Hello, everyone. We meet again.
After taking a few months off, I've missed you all very much.
Before I knew it, I, Tudou, had been writing for eighteen years, ever since 2008. I had gone from a hot-blooded eighteen-year-old to a thirty-six-year-old, tea-drinking, keyboard-tapping middle-aged streamer, and I even get mocked for never being able to get a national ranking with Shen Mengxi. It's enough to make me sigh.
People often say, "Tudou, you've actually stuck with writing for so many years. That can't have been easy." But really, it's perfectly normal, because I get paid for it. With that kind of money on the table, who couldn't stick with it?
Haha.
Back when my first book went on sale, if it hadn't earned me four thousand yuan in that first month, I think I might have struggled to keep going. The pressure was simply too great back then. My family thought the whole thing was unreliable and believed I went to the internet café every day to sneak off and play games.
Well, I really was a game-addicted teenager back then.
Fortunately, the four thousand yuan I earned that first month shattered all the doubts.
You have to understand, in a small county town in 2008, four thousand yuan a month was unquestionably a high salary.
Back then, I felt as if my whole life had lit up.
Haha.
And now, looking back, I'm truly grateful to that teenager who, after playing games at an internet café eighteen years ago, opened a document as if guided by some mysterious force and wrote the first sentence of his first book.
Though he was also at the most bewildered stage of his life then, luckily, despite not knowing how to do anything, he chose a path he had never imagined taking, but which also seemed to be the only one he could make it down.
To tell the truth, if it weren't for web novels, I can't even imagine what I'd be doing. I might not even measure up to ninety-nine percent of you here.
Of course, the people I'm most grateful to are the readers who have been with me over the years.
Eighteen years can change so much.
Eighteen years are enough to transform a person completely.
They can wear down an innocent, wide-eyed high schooler into a middle-aged man who has seen the warmth and coldness of human nature and weathered the wind and frost of life.
Sometimes, I've wondered whether, through the wind and frost of these eighteen years, those ringing, cold words the young man in that story once shouted-"Thirty years the river flows east, thirty years it flows west; don't bully a young man for being poor"-might have given us a little more courage to charge at life, even as we laughed at how wonderfully chuunibyou they were.
If so, that would truly be the proudest achievement of my writing career.
And over those eighteen years, there have been six books.
Sword Saint, Battle Through the Heavens, Martial Universe, The Great Ruler, Dragon Prince Yuan, King of All Aspects.
About twenty-five million Chinese characters in total.
Perhaps many readers haven't read all of those books in their entirety, but even if you've read just one of them, even if you remember only a single character or a single line, that is enough to satisfy me. After all, how fortunate I am to have left a mark on the youth of so many people.
The teenager who put pen to paper and wrote his first passage eighteen years ago probably never dreamed he would gain so many readers.
And now, I'm about to continue writing my seventh novel.
It will once again be a fantasy world, and once again a story of a young man growing up.
Some people say, "Tudou, why do you always write about one young man after another growing up and rising to prominence?"
I think perhaps that is the deepest obsession in my heart.
A young man rises from adversity, strives to grow stronger, and wins fame and success.
Because that was the deepest dream in the heart of a boy whose parents divorced when he was little, who grew up in a broken family and had seen more than his share of warmth and coldness.
People say flowers bloom again, but people are never young twice. Perhaps I only want to keep that youthful spirit in my heart alive a little longer through the stories of one young man after another.
I used to cry out hot-bloodedly, "Don't bully a young man for being poor."
Now that I'm thirty-six, all I can do is raise my arm and shout.
Don't bully a middle-aged man for being poor!
A new world, here I come!
I hope this story can keep you all company for another three years!