"Flower-Plucking Records": Leave to Visit a Loved One, a Progress Review, and a Look Ahead

My apologies: I have another regular research presentation to give this Friday, so I haven't been able to update over the past two or three days. Also, the most important girl in Ping Chao's life apart from his mother temporarily left our homeland at the beginning of this month to pursue a doctorate here. Once I finish work on Friday, I'll be going to her city to see her. So I can only apologize to all my readers: I may be unable to write or update for about five days.

While asking for leave, I might as well say a little about writing this book. With all its odds and ends, Dust Along the Immortal Road has been in the making for nearly two years. By the end of Volume Fifteen, it has reached the middle-to-late portion of the story. Dust upon the immortal road, the immortal road amid the dust-walking alongside everyone to this day, it has always been leisurely and unhurried, with scares but no real peril. The lives of the young men and women in the book seem as placid as water, with plenty of lightness and bright beauty, but somewhat lacking in weight and sorrowful indignation. I'm well aware of this. In fact, if I wanted weight, anguish, desolation, or misery greater than this book's or that one's, I could probably manage it too. It would simply mean stirring up trouble, making trouble out of nothing, conspiracies, wars, deaths, the deaths of important figures, the deaths of many people-why haven't I written it that way all this time? Because it runs counter to my overall vision for this book.

Fighting and killing, debts of gratitude and grudges, violent changes and reversals-many classics have already set glittering jewels before us. Why should I invite disappointment upon myself