CH 19

Approaching noon, Di Ling appeared in Zhichun Garden to call Su Yang for lunch at Lesser Jade House’s dining hall.

Su Yang had been starving for the whole morning. Once he heard that, he immediately dropped the ‘Blooming Lotus Sword Technique’ he was studying and followed Di Ling to memorize his way to the dining hall.

When he reached the dining hall, Gu Feidi, Xu Yunzhan and Pu Lingyun happened to arrive at the same time. Su Yang subconsciously called out: “Ai, Gu Feidi, I have something to tell you.”

Gu Feidi paused in his step and turned to ask: “What’s the matter?”

Su Yang opened his mouth, only to realise that he hadn’t memorized the words of the letter’s message that he was supposed to relay.

As a result, he changed his expression and took advantage to display Devil Sect’s Young Saint and Fan Er’s smile, “It’s nothing, I just want to call you.”

Gu Feidi gave Su Yang a stern look and couldn’t be bothered to nitpick with him, so he turned around and strode into the dining hall.

Seeing that their leader, Gu Feidi, was indifferent, Pu Lingyun and Xu Yunzhan weren’t able to say anything either. Pu Lingyun gave a cold snort and followed Gu Feidi into the dining hall. Xu Yunzhan narrowed his eyes and inexplicably looked Su Yang up and down for a while, then turned around and left.

Su Yang gnawed his nails and instantly remembered something.

——He can’t just tell Gu Feidi about the Return To The Nest scroll like this.

He’s the villain aaa!

To be specific, the ‘to-be-stabbed-to-death by-Gu-Feidi’s-sword-in-the-future’ villain!

In the first place, it was not right for him to enter Lesser Jade House with Gu Feidi. He couldn’t earn too much of the protagonist’s favourability, otherwise the future storyline would collapse.

But how to get Gu Feidi to find out about the information by accident?

This was really a challenge for his IQ.

While pondering this problem, Su Yang sat down at the long table and got lost in his thoughts.

“Young Saint, you’re truly an important person, are you waiting for someone to serve you?”

Fan Xi smiled as he reached Su Yang’s side and patted him on the shoulder. He reached out his hand to take a big bowl from the center of the table and picked up the serving spoon before asking Su Yang, “Which dish do you want to eat, shall I help you ladle it? Steamed buns or rice?”

Su Yang came back to his senses and realised that Lesser Jade House dining hall was actually a bit like a self-serve cafeteria. He needed to choose food from the dishes set out on the long table.

Seeing Fan Xi’s actions of holding the spoon and waiting, Su Yang coughed lightly to suppress the embarrassment in his heart and put on an air of arrogance: “Just rice… and any two dishes.”

Fan Xi smiled and followed Su Yang’s gaze. He spooned him some rice, sliced ​​pork with calabash and roasted eggplant, then carefully took some tableware and placed it before Su Yang.

After finishing this, he took out the comb and hair band and helped Su Yang tie his hair in a simple style.

Pu Lingyun let out a disdainful sneer.

Fan Xi looked over with a smile, “If the little beauty wants to be served, I can also help you with filling your rice bowl and combing your hair!”

Pu Lingyun laughed scornfully, “I’ve my own hands and I’m not disabled.”

Fan Xi was about to continue bantering when a calm, male voice suddenly sounded from the entrance of the dining hall.

“Su Yang, since you have entered Lesser Jade House, you still have to learn to do everything yourself.”

A middle-aged man walked in the door carrying a food box with a faint smile on his face and said to Su Yang. “The young martial artists here are all your fellow schoolmates and they have also come to cultivate. If you need someone to serve you when you dress, eat and everything else, wouldn’t you be holding up others?”

Su Yang recognised this person. He was the middle-aged man who had delivered them from the farmhouse to the stone forest formation. His position in Lesser Jade House should be quite senior.

Sure enough, seeing this person, Di Ling and Mo shixiong immediately got up and saluted.

“Wang Ke shixiong.”

“First Defense shixiong.”

When Gu Feidi and the others saw this, they immediately rose to their feet. Fan Xi stretched out his hand and pulled Su Yang up to pay their respects together with everyone else.

Wang Ke nodded, smiled and saluted everyone. He put the food box he was holding on the table, took a few bowls and plates, filled them with some food and placed them into the food box before covering it.

“The few of you have recently entered Lesser Jade House. If you have anything you’re not used to or need something, please ask your shixiongs and shijies, don’t be afraid to trouble them.” Wang Ke said, “You are tutoring your elders, if you ask them for help, you are also helping them to cultivate, do you understand?”

Everyone nodded quickly.

Wang Ke smiled again, then picked up the food box and turned to leave the dining hall.

Looking at Wang Ke’s departing back, Su Yang diverted his focus and asked Fan Xi in a low voice, “Lesser Jade House allows food takeout… aak, food deliveries?”

Fan Xi was cheerful, “Young Saint, I arrived with you last night; how would I know the rules of Lesser Jade House?”

Di Ling overheard the conversation between the two and casually added, “Ke shixiong is only responsible for delivering meals to Zhu shixiong and Wen shixiong, who are under his tutelage. If you also want to go into seclusion, just hand over your jade bells to me, I will bring your daily three meals to Zhichun Garden. At the same time, if you do not possess the jade bell on your person, you are not allowed to leave Zhichun Garden or go anywhere within Lesser Jade House.”

“Oh,” said Su Yang as he silently lowered his head to eat. But in his head, he was still making plans.

What he needed most now was time. To achieve cultivation success within two years, going into seclusion didn’t seem to be a bad idea. Besides, now that he has obtained the Nine Cold Surging Shoots technique, there was really no need to be running around outside Zhichun Garden every day.

What’s more, the Devil Sect’s Young Saint in the script didn’t enter Lesser Jade House, but he had entered by mistake. Therefore, he must try to keep himself low-key, in case he accidentally did something outrageous.

With this scheme in mind, Su Yang finished lunch without saying a word, bid goodbye to Fan Xi and returned to Zhichun Garden.

The last thing he needed to do now was to tell Gu Feidi about the Return To The Nest volume. Once that was done, he could go into seclusion and cultivate in peace.

When he reached his room, Su Yang turned over the letter that Shizun had written to him again.

The handwriting on the letter was beautiful, but there were no punctuation marks. The whole letter was one combined mass and he couldn’t tear off the sentences involving the Return To The Nest volume alone. If he copied the letter, with his lack of skills in that department, Su Yang guessed that his handwriting would be very easy to identify, especially if he needed to write something in the future. He was afraid that Gu Feidi would see through it at a glance.

Aside from Gu Feidi, there was only him and Di Ling in this Zhichun Garden. Even if he cut up Shizun’s letter and chucked it on Gu Feidi’s table, he would be able to guess without much effort who had sent the information.

Su Yang held the letter pinched between his fingers, then wanted to change his mind.

Deliver it via a third party?

Nope, that won’t work.

He didn’t want anyone to know that he had deliberately revealed the whereabouts of the Return To The Nest volume to Gu Feidi—judging from the conversations he accidentally overheard in the previous assessment, the ability of this Jianghu to spread rumours was no worse than that of the ‘Internet Water Army’*. Maybe his approach would turn into a strange rumour and develop into some weird grudge in the future.

(*TN : Internet Water Army = group of Internet ghostwriters paid to post online comments with particular content.”)

So he couldn’t rely on others for this matter; only on himself.

Suddenly, Su Yang had an idea and his eyes lit up.

——If he could let Gu Feidi get the information of the Return To The Nest volume and hate him at the same time, wouldn’t it kill two birds with one stone?

He didn’t want to gain the protagonist’s favourability, but gaining his animosity shouldn’t be an issue, right!

He could pretend that after seeing Shizun’s letter, he was unwilling to inform Gu Feidi on the matter, so he had intended to destroy the evidence but was discovered by the other party aaa!

With Gu Feidi’s hostile prejudice against the Devil Sect, this animosity would be a definite thing!

Su Yang narrowed his eyes, smiled smugly and wondered: So, if the ancients wanted to keep secrets and attempted to destroy the letters, what method would they use?

His gaze circled around the room and finally fell on the fire stick beside the candle stand on the desk.

Su Yang: .…..

Fine, he still had to deal with this thing in the end.

.…..

That afternoon, when Gu Feidi returned to Zhichun Garden from Wanjuan Pavilion with his face full of disappointment, he saw a handful of burnt black paper bits in the corner of the stone steps outside the east wing.

Furthermore, it seemed like whoever was responsible was afraid that he would miss seeing it. There were still a few unburnt pieces of paper on the top covered in a layer of ash.

Gu Feidi walked forward, reached out and picked up a piece of paper from the pile of ashes and saw the words ‘Wanjuan Pavilion’ written on it.

Neatly. No more, no less.

These pieces of paper had been obviously cut up carefully and their edges were blackened with fire to fake the traces of burning.

Gu Feidi let out a laugh while using his thumb and forefinger to hold the piece of paper.

He squatted down at the side of the steps, reached out and drew out more pieces of paper while digging out all the fake pieces from within.

‘Wanjuan Pavilion’,

‘Top Floor’,

‘Southeast Corner’,

‘Flawed Phoenix Craft Fire’

The four pieces of paper spelled out the four most important points; also two or three pieces with meaningless words on them had been added to create confusion.

Gu Feidi pinched the pieces of papers between his fingers and looked up at Su Yang’s bedroom window.

A dark shadow quickly moved away from the window. In the next instant, there were noises of blunt objects colliding in the room, mixed with the sharp sound of chair legs scraping the floor and a low shout.

Gu Feidi lowered his eyes and stared at the pieces of paper in his hand for a long while before getting up and entering the house. He headed towards Su Yang’s bedroom, bypassed the folding screen and looked straight at Su Yang; his eyes glittering like stars.

Seeing this situation, Su Yang stopped rubbing his knee. His heartbeat grew faster as he felt the excitement pile up.

——He guessed that Gu Feidi was going to interrogate him and he had already prepared his response lines. This time, he won’t go wrong with the ad-libbing again!

Gu Feidi stared at Su Yang for a long time, then his face suddenly lit up with a bright smile.

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

Su Yang: ???

Nooo!

Why was it different from what he anticipated?!

Gu Feidi clearly discovered that he had planned to destroy the letter, so why did he still want to thank him?

What about his prepared lines; where was he going to say them aaa?

Su Yang stared at Gu Feidi with his mouth agape and only managed to recover after a long time.

He fumed resentfully: OK, since the prepared lines were useless and I don’t want to gain Gu Feidi’s favourability, there was only one way to go!

Su Yang clenched his teeth and immediately adjusted his behaviour referencing the script instances where the Devil Sect’s Young Saint had harassed others. He sauntered forward, smiled mischievously, then leaned near Gu Feidi’s ear to inhale a breath and drawled: “Smells wonderful aaa— how does Young Hero Gu want to thank this Young Saint? How about you give yourself to me, what do you think?”

Gu Feidi ‘s expression changed in an instant.

“…You are shameless!”

He shouted angrily as his whole face turned red. Then, he indignantly spun around and left Su Yang’s bedroom.

Once he had returned to his room, Gu Feidi slammed the crumpled pieces of paper onto the table.

After a moment, he sighed and reached out to smoothen them.

Gu Feidi stared at the yellow, scorched-edged pieces of paper for a long time before lowering his head and removing the leather wristband on one of his forearms. He then carefully stuffed the pieces of paper in between the layers.