea what it feels like… to be a princess.”

She smiled with self-mockery and said, ”You know what. Some people are living miserable lives in a kingdom. Some people are living the poorest lives. There are also people who deserve to die. Some could not be forgiven even to be beheaded a hundred times. However, there was one kind of people who were most piteous. These people usually are the few. However, they exist in every dynasty. They are… the princesses of a country.”

”Urh…” Bing Xinyue was surprised. She just casually asked a question, never expected to get such a surprising answer. It was an unbelievable and confusing answer. So she asked, ”How so?”

”Maybe you won’t agree. Maybe you think I would say so just because I was a princess myself. Maybe you will argue that many people have more miserable lives than me…” Wenren Chuchu bitterly smiled and said, ”However, living in the society, no matter how poor or unfortunate a person was, he or she could change the life after enough efforts.

”Those malfeasants, treacherous… they had their chance to make their own choices. It was their own choices that led them to where they were in the end.

”Those killers, murderers, who ended up in prison or dead, also made their own choices before what they became.

”There were two keywords… Change and choice.

”However, a princess… A princess’s life is always settled at the moment she was born. She doesn’t have the right to change. She doesn’t get to choose.

”If she is a princess of a strong country, who is loved by the king, she must be fortunate. She won’t have to worry about her own marriage. Before she gets married, she can enjoy everything the kingdom offers to her. When the time comes, she had to marry somebody to serve the political purpose of her father. Mostly the king will let her marry the son of some influential official as a reward.

”Is the husband a capable man? Is the young man a good man? Will he treat the princess well? Nobody cares. Princess is only a bargaining chip or a tool.

”Well, that is a lucky one though. The most fortunate. Since the princess is born into a strong kingdom, she doesn’t have to marry somebody in another country. No matter who she marries to, that man’s family would show her respect, at least in appearance, because of the awe of the royal power. However, the princess will never get the happy afterlife like any ordinary woman can have!

”In fact, even a princess in a strong country may get mistreated by the king. It will be a tragedy if a princess isn’t loved by her father. She will have to follow all the strict and inhuman rules. Even some maids and eunuchs can tease her as they like to. When she grows up and get married, she may still have to suffer the mistreatment from her husband. A princess who isn’t loved by the king is merely a useless tool! She is useless to the king, also to her own husband!

”No matter what, these are both endurable lives for a princess. No matter what their afterlife will be, they can always see their families from time to time and eventually die in peace. It may not be a wonderful life, but not the worst!

”The most tragic life of a princess is the life of a princess of a weak country. Such a princess is born to grow up and marry somebody in another country. She will have to go somewhere she has never heard of before, to marry a man that she has never even heard of. And that man will be the one who rules her afterlife.

”It is called peace-making marriage. A country exchanges the princess for a certain period of peaceful time… More precisely, the princess is a thing that is sold to somebody who can make decisions in a country.

”Normally, the peace-making marriage happens between to hostile countries! If they are not enemies to each other, why would one country send the princess to the other as an exchange for peace… That princess will spend the rest of her life sleeping and serving the enemy of her own country! She will submit to all kinds of mistreatments. Nobody will help her.”

Wenren Chuchu was talking with bitterness and self-mockery.

”A kingdom raises the princess to let the enemies mistreat her as they wish! That is the tragedy of the weak countries.

”In fact, if the mother country stays weak in the princess’s life, it may not be too difficult for her to keep living through the misery… If her mother country rises up stronger after the particular period of peaceful time, what the king wants will be washing the disgraces and forwardly starting a war.

”If that happens, the princess will be the poorest and most piteous person. Her family sends an army to fight her husband’s family. Her own families wouldn’t care about her; Nor will her husband!”

Wenren Chuchu looked deeply grieved, but spoke in a calm voice, ”This is the life of a princess! If a person is poor, unfortunate, bullied, he or she can fight for a change. However, a princess can never make a difference in her life. Her life is doomed from the moment she was born. She sees the future, but has nothing to do to make a change of it!

”Everybody in the world has the right to fight for a better life, except the princesses! Their lives are doomed!

”So, princess… is the most pathetic and tragic kind of people in the world, even though the life of a princess looks so glaringly wealthy!” Wenren Chuchu’s eyes seemed to burn with the flame of anger. She bitterly smiled and said, ”Even a prostitute has her right to make her own decision at some points. At least, if she hates a man, she can refuse to sleep with him no matter how much he would love to pay. A prostitute has the right to choose her client. A princess doesn’t have it!

”When a woman is born as a princess, she is always a princess! She doesn’t have the right to give it up!”

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