Chapter 511: Afterword: Part One

Everyone, I have finally finished writing. It's hard for me to describe my mood right now: not good, not bad, not calm, and not excited.

It's really hard to describe. Actually, a long time ago I kept thinking about what my mood would be like if I reached this moment. I thought of all kinds of possibilities, but I never imagined it would be like this—so much that I can't even express the most basic words. I think perhaps because I have thought about this moment too much, my fantasies have surpassed the feeling of reality.

However, when I pulled open the curtains and looked at the gloomy Beijing sky, I still felt that something had already changed.

This has been a five-year long rally race, no less—five full years, spending five years writing nine novels, completing such a massive and complex story. For an amateur author, it really was a bit too strenuous. By the time I got to the end, I no longer knew whether the story was good or exciting. I just wanted to let the few characters inside honestly complete the journey they were supposed to take. In fact, that wasn't even something I could control. The biggest difficulty I faced at the end was that the protagonist had grown tired of his life, and I had to find bait within the story to keep him moving forward.

Just a few minutes ago, I let them finish, and it was very peaceful.

When I finished writing the fourth book, I had already planned to write a very long afterword, to write out the entire process of writing The Grave Robbers' Chronicles, along with many doubts and thoughts in my heart. While many memories haven't faded yet, and while all the characters are still vivid in my mind, I must start writing immediately. First, let me talk about some routine matters. About the origin: To be honest, I really can no longer recall my original intention when I started writing this novel. But I know it definitely wasn't some noble and grand idea. I have never been that kind of person with literary ideals; I never wanted to tell others that I am this or that kind of "expert." What I pursued since childhood, to put it bluntly, was a sense of recognition, and telling stories happened to be an easier way for me to gain that recognition. So, although I can't remember, I can almost certainly say that when I put down the first three thousand words, it was probably just to win some applause.

This was a very lowly pursuit. A long time ago, I was too ashamed to speak of it, because it was so mundane. Although I understood that even a person who is not great can do a cause for the happiness of many people, I became uneasy because I didn't have a noble slogan like those people, feeling that my motives were impure.

The Grave Robbers' Chronicles originated from a folk tale my grandmother told me. When I was young, this story left a deep impression on me.

The story goes: A landlord bought an empty house and wanted to plant some flowers and grass in the backyard. But he found that no matter what he planted, nothing would survive, so he went to consult a Feng Shui master. The Feng Shui master said there seemed to be a problem beneath the yard. So the landlord hired some laborers to start digging the yard. Halfway through, they began to see blood—whether real blood or red mud, they didn't know. Finally, at the bottom of the yard, they unearthed a large carved coffin, no one knew whose. They placed the coffin in the ancestral hall, and from then on, the village was in turmoil. Not only did things stop growing, but the landlord's family was almost wiped out, and strange things happened to all the neighbors. So they had to find the Feng Shui master again. After looking, the master told them to keep digging in the yard. They dug down dozens of meters and found another, smaller coffin. It turned out to be a joint burial tomb. The husband and wife were very much in love, but because the wife's coffin had sunk more, the two coffins had drifted further and further apart, causing resentment to grow stronger. The village head found another auspicious feng shui spot, laid stone slabs underground, placed the two coffins there, and reburied them together. Only then did everything calm down. I expanded this story with more associations, used the elements from it, and wrote it as Chapter 001 of The Grave Robbers' Chronicles.

I remember Chapter 001 of the story had over three thousand words. I wrote it in less than half an hour, with no revisions. I posted it where everyone could see it, then covered my head with my collar, hid away, and pricked up my ears, hoping to hear some applause to satisfy my vanity. That listening lasted five years. During those five years, I experienced changes I could never have imagined before. And now, when I look back at that pursuit I once considered so lowly, I find that it has become the most noble slogan of the present. Stephen said in the preface of The Dark Tower: "I wrote this book and made a lot of money, but the initial joy of writing this book had nothing to do with money." Five years later, I have become a so-called best-selling author, but I am glad that my happiest moments were still when I heard applause in that inconspicuous corner of the internet. And at this moment of finishing, I look forward to that time even more.

Regarding this novel: Actually, what I want to say is that when I wrote the second book, I already had a strong feeling that this was no longer a novel.

I always felt that a world had already formed somewhere else. Because as I tapped the keyboard, that world slowly grew and developed, and the characters inside began to have their own souls.

When I was thirteen years old, I read a biography of Alexandre Dumas, in which it was written that "the characters came to life." At that time, when Dumas was writing the third part of The Three Musketeers, one of the characters died, and he cried while writing, soaking the manuscript paper with tears. I found it very strange—what kind of state would allow an author to write his character's death in such a way? I tried to imagine all sorts of things, but got nowhere. It wasn't until I started writing this novel myself, and began to consciously give the characters different personalities and different life experiences, that I gradually discovered that the plot began to develop changes that I myself could not predict.

Soon, I could no longer control what this person should say or what actions they should take. I discovered a very interesting phenomenon: as long as I first established a scene—say, a heavy rain—and placed these characters into that situation, they would go to their respective positions and do what they should do.

I couldn't swap the positions of any two of them, because that would create an irreconcilable sense of dissonance. Even if I forcibly swapped the actions of two characters, later at a tea party scene, who spoke first, who spoke next, who enlivened the atmosphere, who was daydreaming—everything was already decided. I didn't need to think about anything; I just needed to watch them, and I could know the direction of the plot. They really had come to life.

In the extremely long writing process that followed, I changed from an author to an observer. From a god's perspective, I observed everyone's actions. Slowly, I could even see the origins of many of their subtle emotions and behaviors—some childhood experience of theirs. For example, I could really see everything about Fatty through the way he flicked his cigarette ash: his pain, his vicissitudes, everything about him. A flower is a world, a tree is a Buddha. I could constantly rewind and replay a scene, observe it from any angle, even see the psychological activities of everyone on the scene, and the emotions of several people would pass through my heart at the same time. I think few people can experience this kind of pleasure.

When writing the "Havoc in Heaven" section, I felt as if I were in the Moonlight Hotel's private room, as if I could walk from upstairs to downstairs, watching the chaos all around. Amid flying debris and fighting crowds, I could at any moment freeze everything, rewind time, or get close to the characters' inner hearts, experiencing all the emotional changes within them. I could push everything before my eyes forward in slow motion at one frame per second, then squat down and watch the characters' expressions change slowly. The entire world in this book, for me, truly exists. Every detail of it is real and unchangeable. The parts I have already built are as solid as reality. Although I am the creator of this novel, once everything was on track, I began to have extreme reverence for this fictional world.