Responsibility Should Lie Where it Belongs, One Must Not Desire the Unrealistic.
Although Su Yang was afraid of dead bodies, he was not afraid of ones that had completely decomposed into white bones.
Finally, he found the opportunity to act out his role. He immediately came forward to inspect the skeleton like a professional, all for show of course. Based on a superficial knowledge of human body structure from his time learning to dance, he concluded in a forced philosophical manner, “Our friend here was a man.”
Gu Feidi replied with a chuckle, “Just from the length of the bones, I know he could never be a woman.”
After that, Su Yang took a closer and more careful look. All right, this person had to be almost two meters before his death. Although it was possible for women to be close to that height, it was still absolutely rare in this world setting.
Having his persona shattered, he decided to stop talking.
Using the torch, Gu Feidi examined the stone bedchamber attentively and found some traces.
“He wrote books here, but for whatever reason, he burned them.”
He pushed aside ashes in the fire pit and pulled out several pieces of burnt bamboo. Some carved writings were still faintly visible on the bamboo.
“Looking at the faint writings…it might be some kind of sword technique. Unfortunately, it's hard to get a full picture of the sword technique with only pieces of words.”
He held a few pieces of broken bamboo slips in his hands, then looked up at the cave wall. “There are countless sword marks on the inner room. It’s a clear sign that he was a sword expert, but I don’t know how he passed away here. The sword he used to mark the walls and the knife he used to crave the bamboo slips were both looted, it’s going to be difficult to figure out his identity.”
Hearing Gu Feidi bring up ‘sword marks’, Su Yang suddenly recalled a specific detail.
It was too long ago for him to remember all the details, but it seemed that someone in the filming crew mentioned something about the False Tomb of the Sacred Swords—in the original novel, the Sword Sage’s inheritance wasn’t in a form of secret manual, but were carvings on the stone wall where the Sword Sage entered seclusion.
When he saw Gu Feidi throw the bamboo slips back into the fire pit, stand and look as if he wanted to leave here, Su Yang immediately voiced out, “I feel like the sword marks on the wall seem a bit strange.”
Gu Feidi turned around and asked, “Strange how?”
“Humph, follow me.” Su Yang grabbed Gu Feidi’s wrist and pulled him back to the inner stone chamber. “Do you feel that there is a…strange pattern hidden in these sword marks?”
Gu Feidi silently looked at the stone wall, then glanced at Su Yang asking, “What do you see?”
What could Su Yang see? Absolutely nothing!
Since this was an important plot point, if the inner stone chamber didn’t have any secret skill manual, and only had a wall full of sword marks, then that meant there was something in those sword marks!
But he couldn’t spot it, knowing only the story ahead of time, he could only push in the right general direction!
He protested, “I can’t see anything right now, but it looks strange…I think we should stay here for another day to see if we can find any clue behind these sword marks.”
Raising his torch as he was talking, then he waved the torch along the wall, mimicking that of the sword moving by tracing the sword marks.
Gu Feidi suddenly raised his hand and stopped Su Yang’s moving arm.
“Wait!” He frowned, deep in thoughts. “Help me with the light so I can see the marks more clearly.”
Seeing Gu Feidi was on to something, joy filled Su Yang’s heart.
Gu Feidi approached the wall, and reached out to touch the marks. After a quick observation, he suddenly smiled. “There are some more recent sword marks here. Someone must have wanted to cover the original marks on the wall by intentionally carving more marks over it. Since they bothered with this, it must mean there is a mystery behind the sword marks.”
Immediately in agreement, Su Yang chirped, “That’s right!”
Stepping a half step back, Gu Feidi said, “We will gather some firewood and light the fire pit. I’m staying here to see what hides behind these sword marks.”
The plot was back on the right track! Su Yang sighed a breath of relief.
Although Pu Lingyun wasn’t here, there would be no romance plotline for the protagonist here, but it shouldn’t affect the subsequent plot development too much. As long as Gu Feidi obtained the Sword Sage’s inheritance, everything else should be fine and dandy!
So Su Yang, in an extreme over the moon excitement, followed Gu Feidi out of the chamber and collected hay and rotten wood along the outer cave to prepare firewood for their stay.
Gu Feidi didn’t exterminate every last one of the vipers in the cave, they only cleaned the ones in their way. After finding the stone gate, they didn’t explore further into the cave, but there should be many more pit vipers that went into hiding in the unexplored part.
At this point, they decided to stay in the stone room to study the sword marks, and not to clean up the snakes. They kept some of them alive as reserve food for the future—after all, under their current situation, it was best to let the snakes live as they didn’t have a way to preserve meat.
At noon, Gu Feidi smoked the meat pieces with the help of the fire pit. Su Yang finally got to eat cooked meat. But neither of them carried salt, so the meat was not delicious by itself. To help with taste, they ate it with wild onion and sand rice. At least it kept the hunger away.
After they enjoyed their meal together, Gu Feidi collected mud and mended the obvious re-carved marks on the wall of the cave. Not able to distinguish the new from the old marks, Su Yang could only cover marks following Gu Feidi’s instruction.
It was not until night that they filled in a small section on the wall, looking at the rest of the entire inner stone chamber. Su Yang estimated it would take them up to ten days to half a month to complete this, which matched the time in the original plot where the protagonist and heroine cultivated their feelings.
Neither of them wanted to disturb the senior resting in the bedroom, so they exited the stone chamber and cleared a place to rest by the fire pit.
In case anyone from the E’Luo Gui Faction came scouting for them, the two reached an agreement to maintain a watching schedule, where one rested while the other stayed on guard for the night.
But that night, Su Yang was haunted by nightmares again.
Waking up from his nightmare, he wiped his cold sweat and said facing Gu Feidi, “Whatever! I will watch tonight since I can’t sleep anyway. You can rest.”
The first pit was lit, Gu Feidi turned his head to watch the flickering dancing fire. There was an obvious vulnerability on Su Yang’s face.
He said after a while, “You have always trained in martial arts in the middle of the night, and slept in the morning…Was it because of your nightmares?”
Startled by the question, Su Yang realised Gu Feidi was talking about his insomnia during his time in the House of Jade.
But at that time, it was because he still had not adapted to the ancient period’s time cycle, and he was also in a hurry to complete his apprenticeship. Those were the reasons he trained at night. Afterward, Gu Feidi underwent his training in the Hidden Pearl Pavilion. While he gradually accommodated to the ancient schedule, he stopped his reversed lifestyle.
So he laughed and clarified, “That wasn’t the reason. The nightmare started two days ago…”
Gu Feidi brought up, “Because of your first kill?”
Pursing up his lips, Su Yang didn’t want to discuss this topic.
Being the Evil Sect’s Young Master, if he admitted that was his first kill, it would definitely be troublsome if this didn’t line-up with facts before he transmigrated.
But Gu Feidi took this as silent confirmation.
He stayed silent for a moment, before he shared, “When I was twelve, my father took me to the southern border to eliminate a corrupt sect. At that time…I dreamed of many nightmares. But later, I hunted down many more sinister sects. I witnessed the cruel treatment they inflicted on others, that’s when I realised, they must not be spared.”
Turning his head to look straight at Su Yang, the glow of flame flickered in his serious eyes as he whispered, “My father told me that killing these people was in order to save other people, and protecting those that are important to me. The man made an attempt’ on my life, and you killed him to save me. You did nothing wrong.”
After listening to Gu Feidi’s calm and gentle voice in a trance, Su Yang asked, filled with disbelief, “Are you…comforting me?”
Before Gu Feidi could answer, he continued with a smile, “I am the Evil Sect’s Young Master, I am more or less the same as all the bad groups you killed before.”
“No.” Gu Feidi insisted, “You are different.”
Not understanding, Su Yang asked, “How am I different?”
Gu Feidi gazed at his own hands. “You have a good nature, even I can feel it. You fell into the Evil Sect’s clutches…perhaps against your will?”
Instead of answering, Su Yang smiled.
It was not his will to come here, that was for sure, and transmigrating into the Young Master was naturally also out of his control.
But this was actually the better outcome. He’d rather transmigrate into the Evil Sect’s Young Master, someone he was more familiar with as he played this role in the drama, instead of some random person.
Not waiting for Su Yang’s confirmation, the anxious Gu Feidi pushed, “You want to leave the Evil Sect, right?”
Su Yang shook his head and said quietly, “No, I don’t want to leave.”
All of his plotlines were closely related to the Evil Sect. How could he leave?
Gu Feidi pursued further, “Don’t want or can’t?”
Pondering for a moment, Su Yang replied, “I can leave, but I don’t want to leave.”
Hearing such a response, it looked as if the light in Gu Feidi’s eyes suddenly darkened.
Retreating his gaze, and staring at the fire pit for a long time, he asked, “...At your own discretion?”
Discretion? What about discretion?
This question had no start or finish, Su Yang didn’t understand what Gu Feidi was implying.
Gu Feidi exhaled a frustrated breath, clenching his fists.
Not able to hold back the inexplicable fire in his heart, he said, gritting his teeth, “Is the Evil Sect’s Leader treating you well? You were perfectly willing to assist...in his practice?”
Blinking slowly, Su Yang's brain couldn’t wrap itself around this.
What could he say? The Leader had been in seclusion all the time, there was no time for him to be assisting the Leader in anything.
He opened his mouth, but closed it back up. He could not say he had never seen the Evil Sect’s Leader, so so he stayed speechless for a while.
Seeing the near silent attitude as confirmation, Gu Feidi let out a hard breath and said in defeat, “Nevermind.”
“Once we are out of here, you and I should…each be on our way and let heaven decide our fates.” He whispered, “Next time we meet, I won’t hesitate.”
According to the script, Gu Feidi’s declaration to Su Yang should be very normal.
After all, the two of them in the script were in a competitive relationship between life and death. If Gu Feidi wanted to eliminate the Evil Sect, it was all within his rights from his designed role.
But he didn’t know why, seeing the ice cold and the solemn emotion burning in Gu Feidi’s eyes, he could only feel a shiver in his heart. Hearing Gu Feidi saying ‘each be on our way and let heaven decide our fates', he hated not being able to jump up and order him to take this sentence back.
The day he graduated from the House of Jade, Xu Yunzhan also said something similar, but he didn’t feel ill at ease compared to now.
As if Gu Feidi spoke this sentence, then something that would be out of his control would happen.
Su Yang suddenly got a little flustered.
Gu Feidi remained silent for a long time, before he slowly withdrew the surrounding chill and also restored his emotion to that of a calm lake.
He lowered his gaze and mumbled, “A nightmare awakened you, you haven’t had a proper rest and should sleep for longer. I will keep watching, we can switch later.”
Su Yang was indeed still a little tired, not to mention the awkwardness from earlier. He didn’t want to face Gu Feidi right now. Hearing this suggestion, he immediately nodded in agreement.
But being in a disordered mood, entering mediation was impossible now. So he lay down, fully clothed, back towards Gu Feidi and closed his eyes, forcing himself to sleep.
On the back of his robe, there was a gap from the cut, from the right shoulder to his left waist. Although he washed the robe, the bloodstains were still visible on the edge of the material, which revealed how much he had been injured.
He flipped the layer of robe the other way, covering the gap, hiding the wound on his back and the scarlet flower tattoo from sight.
But Gu Feidi knew that there was a bright red flower under the robes.
He fixed his eyes on Su Yang for a long time before he shifted his attention to the open space in front of him.
The emotion in his eyes was quiet and calm, but underneath lay a brewing storm of an unspeakable spiritedness.
Holding the sword in his hand, as if subconsciously, he gently tapped the ground twice, making two dots, followed by a vertical line passing through the middle of the two points. Then, the sword tip paused in an empty place on the right side of the vertical centre, but he wasn’t able to draw a horizontal lineAccording to the comment section, the word Gu Feidi erased was ‘情’, it means emotion/feeling.
.
After a long time, he picked up his blade and erased the unfinished word away.
He sighed and wrote a few words with his sword, responsibility should lie where it belongs. One must not desire the unrealistic.
the red tattoo misunderstanding is so funny, but the chapter ending was angsty 🙁