Blue Snow

Volume One: The Seven-String Zither

I never thought I would hear that music again.

From the memories of the past, it drifts faintly on the wind, and then someone dies.

When the sorrowful music begins, the air turns cold and hearts grow restless.

Snow falls, blood rises.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Now that I hear it once more, what should I choose?

Remember to make the right choice.

At least make a choice.

What are the names of those who seek revenge and those who kill without restraint? What will become of their future?

Volume Two: The Tachi

A spring and autumn pass in vain. Where will the drifting currents carry me? The sun rises over the eastern islands.

I long for a place to call home, yet the past

is impossible to forget. Turmoil rises once more in my heart, as an old friend comes from afar.

You have come seeking me, but remember: what is done cannot be undone.

This year is the year of the Metal Rooster. Time passes and waits for no one. At the end of the road, there is nowhere left to search.

I follow the path fate has set, crossing the vast ocean.

I meet the waves and watch the tide, pluck the strings of the seven-string zither, and let the sharp blade reveal its edge.

The face remains unchanged, while love, hate, gratitude, and grudges intertwine.

We follow different paths and have no reason to work together.

Better to forget each other in the martial world.

Do not speak of the past again.

But my feelings are true, and there is no mistake.

I still believe we will meet again.

Beneath the moon, on the western dunes.

Volume Three: The Way Back

“Everything will be all right once we return.”

A story about revenge and battle, a journey of many stages and a succession of experiences and growth. It is set during the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty, against the backdrop of the wokou raids, and touches on the histories of Japan and the West, as well as some modern culture.

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I started writing this a long time ago, back in 2018, and have been writing it ever since. I update slowly, about once every week or two. Sometimes I slow down and only post one chapter in a month. In short, updates are slow. The reason? Most likely because I'm too busy playing games.

And I've even gone a whole year without updating before, and I can't promise I won't do it again.

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The two main characters are Tang Qingluan and Xia Yuxue. They are not romantically involved with each other (I originally wanted them to be, but later decided against it). Each has her own romantic storyline. There are two protagonists. (I put them both in the supporting-character section. The pink borders don't seem to go well with my picture, hmm.)

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There are lots of martial arts scenes (though I can't promise they're always well written, and there are a few times when I skip right over the fighting), and lots of deaths (...uh, I just want to emphasize that lots of people die. Lots and lots and lots and lots of people). There are plenty of little factoids drawing on historical sources, though I can't promise they're all accurate, as well as all sorts of bizarre, utterly pointless indulgences that may hurt the reading experience, but for some reason I just had to include them.

(And the author keeps barging in with parentheses like this.)

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The text often has sentences like “xx said: xxxx.” That's a typo. It should be “xx said, xxxx.” Since there are too many for me to fix one by one, I'm explaining it here once and for all.

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This novel is adapted (copied) from a comic I drew a long time ago. I couldn't keep drawing it, so I turned it into a novel. The comic is no longer available, so let's pretend I never said anything.

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One more thing: one of the protagonists, Tang Qingluan, was originally written as genderqueer. Later, I stopped writing her as genderqueer and changed her back to a cisgender woman. If any readers are unhappy with how I handled this, I apologize. Sigh, why set it up that way in the first place if I was just going to change it? It seems I still have a lot to learn about gender identity.

Theme: There are no standard answers, as long as you can make your case coherent