Chapter 162.2

Chapter 162.2

That’s right. The Third Prince's Consort mentioned that her last name was Du.
Thankfully, medicines for preventing scars were already available in the medicine chest. Gu Jiao took out some scar cream and scar plaster. The scar cream was squeezed out from its original container and transferred into a porcelain bottle with good sealing, while the scar plasters were packaged with a wrapper.
Gu Jiao told her how to use it and charged her two taels of silver.
Du Xiaoyun was stunned, "So expensive? You’re not actually running a black shop here, are you?"
This was the most effective scar cream in the research institute. It cost more than 2,000 yuan each, which equated to more than two taels of silver. Apart from it, scar plasters were also very expensive. If you think of it, she actually didn't earn any money.
"Don't buy it then." Gu Jiao reached for the medicine.
Each and every medicine in her medicine chest was so precious that she was really reluctant to sell them.
Du Xiaoyun protected the medicine with one hand and put the silver on the table with the other, saying, "I’ll buy it, I’ll buy it! If I don't, my sister will hack me in two! Obviously, there are a lot of imperial physicians in the palace, I don't know why my sister would take a fancy to your medicine!"
The Third Prince's Consort’s surgery hadn’t been spread outside, and even Du Xiaoyun didn't know about it. Du Xiaoyun only thought that the Third Prince's Consort had run into Gu Jiao somewhere.
……
Today was the last day of classes in the Imperial Academy’s private elementary division as well as the women’s academy.
The women’s academy had gone through a series of examinations, and there was only one left, which was the test of their guqin skills.
Within the music hall, a burst of cheers could be heard as soon as Zhuang Yuexi finished playing the music she had learned this month.
It was a really brilliant performance.
Zhuang Yuexi ranked first in the poetry exam and tied with Gu Jinyu in arithmetic. Guqin was her weakness. Everyone thought her performance would be unsatisfactory, but in just half a month's time, she made such rapid progress.
In this examination, the Crown Princess invited a court musician to evaluate the students together with the teachers.
The musician's surname was Xie.
Musician Xie nodded with satisfaction and said, "Young Miss Zhuang's guqin skills have improved a lot."
The teachers all gave her a grade of A.
Musician Xie was a bit stricter and gave her a B.
Even so, this achievement was already quite excellent.
The next one was Gu Jinyu.
Gu Jinyu held the Yue Ying Fuxi guqin and gave a salute to Musician Xie and the teachers.
The teachers also got up and returned her salutations.
After all, she was a county princess, and salutations couldn’t be discarded.
As a court musician, Musician Xie also had an official rank, and his position was above that of Gu Jinyu, so he simply received Gu Jinyu’s salutations calmly.
In terms of timbre, Gu Jinyu’s Yue Ying Fuxi guqin was one point better than Zhuang Yuexi’s guqin. Besides, Gu Jinyu herself had put more sweat into practicing the guqin than Zhuang Yuexi. It wasn’t like what she said before, that she hadn’t practiced for a long time. In fact, she practically practiced every day.
In the end, Musician Xie gave her an A.
"As a matter of fact, not only did you play the guqin well, the changes you did on the latter half of the music also sound good."
That's right. Gu Jinyu changed the music score.
The music they learned was called "Qiu Se". The first half of this music was a remnant of the former dynasty while the latter half was written by later generations. There were several different versions of it on the market, with the version made by Yue Ying being the highest rated.
This was the version also taught in the women’s academy.
However, Gu Jinyu had made some minor changes to this version, adding a bit of gentle and poignant artistic mood, which was more suitable for women to play.
After all, Yue Ying was a man, and his music was more like a custom-made music for male musicians. It was difficult for women to eject that feeling of valiantness and passion.
[T/N: Tbh, I thought Yue Ying was a woman all this time. Lol.]
"I teared up hearing your performance. Young Miss Gu played so well."
A soft-hearted young miss commented as she wiped her tears away.
She wasn't the only one who cried. Gu Jinyu counted, and four or five other girls were also wiping their tears. It could be seen that her arrangement was a great success.
Gu Jinyu was very happy and proud.
With Gu Jinyu’s excellent performance in front, the performance of the following students was useless no matter how good they were. All of them walk away with their heads down.
Finally, it was the turn of a little girl with a round face of about fourteen years old. The women’s academy provided the students with the same uniform, but the jewelry was their own. The girl only had a red string tied on her hair, and not even the most common bead could be seen on her body.
“This student passed the entrance exam." A teacher said to Musician Xie.
She was the daughter of a poor family and her father had once attended an academy as a Xiucai. When her father taught her brothers lessons, she would always sit aside to listen.
She was a hard-working student and passable in everything else, except her guqin skills.
Because of her inferiority complex, she usually dared not practice the guqin in the music hall and instead hid in the silent pavilion every day, even when it was so cold that her face would get frostbitten.
The guqin she used was also the cheapest guqin out there. Its timbre wasn’t comparable to that of a good guqin, but its sound was nevertheless acceptable.
She began to play.
To be honest, her skills seemed to have improved as well. If it weren't for Zhuang Yuexi and Gu Jinyu, then the teachers might have looked at her more.
Not surprisingly, the first half was average.
Musician Xie covered his face and yawned.
This was the last student. He picked up the brush and decided to mark her with a D.
Other teachers were also sleepy.
However, right at this moment, the tune suddenly went up as the girl’s plucked the strings!
It was a music expressing one's inner feelings. On the night of their marriage, the woman’s lover was captured on the battlefield and had not returned for ten years since.
The girl’s playing evoked the woman’s grief for her lover to the extreme.
The beginning part was about the life of the woman which was full of reminiscing and mourning, but as the music approached the latter part, the style suddenly changed.
The woman seemed to have learned the truth as to why her lover had yet to return even after ten years.
She went to see the whole battlefield.
The melody no longer expressed the woman’s mourning for her lover, but rather her lament for the battlefield and for the thousands of dead bones belonging to the heroes that had been buried in the yellow sand under the spears and armored horses of the enemies!
Finally, everyone seemed to see the setting sun in the desert sand, where a lone long sword was erected, and tied on the hilt of the sword was the woman’s veil as it fluttered in the wind.
Everyone's eyes were red, immersed in great shock. It took them a long time to return to their senses.
Musician Xie was the first one to recover, and he found himself in tears.
How long had it been since he heard such stirring music?
It was true that the little girl's guqin skills were not superb; it could even be said that she was still green in some places.
And yet it was precisely this that highlighted the second half of the song, fully expressing the feeling of almost complete breakdown, helplessness, and finally plunging into madness out of despair.
It was like a music tailored for her characteristics.
Unlike Gu Jinyu's slight changes, this girl could be said to have completely altered the second half of the music. In comparison, Gu Jinyu's songs appeared to be very petty and couldn’t be completely presented on the table.
Musician Xie secretly sighed with emotion, thinking that even Yue Ying, the first guqin player in the six states, might not be able to come up with such magnificent music.
No. It wasn’t just a music, it was a tailor-made music for one person!
Musician Xie suppressed his excitement and looked at the girl, asking, "What's your name?"
The girl bowed forward and answered, "Li Wanwan."
Musician Xie nodded with satisfaction, "You altered the song magnificently."
Li Wanwan opened her mouth.
This song...
She wasn’t the one who altered it.