Disappeared for a year.
During the first half of the year, I was recuperating.
Normally, facial paralysis in healthy individuals recovers in about half a month, but I drew the short straw.
Months later, I went to the hospital for an electromyography, and half of my face still had no signal, I couldn’t completely close my eye, and had to rely on eye drops every day for relief.
After consulting with the doctor, I learned that if there was no sign of recovery for such a long period, it would be difficult in the future.
Thus, I quickly prepared myself ntally for a lifeti of facial paralysis, and then I just gave up on treatnt and let it be.
As I let it be, hey, it actually started to recover slowly on its own.
For a while, I got used to having only half a face and still only used half of it to make expressions. Each ti, I realized the other half could move and I had to add it back, creating a delayed symtry.
Now, although there are so lingering effects, they don’t affect my daily life and are basically unnoticeable.
In the first half of the year, in addition to facial paralysis, my body developed many other problems. I used to think I was invincible because of my youth, but eventually, I broke down completely.
When you start reminiscing about your youth, it ans youth has left you;
When you truly understand the aning of "wishing you good health" and no longer see it as a re polite phrase, it ans you’ve lost it at least once.
At that ti, a colleague of mine fell ill. He ca to , and I comforted and encouraged him to stay positive, which he did, and he even started to include smiling emoticons in our chats.
Then suddenly one day, I received news that he had passed away.
Actually, we weren’t that close; both of us were hobodies and had only t a few tis in reality. I rember the last ti we t, after dinner, when the waiter ca with the bill, I discreetly stepped back to let him take care of it.
Now that I think about it, ah, I really should be damned.
In the last phase of his life, he remained open-minded and optimistic, but his departure had a big impact on , especially since my own health was failing at that ti.
It turned out that I, who encouraged him to stay positive, was a coward.
I think I was depressed during that ti; at its worst, I would wake up from sleep in panic every night, my condition either being disinterested in everything or inexplicably fiery and wanting to lose my temper.
Back then, every ti I thought about "writing," I felt disgust and fear, and it chilled to the bone, due to the huge ntal scar it left ; I even thought my career should be over.
After resting for half a year and regaining so health, I thought about how I hadn’t had ti before and had been cooped up at ho for months not going out, so I decided to go out and relax a bit.
Then I drove route 318, ca back, and drove around G331 in Northeast, ca back, and drove to Hainan, ca back, and drove to Urumqi and toured Northern Xinjiang...
I was like an ant, crawling all over the map of the country.
So much so that later, when there were no places to go, I actually started to resent our ancestors for not conquering more land.
The broken bridge at the Yalu River, the majestic Changbai Mountain, the grandeur of Qilian Mountain, the tranquility of Lake Selim, the sandstorms of Inner Mongolia...
Really, going out more does help.
I’ve co to realize, in more literary terms, that I felt my own insignificance, or in plain terms, I finally realized that I am nothing.
And then, I got the itch again, and found the urge to write.
Although I previously said I would use the downti to improve my shortcomings and uplift myself and so on...
But, I’m sorry to say, I really haven’t made any progress.
As an author, I haven’t read much over the years, not only that, I feel more and more out of touch.
In the last Chapter, Liu Yui talked about middle-aged people losing the drive to explore new things, and she was talking about .
I went to find books to read, and although I could sense that so authors wrote wonderfully, intriguingly, and brilliantly, I just couldn’t continue reading them; those with trendy styles, aren’t for .
Then, I wasn’t willing to force myself to follow trends, to study, to analyze. Reason tells that as a creator, this is a slow death, I’m bound to be outpaced by ti, but my feelings tell that I should just let it be.
Because the last ti, the ntal and physical breakdown taught that being outpaced by ti or collapsing first, it’s uncertain which would co faster.
I’ve known for a long ti that my style isn’t suited for blockbuster successes; I’m only fit for a niche audience.
So this ti, I simply want to write sothing I’m interested in.
Nantong is my hotown; I’ve included the local dialect in my writing, knowing this could increase your reading difficulty, but never mind, I imrse myself deeply.
The characters’ hos in the book are actually based on my relatives’ hos back in my hotown. I have it all mapped out in my mind—whose house my uncle lives in, whose house my grand-aunt lives in, including Li Sanjiang’s house where they make paper offerings. As a child, I would often go there to watch Ultraman with kids my age.
So when Little Yuanhou and the others run around the village, I’m viewing it from a god’s perspective, yoh, visiting relatives again.
After turning thirty, I finally feel I can start writing about past eras.
Actually, I’ve wanted to write this for a long ti, but it wasn’t suitable—I not only had to wait for myself to age a bit, but also for my readers to age a bit.
Luckily, we’ve all grown older.
Now we can happily engage in so nostalgia.
The interest in writing this book largely cos from suddenly rembering an old item from the past, and then I incorporate it into the story, waiting to see if my old readers will comnt on the Chapter saying, "Ah yes, yes, we used to use this in my old ho too."
However, there can inevitably be so geographical factors or uneven developnt in rural areas of that era that cause cognitive biases.
For instance, when I wrote that there was a small river right behind Li Weihan’s house, I rember a reader blasting for making things up, asking if I wasn’t afraid the house would be washed away by the river! I checked the IP, it was a reader from Shanxi.
That’s pretty normal. Without having seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe there are towns built hanging off cliffs either. It just shows how vast our country is and how rich its geographical features are.
In many ways, supernatural elents are like a thread woven through this book; as for the beads on the thread, they are various stories and characters.
My understanding of traditional supernatural elents is that they do not follow a purely linear progression—don’t end up breaking through boundaries and ascending to heaven in the end.
Thus, the pace of this book will be very slow, a lot of details will be written about extensively, and will be diluted; it will overflow like the flooding of Mount Jinshan, maddeningly so.
When I showed the draft to my editor initially, my editor warned that the slow pace might turn people off.
I said it’s fine, I did it on purpose.
If I’m going to slack off, then I need to maintain that attitude. After all, readers unaccustod to this style will drop out early on, and those who have stayed... having made it all the way here to the remarks before going online, have survived the ordeal.
Once I didn’t have high expectations for the book’s performance, I felt I could actively choose my audience. Hence, this should be called searching for resonators on the sa frequency.
There are many people in our country, and I’m not so one-in-a-million weirdo. I’ve always believed that, what I find interesting, there definitely will be a bunch of people who share my taste.
After pushing away so readers initially, once I accumulate more words, the community left under the Chapter comnts are good friends with similar interests, which allows for more harmonious and enjoyable interactions, helping to create a more comfortable atmosphere.
Here, I want to thank my chief editor Yi Suo and editor Zhu Sha, because I have never been an obedient author, their tolerance and help towards has always been imnse.
Also, thank you to Ying Tian, pp, Ya Shao, Fan Fan, Miao Sang, Si Si and others, who I suddenly called upon for launches when I said I was going to publish the book, asking them to help form my operations team.
And thanks to the readers who kept sending private ssages last year, asking when I would return, and those who quickly gathered after the book was published.
I’ve found that I’m really getting lazier, I truly can’t utter cheesy lines anymore, look, I even can’t bother with naming each Chapter.
Of course, this is also due to the Chapters being too long, making titles difficult to pick.
Throughout the whole new book period, the only author’s note I’ve said is "Another Chapter will be ready before midnight".
Beyond that, I’ve not said another word. Because I feel it’s unnecessary, it’s enough to interact with everyone through the Chapter content. I think adding my own words or thanks below would ruin the reading experience.
Alright, I’ve said a lot, it’s ti to wrap up.
The next Chapter is the one going online, it will be released at midnight tonight (might be a few minutes late).
Don’t say I lazily blacked out today’s update. When the book was published, I had just three Chapters pre-written, and starting from the third day, I’ve been writing as I go. If I had Chapters saved up, I wouldn’t be frantically posting updates every day, getting later and later.
This point, old readers are clear about my writing habits.
Also, for so reasons, the plan to go online was suddenly brought forward.
Therefore, today’s update will have to wait until the midnight release of the Chapter, because if I rush to write the update tonight, I’ll end up not having the online Chapter ready, the bosses have arranged online activities, then everyone sees, oops, this guy doesn’t even have a VIP Chapter!
Lastly, I feel very fortunate to have your companionship on this journey of life, everyone should actively participate in the Chapter discussions, gather a breadth of ideas. You might not write long pieces as well I do, but I can’t match your imaginative ideas.
Finally, finally,
Don’t panic,
Hold fast to the dragon!
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