Chapter 95: Author’s Note: On Release

Well, the editor said I should post a note about the book going live.

To be honest, every time I have to say something like a speech or thoughts, I never know what to say.

Maybe I’m just an emotionless writing machine.

But since this is my first release, I can talk about my journey. I used to imagine having a chance like this to go on about my writing background, as if I’d become some big-shot author.

So I’ll say it. I’ll write it and everyone can just skip it. Treat it as me entertaining myself.

This book was uploaded on March 4th, and it’s been exactly a month and a half now. But I actually started writing it much earlier.

Around last November, the day after I quit my job, I wrote a story that day. It was the first prototype for this book.

Actually, that story has almost no connection to the current story. It could be seen as a prequel to this book, a prequel set 1,400 years ago during the Sui-Tang period. Something that far back really has almost no connection.

That story was about senior brother Mo Yiguan. He chose to leave his master and go down the mountain into the world so the world could become what it was meant to be. Three years later, junior sister Mo Xinli followed the footsteps he left and went down the mountain. She traced his whereabouts step by step, meeting all kinds of people and events along the way. If I have to point out a strong connection, the Demon Suppression Bureau was founded by Mo Yiguan, and Xu Zhi’s master Xiao Mochen is the successor of a character from that story.

Other than that, nothing.

The second prototype was the initial draft of this book. Well, more like a draft, just an outline and the first few chapters.

That was a story about fighting. Like The King of Fighters or Street Fighter, no monsters or demons. Purely a story about one martial arts fanatic falling in love with another.

In the original version, Bai Ling and Xu Zhi were both fighters. But they were also childhood friends who got separated for some reason.

Bai Ling’s fighting style was based on a snake. Xu Zhi’s father, Xu Liyan, always bragged that his ancestors had subdued demons and monsters, and that they had suppressed a snake demon. But everyone knew he was bluffing, because there were no demons in that world.

Xu Zhi’s father, Xu Liyan, had a lot of scenes in that version. He was Bai Ling and Xu Zhi’s mentor, a martial arts fanatic so obsessed with martial arts that his wife fell gravely ill and died. But in this book, he’s only appeared once so far, in Volume 1, Chapter 25, less than eight hundred words in total.

Now I’m thinking maybe I should arrange some scenes for him in the upcoming plot, let Bai Ling meet her father-in-law or something.

Also, because it was the Year of the Snake, I settled on using Legend of the White Snake as the prototype for this book. But everyone’s probably already noticed that. Next, Xiaoqing will appear, and a character taking Fahai’s place will appear, and so on.

As for whether I have any regrets after writing over two hundred thousand words, of course I do. The biggest regret is the character Feng Yi. From the start, he was designed as a character full of guilt, conflict, and redemption. I wanted to convey his sense of redemption, to give everyone enough emotional pull in his last eight hours of campus life. Unfortunately, my writing ability is limited, and I didn’t achieve the effect I wanted.

But he also taught me a lot. At least next time I write a similar story, I’ll have a rough idea of how to write it.

Oh right, I’ve also buried some Easter eggs and tributes in the book. For example, why zombies disappeared 27 years ago. That’s because Lam Ching-ying passed away on November 8, 1997, exactly 27 years and 5 months ago. His death marked the official decline of Hong Kong zombie films, so I set the soul-moving secret technique that creates zombies as lost 27 years ago. The younger generation of demon hunters now have never seen a zombie.

There are many other tributes and Easter eggs. I hope when you spot them, you’ll smile knowingly: aha, so that’s what it was!

By the way, Volume 3 might be a bit long. As the transition into the middle of the story, many characters will appear in this volume, including characters who have only been mentioned by name so far. The worldbuilding and foreshadowing from earlier will also gradually become clear in this volume. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I hope I can write it well.

Of course, this book will definitely have a warm happy ending for everyone. There may be some heavy content in the middle, but I think the sweetest fruit comes after going through setbacks.

That’s all!

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