The Complete Guide to the Use and Care (41-end)

63

Chapter Sixty-three

Ling Miao couldn’t sleep. The instant he fell asleep, he dreamed that Su Yuyang had stopped breathing. Looking at the empty and quiet room, the ghost stories he had read before now all came to mind and he had even more trouble sleeping. He looked for something to do.

He took out his phone and turned on the flashlight. With the guidance of the light, he turned on the light in the room. Silver lamplight filled the room, calming Ling Miao instantly.

He put the bedside desk up, then felt thirsty. He glanced around the room and noticed a cup by the laptop.

The cup was only half-full, with a lid beside it. Ling Miao surmised that Su Yuyang had drunk half of it, then forgotten to put on the lid.

Ling Miao hadn’t the courage to go out and get more water. He stopped caring about whether this cup was Su Yuyang’s. He walked over, picked it up, and took a great gulp. He was about to return to bed when his gaze was drawn to a stack of papers on the desk.

The paper on top of the stack was densely covered in writing. As Ling Miao glanced at it, he saw words like ‘Chapter XX.’

“The outline of a new novel?” Ling Miao’s eyes lit up. The fear in his heart dissipated and was replaced with excitement. He picked up the paper and started reading closely.

There were two colors of ink on the paper, black and red. Black seemed to be a plot outline, red seemed to be suggestions. Ling Miao had only to read two chapters before he was sure that this wasn’t the outline of a new book. Su Yuyang was writing suggestions, or something similar, for an existing book. Finishing one sheet, Ling Miao picked up another sheet.

The stack of paper was arranged so that the latest chapters were on topin front. After Ling Miao discovered this, he looked at a few sheets in reverse order and found that Su Yuyang’s feedback was extremely incisive. If edits were made according to Su Yuyang’s suggestions, this book would be passable, even if it wasn’t a work of art. Ling Miao envied the author of the book being reviewed in these pages. He even thought about asking Su Yuyang to critique him. If Su Yuyang didn’t agree, he’d use good food to tempt him. If Su Yuyang still didn’t agree, Ling Miao would use the surefire tactic of pestering him.

But Su Yuyang had written his critique in such detail. It had to be an incredibly taxing effort, both mentally and spiritually.

Ling Miao picked up another sheet and began reading in detail. Suddenly, two words made his heart stutter—’Xiao Miao.’

“Xiao… Xiao Miao?” Ling Miao looked closely, then looked again. He had seen correctly.

Ling Miao fished out the last sheet in the stack. At the top, written in red and center aligned: ‘Hundred Transformations Deity: Detailed outline and someone’s suggestions.’

“This…he actually wrote this for me?” Ling Miao clutched the thin sheet of paper, his lips trembling as he tried to find the words to describe his current emotional state. He sat down on the bed in shock. Looking at the hundreds of sheets of paper on the desk, his breathing gradually grew erratic.

Su Yuyang had written about each chapter, from the first to the most recent one numbering over 700, on a separate sheet of paper. 700+ chapters is about 2 million words…

“Since when has Su Yuyang been fixing it?”

Ling Miao looked at Su Yuyang tenderly. He caressed Su Yuyang’s pallid face with a finger, laugh-scolding: “Idiot, the book’s already this bad. What’s the point of fixing it? Even if you want to help me, wait for me to start a new book! Fuck it, I was going to end it early because of you! I learned from you and was gonna just write an outline for the last few chapters. Ah. I keep thinking that after Hundred Transformations, I’ll make a new penname. A penname with a bad history—the less I use it the better.” If Su Yuyang could hear Ling Miao’s words, he’d surely jeer: “It’s just a failed book. Who cares if you have a bad history?”