novelraw Chapter 90: The Conqueror Isn’t Glowering—He Simply Can’t See You!
Chapter 90: The Conqueror Isn’t Glowering—He Simply Can’t See You!
Sun Zhou held the tablet practically up against Jiang Ci’s face.
Jiang Ci’s gaze lifted laboriously from the heavy wooden sword blade and glanced at the screen.
Sweat trickled down from his brow, into his eyes, sharp and stinging.
He blinked, his eyelids barely moving, and muttered under his breath.
“Nice physique, opening a bottle cap with those abs should be no problem.”
“Huh?” Sun Zhou didn’t follow that train of thought at all.
Sun Zhou nearly choked on his words, literally caught in his throat.
Brother! Brother Ci!
Of all times! How can you joke now!
“Ci, this is not the time for jokes!” Sun Zhou stomped his foot in panic, “”“Peng Shaofeng is showing off his muscles, putting it on display for the production and other investors. He’s the best choice for Xiang Yu!”
“Why don’t we switch to the gym too?”
“Start training now, at least you’ll get some definition before the audition, then wearing armor won’t look so bad!”
Jiang Ci refused.
“No need.”
He adjusted his breathing, pulled his already-shifting center of gravity back, planting both feet firmly on the ground.
“Physique isn’t unimportant, but how you portray a character’s aura matters more than appearance.”
“Armor is costume, not soul.”
He closed his eyes again, focusing all his attention back on the heavy wooden sword and his legs.
Sun Zhou opened his mouth, then closed it, unable to speak a single word when faced with Jiang Ci’s tranquility that seemed so out of place.
He quietly put the tablet away and stepped aside.
He didn’t understand.
But he was deeply shaken.
Over the next half month, Jiang Ci’s life was compressed down to a brutal three-point routine.
Hotel, courtyard, hotel.
At 4:50 a.m. like clockwork, he would appear in that dilapidated courtyard.
Horse stance.
Sword practice.
Stage walking.
Master Guan didn’t teach any flashy routines or explain specific techniques.
He only practiced three things.
Standing stance, to train the root.
Swinging the sword, to train the power.
Stage walking, to train the aura.
In the old man’s words, when a martial role steps on stage, before he speaks or reveals himself, just standing there must convey presence.
That presence is hidden in the most fundamental triad: essence, energy, spirit.
The training was brutal.
Every day after training, Jiang Ci looked like he had just been pulled out of water.
The soreness and tearing of his muscles continually pushed his will to the limit.
But Physical Optimization LV1 kept working continuously.
Whenever he felt he was about to collapse, that familiar warm current would surge from his heart,
precisely flowing to the most exhausted parts of his body, neutralizing most of the lactic acid that would drive a person mad.
So the next day, before the first light, he would appear in the courtyard on time, never late by a second.
Master Guan’s attitude toward him subtly shifted over those two weeks.
From initial, undisguised contempt, to mid-period scrutiny, and finally to a complex silence.
He’d seen too many young people come to learn.
Those with talent couldn’t endure hardship.
Those who could endure hardship lacked the spark.
This young man called Jiang Ci was strange.
He wasn’t “playing” at enduring hardship, nor merely “enduring” it.
He was using a near-cruel method to grind himself down.
That morning Jiang Ci was practicing sword swings.
The heavy wooden sword had gradually become more natural in his hands.
He tried to mimic the historical descriptions of Xiang Yu, widening his eyes to look fierce and domineering.
“Wrong.”
The old man drinking tea in the corridor suddenly spoke.
By now he knew why Jiang Ci had come to train,
to play Western Chu’s Conqueror, Xiang Yu.
It was the first time he took the initiative to offer guidance.
Jiang Ci halted his movements and looked at him.
“Your energy is all floating on your face.” Master Guan set down his tea mug. “A conqueror doesn’t intimidate people by glaring.”
He stood, walked up to Jiang Ci, and pointed to his eyes.
“Your ‘I-see-no-one’ isn’t strong enough.”
“There should be no one in your eyes. No enemies, no ministers, nothing.”
“Your energy must sink down, sink into the dantian, not float on your face as an act.”
I-see-no-one.
Those four words made him freeze in place.
In an instant, all his previous thoughts and theories were connected by those four words!
Right!
In Director Wei’s yard, he had concluded that Xiang Yu lived as the “protagonist” of his own script, while Liu Bang was merely an unfit background extra.
In a protagonist’s world, what are other people?
Backdrops!
NPCs!
How would a protagonist focus on the backdrop? How would he bicker with NPCs?
So Xiang Yu’s arrogance wasn’t disdain—it was that he literally couldn’t see people!
In his vision, there was only the realm he intended to conquer and the achievements he intended to create!
The so-called “I-see-no-one” isn’t an expression, but a mindset!
At that moment Master Guan’s theatrical theory and his own system theory perfectly connected!
He suddenly felt his understanding of Xiang Yu evolve from theoretical, armchair analysis to something he could sense physically!
Jiang Ci slowly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the deliberate fierceness he had been forcing with eye micro-expressions was gone without a trace.
His expression became calm, even a bit hollow.
But that hollowness caused an inexplicable chill in Sun Zhou standing opposite him.
In the old man’s cloudy eyes, a glint of light flashed.
He said nothing further, sat back down on his little folding stool, and lifted his tea mug.
During the day Jiang Ci honed his body and aura in the courtyard.
At night he locked himself in his hotel room and reread Records of the Grand Historian, the Book of Han, and various materials on the Chu-Han period.
He searched for the “emotional seams” that history had skimmed over.
At the Battle of Julu, Xiang Yu burned his cooking pots and rowed the boats away—nine battles, nine victories, terrifying the feudal lords.
The histories recorded his courage and his might.
But in that moment, that twenty-something standing on the piled corpses of Qin soldiers, watching the kneeling feudal commanders who didn’t dare breathe—what did he truly feel?
Triumphant contempt for the world? Or the loneliness of being on a high place where the cold is unbearable?
At the Hongmen Feast, he let Liu Bang go. History called it “womanly compassion.” But before making that decision, what were his eye exchanges like with Fan Zeng and Xiang Bo? How much internal struggle did he have?
On the banks of the Wu River, surrounded and sung at on all sides, when he heard familiar dialects from enemy camps, did his hand gripping the sword tremble?
These things are not written in the history books.
And these are the flesh and blood of a character.
Time flew by as he painstakingly polished both extremes.
Half a month passed in a flash.
Jiang Ci’s body didn’t transform into some explosively muscular powerhouse.
He remained slender.
But his entire aura underwent a seismic metamorphosis.
Now he was like an ancient, heavy halberd planted on the battlefield, tempered by blood and fire.
Not sharp, but carrying a silent, oppressive force.
Watching Jiang Ci change day by day, Sun Zhou’s feelings shifted from initial anxious despair to a near-reverent silence.
This was the last day of training.
After three full hours of horse stance, Jiang Ci sheathed the sword and stood; sweat had soaked the ground.
He bowed deeply to Master Guan in the corridor.
Master Guan neither stood nor spoke.
He simply picked up a whitened cloth bundle, stood, walked to Jiang Ci, and tossed it to him.
“These were the wrist guards I used on stage.”
“They’re a bit dirty, but they absorb sweat.”
Jiang Ci caught the still-warm bundle and opened it to find a pair of heavily worn black cotton wrist guards.
They were soaked with traces of time and sweat.
“Thank you, Master Guan.”
Jiang Ci carefully put the wrist guards away.
…
Back at the hotel.
After a shower, Jiang Ci changed into clean clothes and felt every muscle pleasantly tired.
Half a month of extreme training was over.
He felt ready.
Right then, his phone screen lit up.
A message from Lin Wan.
He picked it up and opened it.
“You should be prepared: the choice for Yu Ji in The Legend of Han and Chu has been made.”