I started this before signing the contract, and locked the whole thing so nobody would wander in by mistake.
Started saving chapters on 26.1.2. Story begins 26.3.2. Finished 26.10.7.
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My name is An Xu. This is an absurd story about the "Northern Realm."
I wasn't called "An Xu" at first. When I was fourteen, my parents changed my name, hoping I would calm my mind and stop overthinking.
Because I was a lunatic with yin-yang eyes.
That year, something happened. I skipped class to go to an internet cafe, then an accident left me unconscious. I had a high fever that wouldn't go down, and when I finally woke up, I realized I had lost a huge chunk of my memory.
One day, a hazy stranger suddenly appeared in my cramped little room. It was a pitch-black silhouette with long hair and no face, just standing quietly in the corner.
Before I had even crossed into that forbidden zone of the living, this story had already gained another link in its chain of cause and effect.
From then on, my life became tightly intertwined with those black shadows. Little by little, they led me toward a new world beyond the bounds of order: the "Northern Realm," a world that exists because of me.
It is where wind and water return to their source, the end of all things.
It is where heaven and earth began, the source of all new life.
I saw "him" beckoning to me. The world warped into chaos, and I crossed the Yellow Springs to reach a new land.
An Eight Trigrams formation loomed above all living things. Someone wrote the final chapter in blood and tears. After exhausting every scheme, they looked back and saw that it had all amounted to nothing but a fleeting dream.
The power of cause and effect drew me here, and it will guide me away as well.
Things change, people are gone, and I remember those days. Can the world be turned back? Where can I go to find it?
Even immortality can be a curse.
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After I died, I came to a strange secret realm.
Here, twin Dobermans sell bone-marrow soda and blood lemonade,
a tree spirit makes little bird-skull candied hawthorns, and a snake spirit works as a fortune-teller.
There are cat-spirit real estate agents, ancient creatures working as clerks, parrot tailors, old rabbit doctors...
Anything you can imagine, no matter how incredible, can happen here.
Perhaps you've heard that the Yellow Springs are the underworld, where the dead go after they die.
Perhaps you've heard that cause and effect carries through reincarnation, and in the next life we repay the debts of this one.
Perhaps you've heard that an ancient secret to immortality lies beneath the Kunlun Mountains.
Perhaps you've heard the myths of the body dying while the soul lives forever.
Truth and falsehood blur together. What the yang realm sees is not what the yin realm sees.
Beneath ancient Kunlun lies another world, surrounded by the power of heaven and earth. The north wind howls year-round. The ground breathes, the sky bleeds, the dead are reincarnated, and spirits take human form.
This is the Northern Realm, a world beyond our own that exists because of "me."
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1. First-person narration, no omniscient point of view.
2. Complex worldbuilding and a twisty plot. (Personally, I don't think it's that hard to follow.)
3. No golden finger. The protagonist grows stronger as he matures.
The main story has many twists. To avoid spoilers, the blurb may be somewhat cryptic and abstract.
Modern setting, but with elements such as eastern fantasy and spirits of the dead.
Theme: People can triumph over fate
