Sevenfold

On my Patreon you can now read The Book of Min Yang in full:

the final, carefully edited version and the original uncensored chapters, published chronologically, exactly as they were written.

It’s a peculiar one: I’m terrified of standing on anything that feels thin — a fragile surface with an abyss beneath. Naturally, I avoid glass bridges. But also elevators, airplanes, and high floors.

The worst part, though, is that I can’t escape the biggest “thin surface” of all: Earth itself. Just a delicate film of soil under my feet — and below it, molten fire. And then, nothing but the endless vacuum of space.

Facts about Min Zhengsheng, never mentioned in The Book of Min Yang:

- he killed all his children except Min Yang

- he was expelled from the capital because the future emperor was ashamed of being obsessed with him

I must confess: I hate Liexu. Not in the playful “love-to-hate” sense, but with real disgust. He is dull, homophobic, human trash — a coward who thrives on violence and attacking the weaker ones. He’s exactly the kind of person who poisons life both in fiction and in reality.

And I enjoyed humiliating him. I wrote his downfall with deliberate cruelty, and I don’t regret a single word.

Liexu doesn’t deserve redemption. He doesn’t need a backstory to explain away his actions. He is the pure, ugly face of hatred — and sometimes literature must put such people in their place.

Mozhi are an inhuman, parasitic species that feed on human souls, inhabiting and using human bodies for reasons that will be revealed later.

They are not ghosts. Mozhi have flesh and blood; they grow old, can fall ill, and can be wounded or killed. Outwardly they appear human, and many live among people for decades without being discovered.

Well… questionable.

My characters are quite medieval (surprise!). Min Yang, in particular, treats women awfully. He seduces them while fully aware that the “cost” of intimacy is higher for women. He is far more drawn to men, and even the woman he mourns for a lifetime—Huang Mei—becomes a surrogate, because he cannot openly grieve for Huang Jun or Liang Xiao Yu.

But as Min Yang’s reluctant advocate, I can say this much in his defense:

He never gets jealous.

He never treats women as his property.

He never reduces them to the role of wife and mother.

(Some might say that as a man, I can only be pro-feminist—I won’t argue.)

Anyway, yes.

I reject everything from the past that is not beautiful or useful.

And patriarchy is neither. It is ugly and useless.