Ark, they don't revolve around you

So I tried to imitate him, for example, Jiangnan. This bastard Jiangnan often digs holes and doesn't fill them, but it is undeniable that he does have something. Some people say that he writes by piling up words, but I don't think so.

Take a passage from The Mystical Record of Nine States, where a supporting character, Gu Yueyi, the Marquis of Jinbei, falls into a nightmare set up by the enemy:

At this time, Gu Yueyi walked into the silent city.

This is not a real city. Its short, mottled earthen walls and a city gate with only a drawbridge indicate that it is just a small border town.

Gu Yueyi knew its name, it was called Zhenlian Town. In the past, he thought he would stay here for the rest of his life and marry one of the few dozen girls in the town as his gentle and simple wife. She would weave cotton cloth, and Gu Yueyi would grow some oats and sell them to the military camp to feed the horses.

At this moment, the town was so quiet that it was trance-like, as if a very ancient tribe had been buried in the desert for hundreds or thousands of years, and then a traveler stepped into the weathered wall.

Gu Yueyi walked on the military road in Zhenlian Town, and people lined the road waiting for him. But they were all silent, and Gu Yueyi could only hear the sound of his own footsteps.

Sand, sand, sand...

Those people couldn't make any sound, because they were all dead. Gu Yueyi saw the agile lance sergeant, who was pierced by his own lance and nailed to the wall. He leaned there quietly, smoking and daydreaming like he was lazy on weekdays.

And the gnarled groom, he was just a groom, he couldn't even ride a horse well, but in this cavalry squad, he was the strongest man, with bulging muscles. But now he couldn't use his strength, his muscles had been cut off piece by piece, leaving only a huge and grim skeleton and a head with wide eyes.

Gu Yueyi saw the old soldier who taught him how to hold the bow for the first time. He was hung high up by a bowstring, swaying quietly in the wind.

Gu Yueyi was not surprised, he walked forward step by step. He knew that these people were dead, when he was awarded the title of Marquis of Jinbei, his comrades were buried in the cemetery outside Zhenlian Town. And now they only came out occasionally to rest in this quiet town.

Gu Yueyi stopped walking, and he finally saw the person. She was lying on the stone platform in the central square of the town, her fair face facing the sky calmly, as if she was asleep. She was not very beautiful, but she was warm and sweet like a piece of maltose. She was the most outstanding girl in the town. The cavalry talked to her intentionally or unintentionally, and spread every bit of her. The soldiers thought that this was a good woman, sweet, and could weave durable cotton cloth. Unfortunately, her father was wary of these soldiers and protected his daughter like a hen sitting on a nest.

Gu Yueyi suddenly remembered that he was the most silent and shy one in the squad at that time, and also the youngest. He always avoided the old soldiers' obscene discussions about the girl. He secretly stood at the corner of the small street and watched the girl walk out gracefully, hiding a handful of millet in her palm to feed the pigeons that delivered military reports.

And now she lay there quietly, her clothes torn to shreds, her plump chest covered with dried blood.

Gu Yueyi had heard of Li Changgen, the leader of the Ye Ze thieves. This man was a leader as ferocious as a poisonous snake, and he liked to cut off the breasts of young girls and eat them raw.

Gu Yueyi felt tears flowing down his face. His heart was empty, and he didn't seem to be sad. But his tears flowed down silently.

He turned around and faced the dark earth wall under the night sky. A huge figure behind the wall was staring at him. The figure was several times taller than the wall. He took a step forward, collapsed the wall, and smiled grimly.

Gu Yueyi had never seen such a tall man, even more burly than Kuafu in the north, but he remembered that face, the thief from Ye Ze, Li Changgen.

Thousands of thieves appeared around him, on rooftops, on earthen walls, on the corners of small streets, and on high flagpoles. Gu Yueyi was alone, and all his companions were dead, as were all the people in the town.

Gu Yueyi touched her waist, but there was no bow there.

The thieves laughed wildly, and their laughter was like a whirlpool of strong wind. The wind rubbed against Gu Yueyi's side, and it seemed as if there was a demon licking its sharp fangs in the wind.

"It's the last one. Let's kill him."

"Cowardly little thing, let him watch others die first."

"Look at him, he's crying. Is he scared to the point of peeing himself?"

"Why, why? Where was he hiding just now? I didn't find him, otherwise I would have one more head to claim credit for."

Gu Yueyi looked around at those laughing faces. He remembered more things. They were right. When he shot that arrow at Li Changgen, his brothers had already died in the battle.

He was still alive, because he was the youngest, and his brothers left him a fast horse to report the news. But he was shot in the leg and could not escape. He hid in a secluded place and saw Li Changgen walking by with the girl he longed for.

Zhenlian Town has been broken, and all that remains is killing and looting. Li Changgen is going to enjoy his victory.

And the last Izumo archer was trembling in the crack of the hut.

"Yes, this is the truth." Gu Yueyi said to herself, "It's not what is in the battle report, nor what Lord Jinbei Hou praised to the East Land warriors, but this is what is happening right before my eyes."

Moonlit night party, three arrows frighten the soul.

This praise is more like a mockery, and every time someone says it, it becomes more credible. When the whole East Continent knew about Jinbei's new general Gu Yueyi, the war report full of lies became the truth, and everything else was slowly forgotten. As time went by, I sometimes felt confused. Jinbei Marquis created a new general, and the cavalry general who was killed by Jinbei Marquis in the palace would die with regrets, right? Jinbei Marquis just wanted to use his blood to dye the new general's battle flag red.

Gu Yueyi began to tremble, his heart was empty, but his tears flowed down.

The thieves fired countless arrows. Gu Yueyi raised his head in the rain of arrows, looking at the dots of iron light in the dark night like a swarm of locusts flying over. Li Changgen seemed to be about to laugh, but his smile froze on his face, and he saw Gu Yueyi holding the bow.

Many years later, it was this young mounted archer who fell into despair after seeing the death of his comrades and civilians. When Li Changgen was leaving the town square with satisfaction after satisfying his bloody desire, the young man rushed out from the inconspicuous gap between the huts like a madman and threw his only arrow into Li Changgen's bloody mouth.

Gu Yueyi raised his head and drew his bow: "I can kill you once! I can kill you again!"

This was a bewitching dream, and everyone woke up at the same moment. They faced the long-sounding weapons around them, which were shaking violently as if they were angry. Gu Yueyi grabbed the longbow Zhui Yi and suddenly understood why Bai Yi solemnly handed his bow to him.

This is a wedge that pierces through endless cover-ups and allows people to look into the darkest part of their hearts.

What is the scariest thing? It's not zombies, nor death. The scariest thing is to stand in the deepest part of your heart and see yourself clearly. It is the ghost deep in everyone's heart, absorbing memories to survive, but it is forcibly sealed at the bottom of the memory, not allowing it to show up. But it cannot be killed, maybe it can be defeated.

……

To be honest, there is nothing new about this character, right? But it feels good to read it, and Gu Yueyi could be more fleshed out.

Of course, such a comparison is actually a bit hurtful to Fang Zhou's copywriting, and Jiang Nan is not without flaws. This person has an extremely strong bad taste and is indeed extremely paranoid about certain colors.

After all, the two should not be compared. Ark is the second-best Journey. To put it bluntly, it is impossible for it to create characters like Jiangnan.

If you insist that the two are completely different types, the comparison must be absurd. Someone will definitely say that. Whatever. I am just finishing this speech, not writing an argumentative essay. Why should I pursue too much logic?

There are many reasons why I don’t like Ark’s copywriting, and I am also dissatisfied with what I wrote.

I only know how to forcefully apply templates. What I write is stereotyped and monotonous, and the characters I write are paranoid and ridiculous. If you want to say which one is stronger, it is because I am more self-aware. To me, online literature is a service industry, and readers are God.

But Ark has its own ambitions. Their writers not only abandoned the character "Doctor" that the player has replaced, but also abandoned Rhodes Island. More and more stories have nothing to do with Rhodes Island, and they only visit the island when selling characters. But there are still many people who buy into it, praising Ark's plot for its heritage and depth. They say, "Ark has never written about what you think, but a description of the suffering of this land."

Maybe some paragraphs are well written, but that's not what I want to read. I still don't like just praising grand narratives while not being able to change anything. Changes only appear in the if line, and Rhodes Island can only become the center in the if line. Everyone in the main line is always so powerless.

After finishing this popular book, I have to think about the next one.

Well, don’t think that what I said above is all part of my dilemma.

Until yesterday, I hadn't figured out how to choose a new book.

Some people suggested that I should stop writing hardcore, non-otaku-friendly stuff like Ark.

I struggled for a while, and after careful consideration, I decided to... continue writing Ark.

Does it sound like a masochist? But first of all, I have to make a living. If I don’t write relatively popular fan fiction, I will have no future at HedgehogCat. I don’t really know much about the rest.

After all, I'm already riding on the popularity, so I don't mind those things. For an online writer like me, dignity is too expensive, right?

Secondly, I want to try to write something special and see if I can make progress.

People should have some knowledge of themselves, but they should still try to challenge themselves.

I initially thought of two topics for the new book.

One is a relatively normal peach text. The idea came from my reading of the timeline of Ark. I found that if the time point was set ten years ago, there would be many key nodes during these ten years.

The Ten-Year War in Kazdel, Andorn's betrayal of the team, the destruction of the Texas family... Anyway, I can write in chronological order and have a lot of freedom.

I hate so-called suffering and want to learn from Qidian's "The Blue Sword", which is a light-hearted road novel in style. Theoretically, if I write normally, the result will not be too good, but it will not be too bad either. After all, online novels are about making a living with words.

The second one is a bit risky.

About two or three months ago, I read "Cyber ​​Heroes" on Qidian. It's a good book. To be honest, although it is limited by the daily update mode of online literature, it does have some flaws and the text will inevitably be a bit rough in the later stage, but this book touched me very much.

To give a general outline of the core plot of this book, the protagonist Xiangshan and his idealist friends were inspired by alien creations, completed the transformation from natural men to standard men, and essentially ruled the world.

But later, for some reason, thieves appeared, so the protagonist Xiangshan and his partners had to stop these thieves. They chose martial arts. Xiangshan believed that when there was a huge gap in the resources that could be mobilized, "martial arts" was the "assassination technique" that could bridge this gap, and he added the concept of "chivalry" to "martial arts", and the chivalrous group was born.

The protagonist was almost about to defeat the thief, but then his friend Wan Ji Zhi Fu chose to betray him for some reason and became the biggest thief. Xiang Shan challenged him, but was eventually defeated, and the world fell into despair.

It is worth mentioning that the protagonist Xiangshan was revered as the Martial Ancestor because he developed cyber martial arts. The Martial Ancestor was defeated only once in all the battles he fought.

After getting rid of Xiangshan, Wanji's father, perhaps out of mockery, perhaps to commemorate his former friend, or perhaps to reduce the "divinity" of Wu Zu in the eyes of the knights, rendered Wu Zu's memory harmless and posted it on the Internet.

In order to prevent the Father of Wanji from defaming Wu Zu, Wu Zu's friends and comrades also uploaded their memories of Wu Zu to the Internet.

In this case, anyone who is interested can read the memory of Wu Zu through Mewtwo.

Thus, the God of War was born.

The Martial God here refers to the one who, after reading Martial Ancestor’s memories, completely identified with Martial Ancestor’s philosophy and was willing to give up his own personality to become another “Martial Ancestor” to lead the knights in the struggle against the government.

Over the past few hundred years, there have been eleven Martial Gods, including men, women, and AI. The prerequisite for becoming a Martial God is that he must be recognized by the Martial Ancestor's friends.

Most of the time, every birth of a martial god would cause a wave of chivalry. Each martial god was the incarnation of the "Martial Ancestor" and must be killed by the government, so all martial gods were defeated.

This was the only defeat of the Martial Ancestor in all his battles and the eleventh defeat of the Martial God.

This is the aspect that I want to draw on in this book.

It will probably be set up that a thousand years ago, the Doctor woke up from a sarcophagus. At that time, natural disasters were raging, and there were evil demons and monsters in the north and south. The Doctor began to use the Originium and passed this technology to the various tribes on Terra. The Doctor became the ancestor of magicians.

The Doctor believes this will make the world a better place, but he too experiences betrayal.

So the Doctor established Rhodes Island to fight against it, but there was a traitor in Rhodes Island who eventually betrayed the Doctor. Although the Doctor was the person at the top of Originium skills, he eventually lost.

Following the failure, the Originium engulfed the earth, and most of the Burning Winds and the frozen tundra were polluted.

Before the protagonist died, he uploaded his memory to the continuation of the Black Crown civilization.

Every generation of Black Crown will choose the Doctor, and only those who accept the Doctor's ideas are qualified to become the Demon King.

In the past thousand years, a total of ten demon kings have appeared. Each demon king is an enemy of civilization, but the demon king himself is the messenger of the doctor's will.

Then a thousand years later, the Doctor won the resurrection match, woke up from the sarcophagus, and met Amiya, who was appointed as the next "Devil King".

That’s the second idea.

Of course, this is just a rough idea at the moment.

I want to try writing the second one.

The first one is safer, while the second one will most likely fail, because I don't think I can control it. After all, it's basically ooc, and I have to make major changes based on the original Ark content. Given my writing skills, I don't think many people will buy it.

But I still want to try...

There is no reason, I just had a brain storm and wanted to try if I could handle similar subject matter.

……Um.

Having said so much, I probably don’t want to write for a few days.

I wrote a total of 220 million words last year, which is really not a lot, at least not comparable to the big guys, but I want to take a break.

So I will probably start writing the extra chapter in a few days, and then prepare the outline of the new book, which will probably be published at the end of January.

That’s all I want to say. Goodbye everyone!

And then... Happy New Year!

<Extra>

We are all good citizens

This is the seventh day since Zhuang Ning returned home.

Seven days are enough time for the gods walking on the surface of the abyss to differentiate between darkness and light.

It’s a pity that these actions are meaningless to this man who has become a god in a sense.

To put it nicely, this is a way to conserve energy.

To put it bluntly, the show has begun.

Of course, this description is inevitably harsh. After all, he has been away from this world for a long time, so long that he needs to readapt to the present.

As soon as he opened his eyes, Zhuang Ning told himself that there was no need to rush. He didn't need to race against time to kill or command...

So my mood became cheerful.

dining table.

"Perhaps we should consider the future." Precious said seriously.

"The future? What does Miss Precious think?" This is Amiya, who is still working hard to learn the language recently.

"The future? Your mind is so weak." This is years old. She has an excellent talent for languages ​​and is domineering.

But she seemed to have some kind of hostility towards Precious, and they were always quarreling.

The future... Zhuang Ning sighed. He thought what Precious was saying was right. The future could never be avoided.

"I've thought about it. You're all illegal immigrants at the moment." He wiped the corners of his mouth with a tissue and said softly, "But I've already forged your identities."

"So fast, how did you do it?" Priss asked subconsciously.