AZI Volume 6 Epilogue – The Seed Has Been Sown + Afterword

Along the way to the Serpent Deity Village—

"Hm?"

Long Hua and the others spotted a larger group up ahead.

Straining their eyes, they see the other group to be weapon spirits instead of practitioners.

"…?"

Noticing the smaller group that is led by Yang Hai approaching them—

"Oh?"

"What's up with the way some of those guys are dressed?"

The larger group of weapon spirits stepped forward with a look of confusion on their faces, to which, Shao Tianming states—

"They're the locals around here."

"It's a long story…"

As Gui Lian, Teng Hao, and Yang Hai begin to converse with the weapon spirits, Long Hua turns away from them, while thinking—

(Hmm, quite a bit of fodder to use. Now then, how should I leave a marker to guide those practitioners forward?)

Looking around, and detecting the scent of blood that is in the air, Long Hua uses his divine senses to look for its source, and—

"…"

Seeing several practitioner corpses lying at the center of the weapon spirits' group, Long Hua smiles faintly, as a jade slip—plundered from one of the dead practitioners' storage pouches appears in his right hand.

Holding the jade slip tightly, Long Hua carves a message onto it, and imbues Qing Ming Yang's marker onto it.

Momentarily—

"Right, let's go."

With their conversation concluded, the group begins to move again.

Situating himself at the back, and making sure that no one is watching, Long Hua shrouds the jade slip in sword Qi, and tosses it into the corpse pile.

(The seed has been sown, surnamed Qing and surnamed Lin, don't keep me waiting.)

------------------

Afterword

6/25/2023

For some reason, I feel like not much happened while I was writing this volume. Could just be because of the summer heat making me feel lightheaded while writing.

I feel like I was trying to cramp quite a bit into this volume. Hopefully, nothing seemed too off with that.

Some thoughts and reflections below:

Gui Lian and Teng Hao were characters introduced in the third volume, mainly just simplistic mentions, along with the rest of Shen Le's office. That was mainly so that they didn't just suddenly appear in this volume. It's really difficult to give each character a good spotlight. Still, I think I at least did a decent job at getting the key characters pointed out. Much of this volume, admittedly feels like an info-dump—really more of a setup for what's to come in the next volume. One of the major things I wanted to settle in this volume is related to the Lord Tian She Zi subject, and that's mainly going to be related to the village in this ruin. Yao Ying, I feel like I did a decent job at getting her set up for future events. Still no idea how I want her and Long Hua's relationship to be like until the half-way point of the Leng Bing Realm's story. I was quite dissatisfied with the Moon Guards in the second ruins, they were there, but I didn't write about them much. Honestly, I don't think I can put the Moon Guards into the spotlight until the events that are centered around the Long Yue family begin, and even then, that's somewhat hard to say for certain. Xun Yu in this volume being introduced is sort of like a prelude to that. Also, I wasn't too happy with there being only two named Moon Guards up until this point. The intermission titled "Asking for Entertainment," part three of the Earthborn Elementals' Realm's prologue mini-story, I wasn't expecting myself to write over 1,200 words for it. I did have a somewhat difficult time trying to fit it into this volume, but I eventually found the time-pass between chapters 20 to 21 to be a good fit. So far, I have… Let's say enough parts to this mini-story, that it's basically an entire volume's worth on it's own. Final intermission regarding the Imprisoning Heaven. If I had to describe its final appearance, it's somewhat similar to the Elden Beast from Elden Ring, but its body structure is a humanoid dressed in a dark cloak that can be split off into numerous tendrils. It's appearance aside, the intermission itself is meant to tie into a new mini-story, and what that mini-story is should be obvious at this point. Cuo Qing Yi's intermission mini-stories, truth be told, I'm not sure about telling out the entirety of it via intermissions because the plot of it ties right back to the main-story at its conclusion. Work-in-progress, I guess? Killing off Hai Zang, which was introduced in the events of the second ruin. That was something that I needed to do at some point, and I figured I might as well deal with it in this volume. Sha Chen, I don't know if it's something that I want to get to until much later on. It was only until the near end of this volume that I figured out how I wanted the third and fourth zones of the hunting grounds to be like. Sha Chen's traits, I've already figured that out, along with the environment it lives in. I was going to write out Nuo'er character a bit more in one chapter of this volume, but I stopped myself. The reason… I thought, she's kind to Yao Ying, but I don't think they'd consider themselves equals; basically, Nuo'er sees Yao Ying as a child that needs taking care of. So why would an adult talk to a child about adult-related matters? Also, her background information, there's a rough draft for it, but I do not feel like it's ready. The interaction between Long Hua, Bai Wen, Zhen Qing Huai—it feels a bit less tension-filled and business-like in this volume, I would hope? But relationship wise, I don't think they'd consider each other a tightly knit group just yet. A relationship that was started off for the sake of benefits, I don't think it's something that would turn lax too soon. Li Xue and Ye Chen's relationship, as of writing this afterword (several months before 6/25/23), volume 2 wasn't even released, and with the way the chapters regarding them had been written, I realized I needed to go back, and start putting in more interactions between them to make the chapter that they have interactions in fit better. I got quite a bit of space to work that out, so hopefully it turned out fine? Long Hua's behavior throughout this entire volume, I'm going to be honest—his actions and behaviors later on are probably going to be even more scumbag-like. It's scumbag-like enough to the point that, some people might even be put off by it? I don't think he should be forgiven for his actions later on, and I want him to be the sort of character who could say "if I did something wrong, I'll admit to it, but that doesn't mean that I'll apologize for it because to me—the wrongs committed was worthwhile, as it brought me closer to my goal." As scumbag-like of a line this is, I feel like it's more realistic for his character—which is based around the words selfish and vicious, because he's someone who wants revenge, and to return home to a place that is very far from the Everlasting Spirit Realm, and to do so, he will use everything and everyone at his disposal. Also, snakes are generally seen as dangerous animals, so it fits his character well. There's a trope in anime where characters with closed eyes that are shaped like an arc—are generally monsters in some way or another. I think a good image of Long Hua's current mental state is similar to that, especially when intermissions related to Bujian Yue come up. Speaking of Bujian Yue, it should be obvious at this point that prior to around this volume, Long Hua's character might have strayed from my original intent, but I didn't feel like it would be good to write a character that started off as selfish and vicious because there was far too much to go into details on how he eventually became this way. I didn't want to stall the main plot to go into details on how he became his current self, so I figured that intermissions were the best ways for me to just slowly give out details of his past, and gradually piece his current self together. As a character on his own, Bujian Yue in my head is "a lunatic who has all the rights to act arrogant."

This line: "A lunatic near death has three options. One, they can choose to pass away peacefully. Two, they can choose to spend the rest of their remaining life to find a solution that will let them live. Three, they can drag an entire world down as a part of their burial."

It took me quite a while to type this line out, the idea behind it was something along the lines of "a person who has never experienced lunacy cannot ever hope to understand a lunatic," how could anyone who knows that they might end up turning into a monster or die at random—not be a lunatic?

Due to my experience of caring for my mother when she was living through the final week of her life—at some point throughout her entire experience with cancer, I probably did go insane. However, I couldn't bring myself to scream, so I muted myself. The only time I could stop having a reassuring look on my face was when I was alone in my room. Overall, it wasn't a very pleasant experience to have to act as the go-between between the doctor and the rest of my relatives. Whenever my dad or the rest of my relatives asked me to ask the doctor what's our next step, and the doctor replies that there is no next step—this process repeated itself many times, and with the same vague answers; it eventually just made me think my entire family was looking at me for answers, and expects me to have one—only for me to disappoint them. Someone could tell me not to feel that way, but it's just not possible for me to do that since I was the go-between.

In any case, Long Hua chose the third option in that line—I guess it expresses exactly how I had felt when I was also charged with making funeral arrangements after going through all that. Sure, my relatives gave funds for the funeral, but some things in this world—mental stress and stuff of that nature, you can't pay someone enough for them to go through that. Was it that selfish of me, to want to just take a vacation, and not have to be bothered with funeral arrangements? The entire time I was basically just cursing at everything, and everyone in my head while making these arrangements. Seriously none of them could have taken that load off of me? Sure, some of them might not speak English, and had lives of their own, but—oh well, nothing like family, I guess? Distant relatives are distant relatives for a reason.

Maybe I could have said something and told them to take the load instead, but… Honestly, I really doubt any of them would have taken the baggage—when the go-between role was sort of just forced onto me with the expectation of me being a filial child to a parent. One of them had the decency to basically say, I'm crap at socializing. Mm I am crap at socializing, that's something that I can admit to, but why would I want to socialize with a complete stranger, or engage myself in a conversation that I've no interest in? Any sermon that comes out of anyone's mouth at this point regarding life lessons etc. they'll just enter one ear and out the other for me.

Ah, I'm done. It's definitely not appropriate to include this in this story's afterword, but I feel like I needed to get these thoughts out there somehow. Also, since I'm using a pen-name, none of them will be able to find out about this, and if they did well… I don't care. They can call me selfish or whatever, but it's not going to make me change my mind.

If you've read this far, my thanks. If it's your birthday, happy birthday, and hope you won't ever have to deal with something of this nature. However, if you unfortunately ever did have to—know that you aren't the only one. Hope your relatives are more helpful than mine, so that when the moment passes, you don't have to try to give them a good look on the outside whenever you talk/meet them. …I want to just—oh I don't know, get rid of my current phone number, and just move to some other place without telling them about it. Just cut off all ties, and move to some place quiet while stroking a fat cat on my lap? Yeah, that's the kind of retirement life that I would want.

Bonus message:

Looking at my KDP report, I have three sales for eBooks this month, and it was for volume one and two. Yeah, being a writer is really difficult. Recently I got hired for a job where I work from late afternoon to 11 PM. I guess that's some stability in my life? I'll have to put actual work ahead of writing, but I want to keep writing because as cliché as it sounds, it's something that I am passionate about—even if no one reads the work, and I'm only writing it for myself.

Regardless, thanks to those who purchased the eBooks; it's encouraging to see some numbers. I'm grateful that you're willing to spend money on my work, especially so when we're still living under the shadows of the pandemic's aftermath.