The second installment.
3. Last, Xiao Nai = Mr. Darcy
I think most of my blog-readers will figure out why I said Xiao Nai is Mr. Darcy. But I’ll explain how I find the story of The Girl Bandit Abducts Her Groom relates to Mr. Darcy. I don’t think it’ll be obvious. lol.
The story began in Episode 5. Weiwei was inspired to write a story that all 5 of them, that is, she and Xiao Nai’s team, could enter in the Video Contest
This is her conversation with Xiao Nai. I got the translation off Netflix:
XN: Have you come up with a plot?
WW: Yes, but it’s very sentimental.
XN: I’m all ears.
WW: Guzheng Player encounters Girl Bandit in the woods, en route to the capital. Girl Bandit kidnaps him and takes him back to their mountain hideout. Girl Bandit falls in love with Guzheng Player. She lavishes him with affection, but Guzheng Player is unhappy.
Weiwei then narrated how the female bandit prepared Guzheng Player food which he ignored. Sensing his great disdain for her, the female bandit tried to explain her circumstances, “My grandpa was a bandit. My father was a bandit. So, I was born to be a bandit. I don’t know how to do anything besides cheat or steal. And I don’t know what else to do. Every single person here is a bandit. You detest me so much, but I’ve never actually killed anyone. I’m not the worst. But of course, I’m still a bad person. I’d like to raise some chickens and ducks, like the girls who live at the foot of the mountain, who rise to work at dawn and return home to rest at dusk, living quiet and peaceful lives. But that’s just a dream that will never come to true.”
Then, seeing that her words fell on deaf ears and didn’t move him one bit, the female bandit decided to let him go. She said, “Leave here. I’ll set you free.”
But even as she released him, she was still sad to see him go so she trailed behind him in secret. Fortunately for him, she was following because when a monster suddenly appeared in the woods and he tried to flee but tripped, she came out of hiding to rescue him. The monster hurled at weapon at him but she threw herself on top of him and took the hit instead. She ignored her injury and continued fighting until she won.
Because she saved him, he decided to accept her love for him. They returned to the bandits’ stronghold to be married.
While she danced for him at a feast, he played his instrument for her.
But soon after, his people came to rescue him from his captivity. She fought all of them while he stood to one side watching her fend them off.
Once she defeated them, he approached her. They were gazing into each other’s eyes when he took out a knife hidden under his robes and he stabbed her. She looked at him realizing that he betrayed her. She collapsed and he caught her in his arms.
Later, one of his soldiers told him, “My Lord, you have had a rough time. Now we have wiped out the bandits, folks here will finally live in peace. My Lord, you deserve all the credit. You didn’t have to kill her, My Lord.”
He replied, “Instead of spending the rest of her life hating me, I’d rather that she’s dead.”
Now, Weiwei stopped her story here because she wasn’t sure how to end the story. She didn’t know whether what to do with Guzheng Player.
WW: Maybe it ends with Guzheng Player jumping off of a cliff, following her death, because he suddenly realizes he’s in love with her? What do you think?
XN: Pretty good. Let’s go with it.
WW: You really think so?
XN: Mmm. I don’t have many lines. We’ll start shooting once the script is done.
The impression he gave here was that he didn’t care either way. He was fine with whatever she decided as long as he wasn’t required to do a whole of speaking. But in truth, he sat for a while mulling over the story.
Then, he began typing again. The viewers would only realize what he was typing after he uploaded the video in the following episode.
In Episode 6, the story of the Girl Bandit was finally completed. Xiao Nai was hovering in the library where Weiwei was studying. Of course, she still didn’t know that Xiao Nai’s avatar was her in-game husband, Yuxiao Naihe.
Xiao walked over to the bookshelves to hide and watch her reaction to the edits he made to their plot. The story remained the same up until Guzheng Player and Girl Bandit returned home to their lair after the monster attack.
This time, there were fireworks at their wedding and the ceremony was more elegant.
Also, at the feast, when his soldiers came to rescue him, Guzheng Player stood in the middle, instead of in the corner.
The Girl Bandit moved to stand behind him when Guzheng Player was encircled by his men. Because their backs were together, she didn’t see him turn around and stab her in the back. She fell to the ground and he knelt in front of her as his people marched out of the room.
Now, the point is that Xiao Nai changed the manner of Girl Bandit’s death so she and Guzheng Player wouldn’t be staring at each other as he betrayed her.
Weiwei began to cry here as she saw the new ending. In this revised script, the Guzheng Player removed himself from society and left for the mountains. His soldier protested, “You have such a bright future. Why must you waste away on this desolate mountain?” The ending scene was of the Guzheng Player playing his instrument while his dead wife, Girl Bandit, danced in front of him.
To me this scene meant that for the rest of his lonely life, the Guzheng Player was going to be haunted with his short but happy memories of her. The burden of loneliness and longing for her was the terrible price he had to pay because he sacrificed her for the sake of the greater good.
Jumping off the cliff would have been the easy way out for him. With this finale, his separation from her was his atonement.
Weiwei wondered, “How did this happen? When we shot the ending, Girl Bandit dies and Guzheng Player jumps off the Sunset Peak with her body in his arms. I can’t believe Naihe made such a melodramatic change to the ending.” She took deep breaths to compose herself so people wouldn’t know that she cried her eyes out over a video. He however could see her emotional reaction to his revision and he smiled.
She texted him to ask about the changes.
WW: Did you change the ending?
XN: Yes, otherwise the running time is too short. (Methinks he’s lying.)
WW: Running time, what running time? I remember the video can be any length.
XN: In the detailed guidelines, the winning video that is over 30 minutes long will receive double the reward. We already took the time to make it. We should earn all we can. (Again, I think he’s lying.)
WW: (thinking to herself) Wow! That’s what makes him the master player. He even studied the detailed guidelines. But are your confident that we will win for sure? No, that’s not the point. The point is, according to Naihe, the ending plot that nearly drove to tears was added to stretch the running time?
Here, Weiwei was voicing her disappointment. She thought that Yuxiao Naihe had a romantic soul like her.
WW: (texting him this time) How did you come up with the ending? It’s much better than the original one.
XN: The original ending was good but it wouldn’t work with flashbacks. It’d be too obvious. (Meaning, he wanted to lengthen the script by reusing/recycling previous scenes as flashbacks.)
WW: So, the ending was changed to fit in the flashbacks and to stretch the running time? (now she was beginning to express her disappointment here.)
XN: (glancing at her before he replies) More or less.
WW: (thinking to herself again) I see. Naihe wanted to stretch the running time. Not only that, he also inserted a bunch of flashbacks. The new ending is a product of necessity of extending time and laziness. (lol. She’s really disappointed here). All that heart-wrenching, longing after separation by death is just a lot of nothing. Sigh. I was too naïve to be so moved by it.
See? She actually understood where Xiao Nai was going with that revision in the plot. But Xiao Nai was pretending that he made the changes for TECHNICAL reasons and not for romantic ones.
WW: (texting him for real) Let’s publish it to the forum.
XN: You do it. I’m too lazy to register. (He’s pretending nonchalance)
WW: Okay, I’ll get on it.
In a bit, she would chat with him again. He changed spots again and now he was behind her.
WW: The comments are pouring in, right after I posted. Have you read them? Many people cried. The beginning and the end are so melodramatic. They’re all slamming the scriptwriter. I took the blame for you. You put my name as the scriptwriter.
XN: I haven’t read them. Let me know the result. (He’s still feigning lack of interest.)
WW: Okay, I’ll report back to you every day. Why does Guzheng Player have to kill Girl Bandit?
XN: I’m pretty sure you wrote that part. (lol! That’s right, girl!)
WW: But I was playing around. If it were you, would you kill Girl Bandit?
XN: Not me.
WW: Hmmm?
XN: He’s not me. I wouldn’t reach that point.
WW: (she smiles. she’s comforted by that.) I should go. There’s not a soul in the library.
XN: I’m sure there are.
WW: (she looks around) It’s true! How did you know?
XN: Lucky guess. Be safe on the way back. (Awww. Isn’t that cool?)
She packed up her things and left. He waited for her to leave and then he followed her out, too.
Now, do you know why this scene is so Mr. Darcy?
Remember that time when Elizabeth Bennet and her family were at the brink of social disgrace because Lydia ran away with Wickham without marriage? Mr Darcy rescued her family from public ruin. But he didn’t want her to know so he made her uncle swear to secrecy about his role in paying off Wickham. He didn’t want her to know because he didn’t want her to confuse her gratitude or indebtedness for his assistance for love.
Moreover, he told Lizzy that he stepped in to help her family because he thought only of her. The scandal with Lydia would have destroyed her life and ruined her every chance for happiness. He didn’t want that. He wanted her happy, even if he had no chance of winning her heart. There’s something noble and dedicated about Mr Darcy’s love for Lizzy.
To me, that’s what Xiao Nai was doing here. To Weiwei, love meant killing the Girl Bandit to spare her a lifetime of disillusion and hatred for her lover.
For Xiao Nai, however, love was a little bit more “evolved.” For him, love is sparing the girl from suffering AND taking on the suffering himself. Hence, he changed the plot to make Guzheng Player pay the price for killing his lover even though the Girl Bandit wouldn’t know of it because she was already dead.
The ironic thing here is Xiao Nai disagreed with the murder of Girl Bandit. He went along with it because Weiwei wanted that plot twist in her story. She was happy to incorporate such “sensation” and cliched detail. He didn’t protest it but he took it upon himself to work out an ending that would satisfy her poor romantic heart.
In this sense, too, life imitates art and fiction.
Weiwei complained that readers were slamming the script and that she took the blame for him. But in reality, this was her script. She wanted the Girl Bandit to die. He only enhanced the finale to make it more romantic by rewriting Guzheng Player’s suicide and replacing with long-term separation from love. Then he pretended not to be interested in the story and watched over her from a distance.
lol. He didn’t have to stalk her the whole time but he wanted to see her happy with her new ending even if it meant pretending that he didn’t care.
So, yes, there’s something noble and dedicated in Xiao Nai’s courtship of Weiwei, like Mr. Darcy’s love for Lizzy.
Oooo…I’m getting **the feels** in this story now, thanks to your interpretations @packmule3!
I actually like this story with a story concept. Will get back once I’ve binge-watched this over the weekend.
**story within a story concept.
I also like how their costumes become period costumes like Wuxia warriors, with the guy sporting a long hairdo in his in-game avatar, as opposed to his real-life modern getup.
This blending of game and reality somehow reminds me of MOA again!
Squuuuuuuueeeeeaaaal! 😂😂😂
I’m a mess! 😂
Episode 10 is soooooooo cute and the feels! 😍😍😍
Time to do house chores 😂😂😂
I’m watching it right now, too!
I can legitimately say, “The feels!!”
Waaaaaaaaaaa!!! 😍😍😍
They’re so cute and the things he does for her! ❤️❤️❤️
And the way he looks at her! OMG! No wonder she’s a bit of a mess too! 😂😂😂
Okie! Time to calm down! 😊
Laters! 😉
I was confused when first watching the drama why the musician had to kill the bandit.
And why WeiWei was so moved with the modified version. I understood it more after reading your post here.
Anyway, I’ve started reading the original story. I’m at chapter 12 and so far and, unlike the chapter you linked with the first kiss, it’s super close to the drama. I like that. It’s just mostly about their in game interactions, no side stories so far. We also don’t know about Xiao Nai knowing about WeiWei being Luwei WeiWei or him being Naihe. The story is told mostly from her point of view.
Anyway, chapter 12 is about the video. And I wanted to copy stuff from it here because the way WeiWei reacted to the modifications make even more sense after reading the chapter.
https://dreamsofjianghu.ca/just-one-smile-is-very-alluring/wwyxhqc-12/
WeiWei’s version:
“The story after the kidnapping was still written by Wei Wei. To lengthen the time, Wei Wei added in as many contrived and melodramatic situations as possible using material from TV dramas.
The basic plot was as below:
The white-clothed musician was kidnapped back to the bandit’s village (the game had landscapes of robber’s towns and nests.) The female bandit fell in love with his refinement and elegance and tried all possible ways to make him happy. The musician was unmoved and never spoke, just staying at the lotus pond behind the mountain, playing his instrument.
The female bandit decided in the end to release him but still couldn’t leave him, so she followed behind him and saved him when the musician met a monster. The moment before the musician was killed, the female bandit managed to save him. The musician was moved and decided to accept the bandit. So the female bandit started to prepare for her wedding. Right before the wedding night, soldiers (Yu Gong and the others went into the nest and announced they were going to mentor newbies. A large crowd came and became free background actors) attacked the mountain village, and the bandits, (the pitiful NPCs who were only level 20) who were drunk and defenseless, were therefore slaughtered. The female bandit was strong and couldn’t be taken down by the soldiers who then diverted the attacks onto the musician. The bandit tried to defend the musician, but then, he took out his sword from his instrument and, without any hesitation, thrust it into the heart of the bandit.
The musician was turned out to be an imperial official. Because the bandits had the advantage of the complex landscape, they could not be eradicated. He came to be a double agent.
The end was therefore the most melodramatic part of it all.
After the female bandit died, the musician finally realized he had already fallen in love with her. So the musician decided to take her corpse and leap off the peak of Sunset Mountains.”
The way Xiao Nai edited the video:
“Even though the ending was a tragedy, but it started as a satire. There was a lot of fun of the recording process that came out in the video. Wei Wei maintained a very cheerful mood throughout the video. But the moment the musician unsheathed his sword, the zither music rose in a murderous peak, and as the sword unhesitatingly entered the female bandit’s heart, the music abruptly stopped.
Wei Wei’s heart skipped a beat.
Before Wei Wei could recover, the scene suddenly changed.
Originally, the scenes after should have been the musician leaping down the cliff at Sunset mountains with the corpse. However, the scene that was playing instead was the musician and the captain of the troops that attacked the mountain (played by Yu Gong) standing silently in front of a grave.
The soldier said: “You didn’t have to kill her.”
The musician was silent for a long while before saying: “Rather than letting her live and hate me, better to have her die.”
Wei Wei stared.
She finally realized, from the start of this line, the musician in the video wasn’t the one from the story.
He had turned into a mysterious and strange person.
The musician retreated to a small shack at the bottom of the mountain. Wei Wei recognized as it as a minor location in the game. Nobody actually lived underneath the Sunset Mountains. Beside the shack was a bamboo forest, where the musician stayed day after day with his seven-stringed zither. Otherwise, he would walk up to the top of Sunset Mountains, standing there to look at the sunset.
The captain of the soldiers appeared once again.
“You did a great deed. Titles and riches are within your reach. Why are you hiding in this wilderness?”
The musician didn’t answer, only played the zither, while his divine-level tiger cheerfully ran around him.
The bamboo forest suddenly rippled and broke, the scenery changed to the lotus pond. It seemed to be a memory of the musician as it was carrying a sepia tone. The musician was handling his zither while the bandit sat by his side. There was no music in the background, and everything was silent except for birdsong. Wei Wei heard her own voice.
A few days ago, Nai He had asked her to record some lines that he said he might need to use. What was recorded was what the female bandit said before releasing the musician. Wei Wei had hastily recorded in embarrassment and sent it off. She didn’t think it actually would be used.
The voice seemed to have been treated. Her voice sounded very vague and distant, like coming from the air itself.
“My grandfather was a bandit, my father was also a bandit, so starting from when I was born, I am a bandit. Other than being a bandit, I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know how to do anything else. There’s also this whole village of people depending on me.
“You hate me so much but I have never killed anybody. I’m not the worst, but still bad.
“I want to be like the other girls too. Raise some chickens and ducks, work during the day and sleep at night. Some quiet and peaceful days, but that’s just a dream. It won’t ever happen.
“Go, I’m letting you go.”
The view returned back to the captain angrily asking: “You have such a good future, why are you wasting it in this wilderness?”
After that was a clear and distant voice: “This is my dream too.”
The entire video was done using words on the screen, only the last few words were done with actual voices. The voices had suddenly appeared, and disappeared just as quickly. The zither music started mournfully before disappearing.
The last scene was the female bandit in red and the musician in white beside the lotus pond, the musician playing his zither and the bandit practicing with her blade. The two were vibrantly-coloured and full of life. After, the scene started to fade to black and white.
Stop.
The scene stilled, with the musician still clothed in white.
The red robes of the female bandit had turned stark white.
Wei Wei’s heart shook in pain and her eyes turned wet.”
“The musician was turned out to be an imperial official. Because the bandits had the advantage of the complex landscape, they could not be eradicated. He came to be a double agent.” – this is the part I didn’t get in the drama. And now I understand why the musician killed the bandit.
In the drama WeiWei says that the musician, after killing the bandit realizes he was in love with the bandit and kills himself. And I thought, wait a minute, how come he only figures this out after killing her, didn’t he already accepted her after she saved him from that monster? Well.. apparently not. In the original story it’s more obvious he kills the bandit betraying her.
Which makes Xiao Nai’s edited version even more melodramatic. He only says in Xiao Nai’s version the words: “Rather than letting her live and hate me, better to have her die.”
Except for the episode on the first kiss, I’m purposely NOT reading the translated original story until I’m done with reviewing the tv show. 🙂I’m avoiding it, just like I’m avoiding the movie, because I don’t want to compare the two.
But hmmm 🤔 after reading the original story, I’m glad that the tv script changed even this Bandit Girl video. No! 😂 The original Ending here wouldn’t work for me.
The original story’s ending could lead to this interpretation: he killed her for HER own good.
By transferring what the bandit girl said about desiring a simple life to “raise some chicken and duck” at the END of the video, it would appear as if her wish is HIS RATIONALE for killing her. He was letting her go have her dream of a simple life in the afterlife.
But the musician’s guilt is mitigated. He’s JUSTIFYING his murder as HIS way of freeing HER and letting her have her dream. But that’s as an asshat despicable, contemptible reasoning! 😈
He killed the bandit girl because he was doing his job. Not because he was trying to give her her dreams. 🤦♀️
He was doing his job to save people because the bandits couldn’t be eradicated.
His job was to kill her for the good of many. One vs many. But since he loved her as well, he sacrificed his happiness so in essence, it was two vs many. Killing her was tantamount to killing himself in spirit. He has no reason anymore to live so he exiled himself where he could spend the rest of his days in atonement.
Moreover, the original version made the musician into a schemer.
One, he was prepared to marry the bandit girl even though he didn’t love her (i.e., he only realized his love after she died) and two, he made her come to his rescue and he stabbed her heart. ❤️ These were unchanged in the original novel. The only thing that changed was the aftermath of her death.
In the tv version, Nai started the visual edits way before the final scene. Their homecoming was grander. The banquet feast was grander. They did their wedding bow to each other. Nai inserted these details into the clip. And to me it’s a sign that the musician was actually in love with her when they married.
In the tv version too, Nai edited her dying scene. He had the couple standing with their backs against each other. He didn’t want to kill her while she was in the middle of defending him. And he didn’t want her to see him stabbing her. Nai wanted the bandit girl to think that it was the two of them, she and the musician, against the whole world.
So 😂 this is another scene where changes were made. On the surface it seems like minor changes only, but when you really think about it, the revisions made the TV version a whole lot better than the original novel.
Yes, I didn’t like the original version. Hahaha. THIS is exactly why I’ve been restraining myself from reading the original. Because now instead of just savoring the tv version, I’ve to deal with comparisons with the novel 😂 .
I believe if there were changes made to the novel, it was done for improvement. The TV kiss was better than the novel kiss. The TV clip was better than the novel clip.
I wouldn’t call him a “double agent” because he never betrayed his own people. A “double agent” pretends to work for both sides. But the musician never cooperated with the bandits. In the tv version, he was rescued and then he killed her. The novel version, however, seemed to suggest that he used the wedding feast as a ploy to get his people in and destroy the bandit people.
Ugh! The novel version is bad. The more I think of it, the worse it becomes. Lol. Like the novel version turns the musician into a gigolo of sorts, making the bandit girl fall in love with him.
:)) I see your point. But I didn’t interpret the novel as
“But the musician’s guilt is mitigated. He’s JUSTIFYING his murder as HIS way of freeing HER and letting her have her dream. But that’s as an asshat despicable, contemptible reasoning! 😈
He killed the bandit girl because he was doing his job. Not because he was trying to give her her dreams. 🤦♀️”
I read the part about him remembering her dream of a normal life, saying that’s what he dreamed too (for her as well I assume) and I don’t think it implies in the afterlife. To me it’s just adding to his guilt of killing her, to think of the dream she cannot have because of him, because he killed her.