Special Chapter: About the Release Time and...

First, a quick note on when the book goes premium: June 28.

All right, now let me begin my usual rambling.

A report on the results: Aodang...

Well, it definitely isn’t doing as well as The Great Song. Right now it looks more or less... maybe about the same.

At best, it counts as a solid work.

A lot of my well-meaning friends have been making snide remarks too, saying things like I’m a total flop, that it’s nowhere near The Great Song, and so on. They sound even more worried about it than I do.

Heh. Thanks.

What Cangshan wants to say is: that’s fine. It’s enough.

Really, thank you for your concern. And I mean that sincerely, without the slightest trace of sarcasm.

...

Brother, you may only have seen The Great Song at the height of its glory, and perhaps you started reading my books rather late.

You may not know that when The Great Song first went premium, it had only five thousand favorites, seven hundred subscriptions, and a reader group of just a dozen or so people.

Old Hu, Lazy Cancer, and Rustproof One-Sin all said, “You’re definitely going to blow up!”

And I thought to myself: I didn’t go to school for long, so don’t try to fool me, all right?

You may not know that back then, plenty of people were cursing me as a complete flop, a newbie who didn’t even understand history and still dared to write historical fiction.

Compared with how The Great Song was doing when it first went premium...

Aodang is doing amazingly well by comparison.

...

Your Moon-Moon here is not the kind of writer who can catch fire overnight.

My first book was a slow burn. My second book is a slow burn too. If the groundwork isn’t laid properly, then damn it, I just can’t write.

It’s a flaw, I know.

But I’m not changing it.

...

I also know I can’t write the kind of pure wish-fulfillment stuff people like, and I’m no good at trendy formulae.

But...

I’m still not changing.

...

In truth, no one understands better than I do where The Great Song succeeded. If I wanted to make money, what should I write?

Simple...

With more than twenty thousand average subscriptions and over forty thousand peak subscriptions, if I padded The Great Song out by five or six million words, anyone in the know would understand exactly how much I could have earned.

Even if I got tired of writing The Great Song, I could have kept going with its patriotism, its tragic Fan Zhongyan, its tragic Di Hanchen, its tragic Zhao Zhen, and written more stories in that same spirit of love for country.

...

In fact, for more than a month after finishing the book, Cangshan really did exactly that.

The end of the Southern Song, just days before the naval battle at Yashan.

That absolutely had patriotism, and tragedy.

There was Lu Xiufu, carrying the young emperor and leaping into the sea; there was Wen Tianxiang, faithful unto death; there were a hundred thousand Song people who gave their lives for the realm; there was the Jiang family, the three old pillars who stood together to the end; and there was Zhang Shijie, who fought until the final moment and still could not save the dynasty.

But later, Cangshan stopped. He suddenly remembered why he had ended The Great Song.

Because it was enough. If I kept writing, I would trap myself inside that little patch of ground forever. I can’t keep using patriotism to wring tears from people, can I?

Even if I like it, even if I’m good at it, I still can’t write two books in a row that are both built on the same thing.

So Aodang came into being: a story entirely different from The Great Song, a story about choosing between hatred, selfish desire, kindness, and resolve.

That runs completely against the reading tastes of my audience. In practical terms, it’s almost like starting from zero.

But I don’t care. I’m simply not changing.

Whether the results are good or bad isn’t something I factor into my judgment. As long as people read it and I make a bit of money, and it covers the bills, that’s enough. What more could I want?

Isn’t this already much better than how The Great Song started?

Cangshan is not greedy. Contentment brings happiness. Only without desire can one write truly good work.

Besides, with my health, I was never going to be a high-output writer.

Slowly does it. Fool one person at a time.

All right, that issue is settled. Old readers and new readers alike are the same in this regard, so there’s no need to keep fretting over it. If you have patience, then come along with me and continue strolling through Aodang, taking in the sights and enjoying the ride.

Believe me, I won’t disappoint you.

And if you don’t like it, there’s no need to force yourself. Just let it go, and we’ll part with a wave, hoping to meet again someday.

...

Also...

Some friends said the protagonist is moving at rocket speed, going from dirt-poor to getting involved in court politics within just a few dozen chapters.

How should I explain that?

That Monkey King became a mountain king just by jumping into Water Curtain Cave, didn’t he? And didn’t Journey to the West start causing chaos in Heaven not long after it began?

If, in your eyes, web fiction is supposed to be nothing but leveling up and defeating monsters, with one step per chapter from novice to master...

Then, brother, you’re underestimating web fiction far too much. Even if it’s an awkward ugly girl that nobody likes, damn it, she was still born of the mother called literature!

Literature has diversity. Literature is full of imagination.

Whether it is Aodang or The Great Song, what I am telling is the story of Wu Ning and Tang Yi, carrying ideas into an age and living through joy and sorrow; it is the story of rough men from a mountain hollow and scholars of Tide-Watching Academy stirring the whole world into motion.

It is not about counting fingers from one to ten. It is not about what he looked like at the start, then step by step how much money he had or how high his status rose.

That is also the difference between drama and real life. Life must be lived step by step, but drama selects the shining fragments of a life and focuses its brush there. It is leapwise; time and space are compressed.

Sometimes, we even need to add things that may not exist in reality, simply to make the story fuller.

It may not be reasonable, but from the standpoint of drama, it is reasonable. Because it comes from life, yet must rise above life.

People enjoy watching drama, but not necessarily a person’s entire life.

...

People love novels, but very few people love biographies.

That is the logic here. It may seem unreasonable, but it has its meaning.

...

And another thing.

Some readers also said that Wu Sansi should not be this foolish, and Taiping should not be this naive.

How should I put it? I already talked about this in The Great Song.

Every person, every character, is never a mere template. Each has strengths and weaknesses.

If old readers think back to The Great Song, they’ll actually find it isn’t hard to see that even a villain has his shining points, his convictions, moments of brilliance and moments of stupidity. Only the protagonist is allowed to be flawless and consistent from start to finish.

For example, the Song in Prime Minister Jia’s heart, the throne in Zhao Yunrang’s heart, the ancestral honor of Duke Wei, Han Qi’s principles of governance...

That is why you can hate him, love him, remember him, and in turn remember that story.

Not every court minister is politically perceptive, and not every commoner is timid and ashamed.

We talked about this during The Great Song too, both Cangshan and the old readers. A thousand people see a thousand faces; he simply is not the image you had in mind.

He appears in that scene and does those things for one purpose only: to enrich the story and set off the protagonist.

If you think the other way around, that villains are always evil, ministers are never fooled, and supporting characters never stand out...

Then what gets trapped is not just the characters. The story itself loses all suspense, and you can see the ending at a glance.

What would be interesting about that? Would the story still be worth reading?

A character may be clever, or he may simply be foolish. You cannot deny that possibility.

If you wrote about Donald Trump’s way of doing things as it was five years ago, there would surely still be a crowd insisting that the president of the United States could never be like that.

But what is the truth? The man really is that ridiculous. That is the real him.

Take Wu Sansi and Wu Chengsi as examples. In history, they became prime ministers not because they had real talent, but because their surname was Wu.

That was the kind of men they were: all ambition, no substance.

Don’t let rigid assumptions harden your imagination and your logic. Otherwise, not only will fiction become dull, but life itself will lose some of its color.

...

Lastly.

Because the book went premium on the twenty-eighth, there are only three days left in the month. That means the new-book monthly ticket rankings and I have only three days of fate together.

Monthly tickets, tips, and the like have basically lost their meaning by now. And besides, none of us are the sort to drift along in lazy detachment; I’m a writer of the Way.

Man follows the earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Way, and the Way follows what is natural.

The Way, the law, the self, and nature.

So everyone, save it. If you’re inclined, keep your support for July. Thanks.