As mentioned earlier, there are a few people in our group whose relationships are particularly strained, but on the flip side, there are also a few whose bonds are especially strong. For example, Ben and I—back in high school, during the time I lived on campus, he and I were bunkmates. Later, we both got into the same university. At first, we weren’t in the same dorm, but after overcoming some obstacles, we finally managed to live in the same room.

Ben also drifted for quite a long time, and his love life was full of twists and turns. In the past two years, things have finally stabilized for him, and he’s found a pretty suitable girlfriend. We all advised him that when you meet a girl like this, you should just marry her, but Ben always feels pressured, and lately he’s become very confused.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep because he called me to talk about this, and tonight he came over again.

Ben has his reasons for feeling lost. Roger has long been divorced, our best troublemaker friend from college, Sean Lynn, is also divorced, and even Ben’s best partner—me—doesn’t have an ideal marriage.

Because of these real-life examples, Ben has certain misgivings about marriage.

Tonight, I didn’t have a long talk with Ben; besides, we’ve already discussed everything that needs to be said. I just gave him one sentence: “You are you, we are us. Don’t let our experiences influence your marriage.”

Honestly, I was saying this to myself as well. I used to think my relationship problems were connected to my childhood and my parents. But now, I’m starting to learn to let go of the idea of blaming the past. My relationship issues are just my own personal problems—they have nothing to do with my childhood or my parents.

Ben was stunned by what I said. After a while, he thanked me for giving him such a golden piece of advice, then happily trotted off. Watching his flamboyant figure as he left, I suddenly regretted it—if he goes back and gets married, how much should I give in a wedding red envelope?

I quickly put the matter aside and immersed myself in my daydreams.

Today, I fell asleep when I shouldn’t have, and when I should be sleeping, I can’t. My daydreams have me so excited, it’s like the night before a date with the girl of your dreams in your youth—tossing and turning, unable to sleep.

So I simply got up, grabbed my laptop, and started typing away.

Whenever you’re about to do something big, you always need to be fully prepared in advance.

Before I can start my daydream, there are three things I need to take care of.

The first thing is to calm down and write a book.

For me, writing a book isn’t difficult; the hard part is writing a book that can reignite my own passion.

Most of my friends have read online novels, and a few are even more experienced than I am. They used to be fanatical about chasing certain novels, and later became utterly indifferent and gave up on some. As the only one among us working in the web fiction industry, their attitude toward me has also changed in some very interesting ways.

During that process, they called me different things. At first, they called me “a young man chasing his dreams.” Later, it became “a bastard making money by typing words.” Then it turned into “an otaku who’ll die if he doesn’t fantasize.” Later, everyone learned to insult me in more sophisticated ways, without using any dirty words. For a while, Luke called me: “the national hero of the fantasy superpower.”

Sometimes I feel like I’m not myself—I represent a whole group, and many peers have had similar experiences to mine.

I work in such a fantasy-driven industry, yet deep down I have a kind of respectful aversion to fantasizing.

Until one day, a phone call with Roger elevated my thinking.

More than ten years ago, back when we were scraping together living expenses and hanging out in internet cafes, chatting about life and dreams with distant QQ friends, Roger already had a legendary computer with 512MB of RAM at home and was living it up. At that time, Roger had already discovered online novels, and he brought me into it as well.

I really have to thank him—he was my guide.

In the world of web fiction, the author and the book that left the deepest impression on me were both introduced by Roger.

That author was called Sandy. Back in the early days of web fiction, this rather legendary figure wrote a piece called “You Are Not a Grain of Sand,” and later published a book called “How Lightness Skill Is Made.” I don’t know why he later faded from the web fiction scene; I only know that this person and his works had a profound impact on me, even influencing my writing style to some extent.

Originally, Roger and I were comrades in the same trench—we were both fans of Sandy back then. Not long after, Roger became a traitor; he got hooked on Jin Hezai and Jin Hezai’s “The Legend of Wukong.”

Roger is the one among us who’s read the most fantasy novels. His grandfather ran a book rental shop, and when he was a kid, the shop had all kinds of martial arts novels. Later, the shop started carrying all sorts of online novels. As for whether those novels were pirated, well, we all know, so let’s not discuss it.

Before Roger got married, our impression of him was pretty much the same as Luke—you could never guess what he was going to do next, and he himself didn’t know what he really wanted to do.