First thing first, thanks for your hard work !

Now with that being said I'm more curious as how you couldn't see it as such. For one yes the dark skin and clothes might be a part of it, especially since literaly no one else living in the same climate feels the need to dress similarly. But it's not just that :

• The extraction and explotation of resources (they could have help them have a better economy and turn them into useful allies, but chose to exploit them instead)

  • The exploited people being painted as violent / "not as civilized" along with the implications that the exploitants are actually doing them a favor
  • And now we got the land buying being painted as a good thing (though we still have to see where it goes. Also I know the land is technically not owned by them, but it's not helping the readings.)

It's just textbook colinizer narrative, just told from colonizer perspective.

In fairness, as for no one else wearing clothes like them, the only other Mulai citizens we've seen have been the nobles and their servants. These are the only commoners we've seen so it stands to reason they would dress somewhat differently.

I'm still reserving judgment on whether the villagers are going to be explotied. Hesha and Jolene have stated that they want to make a profit but they have never said how much they're actually going to pay for the grapes. They said they wanted them for the price of Perilla leaves, but we have no in world reference for what that value is. Are they worth 1 gold in this world? Or a hundred gold? Even when the villagers quoted them a price double what the villagers usually ask for, Hesha and Jolene still saw that as extremely cheap. Nothing is stopping them from paying 10 times the normal asking price and still making a profit. Would that still be exploitation? Because the line between exploitation and business can be very thin. Ultimately that's who Hesha and Jolene are, they're businesswomen. And this series puts a lot of emphasis on women becoming financially independant and successful.

And I think the reason I didn't really see it as a colonizer narative is that I didn't put any stock into the villagers outfits because that kind of outfit has no real meaning to a chinese reader the way it would for a western one. The villagers aren't an indigenous population being pushed out by some foreign power, they are just citizens of Mulai and subject ot its rule. For me, if the villagers looked and dressed the same as Hesha or Jolene, without changing any of the plot or writing, I could easily see this kind of thing taking place between any number of European countries back in the day.

Imagine someone living in the big city in Spain, they get treated badly so they run away and live near the border with France. They are poor and barely able to get by so they rob a French noble who's traveling along the border. The French noble (seeing a business opporunity) offers to buy the land the Spaniard is living on from the Spanish government and offers to give them a job so they can provide for themselves. Is the Spaniard being colonized?

This series is mostly based on a historical period where countries trading land back and forth, along with the people living on said land, was common place. To me they're just engaging in normal business and politics of the period.

Admittedly I also don't necessarily read Hesha and Jolene's actions solely as a good thing. They are still ultimately doing it for themselves and they've both been shown to be rather selfish, but they don't mind helping out the villagers at the same time in what ways they can. I think the only truly good people we've met so far in the series are Kelly and Arnold (maybe principal Serena, but she was only in like two chapters)

That felt a bit rambley but I hope that made sense.

I’m not saying it doesn’t appear that way or that people who read it that way are wrong even if I disagree. I’m legitimately interested in what causes the different perspectives on this.
What is the biggest cause of people perceiving it as colonization?

Is it the text? Either because of the original writing or potentially by extension my translation of it.

Is it the visual imagery? That’s why I asked about the clothing before. Obviously from a western lens, those clothes with dark skin has a certain reading regarding natives and “savages” and is often used in colonization narratives. But from the Chinese lens from which the story was written those are just poor commoners clothes and their dark skin has been well established as part of the Mulai people. They’re not things associated with colonization.

Is it the structure of the narrative that’s muddied the authors intent and given it the appearance of something it wasn’t intended to be?

I just find this all interesting

But we don’t know what Hesha plans to pay the villagers yet. Sure she wants the goods for as cheap as she can but that’s how a business works. That doesn’t mean the women won’t still be well paid. Hesha’s already been shown to pay her workers well. She got in trouble with her father multiple times for continuously overpaying the people on her tea plantation because she believes in paying people what they’re worth.
In this venture, their goal seems to be to profit by exploiting the wealthy nobles by overcharging them for the limited fruits and desserts.
It’s also unlikely Jolene of all people would sit back and allow Hesha to exploit other commoners.

The way I read this arc is that Hesha and Jolene come up with a new business venture using these flavored grapes Hesha bought from a merchant to overcharge the nobles by using their seasonal nature.

Then end up getting attacked by desperate women who had previously fled to the border of their kingdom to escape the blatant abuse and sexism they were subjected to in Mulai.

In a twist of fate these women also happen to be the ones responsible for growing the flavored grapes they were interested in.

The two groups agreed to negotiate trade in exchange for Hesha not bringing down the full weight of her family on the struggling village.

Hesha and Jolene then discuss further employing the women of the village (by setting up a grape processing place in the village) so that they don’t have to resort to banditry.

Just as they are about to sit down and negotiate all the details, the Sterling army arrives to “rescue” Hesha. This leads to further mistrust between Hesha and the villagers because she claimed that nothing would happen to them if they agreed to trade. (Not to mention this lead to men entering the village when they aren’t allowed)

This is when Hesha introduces her go big or go home strategy of trying to acquire the land from the kingdom of Mulai, whom these women are still subjects of, in order to free them from Mulai’s rule. This is on top of the already planned trade and jobs that Hesha and Jolene had been discussing. All of this with the goal of improving the lives of these commoners, something that Hesha and Jolene have consistently worked towards at school.

At least this is what I believe is the authors intent for this arc. I don’t believe they intended for any kind of colonizer narrative.
Obviously some things could have been done better to show this. Like if the plan was for the story to lead to Hesha immediately helping the villagers then it probably would have been better to have them simply injure the guards instead of making them act overly violent just to turn around and play victim

Genuine question, is all of the talk about colonizers based solely on the villagers outfits?

My reading of Hesha’s desire to acquire the village is to bring it under her families control and thereby free the villagers from the rule of Mulai, a kingdom that these women fled from and that has been consistently shown to treat women as little more than objects.

Is military training a normal thing in Chinese universities? First time I've heard about it.

Yep. Usually lasts about 2 weeks during the beginning of the students first year. Mostly consists of marching drills and various group exercises. It’s not real military training, just kind of simulates it.

As to why they do it, I’ve seen reasons range from simply encouraging students to work together to it being part of the propaganda machine.

I'm willing to accept a spoiler here, do the sisters ever talk after what happens with Faye at the party?? I know they had their differences but I really want a scene of Hesha stepping up as a sister and be supportive, but right now its like they're in 2 completely different series

As of the most recent chapter (78), Faye hasn’t talked about it with anyone except Irene

Ch. 2 p. 13.

Obviously, it's because they have so many flavors I've never had before!"

ends in a stray quotation mark. (Also it's flavour with an U pretty much everywhere, but I'm not one to complain about catering to niche audiences.)

I'm an American :P

Down with the "u"!

Oh, it's the author of Straight Girl Trap. Funny coincidence, I read it exactly one year ago.

Oh, no kidding. I saw Chang Xi and instantly thought she looked like Lele from Straight Girl Trap. When she jumped Change Le, at least.

Same author, different artist

This was one I've read like ten or so chapters elsewhere I really love the art on this one and the story has been so good.

You've really spoiled us with so many translates and uploads this evening thank you so much

Could you please give us the link? The translated ver in Mangadex marked it completed a year ago while the plot still in cliffhanger, I don't know why.

Mangadex marks when the series is completed in it's native language, not when the translation is complete

Yeah I'm officially out after this chapter. It was a rough ride up to this point...and now the murdering of slaves, plus attempting to murder children, I'll pass. I hope everyone else enjoys the story though!

I would recommend giving it till the next chapter, but I understand if you don’t want to. This is a weird series

Yay, I can't wait for Jolene to get rough! btw, does anyone know why this lovely manhua (?) is not censored? I love long strip type stories, but most come with the demon of censorship!

Because I work very hard to decensor it

What an ending to season 1. I'm so glad that I guessed wrong and their teacher is fine. The rest of the series cannot come soon enough! This is probably one of the best GL manhua (Chinese) I've read, with an engaging story and beautiful art.

It was already clear from an earlier flashback that Weixi is the current emperor's daughter, but this chapter (24.2) just dropped the bomb that her ability to see the future is actually memories of past lives. How is this possible? Her premonitions include knowing the exact words to tell the brothel Madame to let Suyou leave, that the weaving factory might be set on fire, and living with general Suyou as her wife defending the imperial city. All of these things directly relevant to the future and not something that could have vaguely happened in the past. So how is it possible that these are memories from past lives?

The scene with General Su You is a flash forward. It's not part of a past life.
For the other events, she lived through them before to figured out what she needed to know or do to cause the outcome she wanted so that in her next life she could make it happen more easily. But sometimes things happen that she hasn't experienced before (like when Su You told the story about the Huahui) so she doesn't know how these things will affect the future.

I respect the author's vision, but "yandere" just doesn't mean what they think it means. "Mentally snapping under the weight of impossible expectations of being a culturally-perfect love interest" is not the same as "being a confident young person who breaks restrictive gender norms in a calculated way to advance in life".

So far, in fact, I haven't even seen any particular cruelty from Jolene. She has been merely setting and enforcing her boundaries in ways that are largely proportionate to the respective original violations.

Jolene exhibits more Yandere traits as the story goes on though she’s never really what you’d consider a classic Yandere. There is another character later on that does feel more like a true Yandere (obsessive, manipulative, controlling, etc)

I am loving this!!! but....why is the Yandere tag missing, if it's even in the title!!!

Whoops. My bad lol

Question/Remark for the Scanlator:: are "Gesang" and "Lanze" supposed to be german words, or chinese ones that just happen to look like that? As those are terms for (suspiciously blonde) "Westerners" both seem possible.

Gesang is a Tibetan flower. There's a symbol of it on the first page just above the hand holding the knife. I have no idea how relevant that will be in the future lol. And I think Lanze is just a coincidence.