Chapter 187 — What Are the Sirens
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
To be honest, Gao Yang was hardly surprised, in the course of searching out biographies of himself, to come across a few strange variant editions. Seven hundred years of change is ample time for any ancient figure to be rearranged into something outlandish by imaginative amateur historians—and Gao Yang Cecil was a gilded name known to the whole continent. The thirty-five-year legendary life of this pioneering hero had never lacked for eager audiences in any stratum of society. As the saying goes, great merit, great fame, and an early grave—where else could one find material so fine?
At this moment Gao Yang even felt a little glad for how backward this world was, glad that its cultural industries, monopolized by the upper classes, had never enjoyed an explosive expansion. Were this place as developed as Earth, he could well imagine the founding martyrs of seven hundred years ago being fitted one by one with character portraits and hung up in a game's cash shop: log in to receive Charles I free, check in seven days for Duke Weirder, and Gao Yang Cecil in the first-purchase bundle...
And every month these people would get new skins, and his two granddaughters would very likely dump the family fortune into the game and whale until it burst, the better to lick the new character art of the Xuanmai Sect—while he, the party in question, risen from his coffin, would maintain an awkwardness of two hundred-plus plus signs throughout the whole affair, wishing he could wipe out his entire house...
Gao Yang smacked himself hard on the forehead and forcibly reined in his thoughts before they bolted any further. He sighed, looking at the "popular reading" before him, full of absurd inventions. Everyone knew the stories inside were false, yet it was the favorite pastime reading of the ladies and young misses of the kingdom's central and southern regions—ample proof of the vigorous vitality of popular literature, and of just how tedious daily life was for the people of this age.
But as the man himself, Gao Yang saw certain underlying facts embedded in those fabricated love stories: not everything in them was false.
Setting aside the beauties and confidantes wedged in by main force, the book mentioned several adventures connected with Gao Yang Cecil—adventures that appeared in no official biography. An outsider seeing them would likely lump them together with the confidantes as the wild imaginings of some second-rate author, but Gao Yang knew that at least half of those little-known adventures were true.
Searching the ruins of ancient tombs in the Gondo Wasteland for traces of the elemental spirits; crossing the "Arcane Scar" at the head of a handful of soldiers in search of a safe passage, and stumbling upon the Gondo magister corps turned to crystal; venturing deep into the mountains when the Cecil domain was still newborn, communing with the elements and receiving their blessing...
These were the other side of Gao Yang Cecil the pioneer. From such experiences one could see that he truly had lived like a cheat with a halo switched on... Of course, whether he was a cheat hardly mattered. What mattered was that these unknown stories had turned up in a preposterous knightly romance—and that was intriguing.
This book had circulated for ages, and its original author could no longer be traced. Probably the man had feared a beating even as he wrote, for the only clue he left behind was his pen name, "Mr. Bard." Gao Yang knew how this gentleman had come by these stories, but he must have been a fellow of boundless patience and no small resourcefulness, calling on who knew how many people who had once had dealings with Gao Yang Cecil, or their descendants, before he could compile such material. And among all these adventure tales, one chapter mentioned Gao Yang Cecil's challenge to the deep sea.