The Martial Arts Stunt Double of the Entertainment Circle – Chapter 2

Awakening

When she opened her eyes again, the ceiling above was snow-white. Tuoba Yan’s entire body was powerless, and her left wrist throbbed with agony: “Mmm…”

“Yanyan!”¹ a somewhat familiar female voice softly exclaimed. “Yanyan!”

            

Yanyan? Tuoba Yan thought groggily. It had been a very, very long time since anyone had called her Yanyan. She struggled to turn her head—the woman sitting beside her was the same one who had been crying bitterly earlier.

Seeing her daughter wake up, Qiao Chunyi was so overjoyed she laughed and cried at the same time. She hurried to call the nurse. After the nurse arrived, she lifted Tuoba Yan’s eyelids to check her pupils, noted something down in a notebook, and then asked kindly, “What is your name?”

Tuoba Yan herself was reeling from this string of upheavals. She said instinctively, “Tuoba… Yan.”

            

The nurse visibly breathed a sigh of relief and exchanged a glance with the delighted Qiao Chunyi. She asked again, “How old are you this year?”

Tuoba Yan fell silent.

The nurse asked her again, “Do you remember who she is?” pointing at Qiao Chunyi.

            

Tuoba Yan looked at Qiao Chunyi’s haggard face and murmured, “Mom…”

The nurse asked no more questions. She continued writing a few lines in her little notebook and told Qiao Chunyi, “No major issues. Her memory might be a bit muddled. Let’s keep observing.”

Qiao Chunyi nodded gratefully at the nurse repeatedly, then asked, “Then—then what can she eat?”

            

Driven by some inexplicable impulse, Tuoba Yan said, “I want to eat meat…”

Both the nurse and Qiao Chunyi were dumbfounded. A few seconds later, the nurse coughed abruptly to cover a laugh, while Qiao Chunyi was so overwhelmed with joy she doubted whether she was dreaming:

Her anorexic daughter had voluntarily asked to eat meat!

            

“Okay, meat. What does Yanyan want to eat?” Qiao Chunyi asked.

The nurse had to intervene: “The patient is still too weak right now. She cannot have heavy, greasy, meaty food. It is best to stick to a liquid diet.”

Qiao Chunyi looked at her daughter’s visibly disappointed expression. “Can she have fish porridge? She used to love fish porridge more than anything.”

            

The nurse said, “Yes, but be careful not to let her eat too much. The patient’s digestive system has somewhat deteriorated from long-term anorexia, so she should not eat until full.”

Qiao Chunyi asked the nurse to keep an eye on her daughter, gathered her bag, and went out to buy porridge.

Only Tuoba Yan remained in the ward. The surrounding beds were all empty. She lay there, slowly sorting through these inconceivable events.

            

First, she had indeed died. That sharp pain of the long sword’s edge slicing across her neck could not have been an illusion.

So then—was this what they called borrowing a corpse to return the soul?²

The woman in white had asked her name earlier, and she had instinctively said “Tuoba Yan.” The mother of this body had shown no unusual reaction, so “Yanyan” must also be named Tuoba Yan. Although, given the subtle difference in pronunciation, the specific written characters might vary somewhat—but it could not be far off.

            

Tuoba Yan was born beyond the northern passes and had grown up there as well. Her everyday meat dishes were mostly roast meat. Later, after she married the Foolish Emperor,³ the cooks in the Imperial Kitchen knew she was not accustomed to seafood or river fare, and almost never served her dishes prepared with fish or shrimp. Later still, after she was deposed, those sycophantic villains who curried favor with the powerful and trampled the lowly delivered food that was nearly spoiled—wilted greens and plain rice—and meat was entirely out of reach.

So when “Mother” had asked what she wanted to eat earlier, Tuoba Yan had instinctively said, “I want to eat meat…”

Thinking back on it now, even for someone as iron-blooded and ruthless as Tuoba Yan, it was somewhat inexplicably embarrassing.

            

Soon, Qiao Chunyi came back with the porridge. She bustled in carrying a container of fish porridge and asked Tuoba Yan gently, “Yanyan, do you want Mom to feed you?”

“No, there is no need.” Tuoba Yan was hardly about to let someone feed her. She tried moving her body and found she could still support herself to sit up and eat. “Thank you… Mom.” It felt somewhat strange to call a woman roughly her own age “Mom.”

Qiao Chunyi cranked up the bed frame, propped a pillow behind Tuoba Yan’s back, and reminded her in a nagging tone, “If anything feels uncomfortable, tell Mom right away. Don’t suffer in silence.”

            

The former Grand General of the Northern Pacification managed to produce a somewhat stiff smile: “Mm.”

Qiao Chunyi simply assumed her daughter was still weak and did not pay much attention to the changes in her demeanor. She placed a board across the bed, set a fragrant container of fish porridge on it, and let Tuoba Yan enjoy her meal.

Tuoba Yan looked down at the bowl of porridge. Tender fish slices rolled in the creamy white rice porridge, seemingly drizzled with sesame oil, with finely chopped scallions and sesame seeds scattered across the surface—it was almost impossible to tear her eyes away.

            

Her injured hand was the left one. Now she eagerly reached out with her right hand to take the disposable spoon that came with the porridge, scooped up a spoonful, and hesitated. Then Tuoba Yan lifted it with effort and offered it to Qiao Chunyi: “Mom… you eat too,” she said haltingly. It always felt somewhat strange to call a woman roughly her own age “Mom.”

Qiao Chunyi nearly burst into tears again. After such a terrible ordeal, her daughter had become so thoughtful and understanding. She fought back her tears so as not to worry the child: “Mom is not hungry. Eat up.”

Tuoba Yan insisted, keeping her hand extended. Her face had even gone a bit pale: “Mom, eat.”

            

Only then did Qiao Chunyi open her mouth and eat, deeply moved. Mother and daughter shared a bowl of porridge, and for a time, the ward was filled with warmth.

To outsiders, it seemed this young girl Tuoba Yan recovered quickly. In order to understand this family and this world, Tuoba Yan asked Qiao Chunyi to bring her the original Tuoba Yan’s books. They were mostly celebrity magazines and some related to beauty, dance, and music. At first, Tuoba Yan was not yet accustomed to simplified Chinese characters, but after having Qiao Chunyi dig out the dictionary from Tuoba Yan’s old school days, she quickly mastered reading simplified characters.

Mother Qiao’s care was meticulous in every detail. She accommodated almost every request that would not harm Tuoba Yan’s body. After a week of recuperation, Tuoba Yan gradually resumed a normal diet and finally put on some flesh, no longer the horrifying skin-and-bones she had been.

            

Whether it was an illusion or not, Tuoba Yan always felt a heartfelt reliance and trust toward Qiao Chunyi. Meanwhile, the events of her past life seemed to be gradually veiled in a thin mist, and that despairing, life-weary mindset was slowly fading its influence on her present self.

After much thought, the former could only be attributed to the natural bond between mother and daughter, linked by blood through this body.

As for the latter, this change was entirely beneficial to her new life. Since she had taken over Tuoba Yan’s body and enjoyed the love and care of Mother Qiao, she naturally had to repay a drop of kindness with a spring of gratitude.⁴ In the days to come, she would honor her mother and never let her shed tears or feel sorrow on her account again.

            

After finishing the large box of magazines Qiao Chunyi had brought, Tuoba Yan found an exquisite little pink notebook. It had been carefully tucked inside a hollowed-out massive dictionary, pressed together with the dictionary at the bottom of the box. Inside was recorded nearly a year’s worth of Tuoba Yan’s diary entries.

It was also from this diary that Tuoba Yan found the causes and consequences of Tuoba Yan’s suicide that had been troubling her for so long.

Tuoba Yan was a daughter from a single-parent family. Her mother, Qiao Chunyi, and her father, Tuoba Xiu, had divorced when she was young. Mother Qiao had never remarried, for Tuoba Yan’s sake. As for Tuoba Xiu, the reason for his divorce from Qiao Chunyi was the involvement of a third party. Shortly after divorcing Qiao Chunyi, he could not wait to marry his pregnant mistress, Gu Min, into his home. Four months later, she gave birth to a daughter named Tuoba Jiao.

            

Qiao Chunyi had worked hard alone to raise her daughter, but Tuoba Yan, in the throes of rebellion, grew harder to manage as she got older. She insisted on competing against her father’s side of the family. When she heard that her younger sister Tuoba Jiao had entered a talent competition, the naturally pretty Tuoba Yan was determined to follow her into the entertainment industry and make a name for herself to show Tuoba Xiu and his family.

But Tuoba Jiao’s participation was not without the factor of certain sponsorships from the Tuoba family. Tuoba Yan, who had neither backing nor scheming, was eliminated in the first round.

The young girl had gotten herself into a dead end. To surpass Tuoba Jiao, no matter how Qiao Chunyi cried, scolded, or beat her, she stubbornly dropped out of school. She frantically searched for opportunities to become a star every day, until she finally learned that a girls’ idol group was recruiting new members. She dressed up and went to register.

            

Mother Qiao could barely afford to send her daughter to a key high school; it was impossible for her to fund dance and physique training. Tuoba Yan’s stiff and awkward performance naturally failed to move the recruiting teachers. One of the women even said cuttingly, “You falsified your weight, didn’t you? Go lose 20 jin⁵ and come back.”

The room immediately erupted in the gloating whispers of the other auditioning girls.

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The author has something to say:

            

Hmm, the mystery of Tuoba Yan’s suicide has been half-unveiled. Let’s see how General Yan fulfills her wishes for her.

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