Un-edited so please don’t kill me if you find anything wrong, please gently commenting so I can fix it. Thank you.
After Fang Daichuan made some jokes, Li Sinian’s mood improved a little. He was still holding the paper bag of bread in his hand, which made a loud sound when he squeezed it in his palm.
“Do you like acting?” Li Sinian asked, sitting on the reef, to keep up with Fang Daichuan’s words.
“I like it.” Fang Daichuan lowered his head and smiled, a little embarrassed. This era is too utilitarian, you don’t need to feel any shame if you said that you like money, cats and doing nothing. But if someone in your life asks you, do you like your job? If you say yes metaphorically and say it’s my dream, you’ll look childish and immature and out of step with the world, especially if you’re not doing well.
Of course, there are people who ask in public, and everyone answers in the same way: “I like acting, I don’t want to make money. It is my dream to be an actor.” However, the actors themselves didn’t believe it, as they watched the fans on stage cheering in unison, moved to tears by the dreams of their idol, the hosts with encouraging smiles on their faces, applauding politely, but their faces covered in thick foundation, all impatient and going through the motions.
At the beginning, Fang Daichuan would seriously tell the audience about his dreams, how he hoped to weave a real world for the audience and lead them to feel the chivalrous spirit of drawing a sword and calling out injustice. Later, he found that no one cared, and gradually he stopped talking about it.
He still remembers that when he first debuted, he was a newborn calf* and sincerely told his dream. Everyone on the stage applauded, but he was ridiculed by the male lead from the same movie when he stepped down. “What kind of drama do you add to yourself? A third-rate little actor, who acts as a stand-in and stuntman, you think you can talk about dreams?” The male lead said.
https://www.cchatty.com/idiom/116898?hl=zh
Fang Daichuan told himself that he was not a glass-hearted person*, but in public, he was taunted and ridiculed by the seniors from the same movie on the table. For a long time later, he pressed all his feelings to the bottom of his heart, letting his emotions collapse and ferment, feeling too ashamed to tell it to others.
——Don’t know why today is different, maybe it was because it is a lonely island, or he felt that with Li Sinian’s EQ, he would not be ridiculed no matter how disdainful it was, or maybe it was the clear sky, the hazy glimmer star and moon made him distracted and clouded his senses, with a smile, he said I like it.
Li Sinian watched him all the time, only to realise that there was a dimple on his right cheek, not deep, but round and cute that showed when Fang Daichuan smiled and said “I like it”.
He had a strange rhythm to his pronunciation, the swallowing and childishness of the northern accent, which often made his tone seem a little droning, but when he lowered his voice and said with great depth and solemnity that he liked it, Li Sinian heard his heart thump.
(T/N : Link to hear the Northern Chinese Accent yourself)
——It is said that some people’s voices can synthesise and resonate with others’ heartbeats and they can control the other’s heartbeats with their voices. He wonders if Fang Daichuan is one of those people.
Li Sinian’s right index finger twitches uncontrollably and gently at a strange frequency. He stared down at his index finger with astonishment, feeling very surprised himself. He had always had a keen instinct for danger, and sometimes when he subconsciously sensed danger, his body would indeed alert him in this way before his consciousness had awakened. A few of his friends in the mercenary regiment had been amazed by this supernatural ability and had even nicknamed him Lee “the right hand of God”.
(T/N : Remember that in English, Li and Lee are the same. Also Lee is in English in raw)
At the moment, however, Li Sinian stared at his twitching right index finger and looked around. The waves around him were still the same, the drizzle still falling and even though he had his brain’s alert radar turned up to 100 per cent, he did not detect any lurking danger. –The feeling in his body was not the same as before, it is instead a wonderful sensation that was hard to describe, it is not constricting, but a little soft, as if there was a swamp spreading up under his feet, soft mud climbing up his body that he strangely did not want to struggle with.
“I like acting, I don’t know if you have ever had that feeling, but sometimes I feel very lonely for no reason. For example, in the banquet hall, when I hear the lead singer’s raspy voice, I look around holding a glass of wine but I don’t know who to talk to. Sometimes I sit on the balcony in the early hours of the morning, watching the traffic in the distance, the long queues of cars leaving town, and wondering where they were going and what their story was. ——But I am not alone when acting. There are brothers who will live and die with you, friends with a promise worth one thousand in gold*, a desperate villain and a love that goes forever*. Every time I sit in the cinema and watch myself in a play, I think, “In my life, if I can meet just one of these feelings, it’s already enough.” Fang Daichuan looked cross-legged at the distant sea level as several seabirds skimmed the surface, their wing feathers quivering and a long, stirring call emanating from their beaks.
(T/N : … So, basically this [还有一往而深的爱情] I will translate as ‘the longer it goes, the deeper the feelings’ so yeah, love that goes forever to make it easier to read and better flow. No wonder this paragraph is known as ‘one of best quotes in WOYE’ by fans, there are so many idioms to search! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ )
He looked back at Li Sinian a little embarrassedly and scratched his head: “Am I being childish?”
Li Sinian looked back at him, in his light amber pupils, there was a soft glowing light spreading. His voice was very soft, lest he would not believe: “You are very enthusiastic.”
“Enthusiasm?” Fang Daichuan was confused by this adjective, “Forget it, you’re a foreigner, I can’t expect you to know the appropriateness of the words you use.”
Li Sinian smiled and did not refute.
I’m not kidding you, he thought, this puppy has always had a clumsy enthusiasm, with all the positive human feelings.
With that realisation, Li Sinian seemed to have seen the swamp just now and the last part of his body was caught in it and finally he was fully submerged.
The two sat in a daze for a while, the breeze from the sea washing away the heat and humidity of the day and bringing some coolness. Don’t know where the sea breeze was coming from, but it brought a subtle stench.
In the distance the waves rippled a little more, and the white bubbles swooshed and tossed, gathering more small fish that were being rolled up by the waves and bringing seabirds who fought for it.
Li Sinian’s whole body and mind were immersed in an inexplicable soft emotion, losing his wits for a rare moment and losing his alertness to potential danger. It was only when the waves pounded up to both their feet and Li Sinian inadvertently glanced down and saw the small deep-sea fish and the seafloor rock and sand full of marine life rolling up with the waves that he suddenly realised something was wrong with the gathering of sea birds that had been churning in the waves all night.
“Something’s not right!” He snapped back to his senses and pulled Fang Daichuan, and the two of them quickly retreated.
A violent wave struck, and the whole sea seemed like a boiling cauldron, tumbling and spilling with foam, splitting an instantly not too narrow gap where the two men had just stood. The scene looks as if Moses is dividing the sea. The sand and gravel were swept into the sea filling the breach on the island with unknown animal carcasses. The whole island looked like a crispy biscuit, being grilled over a fire, about to break in the middle from the heat. Fang Daichuan watched in amazement at this natural greatness.
“The beginning to the submarine eruption…” Li Sinian’s expression was solemn, his jawline was tense, “That boss may not be lying at all!”
(T/N : The submarine volcano is mentioned at chapter 5, since it is going to erupted I simply using submarine eruption for this part, link for more info)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_eruption
Fang Daichuan stepped on a sand pit. The sand pit itself was not strong. It was split in half by the earlier vibration. His right foot just stepped on it and sank directly into it. Just as he was about to pull out his right foot, Fang Daichuan suddenly had goosebumps. ——The sand pit at his foot is the place where everyone buried the beer belly together. It was probably because someone was buried that the sand was not solid, so it was shaken by vibration from the sea.
With some horrible vision in mind, Fang Daichuan’s right foot, which was stuck in the sand, struck the bottom of the pit.
“Li Sinian…” Li Sinian was still observing the situation on the sea surface. He turned around when he heard his voice, only to see Fang Daichuan’s pale face, a cold sweat clearly rolling down the side of his face and into his collar.
What’s wrong? Li Sinian showed a puzzled look and followed his gaze towards his feet.
Beneath Fang Daichuan’s feet was a large, human-shaped pit, the floating sand having rolled away down the crack that had split the shore not far away, leaving only a bit of solid sand on either side. –The pit was empty, and there was nothing in it.
Fang Daichuan’s voice has a trace of panic and his voice trailing off into the air.
He said: “Beer belly’s corpse… is gone…”
(T/N : This chapter almost did not make it to today’s upload. I try my best to update daily so forgive me for this chapter where I still have some idiom in Mandarin that I have yet English-ing yet so I just put the link for more info for the reader. Sorry Editor for extra work; finding English equivalent word is just takes too much time for me… ( ̄  ̄|| ) )