I wrote novels in the Republic of China

When Sang Jingyun was young, he liked reading martial arts novels very much.

When she was in elementary school, she watched a TV series adapted from a martial arts novel, and she went out of her way to find the original novel to read, and she became obsessed with it.

In the fifth and sixth grades of elementary school and the three years of junior high school that followed, she read hundreds of martial arts novels, and read Mr. Jin Yong's books repeatedly.

When she first started writing, she also wrote martial arts novels.

At that time, martial arts had gradually declined, but at this time, martial arts novels were just emerging.

Sang Jingyun carefully read the martial arts novels serialized in the "New Novel Newspaper". Those novels were written in a mixture of classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese, and were relatively difficult to read. The plots were also very ordinary, and the settings were even more ordinary.

It can even be said that the martial arts novels at this time are completely different from those in later generations.

This was in 1916. Jin Yong, Gu Long, Liang Yusheng and Wen Runan, the four authors known as the four masters of Chinese martial arts novels, were not born yet. Wen Runan, who wrote "The Four", was not born until the 50s.

In the martial arts novels that Sang Jingyun read in the newspapers these days, there was no setting for internal strength.

Probably to meet the word count and get the royalties, these novels also have the problem of inappropriate details. The protagonist suddenly encountered a few robbers, and a whole page was written just for the fight.

In short, these novels were not interesting to her.

This is normal. What she had read before were the best martial arts novels left after the test of time.

The novels that are now serialized in newspapers have not survived to later generations and are naturally not as good as those she has read before.

Sang Jingyun feels that the martial arts novels she writes should be more readable than those currently serialized in newspapers.

In the early years of the Republic of China when entertainment was scarce, there were very few books, so people were willing to read even ordinary stories.

But a hundred years later, the situation is different.

At that time, the population was large, and all young people received education unless there were special circumstances, and there were many people who could write books.

As far as she knew, the total number of registered authors in online literature exceeded 25 million. Although there were duplicates, the number of real authors could exceed the country's literate population at that time.

There are many people writing online articles, so the competition is also fierce. Authors who can make money in the online article industry will not write bad novels.

In short, comparing later online novels with the novels serialized in newspapers at this time is definitely a dimensionality reduction attack.

This is Sang Jingyun's first novel, and she was afraid that it was too unconventional and the newspaper editor would not accept her submission.

As a sixteen-year-old girl, she could not write works that were too detached from the times.

Therefore, what she finally decided to write was a martial arts novel with a clichéd opening.

However, this cliché is only for her, and it must be extremely new to people at this time.

It's like modern online literature.

In the eyes of readers at the time, early online novels had novel and fascinating settings, but only a dozen years later, the once novel settings had become clichés, and those novels even became "old-fashioned novels."

In today's martial arts novels, there is no internal force, no going astray from practicing martial arts that goes wrong, no elixirs that can increase cultivation, and no various strange poisons.

In short, the martial arts worldview that is familiar to later generations no longer exists at this time.

The post-cliché content is something that readers at this time have never seen before. The "cliché" texts she writes will surely give readers at this time a refreshing feeling.

The novel, written by Sang Jingyun, begins with the protagonist's father accidentally obtaining a unique martial arts skill, which leads to the annihilation of his entire family. Only the protagonist escapes by hiding in a secret room.

He heard the murderer's voice in the secret room and discovered that the man who killed his entire family was actually his father's good friend!
The male protagonist hid in the secret room for a month, and only crawled out after making sure it was absolutely safe.

He vowed to avenge his family, but not long after, he was captured by a cult, forced to take poison, and trained as a death warrior.

When the Demon Cult trains its death warriors, they completely ignore their bodies. They make them practice techniques that will damage their bodies and lifespans, and force them to do all kinds of dangerous tasks.

From then on, the hero began his dark life in the demon cult, but he also managed to survive and got a glimmer of hope.

The protagonist's father did get a set of martial arts from a great monk, but that set of martial arts was not the one that could make the practitioner invincible as rumored, but a set of internal skills used to nourish the body.

After his father got the skills, he taught them to the whole family and even to his good friends.

Unfortunately, after practicing, his good friend thought his father was a liar, so he joined forces with some people to wipe out his entire family and force his father to hand over the real skills.

But his father only had this set of exercises that could nourish the body.

The hero learned this technique very early, but he had not realized its benefits before. However, after entering the Demon Sect, he found that as long as he practiced this technique from time to time, he would be able to heal his body that was damaged by practicing the magic technique.

The hero's speed in practicing magic skills is improving by leaps and bounds.

He was born into a wealthy family. Compared with other children who could not read a single word before joining the cult, he was more precocious and unwilling to accept his fate. Therefore, he hid his strength and waited until he became stronger and stronger. Then he took advantage of the cult leader's practice and became possessed by the devil, killed him, and took over the entire cult.

Among the four guardians of the Demon Cult, some rely on absorbing the inner energy of others to practice, some rely on taking the energy of others to practice, some cannot control themselves and start killing people from time to time, and there is also one who likes to play with poison.

These people were also controlled by the male protagonist using various means.

At this time, the protagonist's father's former friend has become the leader of the martial arts world and is preparing to hold a martial arts conference to discuss how to deal with the evil cult.

The male protagonist, who has become the leader of a demon cult, uses his gentle inner strength to disguise himself as a young man who is ignorant of the world and enters the martial arts world, intending to expose the true identity of the leader of the martial arts world in front of the entire martial arts world and avenge his family.

This was not a very complicated story. Sang Jingyun had already conceived it in his mind. He took a pencil and a notebook and started writing.

Nowadays, some novels serialized in newspapers are very long. The famous "The Legend of Sword and Fairy" has about five million words, and the author has been writing for seventeen years and still has not finished it.

But Sang Jingyun didn't want to write such a long novel. She only planned to write 200,000 words for this novel, which she named "The Two-Faced Demon Lord".

The writing style of her novel is very different from that of current novels.

Many books at this time have many characters like the four great classics, and readers can often only watch the stories from the perspective of a bystander, unlike online novels which have an absolute protagonist.

But she got straight to the point right away, and the story was written entirely from the male protagonist's perspective, with various psychological descriptions added, which gave the reader a strong sense of immersion.

Plus, she used vernacular Chinese, so the story is very easy to read.

Sang Jingyun felt that readers would definitely like it.

At least, for her, who has read countless novels, this story of hers is much more interesting than the story in the New Novel.

Sang Jingyun designed the whole story, but she only wrote a thousand words.

Firstly, she was a little tired, and secondly, Sang Jingying brought Sang Jingxiong back.

Sang Jingying seemed to be in a good mood, but Sang Jingxiong looked sad and his eyes were red and swollen.

When Sang Jingxiong learned that he could no longer go to school, he felt like the sky was falling.

Studying is actually very hard. After something happened in their family, people at school would often make sarcastic remarks about him. Therefore, even if Sang Jingxiong really wanted to say how much he liked studying, he couldn't do it.

But this era is different from later generations.

At that time, scholars had a very high status, and people who had read books were respected.

His family's situation was already very bad, but if he continued to study, he would feel that he was superior to others and different from the peasants around him.

Now? He can't read!

His brother was able to finish primary school, so why not let him continue?
Sang Jingxiong targeted Sang Jingyun yesterday, but was punished by Sang Jingying. He no longer dared to target Sang Jingyun. He began to vent his anger on Sang Xuewen: "It's all your fault!"

"My elder brother can finish elementary school, why can't I?"

"You killed my grandfather and stopped me from studying! I hate you!"

……

Sang Jingxiong threw a tantrum in front of Sang Xuewen.

Sang Xuewen didn't have a craving for cigarettes at the moment, and he didn't make any excuses, but remained silent. Others didn't stop him, but they wanted to say the same thing.

If Sang Xuewen had not smoked opium and gambled, Sang Yuanshan would definitely still be with them, happily celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Sang Qianshi didn't have to cook by herself. At that time, she would hold her grandchildren in her arms and chat with neighbors every day, which attracted the envy of countless people.

Today is Mid-Autumn Festival. Although someone in her family passed away not long ago, Sang Qian still wanted to celebrate the festival well, so she took out the only piece of bacon left in the house.

Sang Yuanshan's funeral was extremely simple.

When a funeral is held locally, guests are invited to dinner, with tofu being the main dish. However, families with better financial conditions will prepare some meat dishes for the guests.

At that time, in order to save money, Sang Qianshi served very little meat on the table, which made some guests disgusted.

Because of this, after the funeral, there was nothing to eat left in the house, just a few eggs and a small piece of meat.

The eggs had long been eaten and the meat was pickled.

Today, Sang Qian cut the palm-sized piece of bacon into thin slices, and cooked a large pot of soup with tofu and edamame. She also fried a plate of eggs and leek hearts bought from farmers, and added braised water bamboo shoots with sauce and steamed tofu with salted fish, making a total of three dishes and one soup.

The pickles that we used to eat every day were never served on the table.

Sang Qian cooked the dishes first and then the rice. Because she did not steam the pumpkin when cooking, she used machine-ground white rice. The rice was snow-white and looked extremely tempting.

Once the meal is ready, you can start eating.

Sang Jingxiong, who had been making a lot of noise, also calmed down.

The family sat around the octagonal table and ate white rice. Sang Jingxiong, feeling that he had worked hard today, picked up two slices of bacon in the tofu soup with his chopsticks.

Upon seeing this, Sang Qian quickly stood up and shared the bacon in the soup with her family members.

If you don't make a distinction, others will suffer.

Sang Jingxiong was a little unhappy when he saw this scene. He couldn't eat more meat at noon, and he couldn't eat more at night either.

Sang Jingli is still so young, why does she eat as much meat as him?

Although he was complaining in his heart, Sang Jingxiong didn't say anything in the end because he had learned a lot of lessons in the past two days.

The family was having dinner when there was a knock on the door.

Due to the inconvenience of lighting, people generally do not eat after dark, so it is still light.

Sang Qian walked out and asked, "Who is it?"

"Madam, it's me." A female voice sounded.

When Sang Qian heard the voice, she quickly opened the door and saw a woman about her age standing at the door.

Sang Qian's eyes were red: "Alan..."

The woman's eyes also turned red.

Sang Jingyun knew this woman. She was the Sang family’s former cook, named Alan.

Alan is from Sang Yuanshan's hometown. After Sang Qian gave birth to Sang Xuewen, Sang Yuanshan took her to his hometown to worship his ancestors.

At that time, Sang Qian met Alan, who was beaten all over by her own man and was about to commit suicide, by the river.

Alan didn't know who her biological parents were. She had been a child bride in her husband's family since she was young. She did the most work and ate the least food, and raised her husband and his five younger brothers and sisters.

I don’t know if it was because of her poor health when she was young, but after Alan married her man, she never had a child. Her husband beat her all day long for ten years.

Alan couldn't survive, and Sang Qianshi felt sorry for her so she helped her, brought her to Shanghai, and let her work as a cook in the Sang family.

Sang Yuanshan's hometown is in Jiaxing, not far from Shanghai, but it takes a whole day by boat, and people at that time rarely travel far. After Alan arrived in Shanghai, her husband's family would definitely not be able to find her.

Alan started her new life like this. She used to be skinny and looked miserable, but after staying in the Sang family for a long time, she turned into a plump and amiable woman who always had a smile on her face.

In addition to cooking, she also helped Sang Qian take care of the children. Sang Xuewen, Sang Jingyun and others were often held by her.

Because she had no children, Sang Xuewen once promised to take care of her in her old age, and Sang Yuanshan and Sang Qian also agreed to this.

But after the Sang family got into trouble, they could no longer afford to support servants.

Alan was the last servant to leave. She had suffered a lot in her early years and her health was not so good as she got older, so now she could only work as a kitchen helper.

The salary for a kitchen helper is very low. After the master provides food and accommodation, he can only get one silver dollar a month.

Even though this was the case, before Sang Yuanshan passed away, she still sent two silver dollars and a few copper coins, which was all her belongings.

She came again this Mid-Autumn Festival.

"Ma'am, I brought a bowl of braised pork and two mooncakes to give you some extra dishes." Alan smiled with tears in his eyes.

Alan, who is in his sixties, looks like he is in his seventies or eighties in later generations.

Sang Qian couldn't help crying when she saw Alan, who had lost a lot of weight.

It is not easy for Alan, who does the dirtiest and most tiring job as a kitchen helper, to get a bowl of braised pork.

The Sang family members were a little sad, but the Hong family in the county town, everyone was happy.

Manager Hong's second son, Hong Yongxiang, returned from the concession, bringing back a lot of stuff, big and small.

"Uncle, uncle, you're back!" As soon as Hong Xu saw Hong Yongxiang, he rushed towards him like a cannonball.

Hong Yongxiang wanted to pick up Hong Xu like he used to, but it was very difficult: "A Xu, you've gained weight again!"

Fat is a good word these days, and Hong Xu is not angry at all: "I've grown up!"

"Yes, you have grown up." Hong Yongxiang laughed.

Hong Xu said again: "Uncle, uncle, I'll show you something good!"

"What good stuff?" Hong Yongxiang knew how to make children happy and looked interested.

Hong Xu immediately took out the picture book he and his sister had made, and handed it to Hong Yongxiang like a treasure: "Look, uncle, my sister drew a picture book!"

This book was bound by Manager Hong after he returned home today.

Hongxing Paper Shop is a century-old shop that sells account books and enlightenment books, so Manager Hong understands thread binding and can bind books.

Hong Yongxiang saw the five big words "Three Strikes on the White Bone Demon" on the book at a glance.

He had read Journey to the West, and the copy in Hong Xu's second sister's hand was given to her by him.

He immediately realized that this was a painting of a story from Journey to the West.

Open the book and you will see pictures and text inside.

This picture book is very delicately made, but it is not really surprising.

But Hong Yongxiang just couldn't stop reading. When he finished, he was a little surprised: "Ah Xu, your second sister's vernacular writing is really good, and the punctuation is also very good!"

There are not many words in this book, but the meaning is concise and clear, making it very suitable for children to read. The pictures are also very well drawn.

It’s really amazing that his child can produce such a book!

(End of this chapter)