Final Thoughts—My Heart Remains the Same
I didn't sleep the night before last.
More precisely, from when I got up at eight in the morning on the 25th and began writing, until eleven-thirty in the morning on the 27th, I sat before my computer the entire time.
Reading it word by word.
Deleting, then revising. Revising, then deleting.
Other than eating and using the bathroom, all I did was write, write, write.
My palms were soaked with sweat, and so were the soles of my feet.
When exhaustion became unbearable, I threw myself onto the bed. The moment I closed my eyes, I jolted awake—
I was afraid of the ending.
Afraid that I hadn't done well enough.
Afraid that some hole I had promised everyone I would fill had been left leaking somewhere. Afraid that the way I filled those holes would not satisfy everyone.
10.95 million words. Every story took place on a single map. Plotlines easily stretched across thousands of chapters, intertwining. Characters who appeared in the first chapter still had a stage in the last...
I was muddle-headed, but I didn't dare let myself stay that way. I kept washing my face, then came back to sit down again.
How exactly should I write it...
How was I supposed to write it?
I had already conceived the ending in 2019. Back then, breaking the fourth wall was not especially novel; after all, it had appeared in Don Quixote four hundred years ago... But that was not actually the question I wished to explore.
Zhu You believed this was a novel.
Jiang Wang believed it was not. Yet he did not deny the possibility. At the same time, he believed that even if he existed within such a possibility, he could still elevate fiction into reality.
Zhu