Chapter 134

unedited

Qi Jing reacted as anyone with reporter instinct would upon encountering some exciting news, springing up to his feet. Qiu Tianyang was even a step ahead of him, sitting up in a blink of an eye, his expression shocked. “Two?”

The nickname he uttered only confirmed Qi Jing’s first guess—this guy really was Two!

But… Why would Two show up now looking like he escaped a chase for his life from an enemy? Could it be that he was dabbling in the underworld? How did a plotline looking like it was from ⟪Trap⟫ find its way to ⟪Order to End the Heavens⟫ introduction event?

Just as everyone was losing their heads, a hotel security guard rushed inside, shouting continuously, “Sir! Sir! You’re running too fast…”

It left everyone even more alarmed. The security guard didn’t manage to stop this man, so now he chased all the way here to catch him?!

The security guard aside—by the time a policeman followed huffing and puffing behind him, the whole gathering of people here couldn’t be described with just a mere ‘alarmed’ anymore.

But no one expected that neither the security guard nor policeman would step forward to apprehend him—instead, the security guard stopped him, letting the policeman step forward to pass him a bag, saying repeatedly, “Lad, lad! Just look at you, so in a hurry! You even forgot to bring your luggage from the patrol car—”

Patrol car? Two actually got here in a patrol car?Qi Jing imagined the hotel getting surrounded by police cars like in so many gangster movies, his whole person uncomfortable at the sheer thought.

“Oh,” Two wanted to reach out to take it, but the security guard on the side saw that his hand was injured, so he decidedly picked it up in his stead, saying that he will leave it at the hotel reception. So Two nodded his head, thanking both of them, “I’m sorry, I forgot I left it when rushing here, thanks.”

Under everyone’s watchful eyes, Two send off the security guard and the policeman. By the time he went up the stage, the audience below was still unable to get out of the frozen state they were left in, as if someone had pushed the pause button for all the people in the venue.

Yang Chunqu was the first person to unpause once again.

Throughout this entire scene, she has been sweating while gripping the mic unmovingly, watching as this wounded yet still seemingly unaffected young man stepped closer toward her. Upon taking a closer look, if someone would take in any single characteristic of his face, none of them wouldn’t necessarily look particularly dashing, but as a whole, it made a person feel some kind of sense of security—he looked very ‘upright’.

She sighed with relief, only then beckoning at him to take place by the mic stand dedicated for the contestants, then pulled on a weak smile, “E-, excuse me, but what happened?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Two replied dismissively, “I just caught two robbers on my way here, that’s all.”

….Robbers??The faces of everyone present instantly turned =口=.

Qi Jing sucked in a breathful of cold air as well, falling back into the seat—just what kind of ‘that’s all’ is it?

“You’ve been robbed?” And the opponents also seemed to have carried lethal weapons? Yang Chunqu’s hand shook from the fright, she almost lost her grip on the mic. Alarmed, she stared at that long and deep gash in Two’s coat—it was easy to see how nasty was that slash.

“Ah, I didn’t get robbed, they were mugging someone else.” He pressed down on the place covered with bandages below the coat, off-handedly describing the details that could easily cause someone a heart attack, “Two big guys tried to rob a woman, each with a third of a metre long machete, really, a disgrace as men. I got in a fight with one of them, I managed to seize that kiddo’s machete, but earned a cut from the other one at the side when I wasn’t paying him attention.”

Saying this, he raised his brows proudly.

“Heh, but they only got one in to boast about, I later gave them such a beating they couldn’t stand back up, then dropped them off to the police. Later, I had to record the statement at the police station and get quickly patched up in their sickbay before they dropped me off here, that’s why I’m late—sorry about that.”

Below the scene, people instantly broke into murmurs.

“…And what’s that, scaring me like this. Isn’t that amazing?” Qiu Tianyang, who only stared dumbly up to that point, finally breathed with relief, slowly sitting down back to his seat. Then, the corners of his lips curled up without him knowing as he took the lead to clap his hands in a loud and clear applause.

When he heard his clapping, Qi Jing finally woke up from his shocked stupor, smiling as well and clapping his hands along with him.

Shen Yan also smiled silently on the stage, joining them.

The whole venue momentarily erupted with applause, cheering for Two while clapping along—the sound of it continued uninterrupted for a while, the atmosphere jubilant. Two himself seemed to not think much of his meritorious deed, only giving a composed, slight nod to the crowd. But before he could even speak, someone already sat up from among the fans, red-faced as she ran over to pass him a bandage.

“Ah&#k2026; I-, I have a bandage here, you can change it later, it’s completely new. I-if you need help with applying the medicine to the wound or some simple treatment, then I can also help with that&#k2026;”

The one speaking was a gentle and shy-looking girl. She kept her head lowered when talking as her voice stammered, looking terribly embarrassed offering the bandage with both her hands, but also determined.

“Eh?” Yang Chunqu couldn’t help but comment on this little episode on-spot, “A fan came over to the stage to give our ‘Qin Tuo’ something!”

“Eh?” Two himself seemed puzzled by this and without much care for the blush spilling on the girl’s face, he stared at her fixedly for a long while as he accepted the bandage, like he was searching for the matching voice in his memory. After a moment, he finally remembered it. “…Little Stammer?”

“Ah,” With him pointing that out, Yang Chunqu suddenly realised, “Is this the Little Stammer contestant who previously qualified for the finals?”

The girl’s face became even more red. “Actually, my ID isn’t Little Stammer… It’s Little Kapok.” But because during the competition, she got so nervous that she would start to stammer, she later got teased because of that, hence this nickname.

“Sorry, I’m nor particularly good at remembering other people’s IDs,” Two said honestly, and this Qi Jing could vouch for. But he didn’t feel self-conscious about needing to correct that, giving her a smile instead, “I think Little Stammer is still easier to remember.”

This time, the girl’s face really became just as red as the blooms of the tree in her ID.

“Damn it… Two, that fellow…” Qiu Tianyang just couldn’t continue listening to this shamelessness, tutting, “This guy, he is so dumb with things like this. Even though what he said during the finals was enough to embarrass a person to death, he still was heartless enough to forget this girl’s ID. For him to be like this again, he really is too much as a man—even though this girl clearly has some feelings for him.”

Qi Jing coughed twice, agreeing silently.

During the finals, Two, the ranking number one as ‘Qin Tuo’ after the semi-finals, was unfortunate enough to get paired with Little Kapok, who ranked ninth in her role category. At that time, she was playing ‘Qin Tuo’s’ lover, the main female character ‘Su Miaoyu’. Her natural aptitude was pretty good and she usually performed very naturally when on her own, but she would unfortunately start to tense up and stutter whenever she had an audience. This greatly influenced her performance during the females’ semi-finals, hence the low rank.

When everyone saw that they got coupled together for the audition, they started sweating for Two, thinking it a bad luck that could cause his fall during the finals. Even the girl herself apologised to him before the start of the audition, sounding guilty, “I’m sorry… I-, I heard that you were the number one for the Qin Tuo audition in male characters semi-finals… I-, I easily stutter when performing with an audience, so I m-might, hold you back…”

And at that time, Two just calmly tossed out a following phrase:

“You don’t have to think of anything, just remember—’you love me deeply’. That’ll be enough.”

These confident words.

This confident tone.

Although Qi Jing guessed that that was only his confidence in voice acting and in acting with others, as well as an instinctive act of guidance and encouragement for this girl… But, even as the member of the audience at the sidelines, he felt a bit embarrassed, not to mention the person in question herself.

“But that girl really didn’t stammer later during the audition and she delivered the emotions between the characters just perfectly, so the final result was surprisingly good.” Qi Jing said with a slight smile. Little Kapok was probably the same as How long away is forever, both only able to show off a superb acting skill when their partner’s voice acting is brought in the right direction. In the end, she had outdone Jade Butterly, who previously occupied the spotlight, but still only placed third, ultimately not getting elected.

“There was no grand spectacle during the audition itself, but it’s not half-bad to witness one outside of it.” Qiu Tianyang smiled like an old willy fox, pondering something.

“But speaking of it, why would this girl keep a bandage on her…” What an unusual habit.

“Seems like she’s a nurse by occupation.”

“…You would actually know that?” Qi Jing took a look at him, flabbergasted.

“I did look carefully through the information about the semi-finals candidates, usually I’m also a hard-working guy~” Whenever Qiu Tianyang used his gong voice to mimic a little daughter-in-law’s tone, even his gaze would become sultry, making people’s skin crawl.

Qi Jing looked away silently, deciding to take a thirty second break from this exchange.

“Next we’ll have the official introduction—the winner of this instalment’s ⟪Order to End the Heavens⟫ main male character role, ‘Qin Tuo’!” After this little episode, Yang Chunqu quickly curbed her gossipy nature and resumed her professional behaviour as the host. She smiled and introduced him to the whole audience, “With an ID ‘Gimme a proper dub, dumbass’, here he is—Yang Jie!”

Two—that is, Yang Jie, took a step ahead, unperturbed, his greeting quite standard as he spoke into the mic before him, “Ah, hello everyone.”

“After the episode just now, I presume our audience has some grasp on what kind of person contestant Yang Jie is, but I think everyone still has plenty of questions to ask, so let’s quickly proceed to the Q&A segment.” Yang Chunqu said with a smile, “Contestant Yang Jie, would you mind?”

“…What is Q&A section?” Yang Jie furrowed slightly, looking at the host, seemingly at a loss. Because of his late arrival, he had missed the entire explanation who came before.

Qi Jing gave him a sympathetic look.

“It’s the segment where we chose three of the fans from the audience to let them ask three questions,” Yang Chunqu explained patiently, “It’s a purely recreational segment, you can reply however you wish.”

“Oh,” Yang Jie didn’t seem particularly bothered, “Am I supposed to choose then?”

“In theory, the host is the one responsible for that, but the contestants can choose the person themselves if they wish, there’s no hard rules that would prohibit it.”

“Hm, I get it.” He replied lukewarmly. Then, he suddenly pointed straight at Ms Little Kapok, who got startled by his gesture, “Thank you for the bandage—to show my gratitude, I will give my first question to you.”

The people below the scene started making noise.

Qi Jing noticed that his seat was trembling a little—when he gazed sideways at Qiu Tianyang, he saw this guy doing his very best to hold back the laughter with as much grace as physically possible, the name tag on his chest shaking along with his body, flashing back and forth against his tie.

Little Kapok accepted the mic passed over by the smiling worker, her face red, taking a while to choke out a single, “…I-, I have a bag of crisps, so after this segment is done, do you want t-to, eat it?”

Yang Jie replied without second thought, “Want.”

Below the stage, the noise grew even louder.

After Little Kapok sat down, her friend sitting on her side kept complaining about how she wasted a question for nothing, that she should have asked him if he had a girlfriend. But she herself already seemed quite happy with it and didn’t pay it much mind—from the beginning to the end, there was a faint smile to Qi Jing’s gaze. This kind of longing, feeling content so easily when in love—he had also experienced that.

Following this, Yang Jie turned to Yang Chunqu, “Okay then, you can choose the next two people for the remaining questions, host, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Yang Chunqu nodded, then chose the person for the second question from the multitude of hands raised high below.

“Hello, Mr Yang Jie!” The second person to ask the question was your normal fan, with her first words being also perfectly within the norms, but her question touched upon the topic everyone was curious about, “‘Qin Tuo’ left a very deep impression on everyone during all the auditions from the semi-finals up to the finals, your performance of him was amazing! Especially your control over breath during the dialogues, it was very professional—if you don’t mind sharing this information, then I would like to ask you, Mr Yang Jie—what’s your occupation? Is it something related to professional voice acting? I’m really curious!”

“No, my occupation is in no way related to voice acting.” Yang Jie’s words were both a surprise and not really.

There were a lot of amateurs participating in this competition, so it wasn’t rare for their jobs to be completely unrelated to voice acting. But because his performance was especially outstanding, when he said that, it made people’s curiosity surge even higher.

“In that case…”

“Oh, after graduating from teacher training I kept working at high school.” Yang Jie replied easily.

……

……

……What, the, hell?

People like Qi Jing, who could still remain calm when listening before, all got shocked into jolting by this sentence from Yang Jie, staring at him flabbergasted.

“You’re actually a teacher??” And what’s more, a highschool one?? The exclamation of the fan asking was very much the voice of everyone’s minds at the moment.

Only Qiu Tianyang alone, who knew about it beforehand, laughed himself breathless from the stage below, his shoulders shaking even harder than a moment before. Qi Jing felt that if he didn’t pull him back, this guy would perhaps soon roll off the seat.

“Yeah, I am a teacher.” Yang Jie was indeed very straightforward, hiding nothing at all.

“Wha, what subject did you teach?”

“Physical education.”

Hearing this, Qi Jing couldn’t help but complain in his heart—With things like this, I won’t even be able to use that “I learned my acting skills from a PE teacher” joke whenever my voice acting is bad anymore!

The asking fellow seemed very excited by this and asked the following question; fortunately, the host didn’t stop her. “Then, you were able to settle the fight as a single person against two thieves armed with knives today—was it because you pay a lot of attention to exercising as a PE teacher?”

“That should be one of the reasons, yeah. I actually do exercise everyday,” Yang Jie thought for a bit, then continued, completely earnest, “Ah, if something else helped as well, then it probably should be because I previously trained mixed martial arts in the past as well.”

The gasps of admiration resounded among the crowd, with fans throwing him gazes full of adoration.

But he himself didn’t think much about it, “To be honest, those who bring the knives with them to mug people are usually some cowards with no confidence in their strength. They bring the knives to give themselves courage, only knowing how to scare people. You can easily handle guys like that in two or three moves, so I’m not that amazing.”

After a pause, he also added, “If any of you happen to meet someone like that in the future, then no need to fear, it’ll be fine as long as you remain calm.”

—Truly much like a teacher, he even had that kind of guiding tone meant for the students in his voice. Still, he seemed like a good teacher.

Qi Jing smiled, joining the people around who once again showed their respect for Two with an applause.

Yang Jie remained perfectly calm when answering the previous two questions, so in theory, it shouldn’t go much different for the third one.

But his expression changed visibly when it was asked.

“I want to ask contestant Yang Jie—how did you come up with the nickname ‘Two’? Apart from you, there’s surely also ‘One’, ‘Three’, ‘Four’, and so on? At that time, what kind of group were you a part of?” The third person’s question didn’t only make Yang Jie’s flinch, Qi Jing and Qiu Tianyang who were listening from below flinched as well, “When I heard that Kitty’s Papa is ‘Six’, I got even more curious about your group. Can you tell us the details?”

“We…”

Much to everyone’s surprise, Yang Jie, who remained calm saying just about anything all the way till that moment, stuttered slightly before the mic, pausing momentarily as if not knowing what to say.

Qi Jing instinctively threw a glance at Qiu Tianyang.

The name tag on his chest didn’t move the slightest, his body still—even his lips were pressed shut, not saying a single word.

Suddenly, Yang Jie turned his head back, gaze searching through the contestants, as if looking for someone. Then, he finally saw a rather average-looking man at the very back, waving his hand subtly toward him—only then a bit of light shone in his eyes.

By the time he slowly turned back to once again face the audience, his expression was much more at ease, and continued with a faint smile, “We… If one day, we can still gather back together, it won’t be too late to introduce each of us to everyone. For now, think of it as a secret for the eventual future—”

A/N:

Congratulations for Two for finally making an appearance IRL!

Those few chapters we got quite a few new offline names, so for everyone’s convenience, you can try remembering them with the method below:

【Tan Zixian】: Has a character for ‘tan’ in ‘negotiations’, so it’s our professional lawyer Little Noodles~

【Qiu Tianyang】: This one’s easy, because ‘Qiu’ is in his ID, ‘Sleek Horses Run Fast’.

【Zhang Cheng】: This one is also very easy, ‘bow’ and ‘long’ make up for the surname Zhang, hence Longbow.

【Yang Jie】: Honestly, Two’s name came from the Erlang Shen deity Yang Jian (because he’s also the second son in the legend), so the pronunciation of his name is also similar to how you would pronounce ‘Yang Jian’.

To be fair, I really like Two a lot… (covers face) Fine, but I still like Kitty’s Papa and 2Yan the most, yup…

T/N:

Lucilla: …I’m so sorry, none of those explanations make any sense for English speakers ;;;

Also, I’ll be away for the next week, but happy early Easter! See you all in two weeks! <3