Chapter 20
(Pictures of Secret Scenes. Who is the stabber?)
Fortunately, Doctor Yu was capable of thinking up of a crucial point very quickly. Eyes brightening, she said hurriedly: “If I went to stab him in the middle of the night first, why would I wait until mao s.h.i.+ to curse him once more? I don’t need to do it. Why would I try to kill him twice!”
The Second Martial Brother suddenly opened his mouth and said: “Not necessarily.”
“Why not necessarily?” Doctor Yu stared at him with some visible indignance.
Second Martial Brother said: “It’s not like someone saw you using the curse. Maybe when you saw everyone using [Draw a Circle to Curse You], you imitated our excuses and said that you cursed him to death.”
His reply drew out righteous words from Doctor Yu. “It definitely isn’t me. His martial art skills are phenomenal while I’m completely untrained, how am I supposed to wield a knife against him?”
Second Martial Brother replied, “Beauty Yi drugs Perennial w.a.n.g with knockout drops every night so she could have a secret liaison with Master Hui. This is a matter we all know about. In any case, my script wrote that I encountered Beauty Yi looking for Master Hui when I went out for a stroll one night because I couldn’t sleep. Later, I thought of a plan to get the bowl from the servant girls, and after giving it to a medicine master, it was confirmed that there was a knockout drug inside.”
Saying that, Second Martial Brother looked at Oldest Martial Brother: “You know about this matter too, right? Either way, Perennial w.a.n.g drank the soup, which means it’s completely logical if she could use a knife to stab him. He won’t retaliate.”
Oldest Martial Brother returned Second Martial Brother a look. He nodded after a moment and said, “En. I knew about it. Back then, there were disciples who informed me that you went down the mountain holding a bowl and you were looking for a medicine master. Since I found it odd, I decided to follow you. I asked that medicine master for the results after you left and found out the truth too.”
Doctor Yu’s eyes widened. “When did the both of you learn of the fact that Beauty Yi drugged Perennial w.a.n.g with knockout drops every night and then went to find Master Hui for a secret liaison?”
Second Martial Brother said: “A month ago.”
“That sounds about right. I arrived here half a month ago. I don’t know about these matters at all.”
Doctor Yu frowned. “I can’t compare to the two martial brothers; both of you are Perennial w.a.n.g’s direct disciples and you help him manage Xiaoyao Sect which grants you a significant amount of power and influence, to the extent where you can inquire about everything that happens in the Sect. I’m only a doctor; I don’t even dare to walk around arbitrarily, how could I possibly have known about such a thing?
“And even if I knew about the knockout drugs, I didn’t know about the secret liaisons between Beauty Yi and Master Hui. From my perspective, Perennial w.a.n.g sleeps in the same room with Beauty Yi. Why would I go and find him in the dead of the night?”
Second Martial Brother: “You have no evidence to back up the claims you just said. Who can prove that you don’t know?”
Doctor Yu: “I am unaware of these matters, that’s just a fact! If I knew that Master Hui was together with Beauty Yi, would I go and find him to reminisce about the past in the morning? If I knew that I would catch him sharing a bed with Beauty Yi, would I still run over there shamelessly?
“Yes, I’ve always loved Brother Hui and I want to be with him, but I’ve already said it’s built on the basis that he hasn’t had a change of heart!”
Shaking his head, Second Martial Brother retorted back at her for the sake of arguing: “I don’t care. You’ve already played several scripts. You know how to deceive others, and it’s certainly possible that you’re trying to flip our logic. You’ve already used the knife to kill him and there’s no need for you to curse him. Since you’ve already cursed him to death, you don’t need to murder him with a knife. You’re intentionally using our curse pretext to wash yourself of your suspicion.”
Doctor Yu was angered to the point where she had jumped up. “Huh? I’m finding this strange, why are you so bitingly sure that I’m the murderer? Perhaps you’re the real murderer? You’re biting at people indiscriminately! I was expressing my thoughts in order to give everyone an a.n.a.lysis! Why would I turn myself into the murderer in the process! It’s not like I’m an idiot!”
“Okay, enough of this… both of you should speak less.” The Oldest Martial Brother sighed. Although he was trying to be the peacemaker, it was clearly ineffective.
Head aching from their argument, Gu Liang seized a gap to speak out: “Enough. Let me say two lines for your benefit. At mao s.h.i.+, three quarters of an hour in, I was also in the room when Doctor Yu came to find Master Hui, and she had already admitted to the fact that she used the curse then. Stop arguing and use the time to search the other areas instead.”
Done speaking, Gu Liang took the opportunity to leave the courtyard first.
He hadn’t walked far when he looked over his shoulder and noticed that Yang Ye was following after him. Doctor Yu was still in a heated argument with the Second Martial Brother while the Oldest Martial Brother was trying to persuade them but he ended up joining the dispute. In the end, the three of them probably parted on bad terms as they went on their separate ways to look for clues.
Yang Ye walked over to pat on Gu Liang’s shoulder. “I think I understand the reason for the dog-blooded love triangle now. Or perhaps it’s better to say, one of its reasons.”
Gu Liang: “I’ve roughly figured it out too.”
Truth to be told, they also had to thank the Second Martial Brother and Doctor Yu for arguing for the sake of arguing. This one fight had exposed a lot of details regarding the plot.
— It turns out, the matter of Beauty Yi giving Perennial w.a.n.g knockout drops and seeking Master Hui’s company after the deed was done, was already discovered by Oldest Martial Brother and Second Martial Brother a long time ago.
Yang Ye said: “I agree with Doctor Yu’s words. She carried heartfelt intentions about wanting to rebuild what we once had, and she even wanted me to be her alibi… but all these are built on the premise that I didn’t have a change of heart. She thought I was similar to her, where my heart still remembered the camaraderie and innocent affection we shared as childhood friends. This indicates that she was genuinely out of the loop where our relations.h.i.+p was concerned, and she was also unaware that you didn’t sleep with Perennial w.a.n.g at night.
“Furthermore, it’s quite improbable for her to lie about using the rouge to draw the curse, and consequently, the possibility of her stabbing Perennial w.a.n.g with a knife before mao s.h.i.+ probably doesn’t exist. No… not just that, she basically doesn’t have the chance to stab him after mao s.h.i.+.”
Since Perennial w.a.n.g had the habit of waking up at six quarters of an hour into mao s.h.i.+, the servant girls would correspondingly enter the room to attend to him at that time.
This habit of his, only his two direct disciples are privy to it. Doctor Yu would not know about this.
Only the two direct disciples would know that prior to his awakening, Perennial w.a.n.g would be the sole inhabitant of the room, and it was also an opportune time where they could strike.
Hence, the possibility of Doctor Yu being the one who carved the words into Perennial w.a.n.g was not very high; rather, the perpetrator had to be either Oldest Martial Brother or Second Martial Brother.
As Yang Ye was sorting through his thoughts, he realised that Gu Liang had not spoken in a long time, and he had even stopped walking.
Yang Ye came to a halt and turned his head back to look at him.
There were countless gingko trees behind Gu Liang. Since the time setting of the script was in August, the fallen, pure yellow gingko leaves strewn all over the floor made for a dreary and bleak sight.
With the slight sway of his red robes and dark hair because of the oncoming breeze, and amidst the rustling and swirling, withered and yellowed leaves, Gu Liang seemed to exude a hint of ancient chivalry that a martial arts pract.i.tioner would have.
And in a place slightly further off, was the thick fog this strange game employed to restrict human movement.
Within the game’s regulated time, stepping into that thick fog was equivalent to instantaneous death.
In his eyes, however, the fog completely lost the dreadful and horrifying feeling it induced. Instead, it became a tool that served as a foil to Gu Liang.
— The forest was deep when seeing a deer, the fog was thick when meeting a good man.
After a long, drawn out moment, Yang Ye asked softly, “What are you thinking about?’
Gu Liang snapped back to his reverie and looked back at Yang Ye. “I was thinking about two questions. Firstly, why did no one dare to own up to the knife? Could it be that… the deceased did not die by the curse, but the knife instead, which is why he didn’t dare to confess to it? Secondly, now that I’ve thought about it, it’s accurate to say that the deceased is not Perennial w.a.n.g himself. There definitely has to be a counterfeit replacing him, or else there would be a lot of issues that can’t be explained. Moreover, the ‘wielding of a sword to castrate himself’, what was the point of that? And who is the current deceased exactly?”
When Gu Liang was done asking his questions, he realised that Yang Ye was smiling.
Different from the usual smiles he wore whenever he was ridiculing or making fun of him, this smile contained an unfathomable, deep meaning.
“What are you smiling for?” Gu Liang asked.
I’m laughing at myself. I have the wind and moonin my eyes, but your eyes only have the case.
But Yang Ye did not say those words out loud. Instead, he took out his own card to study the map. “Presently, we have a lot of questions that can’t be explained because we’re still missing some clues. The library pavilion is the place closest to us. Let’s go and take a look, shall we?”
“Sure. A place like the study should be hiding quite a few things.” Gu Liang nodded. Without further delay, they set off to the library pavilion together.
The interiors of the library pavilion had the faint scent of sandalwood. Bookshelves lined the room, and some specifically held literature written on bamboo slips as well as some painting alb.u.ms that had been hand drawn onto bound parchment. Gu Liang skimmed through the bamboo slips, there were ancient books and topics relating to internal energy and matters of the heart. When Gu Liang eventually worked his way to the row with painting alb.u.ms, he pulled a book out. Before he even read the contents, he was shocked to a standstill by the t.i.tle.
—《Secret Scenes Pictures: The Clouds and Rains of Twin Dragons》
Gu Liang: “……”
As Yang Ye leaned over from the side, he happened to see it too. He felt that this was a good chance to test Gu Liang’s att.i.tude towards the subject, so he took the book from Gu Liang’s hand directly and flipped a few pages. All the pages contained pictures of two men with large yardsticks making love.
“d.a.m.n, this Perennial w.a.n.g is something—” As Yang Ye uttered that line, his eyes stared at Gu Liang without blinking once.
Contrary to his expectations, undisguised revulsion appeared in Gu Liang’s eyes.
Yang Ye’s heart sank slightly.
Had it been under normal circ.u.mstances where the straight man was not h.o.m.ophobic, they would usually reject the notion of bottoming at most and be chilly about it. However, Gu Liang was not the same; his eyes were utterly brimmed with disgust.
T/N: Gu Liang, contrary to his current reactions, is not actually h.o.m.ophobic, there are reasons for his reaction which will be explained later in the story!
EDIT: Previously mentioned fanart has run into some issues, but the chapter will stay up!