- Faith is a bird. While the dawn was still dark, it felt the light and sang.

February 16, 2022, through March 31, 2023.

Thirteen months, 1,870,000. The story of Russell came to an end.

As I said in my testimonial – it's a story from cyberpunk to space opera.

At the heart of its creation is a kind of romance, telling the story of "heroes". But this is not a story of heroism, but a story of people.

What is a hero?

I am a pioneer.

"Humans. Without wings, how can you go up? ”

The same sentence, but in the standpoint of "light" and "mirror", the meaning it expounds is different.

The former is about the self, praising the never-ending progress and ascent of the individual, "the eternal woman, leading us upward", is Goethe's "Faust"; And this book is about Tagore, praising the greatness of the group and the love of the world.

- There is no trace of wings left in the sky, but I have flown over.

It's still a story of love and hope.

At the beginning, I said that this book is a joint with the previous one. In the beginning, when you look at a "maniac" you think it's a "hero", and when you look at a "hero" you think it's a "maniac". For when you look at the light, you can only see what the light illuminates; When you see the mirror, you can only see what is reflected in the mirror.

And it is not until near the end that it is clear why the theme of the story is heroes.

Light is one, and it does not tolerate darkness and is not merciful. But mirrors are mundane and can be seen everywhere. He reflects everything but himself.

All beings are heroes if they have courage.

Then let's talk about the motivation for the creation of this book.

I've seen a lot of readers discover that yes, the original inspiration for this book was an animated short story called Breaking Through the Darkness. When I first saw this video, I was in tears. After that, in October of '21, I talked to my editor, Penglai, about the story.

"I want to write a story about breaking through the darkness and reclaiming the blue sky." I say.

With this in mind, I decided on the beginning and end of the book at that time. Now you can look back and see that the first ten chapters and the last ten chapters of the book have opposite and mirror names. This is also a kind of elaboration of the theme of "mirror".

It is a cycle that leads to an infinite future.

Since the core of the book comes from Rabindranath Tagore, it should also be written in a way that speaks of Tagore: what ends with exhaustion is "death", and what ends with infinity is "a happy ending".

For telling the story of the group and the hero, it is necessary to reach the infinite future!

My parents were both workers and my family was poor. When I was in junior high school, my father cheated on me, and my mother worked hard to raise me.

I earned my college tuition on my own. At that time, there was no money, and I hadn't started writing about the blood of mercury. After I graduated from my junior year of high school, I went to a nightclub and wore a cheap suit to the stage. Every day, he bowed at the door with a smiling face and blurted out a smooth "Good evening, welcome". When there are few customers, I will also work as a waiter to clean the private room and take out the garbage.

At that time, I was only a foot eight at the waist, and the skinniest pants a man could buy were too loose. There was no belt that worked, so I had to remove it, cut it short, and put it back on.

I go to work at half past five in the afternoon every day, leave work at two in the morning, and occasionally work overtime until more than three o'clock. And before that I hadn't even slept past twelve o'clock at night. I eat at eight or nine o'clock every night, and the big pot of rice I eat changes every day, and there are three kinds of back and forth, which are characterized by Schrödinger's meat—as if you can eat the taste of meat, but as if there is no meat. Although there is a bowl of food per person, the steamed buns are full, but I have a small amount of rice, and I can only eat half of it. My favorite thing to eat is a stewed chicken with winter melon, although it is full of winter melon and you can hardly find chicken, but at least the soup is delicious.

At that time, my salary was only 1,500 a month, and a private room cost 1,808 a night. After working for half a month, I have met thousands of strange people, and I also understand that life is not easy. After taking two thousand four, school started.

When I was in school, I worked in a bubble tea shop at school and a waitress at a café. Then I started creating Mercury Blood...... Maybe I do have the talent for this, and I paid 18,000 for the first month.

I was very happy. But at that time, I didn't think of writing as my goal in life.

I think very well - I can find an ordinary, leisurely job in the future, with a salary of only 2,000 yuan a month. Because I can still write at night, so my income is doubled. In our third- and fourth-tier small cities, it is enough to support ourselves and live well.

Later, my manuscript fee became higher and higher. In his junior year, his income was already stable and exceeded 10,000 yuan, and he was also well-known in the school and became the minister of the Ministry of Information. But at that time, I still didn't give up on the idea of finding a job, and the idea became more and more relaxed: "I'll just find a job."

Although life was busy at that time, I was full of hope for the future. I have a lot of friends and lovely girlfriends. I also got along with the local newspaper and the teachers liked me. Seeing more and more savings - although when I wrote "Praise to the Demon King" halfway, there was a period of time because I stayed up late every day to write a book until five o'clock, and then I had to get up at nine o'clock to go to class, which led to angina. The sudden death experience at the beginning of "To 4,000 Years Later" is a personal experience.

But fortunately, the fast-acting heart-saving pill is quite awesome. survived, and then the Chinese medicine eased up after two weeks.

Until I was about to graduate, I did an internship in a factory. Yes, many people think that I graduated from a philosophy or communication major, but I actually studied engineering. I studied electrical automation.

Our group took a rickety bus for almost two hours to get to the factory in the suburbs. I originally imagined that the factory should be the kind of busy assembly line. Everyone is in their place, each with its own role. Able to give up thinking and concentrate on work. It's like being a waiter, and it's able to relax a tired brain.

But that's not what I see.

The air smells of rubber, the smell of dust. The sky is gray.

There is only one restaurant within a radius of about five kilometers. That shop sells alcohol and groceries, but it doesn't do very well. The main thing is a kind of big bun, five yuan or eight yuan a piece, the giant is big, bigger than my face. Inside is the stuffing of leek meat vermicelli, you can be full if you eat one, and there is also free porridge.

The excavator was squirming back and forth, not knowing what it was shoveling and the sound of thump coming from nowhere. In the empty factory, there are seven or eight people in a workshop. Everyone was lazy, with that kind of fish-touching action, slow movements, and expressionless mixed days. Silent. At noon, everyone was smiling and playing poker.

At that moment, I felt like a gargoyle had come to life.

I watched as they were doing their work, and we students didn't have anything to do. There are those who are enthusiastic and come up to ask, "Is there anything we can do?" and get a cold reply "Don't make a mess".

Nothing works.

So the students got together to play who was undercover, and some went to fight FGO, Onmyoji, and Honkai Impact 3. But because there is no traffic, most of them are superficial. There was only shouting in the empty factory, as if they had just changed places to play games. I was looking at the Book of Events II and saw the fourth volume from the first volume.

The school said that after we graduated, if we wanted, we could send it directly to the factory. You can come and work right here.

- Boom.

I felt a great sense of fear.

That smelled of death. Not a life-like death, but a spiritual one. It's going to make people angry. I'm more afraid of this kind of life where the spirit decays slowly than the flesh factory.

I was very aware that if I worked here, I would probably not be able to write anything at night. But something was sprouting in my heart that told me that life shouldn't sink like this.

I've endured pain. But that's not because I can live with it, it's because I can see hope in it. I can see the meaning of life, which is to fight – to fight for the sake of no longer suffering.

He who has endured pain cannot endure decay. It's like you can't put salt on a wound.

Since then, I've written Player Justice.

Not to vent, but to praise – the more fearful, the more hymns must be sung. The world asks me in pain and wants me to repay it with a song. So I celebrated the beauty of life, as well as love and hope. Because I always yearn for an upward spirit, yearning for better.

The player's results are good. But I felt a sense of pause again, because the player had almost squeezed me out. I wrote with all my heart, and that's all I could do.

So I wrote this book and I calmed down and sought new progress. There are nine volumes in total, and I tried nine different plot structures and different ways of writing. The three volumes I am most satisfied with are Meteor, Caged Bird, and Nucleus and Shell, while the ones that expose the most problems are the One Day Skeleton, Flower Touch, and Amber. But whether I am satisfied or dissatisfied, they will also become my nourishment.

As long as it is written, it will not be wasted.

Brilliant glow, like a spark, and like a bird.

It's always up, as always.

The tower's subscription score is only half that of players, but fortunately, the copyright potential is relatively strong. And the book has also been nominated for the Galaxy Award for "Most Adaptation Potential" and "Best Internet Science Fiction Award", which is no loss!

The income of the tower and the player, including copyrights, has allowed me to pay off the mortgage completely. Starting from scratch and having my own house in full, I was finally able to put my mind at ease. Although it is only a small third- and fourth-tier city, I think it is still something to be proud of.

Well, that's all for the book. Let me come and rest for more than a month and then come back.

The body is almost unbearable, and the cough has started to stop in the past few days. Bronchiolitis is going to be with me for the rest of my life. And I had a toothache the other day, and I put up with it for two weeks. I'm going to have a tooth extracted and then adjust my routine. If you have time, you can broadcast the game live in Ah B, which is also a kind of material.

Take a good break for a month, and then start writing a new book in May.

The pair of themes of "Light and Mirror" and "Fanatic and Hero" is over, and the new book is a new set of stories with the theme of "The Sun". It's kind of an amber flow story, although it's not standard. Because I'm still going to incorporate something new into it. But overall, it's a light-hearted story, and the theme of the tower is so gloomy that I'm almost depressed when I write it...... It's time to write something lighthearted to heal yourself.

The release time of the new book is 521. It's both I love you and Xiaoman, it's very auspicious.

Why is Xiaoman so auspicious? Because my name is Xiaoman (

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll see you in a new book. Hopefully goodbye.

In the end, I still have to end with that sentence.

- May you always be happy.