This guy is not Ma Chao

  I was so excited at the time that I could hardly control myself and almost couldn't help but pick up the pen again to add a few more words.

  "South of the Yangtze River".

  My heart, my body, every time I put down the pen, it trembles: this is the story that I am most familiar with, this is the character that I deeply love. When I threw away the thirtieth worn-out sheep-hair brush, I finally let out a deep breath.

  "Damn it, Jiangnan is dead! Stinky Wang!" I cursed, "Don't know how many of the nine states have been destroyed in these years? How many have been recorded? Or did they jump into other pits because they couldn't make money?"

  One pit after another is deep, "Jiuzhou Yishilu" 1-6, followed by "Jiuzhou Bianhe Lu" 1-6, and then "Jiuzhou Wangshi Shu" 1-6. Who knows what's next? Maybe "Jiuzhou OOXX Lu" and "Jiuzhou XXOO Shu" 1-6... Alas! This guy digs pits too fast and fills them too slow! In a year, he can't even come up with one book of over 2 million words! Jiangnan Grandfather, compared to those comrades who are struggling at the starting point, writing three chapters a day, six thousand words per chapter, aren't you ashamed?

  I sighed: What a pity, this is just a castrated text. Otherwise, I would find someone to polish it and publish it through a publishing group. It would definitely be a masterpiece that would be passed down for thousands of years, making literary scholars go crazy! And what's more, I could also advance the records of several literary works in our country by one or two thousand years. That would be a great contribution to the nation and the people, wouldn't it?

  I'm very sorry, this long introduction is not only tedious but also looks more and more like a vague advertisement...

  It's just a lot of complaints I've accumulated over many years in my past life.

  This series is indeed not short, with at least over 1 million words, and the fragmented and irrelevant details I've already forgotten seven or eight tenths of them. However, compared to my previous magnum opus "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", due to being full of passion, the creation speed was actually faster, and it was completed in just one year, probably the feeling of mothers' ten months of pregnancy but difficult labor is not much more than that.

  At this time, I have already squandered nearly eight years, and the number of paper sheets that have been wasted is conservatively estimated to be around two or three thousand. Due to the significant improvements made by Cai Lun, a eunuch of the Eastern Han dynasty, in the paper-making technique, the cost of paper production has reportedly decreased dramatically, gradually entering ordinary households, making it increasingly affordable.

  Even so, Father was still heartbroken. Occasionally he would come to my room and see that the fine paper, originally a treasure, had been covered in scribbles with a coarse brush. He would leave without a word, but from his stiff smile I could sense that at this moment he must have wanted to jump up and strangle me to death, then use the thousands of sheets of wasted paper to build a pyre, set it ablaze, and burn both my corpse and works to ashes.

  Looking at Father's unpleasant face, I was naturally extremely disdainful: In any era, the illiterate are jealous of the literati!

  So I continued to waste paper with a clear conscience and started new creations.

  In my childhood, apart from playing with the dogs and horses, taking a few broken classes and sleeping for a while, I really couldn't find anything to entertain myself. It was so boring! In such a materially impoverished environment, I tried to make the best of it and decided to enrich my spiritual world subjectively.

  So I often have a great poetic inspiration, and creative sparks can burst out at any time and place. As a result, my follower Zhao Cheng has to be more careful, carrying pen, ink, paper and inkstone with him all the time to meet the needs of this modern poet's creation of poetry and songs.

  Under such extremely adverse circumstances, I completed hundreds of classic poems on the bumpy horseback, from simple and easy-to-understand ones like "Du Nong", "E", "Jing Ye Si" to transitional ones like "Guan Cang Hai", "You Shan Xi Cun", "Jin Se" and gradually developed into profound and abstruse ones like "Mai Tan Weng", "Chun Jiang Qiu Yue Ye", "Pi Pa Xing" etc. Although it's a bit shameful, I never gave up halfway. As a result, the 300 poems piled up to over half a foot high, heavy and substantial when patted, and a sense of accomplishment arose spontaneously.

  As for why I, who have always been hiding in the northwest wilderness, can recite with a young and vigorous voice, the strange and dangerous "Shu Road is Difficult", the ethereal and fleeting "Dream Journey to Heaven's Platform - A Farewell", the bitter and sour "Watching the Wheat Harvest", the elegant and refined "Water Melody Song Head", the heroic and majestic "Breaking Array Son", the proud and arrogant "Spring in the Garden of Delight - Snow", the melancholic and resentful "Pipa Tune", the gentle and turning "Long Hated Song", the unyielding and stubborn "Mulan's Poem"... The reasons for this are not worth telling to outsiders.

  Anyway, I used Simplified Chinese throughout, and to outsiders, it's just childish scribbles. But I've always treasured them like precious jewels, sealed in an iron box with the label "Ma Chao Meng Qi's Selected Works" emblazoned on it. Of course, at 7 or 8 years old, I hadn't taken a pen name yet, but I just happened to occupy this name "Meng Qi" first - after all, this name was bound to be mine sooner or later.

  This creation of poetry is a meticulous task, which cannot be rushed or hurried, and the more anxious you are, the less likely you are to get it right. So I can only write down my ideas hastily when inspiration strikes, and then refine and polish them slowly before including them in "Selected Works".

  Although the poems are not many, the time spent is the longest. Until I was over ten years old, there were still occasional gains. So, from start to finish, it took three or four years of hard work to initially complete the thick manuscript of "Ma Chao's Literary Selection". Only then did I feel that after coming to this era, I had formally done something significant. Hmm, it can be said that it was a painstaking effort.

  In order to grow up healthily and eventually become a cultured person, I don't ask for the ability to speak fluently or compose poems, but only hope that occasionally I can express my feelings in accordance with the time, place, conversation object and atmosphere, it's not possible to hide in this northwest corner all one's life, generation after generation being ridiculed by the central plains' celebrities as "non-mainstream" barbarians.

  In short, everything is for the rich and colorful growth in the future and the smooth dominance afterwards. I have been making sufficient preparations since childhood, just to be prepared for any situation.

  At this time, I was eight years old and looking forward to a bright future.