★ Make readers laugh, but not at the author.
★ There probably won't be scenes of overwhelming joy or sorrow-if there absolutely must be, then let it be overwhelming joy.
Plenty of things in life already go less than smoothly. People come online looking for a little fun-if the author still serves up knitted brows, bitter grievances, and endless weeping, then two little labels sum him up:
1. Boring;
2. Pighead.
★ Since this is an immortal-hero novel, it seems it ought to be free of the smoke and bustle of mortal life. But Ping Chao has never lived as an immortal hero, so what can he do? Make the language as classical as possible. With nothing but plain everyday speech, it's hard to keep that mortal smoke out.
★ Surveying the thousands of years of online fiction, especially immortal-hero novels, I see quite a few sharing one tendency: they're too cloying. Too many magical treasures, like a museum exhibition-cloying; too many immortal arts, like a showcase of technological achievements-cloying; too many superpowered big shots, like a world scientific congress-cloying; too many wives, like an experiment testing the limits of the human male's endurance-cloying; an overworked protagonist, burdened with all manner of destinies spanning several races, thousands of years, and tens of thousands of light-years-cloying; ... cloying!!!
★ In response to all that cloying excess, Ping Chao has decided that Dust Along the Immortal Road will try to be a little fresher, a little more natural, a little more humorous, and a little closer to ordinary people.
★ "Lustful fantasy" isn't really anything new. In Dream of the Red Chamber, Miss Jing Huan once flamed young Baoyu, replying: "Little Baoyu, what you're doing is lustful fantasizing!" Really, throughout the ages, how many literary classics, Chinese or foreign, have been entirely