Afterword

Translator's note: This isn't a proper chapter, but I felt that the novel wouldn't be properly complete without including the author's afterword. As a result, this will be the last page linked in the main novel. The extras will be posted as well once I've completed translating them, but they will be posted independently, linked only to the main page of contents rather than the novel itself.

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When I invited feedback, this novel of mine was completed incredibly well; it didn't count as sluggish, nor hasty; everything I wanted to say, I had said entirely, and it hadn't yet come to the time when either of us were fed up with the other. But when I typed out the three characters of "this novel is complete", because of the disappointment on my face, it became very ugly.

I've said it many times; writing this novel was unexpected. Originally, it ought to have ended on the first chapter, and ended without finishing what had been started. There wasn't Shijiu, there wasn't A Yin and A Luo, and more than that, there weren't the wide variety of people and stories afterwards. What continued writing it wasn't me, but "continued thoughts". There was someone who told me, multiple years later, "Qiqi, I really want to see the continuation of Wen Guan". And another person said, me too.

I always am deeply nostalgic of the things brought by time, and so, the subject of this novel was time. It is a drop in the ocean, and as countless as the grains of sand in the Ganges river; it's a short, short year, and a creation myth, the splitting apart of heavens and earth; the overlap of Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing, and the recent past and contemporary times. The colliding of time gave rise to an elegant, magnificent vitality; actually, the manipulation of time had never been magic; it can be written language, can be imagination, and can even be what is known to us as "eternity".

I had thought of its completion countless times already; perhaps in April, or perhaps in November, but I hadn't imagined that it was in this time, in this particular circumstance, in this particular frame of mind. But I thought, it's truly not hindering anything, because its other subject is romance. It doesn't mature in April, nor in November; it grows in any season, grows in tenderness.

The romance I speak of, it's not Li Shiyi, not Song Shijiu, nor A Yin or A Luo, but someone who sincerely loved Wen Guan. Because the tolerance and empathy of all of you, tolerating my bold and imaginative imagination, like a heavenly steed soaring across the skies, and listening to some utterly nonsense, invented matters, and in the world which is not earnest, paying attention, and attentively distinguishing the small amount of sincere words.

So, I thank you deeply and wholeheartedly.

I've always felt, in comparing a mature, complete work, the interaction of following a work is even more worthy of commemorating; what allows me to persevere is precisely the persistence and encouragement of all of you. It is a process of mutual understanding, its preciousness in the even harder to reproduce "promptness" and "mutual nature"; even though, in the future, there will be more people who read this work, it's like a meeting which they have come late to, and I will no longer participate in the way that I am now, feeling an epic sense of it happening to myself; I fear I can only say a single phrase: thank you.

So, this afterword isn't for those in the future, but you all, who have accompanied me on this journey. With an origin, with gratitude, in the end, it ought to be a goodbye.

Goodbye, Li Shiyi, Song Shijiu, A Yin, A Luo, Tu Sanping. Wu Qian, Tu Saozi, Tu Sishun, the little green snake, the tiny paper figures. Xia Ji, A Chun, A Wan, A Tang, the E Shou, Mulian, Mulan, Yan Niang, A Bai, Yunyun, Han Yuan, the Xu Hao, A Ping, the Shengsheng, Qin-jiangjun, A Tao, Chang Gong, Chun Ping, Xiao Douding. As well, the guest appearance of the friend, Yushiqie.

The rest of the words, I won't write them; I think you all can find that phrase.

I hope that you all can find it.

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