sid_guardian | Guardian Readalong: Vol. 3, Chapters 3 & 4

Welcome aboard for this week's chapters of our Guardian readalong!

Here are last week's chapters (the beginning of vol. 3). You can find all previous discussions on the schedule post (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4), or via the !readalong tag.

This week's chapters:

Chapter 3: Zhao Yunlan escapes his father's scolding, keeps falling asleep, and is fed medicine by Shen Wei. Zhu Hong gets a visit from her uncle, who wants her to leave Dragon City. Zhao Yunlan surprises Shen Wei in the kitchen cutting his own chest with a knife, and learns what medicine Shen Wei has been feeding him.
Chapter 4: Zhao Yunlan sleeps at the SID, and the team gossips about it. Shen Wei brings clothes while he's asleep. Zhu Hong refuses to leave Zhao Yunlan's side, gives him a gift from her uncle, and offers to sever ties with her tribe if he wants her to stay.

The corresponding part in the Chinese version on JJWXC/the fan translation are chapters 81-82.

Excerpts:

1) Shen Wei feeds Zhao Yunlan medicine

The noise in his ears only intensified, growing from a mere clamor to a cacophony. Zhao Yunlan knew he was dreaming, but the knowledge didn't free him. He remained ensnared in the dream, as if he'd fallen into a bog that was swallowing him up. The more he struggled, the less he could breathe.

Then a bowl that smelled of something raw was pressed to his lips. Ignoring his struggles, the person holding it pried his mouth open and forced him to take the medicine. Zhao Yunlan resisted instinctively, trying to push the stuff back out of his mouth with his tongue. The person seemed to sigh. Then hands cradled his head, and soft lips pressed against his. A familiar scent momentarily quieted Zhao Yunlan's thoughts of protest, and the other person seized their chance to make him swallow the medicine.

Zhao Yunlan's eyes flew open as he started coughing and found himself already home in bed. Dazed, he watched as Shen Wei set down the bowl and brought him a cup of tea that was at the perfect temperature. Shen Wei ducked his head and touched their foreheads together. "Here," he said. "Drink this and rinse your mouth."

Zhao Yunlan accepted the tea. His heavy lashes were lowered, and a trace of cold sweat from his nightmare still beaded his forehead. In a single gulp, he drank the tea to the last drop before asking hoarsely, "Did I catch a cold? Why am I getting sick so easily lately?"

There was a curious pause before Shen Wei replied, "It's nothing. Your time within the Great Divine Tree took too much of your energy."

"Oh." After a long look, Zhao Yunlan continued, deliberately drawing out each word, "I thought maybe..." Shen Wei's spine stiffened, only for him to hear the dumbass conclude, with a bit of a lilting whine, "I was carrying your child."

2) Kitchen scene: Shen Wei is caught

The other side of the bed was empty and already cold to the touch. It was impossible to say how long Shen Wei had been gone.

Startled, Zhao Yunlan sat up and saw light coming from the kitchen. He groped around the floor for his slippers, but when he couldn't find whatever corner they'd been kicked into, he headed for the kitchen barefoot.

Shen Wei was facing away, doing something with his hands as Zhao Yunlan entered. A little clay pot bubbled on the stove. The faint smell of a medicinal decoction wafted from the pot, as if Shen Wei was preparing some grand dish that needed to be stewed overnight.

Zhao Yunlan rubbed his eyes and walked over, rolling up his sleeves. "What are you making? I'll help-" His voice startled Shen Wei, who dropped what he'd been holding.

What clattered to the floor was a knife, dripping enough blood that the clean white cabinets were spattered when it landed. Zhao Yunlan broke off mid-sentence, pupils constricting. In an instant, all trace of sleepiness was gone. Shen Wei had been...had been cutting into his own chest .

3) Kitchen scene: Shen Wei explains

"Long ago...your left soul fire went missing, and your heart's blood became the Soul-Guarding Lamp's wick," Shen Wei responded, very low. "Your spirit was already weak. Your three souls were unstable. And for all that you forcibly elevated me to godhood, the fact remains that I was born from the Place of Great Disrespect. The gui are filthy and inauspicious. If you spend enough time in my presence, I'll start wearing you down. As I do, you'll become deficient in both qi and blood. Ultimately, I'll burn you out until there's nothing left."

Shen Wei dropped his gaze, hiding his ink-black eyes under lashes like crow feathers. Barely audible now, he said, "All those thousands of years ago, Shennong said that, as a King of the Gui, my life was fated to both begin and end badly. If you insist on protecting me and keeping me at your side, I'll inevitably kill you."

"So the 'medicine' I've been drinking has your blood in it... The purest blood from the tip of your heart." Zhao Yunlan's lips trembled. "That's your way of replenishing my 'lamp oil'?"

Shen Wei looked at him with a faint, soft smile. "Every part of me is dark, down to my very soul. Only the very tip of my heart is clean, and that's where I've kept you-where the blood runs red. I'll gladly use it to protect you."

4) Zhao Yunlan's dream

If it was at all possible, Zhao Yunlan wanted to regain Kunlun-jun's powers and true memories. Failing that, he at least wanted to know what was up with all these lies among truths, shrouded in layers of mystery, and learn what had motivated it all. He couldn't act rashly without seeing the full picture.

Shen Wei... The name alone overwhelmed Zhao Yunlan with worry. It was as though a flame was burning in his heart, steadily eating away at his energy, but he had to hold it in-and not only that, he had to seem outwardly peaceful while he was at it, as if he had everything under control.

He'd noticed at times that if he was just sitting there and no one else was around, his brow would furrow subconsciously. The same scene kept unfolding in his mind, no matter where he was or what he was doing: in some cold, dreary place, without a single beam of light or sign of life, Shen Wei was half swallowed by an endless darkness. Helpless to do anything but look up, Shen Wei desperately strained to glimpse the emerald seas and azure skies, but they were beyond him. His vision couldn't pierce the unending, absolute blackness. Sooner or later, inevitably succumbing to disappointment and despair, Shen Wei was slowly sucked away into the darkness...

Zhao Yunlan jolted awake as someone abruptly nudged him. He found his heart racing and his forehead beaded with sweat.

5) Zhu Hong's confession

Zhu Hong found her real feelings tumbling out of her mouth. "Director Zhao, just give me the word. One word and I'll sever all ties with my tribe and follow you to the end, through hell or high water."

It was as if she'd handed her whole life over on a silver platter, leaving her scared of Zhao Yunlan's response, but also anticipating it. However, a declaration of love was never guaranteed reciprocation. In the end, Zhao Yunlan still wouldn't meet her eyes.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "You and I have known each other for years, and we don't have any grudges against each other. Why can't I wish you well? As long as you're doing well, that's what matters to me."

The light in Zhu Hong's eyes flickered out.

Questions:

Do you like the worldbuilding around borrowing years? What do you think about the kitchen scene, and how it was adapted in the drama? Which is more intense? Which do you like better? Is Fourth Uncle right to make Zhu Hong leave? Do you think Zhao Yunlan actually wants Zhu Hong to stay, even if he won't say it? Does it help with understanding what's going on that Zhao Yunlan is actively trying to puzzle out what's true and what's a lie?

(As usual, these are just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like!)

Our current schedule (which is also where you can sign up to host a post - please do if you can!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I 100% fail at structural analysis, lol. Here's how it seems to me:

Novel: Weilan dominates everything. There's some Guo Changcheng scenes, and a few other SID characters get moments, and there was the mythology dump inside the Divine Tree, but those are all just seasoning for the love story. The parts with Ghost Face breaking the Great Seal and the Netherworld trying to awaken Kunlun feel to me, at this stage, pretty peripheral to the focus of the story, which is largely concerned with Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei figuring out how to be together, given their everything. (The reason I see the plot with Ghost Face and so on as separate is because Weilan really don't seem to be thinking about it that much? The SID reacts to cases, but at least lately, Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan are mostly caught up in their relationship stuff. So the background machinations feel almost entirely disconnected to me.) (Which of course might be my own skewed reading, because the relationship stuff is where a lot of my focus is.)

Drama: because it's not ~officially~ a love story, the relationship plot is completely woven into the "Ye Zun tries to take over the world" plot: Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan become partners as they start to get a sense of the big picture, and they join forces partly in reaction to the building threat. Whatever they do, it's all part and parcel of the wider picture. Weilan is still the heart of it, but that heart only beats because the rest of the body is there. If that makes sense?

That's where I was coming from. Thinking about it more, I think you could easily say that there are two major plot threads in the drama -- Zhao Yunlan & Shen Wei, and Shen Wei & Ye Zun -- and they come together at the end. Is that what you were thinking?

Okay, let me see if I can explain how I see it. *g*

You originally said that to you, in the novel it feels like Weilan is the A plot and everything else is the B plot whereas in the drama Weilan is woven into everything else and it's all the A plot, and to me it's more like in the novel there is only one plot, and it's all about Weilan or at least Kunlun - everything else is just sketched in around the edges and doesn't rise to the level of a B plot. Whereas the drama has multiple things going on - the Weilan romance which is inextricably tied up with the main action plot, but also (as you say) the SW & YZ secondary strand (which is secondary mainly because it's not woven through the entire drama but only the second half), and the recurring side characters with their own subplots, and the cases of the week on top of that, all of which get more focus than any secondary plot gets in the novel, because 40 episodes of space.

So it feel to me exactly the other way round from how you initially put it. *g* But as you see, I agree with what you're saying in this comment about Weilan dominating in the novel and everything else being seasoning - except that I don't think of the Ghost Face etc. stuff as separate, just more flavouring that the novel cares very little about in its own right. I don't feel like anything is disconnected because to me, it's all there in service of the Weilan plot. *g*

And I also agree that in the drama the main action plot and the Weilan plot are completely entwined, and unlike the novel, neither one is really dominant. It's just that the drama has more going on on top of that - fleshing out so many things that the novel wasn't interested in fleshing out, with subplots that stand on their own even though they also serve to mirror and illuminate the main themes.

Whatever they do, it's all part and parcel of the wider picture. Weilan is still the heart of it, but that heart only beats because the rest of the body is there. If that makes sense?

100%! ♥ ♥ ♥

everything else is just sketched in around the edges and doesn't rise to the level of a B plot.

Ah right, that totally makes sense (and also explains why I keep forgetting about the rest of it and have to remind myself, lol).

and the recurring side characters with their own subplots, and the cases of the week on top of that, all of which get more focus than any secondary plot gets in the novel, because 40 episodes of space.

Right. Yes! And also, just, the drama seems more interested in worldbuilding-related themes, and that necessarily calls for a wider focus... as you go on to say. *facepalm* *leaves this here anyway*

I don't feel like anything is disconnected because to me, it's all there in service of the Weilan plot. *g*

Gotcha. And yes, now that you say it, that makes total sense.

100%! ♥ ♥ ♥

\o/ \o/ \o/ <3 <3 <3

Guardian Readalong: Vol. 3, Chapters 3 & 4

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