Daomu Biji Volume 8 Chapter 82

TN Note: I'm sorry I keep leaving notes but I figured you'd all like to know what's going on lol. I know nobody really reads the postscripts of books (sometimes I do, sometimes I don't) so I didn't really put my all into it and I'm not bothering to proof-read it like normal. If you see any glaring errors, just let me know and I'll fix it in a jiffy. I figured there would be at least 1 person that would like to read or skim it so I figure I'd translate it, and there's a nice kind of timeline at the end which might help.

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Everybody, I've finally finished writing.

I find it difficult to describe my mood at this time. It's not good, not bad' not calm, not excited.

It's really hard to describe.

In fact, I've been thinking for a long time about how I would feel if I came to this moment. I thought about all kinds of possibilities, but I didn't think it would be like this—even the most basic words can't express it well.

I think maybe it's because I thought too much about this moment that my fantasy exceeded my feelings in reality.

However, when I opened the curtains and looked at the gloomy sky in Beijing, I still felt that something had changed.

This was a rally that lasted for five years, five years to the day, and it took five years to write nine novels and complete such a huge and complicated story. For an amateur writer, it was really a bit too hard. At the end of my writing, I didn't know whether the story was good or not, whether it was wonderful or not. I just wanted to let some of the characters in it actually finish their journey. As a matter of fact, this wasn't under my control. The biggest dilemma I faced in the end was that the hero was tired of his life and I had to find bait in this story to keep him going.

Just a few minutes ago, I let them go, and it was very calm.

When I was writing the fourth book, I had already made up my mind to write a long postscript to write out all the doubts and thoughts in my heart during the whole process of writing “The Grave Robbers' Chronicles”. While many memories are still fresh, while all the characters are still alive in my mind, I must write immediately.

First, let's talk about some routine things.

About the origin:

To tell the truth, I really can't remember the original intention of writing this novel at that time. But I know that it must not have been a noble and great idea. I've never been a person with that kind of writing ideal, and I never wanted to tell others what kind of business I was in. What I've been pursuing since I was a child is, to put it bluntly, a sense of recognition, and telling stories is exactly the way I can get a sense of recognition more easily. So, although I can't remember, I can almost certainly say that when I wrote the first 3,000 words, it was just to win some applause.

This was a very, very low pursuit. I was ashamed to talk about it a long time ago because it was so worldly, and although I knew that even if I wasn't a great man, I could do something for the happiness of many people. I became nervous because I didn't have their noble slogans and felt that my motivation wasn't pure.

“Grave Robbers' Chronicles” originated from a folktale and was told to me by my grandmother. I was very impressed by this story when I was a child.

The story was about a landlord who bought an empty house and wanted to plant some flowers and plants in the backyard. He found that no matter what he planted, it couldn't survive and so he went to ask a feng shui master. The feng shui master said there seemed to be a problem under the yard, so the landlord hired a long-term worker to start digging the yard up. When he dug half way, he began to see blood and he didn't know whether it was really blood or red mud. At last, a large carved coffin was dug up from under the courtyard, but they didn't know whose it was.

They put the coffin in the ancestral temple and the village had been troubled ever since. Not only did things in the field not work, but even the landlord's family was dying. All sorts of strange things happened to the neighbors around, so they had to continue looking for feng shui masters. After seeing this, feng shui masters told them to continue digging in the courtyard, and after digging for more than ten meters, they dug out a smaller coffin.

It turned out that this was a couple's grave, and they loved each other very much. But because the wife's coffin was sinking so severely, the two coffins were getting farther and farther apart in the ground, and the resentment became heavier.

The village chief found a good place for geomancy, laid a stone slab under the ground, put the two coffins down, and buried them together again. Only then did everything calm down.

I developed more associations with this story and used the elements in it to write the first chapter of “Grave Robbers' Chronicles”.

I remember the first chapter of the story had more than 3,000 words and I only wrote it for less than half an hour without any modification. I pasted it where everyone could see it, and then I wrapped my head in my collar and hid my perked ears, hoping to hear some cheers to satisfy my vanity.

This was five years ago. Five years in which I experienced changes that I couldn't have imagined before. Now, when I look back at the pursuit that I thought was very, very low, I find that at present, it's become the noblest slogan.

Stephen King once said in the preface of the Dark Tower: I wrote this book and made a lot of money, but the initial happiness of writing this book had nothing to do with money. Five years later, I have become a so-called best-selling writer, but I'm very glad that I'm most happy when I hear some cheers in that humble place on the Internet, and I look forward to that moment even more when I finish writing.

About this novel:

In fact, what I want to say is that when I wrote the second book, I already had a strong feeling that it was no longer a novel. I always feel that there is a world that had already formed elsewhere. Because I knocked on the keyboard, the world grew up and developed slowly, and the people inside began to have their own souls.

When I was 13 years old, I read Dumas' biography, which said “all the characters are alive.” When Dumas was writing the third part of “The Three Musketeers”, one of the characters in it died and he cried while writing, causing all the manuscript paper to be wet with tears. I felt very strange at that time and wondered, what kind of state can the author write about the death of his characters in this way?

I tried to stretch my imagination, but to no avail, until I started to write this novel, and began to consciously endow the characters with different personalities and different life experiences. Slowly, I found that the plot of the story began to show some changes that I couldn't predict myself. Soon, I couldn't control what this person should say or do and I found it to be a very interesting phenomenon. As long as we set up a scene, such as heavy rain, and put these characters into this scene, they will go to their respective positions and do what they should do.

I can't swap the positions of any two of them, because that would give rise to an irreconcilable sense of discord. Even if I forcibly changed the behavior of two of them, I will continue to explain to them in the future plot. And their language was even more so. For example, say I put them at the scene of a tea party. Who will speak first, who will speak later, who will enliven the atmosphere, who will hit the nail on the head, and who will wander away from home… everything had been decided.

I don't need to think about anything. I just need to look at them to know the direction of the story.

They're really alive.

In the long process of writing, I changed from a writer to an onlooker. From God's perspective, I observed everyone's every move, and slowly, I could even see the origin of many of their slight emotions and behaviors, which came from some of their childhood experiences. For example, I can really see all of Fatty's past, his pain, his vicissitudes, and all of him through his actions when shaking off the cigarette ash.

One flower, one world, one tree, is just like that. I can continuously reverse and repeat a scene, observe it from any angle, and even see the psychological activities of all the people on the scene, and the emotions of several people pass through my heart at the same time.

I think few people can appreciate this kind of pleasure. When I was writing about “making a scene at the Crescent Hotel”, it was as if I was on the balcony and could walk from upstairs to downstairs and watch the people around me in the chaos. In the flying debris, in the fighting crowd, I let everything stop at any time, reversed the whole scene at any time, stuck to the characters' hearts at any time, and experienced all the emotional changes in their hearts. I can slowly push everything in front of me forward at a slow speed of one frame per second, then squat down on the ground and watch the expressions of the characters inside slowly change.

The whole world in this book, including every detail, is real to me and can' be changed. What I've built is as solid as reality. Although I'm said to be the creator of this novel, when everything is on track, I begin to have great respect for the world in this novel.

About the story in the novel:

The earliest thing that happened was at the Changsha Dart Summit.

In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, several grave robbers stole the most important object in this book, the silk book of the Warring States Period, taken from the ancient tomb. This was the story of Wu Xie's grandpa's generation, of Old Dog Wu when he was young. At that time, there was no ranking in the circle and the most famous ones were nine people— Chen Pi Ah Si, Old Dog Wu, Lao Liu, and so on. The last one was Jie Jiuye, Jie Lianhuan's father. There are also the so-called “Master Ten” and “Master Eleven” in the back, but the scope of recognition is very small. They are sealed by themselves or their subordinates, and when it comes to the outside, no one knows.

Some people say that Chen Pi Ah Si is now more than 90 years old, and he was more than 40 years old 50 years ago. At that time, Old Dog Wu wasn't big. If he was 17 years old at that time, it would take him 10 years to become famous, and by then he would be 27. How can you be ranked behind Chen Pi Ah Si, who was nearly 50 years old, and become Old Dog Wu? If this line goes on like this, wouldn't Xie Xiao Jiu still be wearing open-crotch pants? (TN Note: Si=4, Wu=5, Jiu=9, he's basically talking about their seniority I think. Also, apparently open-crotch pants are worn by toddlers in China before they do toilet training, which I find super weird but whatev).

It's a bit unreasonable. But those who have some common sense know that the ranking in the circle isn't based on age, but on skills and seniority, and these are all given by others. Old Dog Wu was high in rank, which shows how powerful his wrist and drive were at that time, which made people unable to refuse to obey.

The second story also happened at the Dart Summit.

That was the incident in which Wu Xie's Uncle Three encountered the blood corpse in the tomb he entered when thwarting the American, Qiu Dekao, 20 to 30 years after the first story. This incident can be said to be entirely coincidental, and Wu Xie's Uncle Three learned from it what had happened when Wu Xie's grandpa and his family encountered the blood corpse. This time around, Uncle Three gained some experience and got a strange pill. Although this was only an episode, it can be said that this incident was the cause of the Xisha incident. (TN Note: it's the first chapter in Cavern of Blood Zombies and Uncle Three's story in chapters 2-4 of Deadly Desert Winds).

The third story takes place off the coast of Xisha.

This was also the story of Wu Xie's Uncle Three's adventure at sea. The appearance of Zhang Qilin forms the biggest mystery in this story. There are two versions of the story: one was the deceptive version given by Uncle Three, and the other is the candid version after the grave robbery. The final truth was that both versions were lies, because for Uncle Three, there was a huge secret that was related to Wu Xie.

The fourth story takes place in the Qixing Lu Palace in Shandong.

This was the first story of this work, and it was also the first time Wu Xie went to a tomb. After this, Wu Xie had changed from a staunch atheist to a neurotic, and his participation in such criminal activities is really curious. In this story, by using Poker-Face to turn the tide, Wu Xie and others finally escaped, and the previous three stories were organically integrated into this story. Silk manuscripts from the Warring States Period, the Xisha underwater tomb incident, and the immortality pills all gathered together, and the whole story began to become extremely complicated.

The fifth story goes back to Xisha.

This time, Wu Xie himself entered Wang Zanghai's undersea grave, looking for the Uncle Three that had disappeared. At this time, Uncle Three had already gotten clues from the bottom of the sea and started the Genting Palace of Heaven project, while Wu Xie and the others, like fools, entered the ancient tomb at the bottom of the sea. This was a game Wang Zanghai had set up a thousand years ago, and in the end, Fatty Wang's unconventional thinking let Wu Xie and the others survive again. In this story, the three forces in this work finally come together and the mystery begins to develop. Wu Xie and the others, who are pursuing the truth, have their own plans for Uncle Three and the unrelenting overseas forces from the previous stories, and they come face-to-face for the first time here. In the two main lines, the story follows the script written by Wang Zanghai a thousand years ago, while the other is temporarily interrupted.

The sixth story is the sacred tree of Qinling Mountain.

This is a story that's been criticized the most—editors think it's the best and most literary, while readers think they don't know the so-called story. This story had little to do with the main plot, as it only leads to the huge bronze monument at the foot of the mountain, and at the same time it also improves the protagonist's ability. In this story, Wu Xie independently led his mischievous childhood friend to the depths of Qinling Mountain. For Wu Xie, this story is sometimes like a long dream that feels unreal.

The seventh story takes place in Changbai Mountain, the eternal Genting Palace of Heaven.

This is the most difficult expedition and the most painful one written by Wu Xie. Everyone took their own mysteries to embark on the road of death. The snow covered the sky and trek in the narrow snow field was painful. There, Wu Xie and others find the ultimate secret that Wang Zanghai tried to leave behind one thousand years ago, but the secret came to an abrupt end before the huge underground bronze door. Zhang Qilin, who entered the giant underground door, seemed to be the only one closest to the secret. Wang Zanghai's main plotline stops here while Tie Mian Sheng's main plotline resumed (TN Note: Tie Mian Sheng is from Book 1 Cavern of Zombies, he's that Iron-masked scholar Wu Xie reads about in the scroll they found in that tomb that came out of the tree—referred to as Mr. Iron-face in the book if that helps).

The eighth story was the Snake Marsh Ghost City.

The two stories spliced together by clues run through the whole story of Snake Marsh Ghost City.

The first is the legend of Wang Zanghai. After Wu Xie sorted it out, he found that it was an excellent novel theme, and if written in Gulong's style, it must be a wonderful book. Wu Xie had to write it out in his lifetime.

The second is the story of Tie Mian Sheng that was slowly beginning to take shape.

Now you can clearly see the origin of the story—the huge bronze miracle in the mountain and the secret behind the Snake Marsh Ghost City. In history, there are two people who transcended the times and got a glimpse of this secret: one was Tie Mian Sheng in the Warring States period, and the other was Wang Zanghai in the early Ming Dynasty. Judging from the available data, Wu Xie and others don't know whether there was a direct connection between them, but what can be seen is that Tie Mian Sheng should've had more abundant data since his era was very close to the myth's era. Judging from the elixir in their graves, the two should've had something in common. At the very least, both of them passed down their experiences in some way—silk manuscripts of the Warring States Period and snake-eyebrow copper fish. Wu Xie and others are pursuing these two clues and gradually unveiling the mysterious veil.

About Wang Zanghai, Lu Palace, Golmud, and the Genting Palace of Heaven, it was another system that had very close relations with the Zhang family's ancient building, and the Zhang family's ancestors. For example, the story of Chen Pi Ah Si's hanging upside down from the inverted mirrors and beating the Miao people in the palace was a collection of words.

About dragging out the manuscript:

As a writer, the greatest external pain must be the contradiction between the pressure of the publishing cycle and the quality of your writing, especially when you are already very familiar with the matter of rushing to draft a manuscript. You know, it's irreconcilable, but as long as you face this kind of pain long enough, you will find that this isn't something unbearable. What's really hard to bear is that after you've endured these pains, you will have to endure more incomprehension.

However, I am still dragging out the manuscript as usual.

I'm a slow hand, especially in the later period, and the writing speed will become slower and slower. Not because I don't write, but because the longer the story is written later, the more information is needed up front, so there's more you need to worry about. After you write five books, the basic clues and puzzles that were written about before will become a mountain pressing down on you, leaving you helpless and finding that every step is extremely difficult.

In this case, most of the time, I can only choose a steady writing speed. But because of my slow writing, I became infamous. These insults accumulated book by book, slowly drowned out the cheers I could hear before, and slowly became mainstream.

I can't say that my heart has always been calm in the face of these words, since anyone who faces so much criticism in the early days will doubt his own value.

“So many people don't like me.” The frustration in my heart at that time can be imagined as “Jiang Lang did his best” and “irresponsible”, and countless blame was flying everywhere.

I only write for those who like me. I wanted to drop a sentence like that, but I couldn't do it. Slowly, anxiety about this information began to encroach over everything. That year, I don't know what method I used to slowly calm my heart, but I would like to thank my friends, one of whom had long been famous and experienced all this. She told me that writing was meditation, a process of gazing into the heart. All that I am worried about losing didn't exist for me before.

Therefore, what I have lost was only what I shouldn't have. I didn't lose everything I had before writing, just as a child picked ten apples from an apple tree and found three of them rotten. He should not be discouraged by losing three apples, but should see the other seven intact.

Language has some power, and I have slowly understood this truth myself: emotion is an unquantifiable thing, sadness is sadness, and happiness is happiness. I write to find my initial happiness, because if I lose my heart because of a small loss, it wasn't worth it.

Although my heart had its own helplessness and persistence in delaying the draft, I still want to apologize to all my readers here. Five years of waiting was almost a small cycle in life. I apologize for all the pain you've been waiting for. At the same time, I also hope that in the five years of waiting, this novel can become a memory. Five years isn't a long or short period of life. If there is a Fatty that can make so many people struggle for five years in their precious life, this Fatty will be regarded as a complete accomplishment. So even if it's painful, I will secretly rejoice while apologizing.

Why do I like stories?

Let's talk about my life first. I was born at midnight in a small town in Zhejiang on February 20, 1982. When I was born, neither the sky nor the earth nor the sea responded.

Sometimes when I think about it, I blame God a little, because if there was thunder in the sky when I was born, I could have reason to think that I must be different from others. Unfortunately, I can't go back. I can only live as a real ordinary person in this world.

My family background is quite complicated. My grandmother is from Taixing, Jiangsu, and my publisher is from the same hometown. My grandmother is a boatwoman, that is to say, she has no property besides a small wooden boat. My grandfather died when my father was five years old. My father has a brother and a sister. I don't know why my grandfather died, nor does my father, but I vaguely know that my grandmother should be regarded as my grandfather's child bride.

Grandma actually had a lot of children, but she couldn't support them at that time. My father was the youngest, so she was very fond of him. Due to famine in the 1960s, my grandmother's boat set out from Taixing to Shanghai but her ship sank on the Huangpu River due to a collision with a large ship.

My grandmother and her three children wept bitterly when they came ashore because the home they had lived in was gone. Now that they had come to the land and looked at the vast beach, all she could feel was fear.

Thanks to the party and the people, my grandmother was resettled (TN note: think he means the Communist Party/government). In my father's memory, there was a particularly peaceful and beautiful memory of old Shanghai. I've estimated that if my father hadn't landed at that time, he might not have gone to school and there wouldn't have been anything after.

I don't know why, but my father left Shanghai and moved to Zhejiang province near Shanghai. After the “Cultural Revolution” began, my father followed the railway troops into the Greater Hinggan Mountains and spent his most precious youth in the Construction Corps. My mother was also one of the young people who went from the south to the north to support the border. She was a very beautiful 16-year-old at that time, and together with three other southern girls, she was called one of the Four Golden Flowers of Daxing'an Mountain. She was chased by my father, who pursued her with specially supplied white rice.

At that time, they should have been quite the glorious couple. In the Construction Corps, people were divided into factions by region. Ningbo, Wenzhou and Lishui all had their own small groups, during which conflicts continued. My father has been able to fight since he was a child and had good fighting skills. My mother said that there were almost no scars on my father at that time. Because of his ability to fight and his loyalty, my father had prestige in all of the groups. As long as there was a fight, when my father showed up, everyone was afraid to say a word. Once, after returning to the south, my father took a boat full of watermelons, and was met by rebels who were robbing others. My father beat dozens of them into the water with a pole from the boat. Although he was outnumbered and had to abandon the watermelons in the end, I feel satisfied when I remember his glory at that time. In addition, my mother was amazingly beautiful, and both of them were quite envied at that time.

Speaking of my mother, her family is more interesting.

My grandmother is the kiln owner of a place called Qianyao (TN note: thousand kilns) in our hometown. There were a thousand kilns in Qianyao, which was the core producing area of bricks and tiles at that time. My grandmother owned a large kiln in the local area, belonging to a very important class. My grandfather escaped from the Kuomintang soldiers and snuck all the way through the mountains to my hometown where he worked as a short-term laborer in the landlord's house. It wasn't until after the founding of the People's Republic of China that they were introduced to each other and became a couple.

There must be thousands of stories of my grandmother and grandfather. At that time, my grandfather was born with divine power. He was a big man of 1.86 meters (~6 ft), like a giant compared to others in society at that time. My grandmother said that she married him because she saw him lift something that only three people could lift. Of course, it seems that there are many interludes to this marriage. When my grandfather died, I vaguely heard my grandmother sadly telling my mother in the mourning hall about my grandfather's previous love affair.

I've seen the photos of my parents in those days. My father was too handsome to look straight at, while my mother looked like a lotus flower. They were so beautiful and outstanding that every time I look in the mirror, I think of how unfair the world is. So many good genes, but unexpectedly when it came to me, they didn't get passed down.

My parents established a relationship in Daxing'an Mountain, then transferred to Daqing oil field, then returned to the south. My father was a deputy food manager in the supply and marketing system at that time, in charge of materials, so my family was fairly well off. After that, on a night with no special features, I was born.

Up to this point, many people will find it interesting and some people will feel bored. What is this all about? Is there a reason to mention all these things?

In fact, it's very meaningful. I want to tell you that my paternal grandmother, my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and my father and mother are all very good storytellers. When I was born as the first child of two families, how did I spend my childhood when there was no TV, no movies, no internet, no novels?

Telling stories.

I grew up under the care of a circle of storytellers. Folktales, war stories, fairy tales… my childhood was full of these. Some stories now sound very appealing, and many of them I have directly used in “Grave Robbers' Chronicles”.

At that time, I was already sure that all the initial fun can only come from stories. This is also the most basic reason why I became fascinated with stories later on, because I can 100% enjoy the fun that a story can convey.

After that, my life can be described as “boring”. It failed in all aspects, and in today's words, can even be called useless. Some people say that when a person is born, God will always give him some special skills so that he can help others. For a long time, however, I really felt that I had no special skills.

In my circle of friends, there are always such phenomena: students with good grades are generally not very good at sports; students good at sports generally don't have good test results. Students with good grades and good physical education are generally ugly; students who have good grades, are good at sports, and aren't ugly usually fall in love early and are expelled. Students who have good grades, are good at sports, aren't ugly, and don't fall in love early become GAY. (TN note: lol wtf is up with that logic? Don't flame me or anything. Trust me, the all-caps bit was just like that in the raws. I'm sure you all know the stigma against gays in China so don't take it to heart).

What am I trying to say?

What I want to say is that I have nothing to do with the above, which is the sorrow of this society. No one has ever cared about a child who is bad at sports, has bad grades, is ugly, and skips classes all the time.

Most of the time when I dream at midnight, I think God is so unfair. Everyone around me has a legendary life, so why is my life like this?

At that time, I wasn't very well. Since I fainted in the examination room during a primary school exam, the teacher focused on me every time, and would place me in a ventilated place with appropriate temperature. This place must have been a good feng shui spot, because the teacher proctoring the exam would rest there except for when he was making his rounds. He often asked me about my physical condition for fear that I would die in the exam room, so I couldn't cheat. But travel, sports, and the like were already predetermined when it came to me. I was born with a pair of fishermen's feet—my toes are long and the big toes are the longest. They are especially useful when swimming lazily, but they are completely useless when explosive force is needed. In addition, as long as the sun was a little higher, it was easy to suddenly fall to the ground and froth at the mouth. The PE teacher took good care of me as if I was the headmaster's son. Therefore, most of my PE classes were spent in the shade of some trees, wearing a white shirt and holding a novel in my hand.

For me, this early life was quite pleasant. Apart from being hit in the head by a soccer ball kicked by a handsome guy on the field and rolling down the stairs, I still especially like those quiet days when I didn't sweat and could read instead.

I think many people have similar experiences like this, but not necessarily as absolute as mine. At that time, I was reading novels almost all the time. After emptying the library, I turned to a small private bookstore and started reading the first book on the shelf. I spent my money borrowing all the books, and soon the money wasn't enough. For me, who had no special skills, it was impossible to earn living expenses. I started reading the books in the store, but I usually read three and borrowed one. The boss was embarrassed to drive me away because I was a big customer at the beginning. Although I borrowed less later, the frequency was high, and the total amount was good. I think my emotional intelligence was developed at this time.

By the end of junior high, I had no more books to read and began to write some things myself. Although the quality wasn't high, but after finishing a round of regular novel reading, I suddenly had a strong desire—I want to write a novel myself. The idea at that time had nothing to do with any dream. I didn't want to be a writer at all. At that time, I just felt that writing a good story would be cool, so that everyone would look at me.

That year, I began to really write. From the beginning of graffiti writing, to analyzing the works of famous artists, abbreviations, re-writing outlines, looking for suspense setting skills, and the basic rhythm of novels. In only two months, I slowly found that the novels I had written were becoming more and more interesting.

However, I still didn't dare submit articles. My useless life made it difficult for me to encourage myself to take this step. At that time, there was no computer so I used paper and pen to write on manuscript paper. I slowly began to indulge myself and abandoned my studies (I didn't achieve much anyway). By the time I graduated from college, the total number of words I wrote exceeded twenty million, most of which were written on various abandoned exercise books (TN note: not physical exercise books, think like workbooks or notebooks they write their homework in). I'm the type of person who changes exercise books very frequently, because mine are usually preceded by homework and followed by the novels I write. This makes it convenient for me to write in class, and I can fill in one notebook in two or three classes, but I have to change to a new one for my homework the next day.

To be honest, looking back at what I've written now, some of my works are still at a level that astonishes me. Not only can they be compared with what I've written now, but many of them are even better because I paid attention to writing and sentence at that time. But now I'm already a wily old man. I know it's enough to express my meaning clearly, and I'm often too lazy to think over the words.

In the whole process of writing, I have a particularly obvious feature, that is, I only write stories.

At that time, there were many kinds of stories I wrote, including martial arts, thrillers, and romance. I even started to write some popular types, such as transmigration novels, but unlike other literary lovers, I only want to write stories. The sentence I want to hear most is: “What about the rest, will you write it later?" Because this is the best evaluation my story can receive.

After the publication of Grave Robbers' Chronicles, many people asked me a question: Do you think your success is due to luck?

I want to say that there is no success without luck. Some good luck is always good, although what one needs most isn't luck. Many times we also know that luck can't help you too much. Even if you win the lottery, if you don't have the ability to handle huge sums of money, the money in your hand will soon become big trouble.

What people need is the ability to seize opportunities. The moment I decided to write “Grave Robbers' Chronicles”, I took a kind of carefree attitude. This indifference would attract many people to check it out, and it's all attributed to the twenty million words.

Therefore, if I really want to say where my luck is, I think it comes from not being smart, not getting good grades, and not playing or being good at sports. God prefers the ugly ones.

Today, I accept everything very frankly. It has nothing to do with luck and talent, I've just been led by the story. What I want to say is that if a person likes eating very much and has been deeply involved in eating since childhood, then he will be successful when he's 30 years old. If a person has liked fighting from the time he was a child up until he's 30 years old, then he can also succeed.

If you like a thing and stick to it, you can always succeed.

I said some conventional remarks, which are probably what should be written in a postscript. Now, let's say the things I really want to say. To turn this page, one must be psychologically prepared.

Wu Xie:

Wu Xie is a difficult person to describe. If I have to say it, I want to say: he is actually an ordinary person.

However, this doesn't mean that he wasn't great. It's because he's an ordinary person that people admire him so much for all he has experienced.

I think many friends will hate his weakness and hesitation when they first see him, but as the story progresses step by step, more and more people like him. He is a boy as weak as water, but please don't forget that in severe winter, the water with the least shape will become solid ice.

Wu Xie is just such a person. He is simple, a little clever, cowardly, and cherishes his life. He's sensitive and afraid of hurting people around him, and is the least suitable person to experience danger among all the teams.

However, I let him become the main character of the story and go through the most terrible journey, which is probably the most special part of the story. When everyone can back down, he just can't; wen everyone can escape, he can't.

I really want to say sorry to him, pushing this ordinary person into such a complicated puzzle. When I look at his entanglements and troubles, it's like I see my own entanglements and troubles. For a period of time, I could even deeply feel the despair in his heart for everything. At that time, I wanted to know what he would do when faced with such complicated despair.

I didn't expect him to survive. In the development of the story, everyone sees how an ordinary person struggles to become a person he doesn't want to be. What makes everyone like him is that he keeps his conscience in all the places that can be turning points in his life. Even though he finally wears a mask of ferocity, his heart is still Wu Xie. He can have a lot of petty crimes and petty vices under his belt, and can have a lot of minor moral problems, but when he faces the biggest choice, he will always be the Wu Xie who wishes everyone well.

“I hope all of us can live well along the way, and all of us can see our own ending. We may not live long, please let us live the life we deserve."

Wu Xie prayed to the sky when Pan Zi was dying, even though he was in a dark cave. He took all the responsibility and blamed himself, unable to face the meaning of his journey.

This is Wu Xie, who's always “useless” in the team and the most useless leader in the iron triangle. He needs other people's protection and help. He has boundless curiosity and desire, but as long as a person is hurt, his own things aren't important. He's an ordinary person who wishes you to live no matter how much he hates you. This is because he doesn't understand killing and the wealth beyond life, he only understands the value of the word “alive”.

Poker-Face:

This is a man as powerful as a deity. With him in the space, I can always write very easily, because as long as he is around, I can block all disasters and suffering for you.

He has no words, will not be happy, will not grieve… he's always like a porcelain doll, standing there silently, looking at everything indifferently. But you know he's concerned about you, and no one can ever bring you as much security as he does.

I don't know why, but when I write about this man's various actions, my heart is always suffused with a deep sadness.

As he himself said, he is a man without past and future. His only connection with the world seems to be of little value and he doesn't know where he came from or where he's going. He only knows that he has one thing he must do in this world.

“Can you imagine? One day, when you wake up in a cave and look around without knowing anything, you already have a responsibility that you must shoulder. You have no right to see the scenery along the way, and you can't enjoy your friends and lovers. All the beautiful things in your life have no meaning to you the moment you regain consciousness."

Zhang Qilin is carrying his own destiny in silence. What saddens me most is that he only carries it indifferently, as if it was all taken for granted, and just a trivial matter. If you ask him, he will only silently shake his head and say to you, “It doesn't matter.”

This is the man I wrote. He bears the most painful fate in the world, even a thousand times more painful than death. However, he is neither angry nor sad, neither evasive nor painful. He's right there, telling everyone he's protecting that it's ok.

At the end of “Grave Robbers' Chronicles 8”, I let him sleep again, and only after ten years do I have the chance to wake him up again.

This may not be a good ending for everyone, but for him, I really can't think of a better one.

Fatty：

Fatty is a person who is coarse and fine, but on the whole, I think he's a fine man. Even in many aspects, he's more fine than Wu Xie. Fatty gives people the impression that he's always joking and always getting into trouble. He has his own bad habits, but I still think he's the most normal of the three.

In other words, if you had to choose someone to be your husband, only Fatty can do it.

If Wu Xie is the kind of person who avoids pain and Little Brother is the kind who ignores it, Fatty is the only one who can resolve it.

Of these people, Fatty undoubtedly suffered the most. This so-called endurance means that Fatty can feel the pain from getting hurt, but instead of wearing it endlessly like Little Brother, he just nods.

A person who can understand and bear so much pain, and can dissolve it bit by bit to truly be happy from the depths of their heart, we can almost call them Buddha.

Yes, Fatty is the Buddha who sees through everything. To some extent, there is more in his jokes than he originally lets on. When he patted the innocent shoulder and said the sentence “Naive Wu Xie”, he already saw through Wu Xie clearly. His nodding to Little Brother in tacit understanding to outflank any danger shows that he also fully understands Little Brother's blank heart.

But in the end, Fatty couldn't bear it. After Yunyun died, could his strong heart resolve the intense grief? He found that his heart was unwilling to heal, and he didn't want this pain to be the same as before, so he finally became an empty shell.

Fatty chose to keep this pain with him forever. I wrote a crying Fatty holding Yunyun and saying to Wu Xie, “I really liked her. I never joked about that.” My tears couldn't stop flowing and I regret that I didn't write more space for him and Yunyun earlier so that he could have more memories with her.

For Fatty, his love is simple: like is like. You don't have to have so many reasons, and don't need to get along so much.

Iron triangle:

I don't know what their relationship is, are they friends? I think that they've gone beyond being friends. They had their own goals, but in the end they all gave those up, so are they relatives? I don't think so either. They are estranged from each other and question each other, but this estrangement was a kind of silent protection. All this seems to be based on the most basic feelings: I hope you can be safe, whether it's Wu Xie pursuing and cajoling Poker-Face, Fatty not seeking money when helping Wu Xie take risks, or Poker-Face's repeated rescue of the two and putting himself in danger.

“These are my friends. Please go away and tell your boss that if my friends suffer any harm, I will definitely kill him. Even if he runs to the ends of the earth, I can find him. I have plenty of time, anyways.” Poker-Face said this sentence indifferently, followed by a bewildered Fatty and Wu Xie.

“I tell you, even if he destroys all my business in the future, I won't frown. This is the Wu family's business and I won't let it fall into just anybody's hands. I'm not here today to ask you to agree to this matter, but to warn you. Anyone who dares to say another word of nonsense to Master Zhang will be like this!” Wu Xie smashed through the desk with his unclenched fist. At that moment, his anger didn't let him feel the severe pain when the phalanges were broken.

“This Fat Master will stay here. There are only two people who can get me to go out from here: one is Mr. Naïve and the other is Little Brother. You must live well, and don't do anything to bother me. You know I'm getting old. Of course, it's also a beautiful thing for us to die together in a fight. If one day you really feel that there's a place you have to go to and you run into trouble, you must call me so I don't have any regrets in this life."

This is the iron triangle.

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In the early 1950s— the Wu family encountered the blood corpse.

1952— Qiu Dekao went back to the US, the Mystic Nine declines.

1956— Archaeological Team at Zhang family historical relic site in Shangsi, Guangxi.

1963-1965— led by Zhang Fo Ye, the Mystic Nine participated in the largest tomb robbing activity in history.

1970—The translation organization, thanks to gold-toothed Jin Wantang completed the research on the Zhang family's ancient building.

1974—Chen Pi Ah Si went to the mirror palace at Reclining Buddha Ridge; Qiu Dekao unraveled the mystery of the Warring States Period silk books and organized the first exploration of Long Mai (TN note: dragon vein; terrain that looks like a dragon).

1976—The original archaeological team to Banai was actually a funeral procession.

1977—Wu Xie was born.

Around 1978—the original archaeological team was replaced.

After 1979—Jie Jiuye's team had no choice but to turn to Grandpa Wu Xie in Hangzhou, who made a crafty escape plan and hid the corpse in the Imperial Mausoleum of the Southern Song Dynasty.

Around 1982—Wu Sanxing got ahead of Qiu Dekao's team and single-handedly explored the tomb of the blood corpse.

Around 1985—the archaeological team entered the Xisha undersea tomb and was imprisoned in a sanatorium. Jie Lianhuan and Wu Sanxing joined forces for the first time.

1990—Organize the sealing up of the archaeological data of Banai and remove the surveillance at the sanatorium. Wen-Jin and her group are still based in the sanatorium and continue their research while establishing a video tape mechanism.

In 1993— Wen-Jin and others discovered the Changbai Mountain clue and decided to go there after studying the data brought out from the undersea tomb.

June 18, 1993—Looking at the Genting Palace of Heaven in Changbai Mountain, Wen-Jin saw the Ultimate.

1995—Wen-Jin and her group found the legendary territory of the Queen of the West.  After the trip to Tamu-Tuo, Huo Ling began to die.

From 1995 to 1999— Granny Huo received the mysterious video tape.

Around 2000—Little Brother returned to Banai, Guangxi, only to have a sudden bout of amnesia. He was put into the tomb as bait to catch zombies and was rescued by Chen Pei Ah Si.

February 1, 2003— Jin Wantang brought Wu Xie the silk manuscript from the Warring States Period, and Wu Xie's grave-robbing tour began.

February 2003— Qixing Lu Palace

March 2003—Xisha Undersea Tomb

Autumn 2003—Qinling Sacred Tree.

Winter 2003—Genting Palace of Heaven

May 2004—Snake Marsh Ghost City

August 2004—Yinshan Ancient Building

Month A in 2004—the Iron Triangle wreaked havoc at the Crescent Hotel.

Month B in 2004—Qionglong Stone Shadow.

Month C in 2004— Wu Xie and Fatty went deep into Zhang Jialou and rescued Poker-face.

Month D in 2004—Wu Xie found the basement under Uncle Three's house and received a letter.

Beginning of autumn, 2005—Poke-face went thousands of miles to Hangzhou to say goodbye to Wu Xie, and then went to Changbai Mountain again.

2015— Ten years later…

Update:

Uncle Three has filled in the pit, and said the important things three times.  Poker-face came out of the bronze door.  Please continue to read the Grave Robbers' Chronicles Ten Years Later.

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Another TN note: I wasn't sure what the A, B, C, D bit from 2004 in the timeline meant but that's how it was in the raw. I'll start on the 2009 Chinese New Year Special tomorrow (it's 30 chapters so you know the drill, ~3 chapters a weeknight (or ~20 pages in word)).

There's been a change of plans after the lovely Taomubiji pointed out that there's a Vol 9 that takes place right after Vol 8 (don't know how I missed that lol) so I'll do that after the new year special. It looks like a beast, so the Tibetan Prequel is gonna be pushed back quite a bit. Sorry to those looking forward to it. Once again, THANK YOU for putting up with my confusion as I try to get this all sorted out lol. And a super thank you for the very kind comments, likes, and emails. They do warm my heart after a shitty day at work 🙂

Chapter end