Malice Hearts Yin Book 1 Part 1

EXTRAS

IMAGES:

The cover art was done by Darc-Rose from deviant art. He did a wonderful job and was great to work with. I am looking forward to commissioning him for my next cover. 

The chapter images however were all done by NovelAi. I wish I could have commissioned an artist to get the images more exact to detail, but alas I'm too poor to afford to commission that much art work, lol. I will commission for important things like Cover Art however. 

NOTES

Chapter one Notes:

" Merrily the ospreys cry, on the islet in the stream, gentle and graceful the girl, a fit wife for the gentleman" — poem by Yang Xianyi

Chapter Two Notes:

Azure Dragon and Vermilion Phoenix are correct alternatives to Blue Dragon and Red Phoenix, however Obsidian Tortoise and Snow Tiger are made up for this story in order to allow a second palace such as in the case of Blue Dragon being in Japan and Azure being in China.

"Aiyah" is an exclamation used mainly among Chinese speakers. It's used to express surprise, exasperation or dismay. While Choukichi is Japanese, he picked the habit up from his Chinese wife.

Chapter Five Notes:

⦁ Salt pork: Prostitutes housed in brothels that were focused entirely on selling sexual services. They were called salt pork shops, as the selling of these women was akin to the division and selling of salted pork.

⦁ Pheasants: Being in the streets, they had little protection. They were called "pheasants" for their gaudy dress and habit of scouring the streets for customers.

⦁ Opium Flowers; the second lowest class of prostitutes that worked in opium dens.

⦁ "Nail sheds"–brothels targeted towards low class laborers such as rickshaw pullers.

Chapter Six Notes:

⦁ Clouds and rain is a poetic euphemism for sex that came about due to the story of how Song King during the warring states period had a romantic dream of an exotic beauty who left him with a poem "Dawn is the clouds, dusk is the rain, day and night under the canopy."

⦁ Kenpachiro is referring to the child as "fresh young grass and crying for lost sparrows" in order to compare her to Murasaki from the Tale of Genji, a young girl of ten the hero came to admire and brought into the imperial palace. The reference to the new handle for the ax comes from a fable about a woodcutter who stopping to watch a game of go between two immortals found that 7 generations had passed by and that the handle of his ax had turned to dust. This fable is also referenced to in a poem written by the girl, Murasaki, in the Tale of Genji

Chapter Eight Notes:

⦁ Yangmei (plum blossom sores) was a term used in the past for syphilis.

⦁ In Chinese Peking opera a Dan was a main heroine role.

Chapter Nine Notes:

⦁ Pan Jinlian is a character from the Chinese novel Plum and the golden vase. She was a wicked woman that physically and verbally abused her maids and sister wives and killed several characters, including both her former husband and her sister wife's infant son.

⦁ There was an ancient belief that everyone was born with a pre-determined maximum potential in intelligence, strength, beauty, etc., decided on by actions taken in their past life and while this potential could fail to be reached, it could never be surpassed.