Everyone, I have finally finished writing.
It’s hard for me to describe how I feel at this moment—neither good nor bad, neither calm nor excited. It’s truly difficult to put into words.
In fact, I had been thinking for a long time about what my feelings would be like when I reached this moment. I imagined various possibilities, but I never expected it to be like this—where I can’t even express the most basic words.
Perhaps it’s because I thought too much about this moment; my fantasies have surpassed the reality of the feelings. However, as I pull back the curtains and look at the gloomy sky in Beijing, I still feel that something has changed.
This has been a five-year-long marathon, an unrelenting five years. Spending five years to write nine novels and complete such a vast and complex story is indeed quite a challenge for an amateur writer. By the end, I no longer knew if the story was good or exciting. I just wanted a few characters to genuinely complete the journeys they were meant to take. In fact, this is not something I can control. The greatest dilemma I faced at the end was that the protagonist had grown tired of his life, and I had to find something in the story to keep him moving forward.
Just a few minutes ago, I let them finish their journey, and it was quite peaceful.
When I completed the fourth book, I had already decided to write a long epilogue, detailing the entire process of writing “Tomb Raiding Notes,” along with many doubts and thoughts I had in my heart. While many memories are still fresh and all the characters are still vivid in my mind, I must start writing immediately.
First, let me talk about some conventional matters. Regarding the origin: to be honest, I really can’t remember the initial motivation behind writing this novel. But I know it wasn’t some noble or grand idea. I have never been the type of person with lofty literary ideals; I never wanted to tell others that I am something or other. What I have pursued since childhood, to put it plainly, is a sense of recognition, and storytelling happens to be a way for me to easily gain that recognition. So, although I can’t recall, I can almost say for certain that when I wrote the first three thousand words, it was probably just to earn some applause.
This is a very humble pursuit. Long ago, I was too embarrassed to admit it because it seemed so worldly, even though I understood that even if one is not a great person, they can still embark on a career for the happiness of many people. I felt uneasy because I didn’t have such noble slogans, thinking that my motives were impure.
“Tomb Raiding Notes” is derived from a folk story that my grandmother told me. This story left a deep impression on me when I was a child.
Feel free to ask if you need any further assistance!
The story is about a landlord who buys an empty house and wants to plant flowers and plants in the backyard. However, he discovers that nothing he plants can survive, so he consults a feng shui master. The master suggests that there seems to be a problem beneath the yard, prompting the landlord to hire laborers to start digging. Halfway through, they begin to see blood, although it’s unclear whether it’s real blood or just red mud. Eventually, they unearth a beautifully carved coffin, but they have no idea whose it is. They place the coffin in the ancestral hall, and from then on, the village is thrown into chaos. Not only do the crops fail, but even the landlord’s family is on the brink of extinction, and strange occurrences begin to happen in the neighboring houses. They have no choice but to consult the feng shui master again. After examining the site, the master instructs them to keep digging, and they eventually find a smaller coffin buried deeper down. It turns out to be a joint burial site for a loving couple, but because the wife’s coffin has sunk significantly, the two coffins are now farther apart, increasing the resentment. The village chief finds a new auspicious site, lays down stone slabs underground, and reburies the two coffins together. Only then does the situation calm down.
I expanded on this story and used its elements to write Chapter 001 of “The Grave Robbers’ Chronicles.” I remember that Chapter 001 has over three thousand words. I wrote it in less than half an hour without any revisions, then posted it in a place where everyone could see it. I wrapped my head in my collar and hid, straining my ears to catch any sounds of applause, hoping to satisfy my vanity. I listened for five years, during which I experienced changes that I had never imagined before. Now, when I look back at what I once considered a very humble pursuit, I find that it has transformed into the noblest of aspirations. Stephen King once said in the preface to “The Dark Tower”: “I wrote this book and made a lot of money, but the initial joy of writing it had nothing to do with money.” Five years later, I have become what some call a bestselling author, but I am grateful that my happiest moments still come from hearing applause in that inconspicuous corner of the internet, and at the moment of finishing my writing, I look forward even more to that time.
Regarding this novel: What I want to say is that when I was writing the second book, I had a strong feeling that it was no longer just a novel. I always feel that a world has already formed elsewhere. As I tap on the keyboard, that world slowly grows and develops, and the characters within it begin to have their own souls. When I was thirteen, I read a biography of Alexandre Dumas, which mentioned that “the characters came to life.” When Dumas was writing the third part of “The Three Musketeers,” a character died, and he cried while writing, soaking the manuscript with his tears. I found it particularly strange; what kind of state allows an author to write about the death of their characters in such a way?
I tried to explore various imaginations, but to no avail, until I began writing this novel myself. I consciously started to give the characters different personalities and life experiences. Gradually, I discovered that the plot began to evolve in ways I couldn’t have predicted.
Before long, I found that I could no longer control what this character should say or what actions they should take. I noticed a fascinating phenomenon: as long as I established a scene—say, a heavy rain—and placed these characters in that context, they would naturally find their respective positions and do what they were meant to do.
I couldn’t swap the positions of any two characters, as that would create an irreconcilable dissonance. Even if I forcefully switched the actions of two characters, when I later arrived at a tea party scene, it was already predetermined who would speak first, who would follow, who would liven up the atmosphere, and who would be lost in thought. I didn’t need to think about anything; I just had to watch them to know the direction of the story. They had truly come to life.
During the lengthy writing process that followed, I transformed from an author into an observer. From a god-like perspective, I observed each person’s actions, and slowly, I could even see the origins of many subtle emotions and behaviors, tracing them back to experiences from their childhood. For example, I could truly see everything about the chubby character through his gesture of shaking off ash from his cigarette—his pain, his hardships, everything. A flower is a world, a tree is the Buddha. I could rewind and replay a scene endlessly, observing it from any angle, and even perceive the psychological activities of everyone present, as multiple emotions passed through my mind simultaneously. I think few people can experience this kind of thrill.
When writing the segment about “The Havoc in Heaven,” it felt as if I were in a private room at the New Moon Restaurant. I could almost walk from upstairs to downstairs, witnessing the chaos around me. Amidst the flying shards and the fighting crowd, I could pause everything at any moment, rewind time, and delve into the characters’ inner thoughts, experiencing all the emotional shifts within them. I could advance everything before me at a slow pace, frame by frame, crouching down to observe the gradual changes in the characters’ expressions. The entire world within this book felt real to me. Every detail was authentic and unchangeable. The parts I had already constructed were as solid as reality itself. Although I am the creator of this novel, once everything fell into place, I began to feel an immense reverence for the world of this story.
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