How To Survive as a Villain
chapter-154-30041322

Chapter 154: You Have To Miss Me Deeply.¹

The two of them stared at each other and hurriedly ran towards the cave that the Eastern Wu soldiers had just searched.

The cave wasn’t large, but it was dark, damp, and cold. Chen Ge acted quickly to make a simple torch to illuminate the whole cave, but there was nothing inside the cave that could work. There were only leaves and mud.

“The roof of the cave… the roof of the cave…” Xiao YuAn looked up at the roof of the cave, which was formed by the erosion and dissolution of groundwater, and saw that it was full of holes. Some of them were higher, and some were lower. Since there weren’t any kind of light inside the cave, it was so dark that the roof looked extremely creepy.

“Yan-ge! Can you hear me? Yan-ge, are you here?!” Xiao YuAn put his hands around his mouth and started to shout loudly. His voice echoed every corner of the cave, over and over again. However, as if a stone sunking at the bottom of the sea², no one replied.

“Physician Xiao, do you think that the words ‘roof of the cave’ written on that wooden plate mean something else?” Chen Ge yelled as he knocked at the walls of the cave, only to end up disappointed when he found out that every wall was as solid as stone. Chen Ge then turned around to discuss this with Xiao YuAn, but saw him standing in place, quietly looking up without saying a word.

“Physician Xiao?” Chen Ge walked closer to him: “What are you… looking a-?”

Chen Ge couldn’t finish what he wanted to say, because Xiao YuAn suddenly pressed hard on his shoulders, making him squat down.

“Help me go up.” Xiao YuAn firmly said as he stepped on Chen Ge’s shoulders.

Chen Ge, while exerting some strength, replied: “Physician Xiao, be careful. It’s so dark in here, that I’m afraid of making you hit your head against the roof of the cave.”

Xiao YuAn jumped up and went into a specific hole at the roof of the cave. The hole in front of him was more spacious than what he thought it would be, and since the inside of the hole was vertical, Xiao YuAn had to rely solely on the strength of his arms and feet to support himself. However, because he wasn’t careful enough, he ended up falling.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Chen Ge couldn’t react in time, and only saw how Xiao YuAn fell heavily on the ground, raising a cloud of dust.

Xiao YuAn immediately propped himself up, because he didn’t have the time to check on himself. Without saying a single word, Xiao YuAn pressed Chen Ge down again and stepped on his shoulders one more time. In the end, Chen Ge didn’t have any other choice than to help him go up the hole again. This time, Xiao YuAn took a posture that allowed him to move bit by bit.

At that moment, Chen Ge lit up a torch with what he could find at the last minute, and held it high to help Xiao YuAn see what was inside the hole: “Physician Xiao, be careful. It’s too dark to see clearly. What if there’s a stone wall at the end of the hole? Won’t you end up hitting your head?”

However, after a while passed, Chen Ge could barely see Xiao YuAn’s ankles, until he suddenly heard Xiao YuAn express an ‘ah!’, followed by Xiao YuAn disappearing from sight.

“Physician Xiao! Owowowowaahh where are you?! This is awful! Can you hear me?! Answer me ahhh!!” Chen Ge, who held the torch as high as he could, began to swing it back and forth, while he kept on stubbornly staring at the hole, not daring to move his eyes away.

“I can hear you! I’m not deaf!” Xiao YuAn’s voice suddenly came from the depths of the hole, across the stone wall, sounding distant and hollow: “Chen Ge, since you’re there, you have to catch him….”

Chen Ge replied confused: “Catch… catch what?”

He soon discovered what Xiao YuAn meant when he heard a sound coming from the hole and saw a pair of feet appearing at the entrance of the hole. Such a scene was so bizarre that Chen Ge blurted out ‘oh for my mother-’, and then the torch in his hand fell on the ground, as he raised his hands to catch the man coming out of the roof of the cave. Since Xiao YuAn wasn’t able to hold on any longer, when Chen Ge finally caught that person, his weight instantly caught Chen Ge off guard as he fell on the ground, ending up acting as a human cushion.

“Ouch! Ah mother, it hurts! It hurts!” Chen Ge subconsciously reached out to push that person away from him, but when he saw who it was, he suddenly froze and stared at him wide eyed: “Your Majesty?!”

As soon as he said this, Xiao YuAn fell down from the roof. He fell so heavily, that he ended up rolling twice on the ground. However, he couldn’t care less whether he was hurt or not. He simply turned over and grabbed the man, who had just fallen on top of Chen Ge, into his arms.

Xiao YuAn’s hands were shaking as he held that man tightly. He was so lost in thought, that he murmured something a few times. Then he took a deep breath to force himself to calm down, lowered his head, and gently kissed Yan HeQing’s closed eyes and cold lips: “Yan-ge, it’s me, can you hear me? I’ve found you. I’ve finally found you.”

Finally!!! YHQ is in XYA’s arms ♡✧( ु•⌄• )!!

Also, wasn’t it extremely cute how CG kept worrying that XYA would hit his head against a wall by accident? XD

Footnotes

1. 也得姮娥念我痴 yě de héng é niàn wǒ chī; A sentence from the poem《南乡子·戊申秋隽喜晤故人》written by (高鹗 gāo è) Gao E [1738-1815] from the Qing Dynasty [1644-1911]. This poem was written in the Autumn of the 53th year of Emperor Qianlong’s reign, when Gao E had successfully passed the Imperial Examinations in Shuntian County, so he was able to reunite with his lover again after a long time being apart from each other. The poem reveals his sincere happiness and is written with love and tenderness.
2. 石沉大海 shí chén dà hǎi; It’s a Chinese idiom. It means that when a stone is thrown into the sea, it will sink, and will never be found again. It’s used as a metaphor for ‘never being heard of again’. From《西厢记》(xī xiāng jì) “Romance of the West Chamber”, written by (王实甫 wáng shí fǔ) Wang Shifu [1295-1307], from the Yuan or Mongol Dynasty [1279-1368].