He Looked Neither Sad nor Happy...

Su Yang took his luggage and hair band, and brushed past Gu Feidi’s shoulder. But as he was about to step out of the room, his name was called.

“Su Yang.”

The young man raised his face and looked at him with eyes as bright as stars.

His voice was very low, but his words were very clear, “My deepest apologies for concealing last night.”

His words shocked Su Yang.

Then he remembered that according to the script, Gu Feidi was a spotless and transparent protagonist with almost no darker side. An extremely gifted young talent, but never arrogant or complacent. He was even harder on himself than others. Even though he occasionally made mistakes because of his youth, he was brave enough to admit them and take responsibility. As if he was the embodiment of positivity.

Just like now, Gu Feidi clearly disregarded him, as he was the Young Master of the Evil Sect, but he still obeyed the punishment without trying to get out of it and even apologised to him solemnly. 

Facing this kind of Gu Feidi, Su Yang suddenly became slightly uncomfortable.

How could he be cruel enough to ridicule a young man who stared at him with such eyes?

He just wanted to pull the boy into his arms and give him a noogie!

Fortunately, this scene was not in the script, so there was no need for him to ridicule Gu Feidi.

He tried very hard to resist the urge of reaching out and patting the other’s head. He raised the corner of his mouth slightly and showed an innocent and encouraging smile to Gu Feidi. Then he exited out of the room without replying a single word, leaving all possibilities blank.

Su Yang’s abrupt smile stunned Gu Feidi, his gaze following Su Yang’s departure, at a loss, staring at the spot which appeared to be empty.

After a moment, he came back to his senses and took a deep breath before walking quickly out of the door. He followed Su Yang back to the group of young contenders on the mountain path.

Watching the two rejoin the group, the middle-aged man looked at Su Yang, a hint of a smile floating out of the deepest layer of his eyes, but other than that, he didn’t make any comments. He turned around and declared, “Everyone is present, let’s go.”

This time, Old Qi didn’t speak up again, as the group of young men and women followed the middle-aged man up the mountain path.

Fan Xi strolled over to Su Yang’s side and said, “Fortunately, the old man spotted the Young Master last night. Otherwise, you would have lost much more虧死 is when someone has struck a non-beneficial bargain and ended up losing more than what they had started out with. (這莊生意虧死你）(死得虧 means when someone died in vain or died for nothing).! I never knew that Gu Feidi, a pure righteous martial artist, has such a devious mind…”

Su Yang glanced at Fan Xi light-heartedly and responded, “He has already completed his punishment, so stop mentioning it.”

Shocked by his words and seeing his face lack humour, Fan Xi immediately changed his opinion, “The Young Master is right, everyone makes mistakes. What’s more, he has learned his lesson.”

After that, Su Yang replied with “En” and stopped talking.

With the middle-aged man leading the group, even if there were still people dissatisfied with Su Yang being among them, they dared not voice it out. Consequently, the group travelled hastily and quietly on the mountain path, and soon came to a platform at the top.

This platform was located halfway up the mountain. It was about twice the size of the previous farmhouse, and covered in pure-white stone bricks, which made the platform appear extremely smooth and spotless. 

Everyone was led to the end of the platform by the middle-aged man, only to discover that the end was a cliff.

The fog under the cliff was so thick that none of them could see how deep it was. On the opposite side of the platform was an inselberg 斷山 closest mountain type that I found is inselbergs, the description is of precipitous cliffs (stand like a wall/ rise steeply) style high mountain. standing upright between the clouds and the mist, like a stump cut by an enormous axe. The platform was connected with the precipice of the mountain by an iron chain as thick as a grown man’s arm. In the distance, beyond the broken mountain, stood a peak high enough to touch Heaven. 

Seeing the scene, all the young contenders were astonished.

Since they were young, they had often heard from their elders that the House of Jade was located on an isolated peak which could only be reached through chains connected to the ‘Tree Stump Platform’.

However, when they saw it with their own eyes, they understood that no matter how detailed the elder’s narration was, no matter how vivid and lifelike the depiction of the House of Jade’s painting was, in the end, only when they stood here at this moment could they really feel the shock brought by this isolated peak.

The middle-aged man stood on the edge of the cliff and said, “You came to the House of Jade to participate in the selection. You don’t have to journey alone on this iron chain bridge. I will take you across the bridge one by one, please wait here for your turn.”

With that, he reached out and pointed to the nearest youth, threw a rope to him and added, “Wrap the rope around your wrist, and try to use light movement skill to cross. I will assist you when you can’t continue. Come.”

The young man secured the rope on himself, nervously nodded toward his friends before stepping on the iron chain.

The middle-aged man grabbed the other end of the rope and followed behind the young man gently and skilfully.

Standing by the edge of the cliff, Su Yang looked at the fantastic scene filled with colours before him, and sighed.

When he was in the production group, large-scale scenes like these would always be shot against the studio’s green screen. Once they were done filming, the visualisation specialists would render the scene model which would be the final version. Therefore, this was also his first time seeing what the House of Jade’s isolated peak would look like in Arch-Rivals.

If such magnificent cliffs, an inselberg of high peaks, really appeared in the real world, it would have become a scenic spot famous around the world.

Thinking of this, Su Yang moved forward and stood close to the cliff edge, letting the wind ruffle through his long-disordered hair, along with his spacious and graceful clothes, both fluttering wildly in the breeze.

He already had a beautiful temperament, like something beyond the mortal world. Now, standing in the draft, his whole body seemed to be floating. He looked neither sad nor happy, as if he didn’t belong to or care about the world—like he could ascend with the wind at any time and become an immortal.

Gu Feidi was suddenly lost in a trance when he saw Su Yang like this.

Who would have expected that in the next second, this almost incomparable aesthetic portrait was suddenly shattered by a green figure.

Fan Xi suddenly entered his field of vision, moved close beside Su Yang, saying something while smiling mischievously.

He saw Su Yang nod toward Fan Xi and hand over the crimson hair band in his hand. Fan Xi took it and walked to Su Yang’s back. He gathered the waist-length, silky black hair in one hand, pulled out a small comb with his other hand, and helped the Young Master comb his long hair into a simple braid.

Gu Feidi abruptly snorted.

Xu Yunzhan followed Gu Feidi’s line of sight, frowned and whispered, “Ah, that Fan Xi is really attentive. He would even perform the most trivial task like combing someone’s hair.”

Gu Feidi flattened his lips, turned away from the image of the two men, and casually added, “That is him willing to help others comb their hair. Perhaps he is even willing to help others dress…”

Xu Yunzhan asked in surprise, “What do you mean?”

Gu Feidi was silent for a moment and replied, “...Nothing.”

As the middle-aged man took off again and again, the young fighters waiting on the platform finally began to explore and discuss the prior assessment with no restraint. 

A few of them were glad that they had been diligent enough, while others were thankful to their close friends for waking them up early, and some were lamenting in a low voice that several of their acquaintances had failed.

In the end, the topic finally circled back to Su Yang.

“How the people from the Evil Sect do things is always strange. For everyone, early morning is the golden time of the day. He doesn’t sleep in the middle of the night, instead, he goes out to the yard to practice martial arts. He must be practicing some shameless martial art method.”

“The Evil Sect’s way is probably not a proper way.”

“I’d say that maybe he didn’t practice all night at all. What Young Hero Gu happened to see is when Su Yang was actually practicing hard. During the middle when everyone was resting, he must have gone back to the house and slept, before coming out again for show. Who knows.”

“What you said makes sense…”

Su Yang listened to their private discussion in silence. He wasn’t angry, only pretended that he didn’t hear anything.

Perhaps because he was transmigrated, but the words they gossiped around him were all based on ‘Young Master Su Yang’, which had nothing to do with him.

In fact, he was more like a bystander up in the nosebleed sectionIn the United States, Canada and Australia, it's a common tongue-in-cheek reference to say that having seats in the upper tiers of a stadium is "sitting in the nosebleed section," or "nosebleed seats." The reference alludes to the tendency for mountain climbers to suffer nosebleeds at high altitudes. of the stadium. Although he had taken over the identity of Su Yang, he still had no sense of belonging. It was like watching a holographic movie. Although what they gossiped about was him, he knew that he was just a fictional character, and this was just a fictional story.

Suddenly, a young man in the crowd turned his head and whispered, “However, Gu Feidi’s attempt to conceal Su Yang’s training really surprised me.”

Another immediately chipped in, “Yes, that’s right. I didn’t expect someone like Gu Feidi would scheme selfishly.”

Another person chimed in, “How could he not? Although Alliance Leader Gu handles things honestly and openly, their Tengyun Pavilion is large, and there must be no lack of private things. What I see is that Gu Feidi is not as simple as he displays…”

Hearing this, Su Yang couldn’t help frowning, and turned toward the small number of people who had gathered together to engage in conversation. 

These people didn’t have the slightest conscience that they started whispering gossip about Gu Feidi, the Alliance Leader and the Tengyun Pavilion.

“Now you mentioned it, I heard that when the Alliance Leader was young, he seemed to join the House of Jade the same year as the Sect Leader of the Evil Sect. They were very close friends. However, after completing their training, they suddenly turned against each other for some reason. And afterward the Sect Leader caused a massacre in the middle region, and thus garnered the name of ‘Evil Sect’.”

“I’ve heard about it!”

“It’s true. It’s said that they had a big falling out because of a woman, resulting in them parting ways. However, there are few rumours regarding the woman. One rumour was that the Leader of the Evil Sect took the woman, who later escaped by pretending to be dead. She was disguised as the maidservant of the Alliance Leader and hid in the Tengyun Pavilion.”

“That’s right! Someone else said that the woman was pregnant when she escaped from the Evil Sect!”

“Ho! Pregnant?!”

“Then…is Gu Feidi the son of the Alliance Leader or the son of the Sect Leader of the Evil Sect?”

Su Yang all of a sudden burst out laughing.

Hearing this laugh, someone finally noticed Su Yang's crescent eyes were in their direction. He poked at the person who was still talking. The big mouth turned around, saw Su Yang’s unkind expression and immediately shut his mouth.

The corner of Su Yang’s lips raised as he gave a ferocious smirk to the group.

“I had said that it is not a good habit to talk about people behind their backs. For someone like me, who accidentally trained their internal energy too deeply, may easily hear these complicated things. If you guys are not being considerate, you might bump into me when I am in a bad mood. Even if I am disqualified by the House of Jade, I will still pull every one of your tongues out.”