Chapter 81
TLC: Lilies
Editing: Mashiro
The number 120 appeared on the counter, then it started decreasing with each passing second.
No one in the audience could hear anything in their headphones.
It was dead silent.
Until suddenly, a weary voice with a hint of impatience could be heard sighing—
“Ha...”
It was a faint and weak sigh, but since it was just by a mic it could be heard especially clearly.
Those who had headphones of a higher quality could even feel that breath getting into their ears, slowly creeping deeper.
“We really don’t understand...” This line made it sound as if a man had just woken from his stupor, his voice a bit hoarse—it was as if one could see an image of a disheveled man slumped lazily over the dragon throne.
Next moment, the man on the dragon throne seemed to reluctantly straighten up his posture.
He had already come to completely, but his tone became even more irate.
“The country prospers, the people live in peace and favourable weather brings bountiful crops—why are there still rebels causing trouble?” His pitch kept getting higher and higher with each word, like a blunt bamboo that was sharpened and violently stabbed into the ground, he questioned angrily, “Is it to inconvenience Us, or to inconvenience the people of this land?!”
After those two furious queries, seemingly already exhausted, he huffed and puffed for a while before eventually calming down.
Qi Jing’s voice was quite youthful, so even after making it sound a bit more hoarse, he still sounded like someone in their early thirties.
But he made his voice sound a little bit old, like an overworked middle aged man, making it sound as if his health wasn’t at its best.
“Just listen, all of you...” He read the content of the memorial while catching his breath, “’The government office of the provincial capital of Tongzhou had been burnt down by the rebels, causing over hundred casualties among soldiers; the government forces had retreated to the peripheral city of Yao. The provincial treasury had been robbed, the loss totaling in twelve thousand and seven hundred taels, and the grain reserves had been opened; ignorant village folk raided and looted the entirety of the reserves, leaving not a grain behind’?”
His voice was trembling because of his rage, and the more he read, the faster his reading had become—but, he didn’t forget to get the correct pronunciation of “Yao city” that so many previous contestants mispronounced.
The TV reporters fared much better at Standard Mandarin than an average person, and Qi Jing also got the 1-A grade during the Putonghua Proficiency Test, so it was his forte.
Obscure words, characters with multiple pronunciations, ancient and classical scripts—none of those posed any difficulty to him.
When he read it all, a coarse breath escaped his throat and he cursed, “Rebellion... It’s clearly a rebellion! Rebellion!”
It was different from Uncle Bang’s outburst of fury.
His fury was neurotic, sounding a bit deranged. After a moment, he seemed to have remembered something and started shouting nervously.
“Marquess Shunyang... Marquess Shunyang... Marquess Shunyang!”
That person within the court probably had already answered him many times, but he still called him multiple times, as if only calling him more would appease him.
“You shall take two hundred soldiers and leave immediately to Quell the rebellion in Tongzhou.” After he gave an order, his royal bearing suddenly disappeared as he mumbled imploringly, as if he was clutching at his last trace of hope, “You’re... One of Our most trusted generals, you should be able to handle it well?”
The “Emperor Chang” from the original novel was someone extremely insecure—to describe it in modern terminology, he had a form of “persecutory delusion”.
The symptoms depended on whether he was clear of mind or under the influence of the drug, and their degree also varied.
The dialogue during that morning court session had occurred when the uprisings had just started cropping up in different regions, and the attack on Tongzhou government office was a small climax of the story. At that time, “Emperor Chang” had yet to realise that “Marquess Shunyang” was his half-brother from a different mother. He only knew that although “Marquess Shunyang” held military power in his hand, he wasn’t like those who would use all kinds of excuses, unwilling to take action without some kind of profit—he was like a driftwood among the fierce gales and towering waves.
He could speak while looking down upon any other of his subjects.
But when it came to his only hope, “Marquess Shunyang”, he would only be reliant on him.
The people in the audience listened, not even daring to breathe, and even his antis disappeared temporarily without a trace. During Qi Jing’s performance, there was only one reaction in the public chat.
A particularly coordinated and uniform reaction&#k2014;
Audience 1: Eh&#k2026;
Audience 2: Eh eh eh&#k2026;
Audience 3: Eh eh eh eh eh&#k2026;
All of them looked about the same.
Only after the first scene concluded did people remember that besides saying “eh”, there were also other words that could be used to express their feelings.
Audience 1: I, I don’t know how to describe it, but just now, I’ve been sitting curled up like a hamster with my paws on my chest as I listened...【What the hell am I saying, facepalm】 What I want to say is, I really got into it!!
Audience 2: So an emperor could also be played like that... I kinda feel like I just had a moment of enlightenment! Σ(⊙▽⊙ That right, Emperor Chang was supposed to be sickly... Huge kudos for those neurotic parts of the performance!
Audience 3: ... Give me back that noble, refined, amorous and graceful Return Date! GIVE HIM BACK!! ┭┮﹏┭┮ 【Ah... It’s mainly because this role is so different from his usual roles, I find it hard to take in right now, but on the other hand, it also proves that his voice acting is just so realistic!!】
Audience 4: （╯－＿－）╯╧╧ If in the future anyone tells me Don’t ask for my return date is a weak shou VA, I’ll make them eat their words!
Audience 5: （╯－＿－）╯╧╧ Flipping the table together with the commenter above! What’s with that ambiguousness I heard between Emperor Chang and Marquess Shunyang?? Isn’t this story targeted for a normal audience?? To actually make me start shipping those two brothers, I really am doomed!! But just now, when I heard him keep calling “Marquess Shunyang”, it was as if my heart had suffered a hit... Hurray for younger tops!!【Oi】
Audience 6: I’ve been reading the lines while listening and got so moved... Only to suddenly realise that calling “Marquess Shunyang” multiple times is what No.16 had come up with himself, it only appears once in the original lines. Haha, that was an amazing way to handle it! II can totally feel that “you’re the only one I can rely on” mentality... Hooowl-! After all this talking, basically I also started to ship the younger top brother x brother ship... (covers face)
As the public chat was still buzzing with comments, Qi Jing suddenly bellowed coldly. “Wanton—!“
An emperor was, after all, an emperor, so a scene of outburst of royal fury was necessary.
The explosiveness of his acting wasn’t half bad, but it was quite a pity that he was born with a rather clear voice, as the deepness of a voice could add to the sense of impetus brought by the explosive acting.
But Qi Jing intended to play up his strengths while hiding his shortcomings.
He utilised his clear voice to bring in the shrill and jarring quality of “Emperor Chang”’s voice during a withdrawal, bringing the listeners’ attention to the current “sickly” state of the character instead of simply going for a shout for the sake of it. When he finished, he slightly coughed twice to make it appear more realistic.
“Our’s land—... Is Ours!” He uttered intermittently while coughing.
According to the descriptions from the novel, it was around that time when the symptoms of Emperor Chang’s drug addiction was becoming increasingly obvious. Qi Jing’s voice had also started to shift from sharp to muffled as he mumbled, as if to himself, “And as for which of Our sons is to be made a crown prince...—That is for Us to decide!”
Suddenly, there was an instant where Qi Jing noticed that he’s been subconsciously imitating his father from when he had fallen in a drunken rage.
The same messy state of mind.
The same discomfort.
The same aggressiveness.
Everyone would make him angry, everyone would make him irascible, and it didn’t even matter if it was his beloved consort—no matter how fine and lovable a woman she was, the moment she mentioned something he didn’t want to hear, it would only spark a cruel urge to crush this beautiful flower of a woman.
In the past, when his father had had a little too much to drink, their home would be filled with shouting and screaming, and he would even try to hit his mother.
Whenever that happened, he and his brother would desperately hold onto him from either side, letting their sister run away with their mother to hide behind the door and wait until father’s drunken rage passed... It didn’t happen a lot and a long time had passed since then—at least it used to happen before he went to college—but it was still vivid in his mind.
Strange.So strange.
Was it because of that similarity... He actually got reminded of some insignificant memories of the past, making him almost break out of the character.
Qi Jing got a bit distracted during that moment, but then he shook his head and continued acting out the following lines.
“We are not... nothing, without the Yan family’s support,” But that was exactly the case, and it was this understanding that made him feel indignant and distressed “We are the emperor... The emperor!”
The way Uncle Bang delivered the furiousness was incredibly well done—but it was monotonous.
If the fury was always portrayed the same, then it would appear unrefined.
In the previous scene, Qi Jing added in a bit of madness, but this scene on the other hand had that kind of misery to it. Thereby making the “fury” in the two scenes sound different, making them distinct from one another.
Next, there was that movement prompt for breaking the flower vase and falling to the ground.
This was where his and Uncle Bang’s understanding differed the most—Uncle Bang thought that the character shoved the flower vase himself in a fit of anger, then tripped and fell on the ground in a moment of carelessness. Qi Jing, on the other hand, took it as the result of the effects of the drug getting too strong—it made him unable to keep balance and knock the vase down before he fell to the ground.
This train of thought was inspired by the documentaries about drug rehabilitation he had brought home from the office. Before the start of the competition, he had studied those recordings for the research, going through them multiple times. He noticed that during flare-ups, a lot of those drug addicts would start to sway back and forth and their limbs would start to twitch, their movements often unable to follow the brain’s control. If “Emperor Chang” of that time was still able to shove the flower vase, then the symptoms of his illness shouldn’t be too obvious and thus wouldn’t possibly lead to his falling.
This would go against his description from the original novel, the onset of “Emperor Chang’s illness was rapid, his person crazed and deranged.”
The other detail a person who didn’t read the original novel wouldn’t think of was the role of the person “Emperor Chang” faced during this scene.
“Consort Shu” was surnamed Yan—she was precisely the eldest daughter of the “Yan family” that had been mentioned in the previous line.
Because of the fear “Emperor Chang” felt towards her father, he would usually let her have her way and kept doting her, always treating her like a symbol of the Yan family. In the original novel it was mentioned that after “Emperor Chang” fell down, “Consort Shu” had hurried over to help him up, but the hallucinations caused by the drug contained in the “immortality pill” made her look like a demon in his eyes—a reflection of the fear and hate he often felt towards the Yan family.
“Ugh...”
Suddenly, Qi Jing started gasping spasmodically with a whimper as if he was in a dream, his voice even tinted with a sobbing tone—so similar to how when those in the middle of a drug addiction flare-up would suffer from an emotional breakdown.
Hating timidly, cowardly...
“We... are clearly the monarch of the country, the ruler of the land under Heavens...” He mumbled intermittently between his rapid breaths, “Why, why do We still need to listen to others, when considering those matters?”
Then, Qi Jing suddenly laughed. This laughter was muddled, rising from the very depths of his throat, making one’s hair stand on ends.
“He, hehehehe...”
He could very well throw caution to the wind, just who is afraid of who?
“We don’t care, We don’t care!” Only under the influence of a drug would he dare to say such words, only then would he dare to blatantly go against the powerful minister, dare to try acting like a real, authentic emperor for that one time. Even though he was only lying to himself, at that moment, the character’s tone should be unweighted by any worries, “We don’t care what Our father-in-law has to say, We absolutely do not care—!”
After it finished, Qi Jing fell silent for the moment where the lines ended, then once again sighed gloomily, just like at the beginning of the first scene.
But contrary to the previous time, this time it was a sigh of liberation.
“We don’t care...”
This repetition was something Qi Jing improvised. Without changing the content of the lines, he would sometimes add or sometimes cut down the repetitions in the lines, creating the final effect according to his own understanding.
If it wasn’t an online competition, but some real-life competition at some venue, then the venue would probably be so silent, even a dropped pin could be heard.
Because all of the listeners froze.
The only person moving was the one on the mic, and it wasn’t only his voice that he moved, but also the whole scenery behind that voice.
Before everyone could extricate themself, the scenery had already changed along with the setting.
A grim atmosphere loomed.
The joyful sigh from just before had suddenly become a panicked panting of a cornered man. But the trademark insanity of “Emperor Chang” could still be seen in his lines. Even though the man himself had stopped, his panting voice didn’t. “You... You are here to kill Us, aren’t you?”
The first line still had a trace of optimistic hope that the other would answer “no”, but later, he saw the decree and he quickly lost all hope, drowning in despair. But that in turn made him unafraid. “Hehe, that thing in your hand... is that not the token you rebels call the ‘Order to End the Heavens’?”
He was now not only unafraid, but also flew into the reckless rage as if he didn’t care any more after having his last hope quenched.
“Every single one of you are rebels! Each and every one, pushing Us to this extent!” He suddenly roared out. Since the character was of a clear mind, his roar was also much stronger, his speech clear and powerful, “‘End the Heavens?’ Ha, hahahaha... Is the Heavens something anyone can end? What you are doing is not ending the Heavens—it’s rebelling against the will of Heavens!”
His body was already in a seriously bad state, so after cursing for so long, he didn’t have enough breath for the next words, after the yell he could only pant.
But for him, who was the direct lineage of the emperor’s blood, to lose to that bastard little brother of his; and he used to gullibly believe him unconditionally—how could he bear to die just like that?
“He, hehe...” He laughed twice eerily, his voice chilling to the bone.
“We know... You rebels... Want to make Marquess Shunyang the emperor. But Marquess Shunyang, hehe...” Saying this, his face suddenly became chilling as he yelled viciously, “Marquess Shunyang, he’s nothing more than a dirty bastard spawned outside by the previous emperor! It is Us who were titled... The only true crown prince by the previous emperor!”
At that time, the number on the counter had counted down to “5”.
Qi Jing quickly took a deep breath, dispelling all of the atmosphere of the scene and delivered his short curtain call in a crisp voice, “The end. Thank you everyone—”
Without waiting for the MC to act, he left the mic sequence on his own volition.
His activity indicator lamp became grey right away.
Audience 1: ... Eh...
Audience 2: ... Eh, it’s finished??
Audience 3: That’s how you ended the performance?? What about the promised love-hate between Emperor Chang and Marquess Shunyang!!【There was no such promise】〒▽〒
Audience 4: （╯－＿－）╯╧╧ Douchebag, I was so into it and you ended it like that!! This feeling of getting my pants off yet not getting the satisfaction is driving me crazy??
Audience 5: （╯－＿－）╯╧╧ The metaphor by the commenter above took the words right out of my heart!!
Audience 6: （╯－＿－）╯╧╧ Don’t ask for my return date, if you don’t continue then I will hate on you every day on the forum!! I’ll hate on you!!
Yang Chunqu, to whom the mic sequence got returned, was also stupefied, and also blurted out a single, “Eh?”
But when she heard her own voice in the headphones, she finally realized what was happening and quickly recovered her professional MC visage.
“Ah...We’ve come to the end of contestant 16’s performance. No.16 Don’t ask for my return date, performing as ‘Emperor Chang’!” She made the routine announcement for the entire audience with a smile, “Next, we’ll share the voting window, dear listeners, please leave your votes! At the same time, we’ll ask the three judges to proceed with the scoring behind the scenes.”
A/N:
_(:з」∠)_ In fact, I feel like Qi Jing playing a deranged character is especially attractive... (covers face)
Then, this, during writing I really started getting into the love-hate brothers couple... ⟪Order to End the Heavens⟫ is about to be destroyed by me continuously unable to stop headcanoning stuff...
And I guess your emotional state after Qi Jing’s performance is about the same as that of the audience... or is it?
T/N:
Lucilla: I stan, I stan, I stan 2Yan playing deranged characters, but please, be careful with the angst around Uncle Yan QAQ
Mashiro: eh....all the 3 acts were over just like that?........I feel that I am lagging somewhere (⊙ . ⊙)