Don’t Be a Kept Man

andy.

Fu Xiu Nian felt his movements, and he turned his head discreetly to give him a wink.

Chen Yi smiled and he handed himself and Fu Xiu Nian a piece of candy before grasping his hand again.
The actors or directors on stage receiving their awards who were giving their speeches all seemed to meld together, saying approximately the same thing: thank you XX, thank you XXX, without you all I would never have reached the result I attained today.

Still, Chen Yi was having a blast listening to it all.
Every time there was an award presented, there was no end to the thankful speeches, which was very good……

Because honestly, for an entire life, you are not alone.
There have been many people who have helped you and if you didn’t have someone to thank, then that was too sad.

Chen Yi had thought about the people he wanted to thank, Fu Xiu Nian, Chen Xiao Meng, his fans.
If one day he could stand up high, the glory was part of theirs too.
He himself would probably be like the people on stage, with nonstop gratitude to an endless amount of people.

[ Ding !!!!! ]

A noise suddenly rang inside his head, vibrating in Chen Yi’s mind and causing a headache.
He quickly recognized that this was the system and he was about to speak up when he heard it say enthusiastically,

[ AH AH AH AH AH The galactic judges have accepted my request to leave.
We can be released from each other! ]

He could hear that the system sounded very excited and surprised, which made him raise his eyebrows.
Chen Yi then calmly said, 

“Hmm.
Go on then.”

[ Then I will leave ]

Chen Yi: “Hmm.”

[ I’m really going to go ]

Chen Yi: “Bye.”

The system thought that this must be the least romantic farewell and Chen Yi must be the worst host he had ever had.
When it started the withdrawal process, and the countdown was ringing out, Chen Yi suddenly spoke up.

“Thank you.”

He turned to look at the person beside him and through the layers of light, he recalled something in his memories.
He was still grasping tightly onto Fu Xiu Nian and the other seemed to sense something, smiling and dropping his candy into Chen Yi’s palm.

Chen Yi unconsciously tightened his grip, 

“I am someone who had practiced martial arts, could be considered half a vigilante4 .
And there is a saying among us that the world will never change, as the mountains under our feet would never change, and the water in the rivers keep flowing……”

“The mountains would never change” represented the initial dreams and aspirations and “the rivers keep flowing” meant forever.
When, in the future, they have the chance to meet again, their relationship would be like these mountains and rivers, everlasting into eternity without a change.

Chen Yi finally smiled and said, 

“Thank you for bringing me into this world.
But, this will be our last farewell……

[ Farewell chu~ ]

And where no one could see, a tiny tiny small ball of light flew out from Chen Yi’s body and then fluttered upwards until the people and objects below were shrinking and shrinking into a bundle of light.
Fans full of joyous faces, pedestrians hustling on their way, the never ending traffic of cars, all normal humans living their lives, all combining into one bright shining image of lights.

Notes:

*1 poisonous solo fans: Referring to those who only support their idol (as in one individual).
So if they were in a group, they would care only about their bias, so much so that they don’t care about the rest of the group and would even bash or be antis just to make their idol “better” or, if in a relationship, these fans would want them to break up because they only like their one and only idol, thinking the other person/their partner is bringing their idol down, etc.
According to a google search, for those of you that follow kpop, it’s apparently like “akgae” which apparently translates to about the same literal translations as “poisonous only”, and seems to be the same thing?

*2 Dogshit luck has a pretty interesting origin.
It came about where, when in the ancient eras, they didn’t really have a lot of fertilizer (or a very good way to make a lot) and so a lot of it was used by taking feces and letting it ferment, but humans could not output as much as the fields needed and so it came to a point where feces could be bought due to the high demand.
So people would go and pick up fecal matter, especially from dogs, in the morning as it was worth quite a bit of money.
There’s actually a few different ways to interpret this (besides the common meanings we would think, in which it’s being said sarcastically, like wow your luck’s good or you have some sort of luck in the midst of a bad time, or where you have come across good luck but it seemed so unreasonable, or you attain some good luck, meet someone beneficial to you or some other good thing, and it’s like mocking yourself or being humble about what you attained).

*3 the “<3”: The literal translation here is pencil lead, but it’s a play on tones for giving a heart (or “compare heart”). *4 a vigilante: Hard to describe the wording used here, but it’s kind of like in wuxia, where the people of this “Jiang Hu” was more like a lawless society, governed only by power, where the strong stand above the weak.
But this has evolved with the many novels that have this particular thing, such as wuxia and other themes and so the definition has also evolved/changed with it.
Sometimes it means a gathering of martial arts families, sometimes it means a society not dictated by a dynasty rule/reign, or like the ancient equivalent of a mafia/gang, a battle worn area where no law exists except for your blade, somewhere special where based on the dynamics and pressure, you are only motivated to move as per what your “enemies” have done to you, somewhere just violent, or like if someone says they are going out to walk in “Jiang Hu”, it’s like going out to understand what society is like outside of your family, which based on the change of the definition, relates heavily to martial arts, and so forth…… which hopefully gets you the general gist, as I might consider it as more of a concept than an actual concrete definition of something.

And here we are at the very end of volume 3! I hope you have all enjoyed the journey of Chen Yi and Fu Xiu Nian (and of all their fluff and sugar stuffed down our throats haha).
A very nice quiet ending to their story (and a different focus here… hmmm….), but we shall be moving on, with the dear old system who keeps on being forgotten lol! Onto a very drastically different story that is, I would say, almost like the polar opposite of Volume 3.
Where it was sunshine and giggles, it’s now gloom (but of course, still a love story).
On a bit of a teaser, I think a lot of people found this next volume to be perhaps one of the most memorable part of this novel.
It’s part mystery, thriller, supernatural, but also it’s a pretty heavy/emotional volume with themes around death and the afterlife and lots of mythology and beliefs in that regard (so more research here we gooooo…).
It’ll definitely be interesting for sure, and I hope to see you all then! 

On that note, if you haven’t read the pretty long note on Chp 85, I will be taking a longer break just to get my head up and to get most of the other things that have been piling on my plate, hopefully sorted by then.
So, Volume 4 Chapter 89 will be released on May 3rd as the plan for now.

In any case, may you all Galactic Judges have a great 2 months! Hopefully by then, I will be back to greet you all with a better (mentally and… maybe physically too) and not so overstressed me, and I hope to see you all then for the rest of the novel (and the mysterious Volume 4 that I have been dreading looking forward to…) 

Additional Tidbit:

Thank you to the commenter below who reminded me! In the meantime while I’m on my break, you might want to check out the manhua adaptation of this novel!  (the link takes you to the raws).
There was a kind soul who left comments on chp 72 and 73 that there was an adaptation to be coming and I just checked it again and it’s currently at chp 5.
Quick read through and it seems to capture about the same events up to the end of chp 5, so I’m assuming it’s going to be kept at that pace.
At the moment, it looks like english translations have the prologue up so if you are interested, that might be something you might want to keep an eye, and let me know what’s similar or not to the pace or events of the novel! (one difference I’ve already spotted, perhaps due to the nature of manhua/visual telling, is Lu Qi directly telling Huo Meng Chen there’s an inspection later, versus Huo Meng Chen discovering that for himself)

Also I guess a quick note I’ll put here, which I’ll add more in either the first chapter or the volume descriptions page sometime in the future as this footnote space isn’t really a good area for this.
But I thought I’ll add a bit of an explanation of the title as the translations for manhua (and you may have heard other people refer to it) take the novel title as “Don’t be Soft Rice Man”, versus my translation as “Don’t be a Kept Man”.
And to explain it very briefly here (especially if you came from the manhua translations (which, Hello!  ), the literal translation of the novel title is “soft rice man” which means … something like don’t be a mooch/leecher/kept man/lover.
I think a very close expression I have seen others say is gold digger, gigolo but it’s not exactly that meaning of only for money (kind of like the red light district versus entertainment district) or being paid for something in a service.

On a very general level, it means men who don’t want to use their brain or strength, don’t want to put the effort in, lazy, or like don’t want to think about how to get far in life through the normal way like schooling or apprenticeship, etc.
And these particular men want to use their looks to hook someone (usually female) wealthy and appease them, and basically live by “serving” them and in exchange, get paid for everything (so hence, the similiarity with gigolo/gold digger).
Another type that is counted in this category is those men who depend completely on their wives for benefit like their wife’s family background/status and connections.
And obviously, this gets contrasted with how a man should act or conduct himself in the chinese community, as evident by the past history, so this term is essentially bad or used to mock others.

I’d put more details here, but as I kept writing, it just never stopped expanding this footnote section and became wayyyy too long.
So I’ll put something a bit more explanatory on a different page (probably the volume descriptions or translator’s corner or something, away from actual chapters like this), but hopefully this will tide you over in the meantime of a brief explanation of the difference in title. 

Thank you very much for all the support you have given me  And keep safe! See you all back on May 3rd! (｡’▽’｡)♡

(edit: moved some sections around to accomodate that big blurb of text I added)