Why is it Different from What He Imagined?

Around noon, Di Ling arrived at the Lively Spring Garden and called Su Yang to eat in the House of Jade’s dining hall.

After being hungry for the entire morning, he immediately tossed the manual he was reviewing and followed Di Ling for lunch.

When they showed up at the dining hall, Gu Feidi, Xu Yunzhan, and Pu Lingyun arrived at the same time. Su Yang shouted out without thinking, “Hey, Gu Feidi, I have something to tell you.”

Gu Feidi stopped, looked at him to ask, “What is it?”

Su Yang opened his mouth and realised that he didn’t memorise the words on the letter.

Improvising, he shifted his expression to display the wicked smile of an evil Young Master and informed, “Nothing, I just wanted to call out to you.”

Gu Feidi glared at Su Yang, turned, and walked into the canteen as he was too lazy to start an argument with the Young Master.

Seeing that their friend gave Su Yang the cold shoulder, Pu Lingyun and Xu Yunzhan weren’t sure if they should intercept. Pu Lingyun gave a cold snort and went after Gu Feidi. Xu Yunzhan narrowed his eyes, looking up and down as if trying to solve this mystery named Su Yang, before he followed his friends.

Su Yang bit his nails and suddenly had an epiphany. 

—He couldn't inform Gu Feidi about the location of the final volume. 

He was the villain!

To be more specific, he would be the villain who Gu Feidi would run his sword through!

It was already wrong for him to be in the House of Jade together with Gu Feidi. He could not earn the protagonist’s good grace, otherwise, the plot-end would collapse.

However, how could he accidentally leak this information to Gu Feidi?

This was really testing his intelligence. 

As he pondered over the problem, he sat down at the long table in a daze.

“Noble Young Master, are you waiting to be served?”

Fan Xi came toward Su Yang’s side with a smile, patted him on the shoulder. Then he reached out and took a large bowl from the center of the table, picked up the serving ladle, and asked, “Which dishes would you like to eat? I will get them for you. Do you want steamed buns or rice?”

This helped Su Yang come back to his senses and found that the dining hall was a bit like a self-serve buffet. He had to choose from the dishes on the long table.

Looking at the waiting Fan Xi, he coughed softly to suppress his embarrassment, displaying his persona. “Just rice and any two dishes.”

Fan Xi grinned and got him rice, meat slices with bottle gourdMeat slices with bottle gourd - 肉片葫蘆, and stewed eggplantStewed eggplant - 燒茄子. He also attentively fetched the tableware and set it in front of Su Yang.

After setting the food and tableware, he took out a comb and hairband, and helped Su Yang tie up his hair.

Pu Lingyun let out a scornful sneer.

Smiling, Fan Xi looked toward them. “If the beauty wants to be served, I can also serve your meals and comb your hair.”

Pu Lingyun jeered, “I have hands, I am not a cripple.” 

Fan Xi was just about to continue the teasing session when a calm male voice rang out at the entrance. 

“Su Yang, since you are studying within the walls of the House of Jade, you should learn to do everything yourself.”

A middle-aged man walked in the door with a lunch box. A faint smile on his face as he looked at Su Yang and said, “Everyone here are your fellow schoolmates. Their goal here is also to learn and advance their ability. Won’t you be delaying their progress if you need them to serve your meals and dress you?”

Su Yang recognised this man was the middle-aged man who chaperoned them from the homestead to the stone forest array. He must have more seniority in the House of Jade.

Sure enough, as soon as he appeared, Di Ling and Mo Shixiong immediately got up and greeted the newcomers respectfully. 

“Wang Ke Shixiong.”

“Shou Chu Shixiong.”

In response, Gu Feidi’s group immediately got up too. Fan Xi pulled Su Yan and saluted with others.

Wang Ke greeted everyone with a smile, placed his lunch box on the table, and picked from a few dishes to fill it in an organised manner.

“If you have something you are not used to as new recruits of the House of Jade, and require assistance, please bring it up with your shixiong and shijie. Don’t be afraid to trouble them.” Wang Ke advised. “Teaching is a mutual benefit. If you ask them for help, you are also helping them learn. Understand?”

Everyone nodded quickly.

Wang Ke smiled again, then picked up his lunch box and took his leave.

Su Yang looked at Wang Ke’s departing shadow. Now his main focus had successfully gone off course, he asked Fan Xi in a whisper, “Can you call take out…um…meal delivery in the House of Jade?”

Fan Xi laughed. “Young Master, I arrived here with you at the same time last night. How would I know all the rules here?”

Listening to the two’s conversation, Di Ling answered without hurry, “Ke Shixiong’s only food delivering responsibility are for Zhu Shixiong and Wen Shixiong. When you decide to go into seclusion, just hand me your jade bell and I will deliver all of your meals back to the Lively Spring Garden. At the same time, if you don’t have a jade bell on you, you can’t freely travel out of the garden and move around the House of Jade.”

Su Yang uttered an, “Oh” and silently lowered his head to enjoy his meal, secretly contemplating.

What he needed the most now was time. If he wanted to succeed in his training in two years, seclusion sounded like a good idea. In any case, he got Blooming of the Nine Glacial’s manuals. Honestly, there was no need for him to venture out of the Lively Spring Garden daily.

Also, in the script, the Young Master had never entered the House of Jade, but he did by a fluke. Therefore, he must try his best to lower his presence, in order to avoid the accidental uncovering of some uncontrollable plot twist.

Determining this, Su Yang finished his lunch quietly and returned to the Lively Spring Garden after saying goodbye to Fan Xi.

The last thing he needed to do now was to let Gu Feidi know the whereabouts of the last volume. After that, he could enter seclusion in peace.

Back in his room, he flipped open the letter written by Shizun.

The writing was elegant, but there were no punctuation marks, making the whole letter blend into one another. He couldn’t tear out the parts regarding the last volume. If he was to copy out the important details, he predicted the handwriting would very easily be recognised, as he had zero calligraphy skills. If he wanted to exclude parts of the detail, he feared Gu Feidi would see through it at a single glance.

Beside, other than Gu Feidi, the only other people living in the Lively Spring Garden were him and Di Ling. Even if he could rip out parts of the letter and leave it on Gu Feidi’s desk, the other man would definitely guess who left the letter.

Su Yang twisted the letter in his hand, trying to come up with something else.

Entrust the message to someone else?

No, that won’t do.

He didn’t want anyone to know that he intentionally disclosed the location of the last volume to Gu Feidi. Judging from the gossip he overheard during the assessments, the ability for rumours to travel in the Jianghu could rival an internet water army網絡水軍 A group of Internet ghostwriters paid to post online comments with particular content.. He wouldn’t be surprised if this deed were to be misrepresented into some strange hatred or grievance between two arch rivals.

So this matter couldn’t be entrusted to others. He could only trust himself.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up. He had an idea!

—If he could make Gu Feidi hate him more and also learn the information, wouldn’t that kill two birds with one stone?

If he couldn’t earn the protagonist's favourable opinion, getting more negative opinions was totally no problem!

He can pretend that after seeing the Shizun’s letter, instead of informing Gu Feidi of the secret, he intended to destroy the evidence which would be discovered by the other party!

With Gu Feidi’s prejudice against the Evil Sect, this feeling of malice was absolutely a win!

He narrowed his eyes and grinned with contentment. He thought to himself, So, how would ancient peoples keep secrets, how would they destroy a letter? Which method…?

His eyes wandered around the room and finally landed on the flame stick on the edge of the desk lamp stand.

Su Yang: “...”

Humph! He still ended up coming back to this thing.

* * *

That afternoon, when Ge Feidi returned to Lively Spring Gardens from the Pavilion of Infinite Knowledge, his face was filled with disappointment. He saw a small pile of burned paper ashes in the corner of the stone steps outside of the east chamber. 

As if someone was afraid that he wouldn’t see it, several pieces of unburned paper poked out on the top layer of the ash, as if someone tried painfully to hide the truth but making it pitifully obvious instead. 

He stepped forward and reached out to pick up those unburned papers from the pile of ashes. He saw four words written on it: ‘Pavilion of Infinite Knowledge’.

Neatly, no more, no less.

This piece of paper was obviously carefully cut out. Someone used the fire to blacken the edges, trying to imitate the traces of burning paper. 

With the piece of paper in his hand, he suddenly chuckled. 

He squatted down and reached out to spread out the pile of ashes, and picked out all the fake burned pieces of papers.

‘Pavilion of Infinite Knowledge’

‘highest floor’

‘southeast corner’

‘Calamity Phoenix’s Everlasting Fire’

Four pieces of paper spelled out the four most important directional details, plus two or three meaningless words to create confusion and misdirection. 

Gu Feidi gathered the papers and looked up at the window on the other side of the bedroom.

A dark shadow quickly disappeared from the window. The next moment, there was a loud crash of blunt objects in the room, mixed with the sharp sound of chair feet scratching the floor and a muffled low cry.

Gu Feidi lowered his eyes, studied the paper in his hand for a long time, before he got up to enter the house. He turned to the bedroom where Su Yang was staying and went around the folding screen. With eyes glittered like the starry night, he looked straight at Su Yang.

Su Yang saw this as a declaration of war. He paused the hand that was rubbing on his hurt knee, excitedly waiting for something to happen.

—He guessed that Gu Feidi was here to question him and he had already prepared the lines to counter all questions. He wouldn’t be making any mistakes this time!

Gu Feidi stared at Su Yang for a long time, and suddenly his eyebrows relaxed as he displayed a bright smile.

He said in a low voice, “Su Yang, thank you so much.”

Su Yang: “???”

No!!

Why was this different from what he imagined?!

Gu Feidi clearly found out that he was the one who destroyed the letter. Why was he thanking him? 

There was no chance for him to use the lines he prepared now!

Su Yang was staring agape and tongue-tied, gawking at Gu Feidi. It took him quite a while to recover.

He thought indignantly, Fine! Since the prepared lines are useless, and he doesn't want to gain Gu Feidi’s good graces, that means there is only one way to go!

After biting down, he quickly fixed his appearances and acted according to the Young Master from the script by disrupting the other’s rhyme. He stepped forward step by step until he was right next to Gu Feidi. He took a sniff by the other’s ear with a smirk and whispered, “Such a sweet scent—Gu Feidi, what would you give this Young Master in return? Let’s see, why don’t you devote yourself to me?”

Gu Feidi’s expression shifted immediately.

“You…you…absolutely shameless!”

He turned away, red-faced in anger, and left Su Yang’s bedroom.

Once he was back into his own room, he slammed the crumpled papers on the table.

After a moment, he sighed again and gently smooth them out.

Glancing at the pieces of paper with yellow chars and black edges for a long time, he lowered his head and removed the leather wrist guard on his forearm, and carefully stored those pieces of paper into the inner layer.