Hello. This is my first novel so please feel free to comment; I'd really appreciate your input. I just wanted to establish some stuff before I begin.
1) There may be some spelling which might seem odd to a lot of people, but I speak and write British English so that's usually why. Measurements will primarily be in the metric system.
2) This story is set in a fictional world based on Ancient China but this is still fantasy so there will be deviation as this isn't a historical piece.
3) The sense of naming of characters may be a bit off as I'm not Chinese but I have done a bit of research and hope I didn't do too bad.
4) The characters' names have many puns about them when written as pinyin without the tone.
5) I cannot stress this enough. There are scenes depicting or referencing trauma not limited to sexual but also involving physical and mental. These scenes may impact the story but most do not affect the flow of the story. A warning will be included in chapters depicting such scenes and a the next chapter afterwards with a summary of the previous chapter omitting and editing it to not be triggering so that general understanding of the story will not be affected if such chapters are skipped.
Please do not treat trauma merely as fictional. There are people in the world who have and are experiencing such tragic events. Please be mindful of your comments in such instances.
6) Pay attention to warnings. This novel contains mature content and is not suitable for minors.
Thanks for reading.
Mao
This story is quite slow paced and though it’s not heavily focused on cultivation, it takes quite a while for romance to be brewed. The focus of the story for the first few arcs is our MC trying to piece his life back together and overcome his issues by himself. He’s pretty much going to go on this journey by himself before our ML gets introduced. I quite like the idea of the MC not needing to depend on another party to get through his problems as our ML has his own issues. With our ML’s personality, there’s no way he could have any character development if our MC doesn’t have any backbone himself. So I’d like to apologise to everyone if it takes a couple of chapters before we even meet the ML. I do hope I do a good job of keeping you hooked until then.
Our MC has a few conditions he suffers from, as I based him loosely on myself. Not only does he have extreme aphantasia; can’t see images, hear sounds, replicate smells, tastes and sensations in his head, even when asleep; social anxiety; finds it a bit stressful to interact with others, though he’s learned to fake it quite well and only breaks down when he’s alone; and ADHD; has lots of varying traits, but mostly affects attention span (MC’s is more typical to most girls’ where he gets lost inside his own head rather than be visibly disruptive, aside fidgeting with his hands ). These conditions make him think himself to be quite apathetic towards others as he can’t relate to them so well, adding on that he has a hard time remembering events and people. Our poor MC just want to be like everyone else, even though he’s comfortable with how he is now. His major struggle is changing the way he feels about himself as society says he should be distressed and want to change since he isn’t ‘normal’. If everyone thinks he has issues, he must certainly have them and so him loving himself is just plain wrong. Let’s just cheer him on and hope he realises that everyone is different and that in itself is normal.
