CH 41

Although Su Yang was afraid of corpses, he was not afraid of this kind of skeleton that had already decayed into bones.

When he finally found the opportunity to show off his character, Su Yang immediately stepped forward and pretended to examine the skeleton carefully. When he had studied dance, he’d learned some basics about the human structure, skin and hair, so he pretended to be intellectual: “This person was a man.”

Gu Feidi smiled and said, “Looking at the stature, I also know that it’s impossible to be a woman.”

Su Yang paused and took a closer look. Okay, it seems like this body is 1.9 meters tall. Although there may be women with a height of 1.9 meters, they were absolutely rare in the context of this world.

Portraying a pretentious prick was doomed to fail and Su Yang decided not to speak.

Gu Feidi used the torch to inspect the ins and outs of this stone room and actually found some clues.

“He used to write a book here, but it’s not known why it was all burned.”

Gu Feidi pushed aside the ashes in the fire pit and pulled out a few blackened bamboo pieces from within. There were still some carved handwriting on them.

“Look at these word remnants… it might actually be some kind of swordsmanship. Unfortunately, just a few words can’t reveal the complete picture of this technique.”

He held a few broken bamboo slips in his hand and looked up at the stone chamber wall: “There seem to be countless sword marks on the wall in the empty stone room… He was indeed a master of swords, but it is unknown why he died here. His sword and engraving knives have also been taken away, I am afraid it will be difficult to determine his identity.”

Upon hearing Gu Feidi mention ‘sword marks’, Su Yang suddenly recalled a little detail.

It had been too long, he couldn’t remember clearly the situation at that time, but it seemed that someone in the crew had discussed the plot of the Dubious Tomb of the Sword Sage—in the original work, the Sword Sage legacy did not actually appear in the form of a secret book but was carved onto the walls of the Sword Sage Retreat instead.

Su Yang glanced at Gu Feidi. He saw him throw the bamboo sticks he was holding back into the fire pit and got up as if he wanted to leave. He immediately said, “I think those sword marks seem a little strange.”

Gu Feidi turned his head, raised his eyebrows and asked, “How is it strange?”

“Aai, follow me.” Su Yang grabbed Gu Feidi’s wrist and pulled him back into the inner stone room, saying, “Do you think that there is a… hmm, a peculiar rhythm hidden in these sword marks?”

Gu Feidi was silent for a moment, then he cast a sidelong glance at Su Yang and asked, “What do you see?”

What was Su Yang able to see?

Since this was the plot point, there was no martial arts secret book in the stone room; only this wall full of sword marks. As such, there must be something in these sword marks!

He couldn’t see it, but he knew the storyline in advance, so he could pull a trick!

Su Yang said: “At the moment, I can’t see anything yet, but I still find it strange… I think we should stay here for one more day to see if we can find something from them.” 

As he said, he raised his torch-wielding hand and moved along the direction of those sword marks.

Gu Feidi suddenly held onto Su Yang’s arm.

“Wait a moment!” His expression darkened and he frowned, “Help me illuminate, I will look at these markings.”

Seeing Gu Feidi step up, Su Yang was overjoyed.

Gu Feidi approached the wall, stretched out his hand to touch the marks, observed for a long time and suddenly smiled: “There are some very new marks here. Someone must have deliberately carved them to cover up the original sword marks on the wall. Since they bothered to cover them up, then these sword marks must be peculiar!”

Su Yang immediately echoed: “That’s right!”

Gu Feidi stepped back from the wall: “Let’s find some firewood and light the fire pit. I want to stay here for a while to see what secrets are hidden in these sword marks.”

Su Yang breathed a sigh of relief since the storyline was back on the right track.

Although Pu Lingyun wasn’t here and couldn’t run along the emotional story arc with the protagonist, it would not affect the subsequent development of the plot. As long as Gu Feidi obtains the Sword Sage legacy, everything else would be easier!

So Su Yang happily followed Gu Feidi and walked out of the stone room to start collecting hay and dead wood along the outer cave, preparing firewood for them to stay there.

The snakes in the cave were not completely exterminated by Gu Feidi. The two of them only eliminated the vipers in their path. They didn’t explore further after encountering a stone door, but there were a lot of vipers that wanted to flee at the front of the cave.

At that point, they decided to stay in the stone room to study the sword marks. They did not move ahead to exterminate those snakes, but instead decided to keep some of them to be used as future food reserves. After all, under the current conditions, meat wasn’t easy to store, so it would be better to let them live a little longer.

At noon that day, Gu Feidi used the stone room fire pit to smoke the snake segments of those that they had killed earlier and Su Yang finally ate some cooked meat. However, neither of them had brought salt and the meat was not very tasty at all. Fortunately, after mixing it with sand scallions and sand rice, they were at least capable of withstanding hunger.

Once both of them had eaten, Gu Feidi took some soil and began to repair the traces on the cave wall that were obviously carved later. Su Yang couldn’t tell the old marks from the new ones, so he blindly followed suit and filled the soil as instructed by Gu Feidi.

When night fell, they had filled some small parts of the sword marks on the wall of the entire stone room. Looking at the area of ​​the remaining parts, Su Yang felt that they might really need to stay there for at least ten days to half a month, which was about as long as the protagonist and heroine had spent there to fall in love in the script.

Both of them didn’t want to disturb the elder who was ‘sleeping’ in the bedroom, so they came out of the stone room and cleared a place to rest by the fire pit.

In order to prevent Eluo Ghost Tent from finding them there, they reached an agreement to maintain a one-person meditate and one-person sentry every night.

However, that night, Su Yang had a nightmare again.

He woke up from the nightmare, wiped the cold sweat on his head and said to Gu Feidi: “Forget it, I can’t sleep anyway, I’ll guard, you rest.” 

The indoor fire pit had been lit. Gu Feidi turned his head to look in the midst of the flickering flames, Su Yang’s face was obviously somewhat downcast.

After a while he said: “All this time you’ve been used to practicing martial arts late at night and falling asleep early in the morning… is it because of this nightmare?”

Su Yang was stunned for a moment and then realised after he had reacted, Gu Feidi was referring to his sleepless nights in Lesser Jade House.

However, at that time, he was not used to the work and rest times of the ancients and he was anxious to complete his discipleship, so he would work hard at night. Later, when Gu Feidi went to Veiled Pearl Pavilion, he gradually assimilated into this world and his schedule never turned upside again.

So he smiled, “That’s not true. The nightmare… only started two days ago.”

Gu Feidi asked, “Is it because of your first kill?”

Su Yang’s lips flattened, not wanting to talk about this topic.

The Devil Sect’s Young Saint’s identity was at stake. If he admitted that it was his first time killing someone, who knows what kind of trouble it might cause in the future.

Gu Feidi thought that Su Yang had acquiesced.

He was silent for a moment: “Back when I was twelve years old, my father took me to southern Xinjiang to eliminate evil sects… At that time, I also had nightmares for a long time. However, later… I pursued many of these kinds of evil sects, I’ve witnessed how cruelly they treat others and I know that their deaths were deserved.”

He turned to look at Su Yang with a serious expression in his eyes and said softly: “Father told me that we kill these people to save more people. The person who protects is an important person. That person wanted to kill me at the time and you killed him to save me; you did nothing wrong.”

Su Yang was in a daze after hearing Gu Feidi’s words and he was incredulous, “Are you comforting me?”

Without waiting for Gu Feidi to respond, he smiled: “I am the Devil Sect’s Young Saint. Those evil sects that you had killed before…… I’m probably not that different from them.”

“Not at all.” Gu Feidi said, “You’re not the same.”

Su Yang was puzzled: “How am I ‘not the same’?”

Gu Feidi looked down at his hands and said after some time: “Your nature isn’t bad, I can feel it. Either you’re being trapped by the Devil Sect… or… maybe it’s not of your own free will?”

Su Yang smiled and didn’t answer.

Of course it wasn’t of his own free will to come here and it was naturally beyond his control to transmigrate into the Devil Sect’s Young Saint.

However, if he compared being transmigrated into someone else who did not understand the storyline, being transmigrated into the Devil Sect’s Young Saint whom he had acted as before was the best outcome.

Gu Feidi couldn’t wait for him to acknowledge, his tone suddenly became a little anxious: “You wish to leave the Devil Sect, don’t you?”

Su Yang shook his head and calmly replied: “No, I don’t wish to leave.”

His storyline was closely bound to the Devil Sect, how could he leave?

Gu Feidi pushed on, “Don’t wish to or can’t?”

Su Yang thought for a moment and replied: “Can’t and don’t want to.”

Hearing this type of answer, the light in Gu Feidi’s eyes seemed to dim suddenly.

He retracted his gaze and stared at the fire pit in silence for a long time before asking: “…Was it your choice?”

Choice? What choice?

This question was a little bit vague and open-ended. Su Yang didn’t understand what Gu Feidi was alluding to.

Gu Feidi exhaled a chaotic breath, clenching his fists tightly.

In the end, he couldn’t stand the inexplicable anger in his heart, gritted his teeth and said: “The Devil Sect Leader, is he good to you? You are perfectly willing to… assist his martial arts practices?”

Su Yang blinked for a spell, feeling at a loss.

What are you trying to say? The Devil Sect Leader has always been in seclusion, since when was there a time that he required his assistance?

He opened his mouth but he couldn’t say that he’d never seen the Devil Sect Leader before and he was left without an argument for a while.

Seeing him like that was almost tantamount to tacitly agreeing and Gu Feidi let out an exasperated breath: “Forget it.”

“After we get out of here, you and I… we submit our fates to the will of Heaven.” He whispered, “Next time we meet, I won’t be soft-hearted.” 

Logically, when Gu Feidi said this, Su Yang should have felt that it was quite normal.

After all, in the script, both of them had always been a life-and-death rivalry and Gu Feidi’s desire to destroy the Devil Sect was determined by his identity.

But for some reason, as he stared at Gu Feidi who was looking coldly into the flames, Su Yang only felt tremors in his heart. When he heard Gu Feidi say ‘submit our fates to the will of Heaven’, he couldn’t wait to jump up and order him to take those words back.

Xu Yunzhan had also said similar things when Su Yang first completed his Lesser Jade House discipleship, but he didn’t feel so agitated at that time.

It was as if when the person who said this was replaced by Gu Feidi, something would happen that he could no longer control.

Su Yang suddenly felt a little flustered.

Gu Feidi was silent for a long while. The coldness of his whole body slowly subsided and his expression became calm again.

He lowered his eyes and said in a low voice: “You were awakened by the nightmare. You haven’t rested yet, so sleep for a while longer. I’ll do the night watch and we’ll switch places later.” 

Su Yang was indeed still a little tired and was somewhat unwilling to face such an odd Gu Feidi, so he nodded and immediately agreed when he heard these words.

But his feelings were chaotic and confused. He couldn’t practice or go into meditation, so he lay down fully-clothed, turned his back to Gu Feidi, closed his eyes and forced himself to fall asleep.

There was a gap on the back of Su Yang’s shirt causing one side to fall open from his right shoulder to the left side of his waist. Although it had been washed, mottled blood stains were still visible on the edges which clearly showed how badly he had been injured.

The gap in the two layers of clothing were crumpled, overlapping and it was impossible to see the wound on Su Yang’s back as well as the bright red flower tattoo.

But Gu Feidi knew that there was a bright red flower there.

He stared for a while, then retracted his gaze and looked at the open space in front of him, his heart beating rapidly.

Gu Feidi’s expression was indifferent and tranquil, but there seemed to be some unspeakable emotion brewing in his eyes.

Holding the sword in his hand, he seemed to unconsciously tap the two adjacent points on the ground, then drew a vertical line passing through the center of the two points. Afterwards, the tip of the sword fell on the empty upper right side, but for a long while, he was unable to bring himself to draw a horizontal line.

After a long time, Gu Feidi put up his sword and erased the half-written word.

He sighed lightly, then wrote a few words with the sword——”Responsibility must remain, don’t be egoistic.”