Acting is a really difficult thing.
Especially playing a villain.
At some point, people started liking to build contradictory points into villainous roles, using that as an opportunity to explore human nature and sneak in their own messages.
This is especially true in Daxia, a country where everyone seems to speak in riddles, taking about eight hundred detours just to say one sentence, practically requiring a “Chinese-to-Chinese” translation.
A phrase has even emerged from this:
“Just because he’s a villain doesn’t mean you have to write him as a one-dimensional villain!”
This gives many actors a huge headache when they get a villain role.
It’s very common to see actors working with character backgrounds spanning several pages, or even dozens of pages, when preparing for a role.
As the male lead villain in The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate,
Yu Huatian is naturally like this too.
When Yang Mi first got the script back then, she read it.
This character is very complex. He has experienced decline and also moments of grandeur.
He possesses greed, but also aloofness and integrity.
All these contradictory traits come together, making the role of Yu Huatian extremely difficult to portray.
Without serious refinement and patient deliberation, it’s simply impossible to bring him to life.
But now,
looking at Jiang Nian standing there, sword in hand,
Yang Mi felt a sense of daze.
It was as if time had rewound, and the years had passed by.
Amidst the swirling sand and dust, a swordsman in a black robe over a white garment walked slowly forward.
He was restrained yet elegant, commanding respect without showing anger.
His arrogant posture seemed to say there wasn’t a single person in the world worthy of his attention.
With his sharp blade in hand, still sheathed,
he still gave off an intimidating aura, like a thorn in one’s back, a bone stuck in one’s throat.
“This…”
Snapping back to reality, Yang Mi swallowed hard, her face full of surprise.
“Different, completely different!”
She murmured softly.
Just now, she had subconsciously compared Jiang Nian’s previous performance as ‘Du Gao’.
And she realized that Jiang Nian now, whether in terms of aura or feel,
was completely different from that ‘Du Gao’ he had played before.
If you didn’t look at his face, you would never guess that these two roles were actually performed by the same person!
This felt unbelievable to Yang Mi.
Jiang Nian had just gotten the script!
How did he manage to fully grasp this character so quickly?!
You couldn’t even call him a genius; he was a prodigy!
Yang Mi’s heart was filled with shock.
But soon, she composed herself.
Because she remembered what happened earlier.
And she realized the key issue right now wasn’t Jiang Nian’s acting skills, but practicing martial arts!
“You almost fooled me again.”
“Today, I’m going to see exactly what you can actually show me!”
Yang Mi thought to herself silently.
Jiang Nian, meanwhile, was oblivious to this.
He was currently going through Yu Huatian’s memories.
The Sword-Breaking Art.
As the name suggests, this martial art aims to make your swordsmanship so superb that you can easily shatter an opponent’s sword, leaving them with no weapon to face you.
Therefore, to practice it, besides swordsmanship, you need extremely high levels of control over your strength!
If you use too much force, the opponent’s sword breaks, but yours breaks too. Losing the advantage of superior equipment makes the effort useless.
If you hold back too much and can’t break the opponent’s sword, you won’t achieve your goal.
Jiang Nian needed to find a suitable middle ground.
So, his practice didn’t look very good at first. The sword swings were even somewhat crooked and deformed.
Seeing this, Yang Mi frowned deeply, thinking to herself, what kind of lousy form was Jiang Nian practicing? She could call her grandmother over, and even she would do better than him.
Just as she couldn’t bear to watch any longer and was about to step in and stop him,
suddenly,
Hum—
The blade sliced through the air.
Like ripples spreading on water.
Or like the distorted heat haze from a roaring engine.
Ripples visibly shimmered in the air.
“???”
Seeing this, Yang Mi was stunned.
She couldn’t quite believe what was happening and quickly rubbed her eyes.
What was going on?
Were her eyes playing tricks on her?
Did something just ripple there?
But when she looked carefully again, everything seemed normal, as if what she had seen just now was just an illusion.
“Jiang Nian, just now was…”
“What?”
Jiang Nian sheathed his sword, looking a bit lost.
He had been so focused on practicing that he hadn’t noticed anything outside, and had no idea what had happened.
Yang Mi seemed a bit incoherent. “The sword, the sword you swung just now, the air distorted!”
“Huh?”
Jiang Nian was confused, completely baffled.
What kind of nonsense was Yang Mi talking about?
Swords and air?
“I don’t get it.”
“Oh come on, your sword! How can I describe it… Anyway, just try swinging it again and you’ll see!”
Hearing this, Jiang Nian looked at her skeptically. To be honest, he felt like Yang Mi was losing it.
But then again, her losing her mind seemed unlikely.
“Swing the sword?”
Jiang Nian muttered, then gripped the sword tightly and slashed forward.
Hum!
A faint, almost imperceptible sound rang out.
This time, both Jiang Nian and Yang Mi clearly saw the rippling air left in the wake of the sword swing.
“!!!”
Yang Mi was speechless.
Jiang Nian was also very surprised. He looked at the sword in his hand in disbelief, never expecting that just practicing a little could yield such a result!
“Is this Sword-Breaking Art really this awesome?”
“After practicing for just a short while, I can already produce a sword aura?”
“No, that’s not right, this isn’t a sword aura. It’s too weak. At best, it’s just an airwave.”
Almost instantly, Jiang Nian understood what was happening.
But precisely because of that, the questions in his mind only multiplied.
It was undeniable that Yu Huatian’s Sword-Breaking Art was very powerful.
But no matter how powerful it was, producing an airwave right at the beginning of practice was clearly unreasonable.
It was like learning to run before even figuring out how to crawl.
“So, this airwave…”
“Is it my internal energy?”
Since it wasn’t something external, he had to look inward.
Jiang Nian thought about it and realized that only his own internal energy could achieve this.
And after checking, finding that his internal energy had indeed decreased, Jiang Nian became even more certain of this guess!
“How did you do that?”
Just as Jiang Nian was piecing together the known information to analyze his own situation,
Yang Mi looked at him, her face full of curiosity as she asked.
But Jiang Nian was deep in thought and didn’t have the time to pay her any attention.
Seeing this, Yang Mi felt a bit annoyed, so she reached out directly, trying to grab Jiang Nian to snap him out of it.
Good news: she succeeded. Her action brought Jiang Nian back to his senses immediately.
Bad news: the moment Yang Mi’s hand touched Jiang Nian, she felt the world spin around her.
By the time she came to, she was already lying on the ground, her back aching.
“???”
Looking up at the clear blue sky, Yang Mi’s head was spinning.
What just happened?
How did she end up on the floor?
Jiang Nian twitched the corner of his mouth, looking down at Yang Mi lying on the ground with a dazed expression on her face.
He never expected that just spacing out for a second would trigger the full-auto counterattack of the [Shaolin Virgin Boy Skill].
This was just…
“Mi Jie, if I said I didn’t do it on purpose, would you believe me?”
Yang Mi: “…”
