Chapter 82: VIP Announcement: [As Always]_3

There were only two people on the bus: him and the driver.

They were both smoking. The smoke alarm beeped away, the in-vehicle AC chilled his fingers to the bone, and the bus drove on without stopping, traffic lights changing colors beyond the windshield.

Drunken student couples, office workers, and street punks on the sidewalks and crosswalks cursed the bus driver, asking if he was driving so recklessly because he was in a hurry to get reincarnated.

The bus driver said nothing. Only after his cigarette had burned to the filter did he ask the man, "Are you ready?"

After a long silence, the man said, "Where are we going?"

"Don’t know," the driver shrugged. "Could be Heaven, could be Hell. Could also be a place that you think shouldn’t exist, but does."

"Then let’s go." The man flicked his ash on the window pane.

"Shouldn’t you prepare? Call your family, your lover, your friends, that sort of thing."

"No need," the man said. "Someone who truly wants to leave never says goodbye. If you say goodbye, it means you expect to meet again."

The driver nodded and drove the bus right into the man’s company building.

When they got off, the driver gave the man two revolvers loaded with infinite Hell Fire bullets. He put a pair of shades on him, changed him into a Burberry suit, fixed his tie, and sprayed him with cheap Ancient Dragon perfume.

He told him, "Take the guns in your hand and go blow your bosses’ fucking heads off! They’re all just Demons lingering in the mortal realm!"

The next day, the man went down to the Underworld to face the Judgement of the Ten Halls of Yama.

It turned out the driver was actually Satan from the West, just there to stir up trouble. Meanwhile, the bosses and colleagues whose heads he’d blown off belonged to the Ministry of Finance, one of the Celestial Court Eight Divisions. Their superior was the Golden Dragon Ruyi Zhengyi Dragon Tiger Xuantan True Monarch, who was in charge of distributing fortune in the mortal realm.

In other words, he had killed the secretary-generals of the Celestial Court’s finance department and torn up the Ledger of Fortune. A crime like that was enough to have him copy his own name in the Book of Life and Death a trillion times.

So he escaped from the Underworld.

And that’s how the opening story for Westminster Cathedral was born, adapted and devilishly modified from this.

Now, let’s get back to what you’re all most interested in: the world-building. I had actually planned to just dump all the job class settings in the part where Lawrence and Baron escape on the Griffin.

But after thinking it over and over, I started to wonder, ’Isn’t that too much of an info-dump? Won’t readers get annoyed by it?’

Besides, for another one of my books on a different platform, readers felt that I revealed the settings and world-building too quickly, and that it should be unveiled gradually through the plot.

I asked a friend, and he said, "Fuck the world-building. In this day and age where a hundred flowers of creativity bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend, isn’t your story what readers care about most? Fuck the world-building! Fuck the outline! Fuck the fascists!"

I said, "You’re fucking right, but I have to make money. The cash is in their hands. What if they don’t want to give it to me? I’m planning on living off this if I ever have a falling out with my boss."

My friend said, "That’s easy. Just let them slap you in the face with their cash. As long as you’re raking it in, who cares, right?"

I said, "You’re a genius."

Then, I saw a bunch of comments calling me cryptic. In response, all I could do was go to the review section of my other book and see them saying, "Is the author European or American? He just gets straight to the action."

So sometimes I just have to sigh. Readers are really like a girlfriend. Every day they’re a mysterious and unpredictable enigma. You never know when they’ll suddenly turn on you, or if you’ll be in the doghouse for it.

Different comments appear in different Chapter segments: "The plot is a mess." "The plot is moving too fast." "The beginning was so good, but the later parts are trash." "The beginning was trash, but the later trashy parts are actually not bad..."

A friend who follows my novel said, "If you try to please everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one."

I said, "Goddammit, I *am* going to please everyone. There’s no greater thrill than winning over a picky reader. If there is, it’s when that reader happens to be my boss."

"And they also gifted you an Alliance Lord sponsorship?"

I said, "Nope. Not even an Alliance Lord can get my underwear off."

"That’s not—who asked about your underwear?"

But, to cater to those readers who don’t like the world-building being laid out bit by bit, I thought about it for a long time and decided to add some more world-building details earlier on.

(If old-time readers look at Chapter Six, compared to before, they’ll find I’ve added more explanation of the Professional Law. But that’s it; it doesn’t affect the reading experience going forward.)

Can’t be helped. I really do want to take everyone’s money.

Someone asked me before, "Yan Yao, what kind of person are you, really? Why does your writing sometimes feel like you’re high on something?"

To those who haven’t read this book, all I can say is that our relationship is simply that of producer and consumer of text. Don’t cross the line.

To those who have followed the story this far, or anyone who is reading these words—whether you choose to read the official version or a pirated copy, whether you’re a boy or a girl—first, I have to say that I respect and love you all. I wish you happiness. I really do.

Because I feel that having one’s words and stories liked by others is itself a tremendous honor.

Second, I have to say that what kind of person I am isn’t important. What’s important is the kind of person you think I am through my writing.

I hope you all forever keep your adolescent sexual fantasies, and that you ponder and analyze the words I write when I’m either going crazy, drunk, depressed, or excited—just like maliciously pondering the underwear beneath a man’s or a woman’s clothes.

Even if I’m not wearing any underwear at all.

Finally, thank you to all the readers who have, since this book’s release, supported me, cursed me, spat on me, cherished me, praised me to the heavens, and trampled me into the dust. My love for you is as fucked up as your feelings are for my book.