Overturned Tower

"It's too dangerous here, even if any boss wants to kill you or take you away. At that time, your boss will not be able to protect you.

"But if something happens to you, he won't go to other big bosses, but he will come to trouble me, a small guy... I can't afford this risk, little pigeon. I don't care what you say today." will put you in."

Unlike the day before yesterday, the "lover" whose arm was transformed into a prosthetic body was unexpectedly reasonable today.

She is no longer manic and frivolous, but calm and rational.

From this point of view, the beating she suffered before was obviously valuable.

But it's also reasonable.Those who cannot learn from the pain will never survive the Lower Town which obeys the law of the jungle.

Paradise Bird still wanted to defend herself...but at this moment, she felt someone put a hand on her shoulder naturally.

She was frowning tightly, trying to distance herself.

However, at this moment, a gentle and friendly voice sounded from beside her:

"So... can I take her in, okay?"

Paradise Bird's bright red pupils dilated slightly with fear, and her narrow shoulders couldn't help trembling slightly.

She judged almost immediately who was quietly approaching behind her.

It was the dangerous man who could laugh and burn someone's arm off!

He is also a mage!

If the lover hadn't had her arm cut off, she would have been burned alive.

Obviously he has the same spell as strangle, strangle can burn people into coke in a few seconds, there is no reason why he can't do it.

But he was slowly roasting the opponent with flames like that, and the flames might not be able to spread one centimeter up in a second...

If he laughed wildly at this moment, or said a few cruel words, he would still be in the cognition of Paradise Bird.

But while he was torturing the other party, he was able to show such a gentle smile, and said something like "this is a reward" to encourage the other party to cut off his arm.

And all this happened when "he touched his lover".After the lover's hand was cut off, he touched the other's hair intimately.

What a crazy and twisted person, this is something that can be done!

Paradise Bird can even imagine, the moment his hand touches his lover's hair... what kind of despair and fear surged in the lover's heart.

——Because she felt a similar feeling in her heart the moment she realized that the barber's hand was on her shoulder.

Her upper body was completely frozen and she dared not move.

Under the watchful eyes of Paradise Bird, fear visible to the naked eye gradually appeared on the face of the opposite "lover".

"Yes... yes! Of course you can..."

She was a little incoherent, saluted the barber very respectfully, and immediately got out of the way: "Please come in, Your Excellency the barber."

The barber smiled, like a big brother next door, and gave her a slight nod in return.

"Your prosthetic hand is beautiful."

The corners of his mouth were slightly raised, showing a clean and harmless smile: "The person who designed it must be an aesthetic genius."

"...Yes... Thank you, thank you for the compliment?"

Lovers don't even know how to respond.

But the fear in her eyes and demeanor had already attracted the attention of everyone around her.

Being watched, the barber was not intimidated.But Paradise Bird felt his heart beating violently.

"Let's go."

The barber patted her on the shoulder and said gently.

His palm was very warm, with a dry feeling of sunshine.

But where he couldn't reach, the palm of Paradise Bird was soaked in sweat.

As soon as she took a step, she fell and fell on the barber weakly.

Paradise Bird swears that this is definitely not a coquettish way, let alone a way to attract the protection of the strong—she dare not at all.

In fact, she was a little unsteady...

Pigeons are very timid animals and can easily be frightened to death.And she is also the most timid of the white doves.

The moment she fell over, her little heart almost reached her throat.

She was afraid that she would provoke the other party, and then be burned into a roast pigeon in public.

But luckily the barber doesn't seem to blame himself.His strong arms grabbed the Bird of Paradise by the shoulders, holding her almost in his arms, helping her to stand up again.

"is that OK?"

He looked at the Paradise Bird in his arms and made a low and magnetic voice: "Be careful, don't fall."

——If you only look at this scene, you are like a prince in a picture book of fairy tales.

When Keyuan Bird saw his smile, his brain almost went blank.

The thought of "what on earth does he want me to do" lingered in Paradise Bird's mind and could not go away for a long time.

"Which ones have arrived?"

The barber politely asked the lover, "Where are they?"

"A few have arrived. If you're looking for the Boss Strangler, he arrived early. And our Big Boss was the first to arrive..."

"Oh?"

The barber asked with great interest: "I heard that the chief of the Veil of Ignorance has never appeared?"

"Yes, he is here this time!"

The lover replied very positively.

It seemed that just mentioning their big leader made her less afraid of the barber, and even her voice became much clearer.

"Is this the barber?"

A childish and cold voice came: "I have heard of you...the new apprentice of the furnace."

When the lover heard the voice, his eyes lit up and even shone.

She respectfully turned to the direction where the voice came from, and saluted sincerely: "Big boss!"

While the barber was thinking, quietly looking in the direction of the sound.

But when he saw the speaker clearly, the right hand holding the right shoulder of Paradise Bird clenched subconsciously.

The other party has the face of a scholar and a sick temperament, his skin is so pale that he looks like a terminally ill patient, and there is a very friendly smile on his face.

If he was older, he should be like a nobleman.

"Thank you very much for saving your lover's life the day before yesterday. I quite like her."

He said with a calm smile, and even bowed to the barber decently: "Thank you for your restraint, Mr. Barber."

For other underground leaders, such a move would become laughable.Like a bear in a tuxedo.

But to him, it was so appropriate.It was as if this etiquette originally existed for him.

"...Such a young elf?"

The barber said slowly, "It's really unexpected. I thought that a big shot like an 'elf' must at least be hiding behind the 'veil of ignorance'."

"After all, it's a career I love."

The elf boy with black hair and red eyes said with a smile.

He looked less than ten years old, and his pointed ears proved that he was a pure-blooded elf.

Although he is a young child, his pupils are not clear, but deep and dim.

Like high-end red wine, or a pool of blood that can drown others.

He looked up at the barber, and introduced himself seriously: "My name is Tovatus, 'Discordant' Tovatus, the founder of the Veil of Ignorance. You can just call me Discordant."

Torvatus looked at the barber thoughtfully: "You look...a bit familiar."

Testimonials

This is a very long testimonial, because there are many things I want to talk about seriously.

As you all know, when I write novels, I like to establish the theme of a story in advance.Like the theme of "The Overturned Tower", it is called "Hero".

This is not a description, but a discussion.

I have to correct a concept that may be misunderstood-I don't first think of a story, determine a protagonist, and summarize it as the word "hero".Instead, I first thought of this keyword, and then began to think about how to explain and discuss this word, and then construct a complete story from this.

This creative habit comes from the later stage of my creation of "Blood of Mercury".

At that time, I was deeply aware of my lack of ability.Not only the lack of creative ability, but also the lack of reading and knowledge.

Under the advice of a friend, I have developed a habit since my freshman year: study for two hours every day, and allow myself to acquire new knowledge.

Such learning has continued until now.Except when I am sick, and on the day when the new game I want to play is released-I will keep studying for more than two hours a day, and this habit has been going on for almost eight years now.

No matter what I am doing, the learning content of these two hours must have nothing to do with the work and learning tasks I am currently doing.For example, when I was in school, my "study time" may point to a movie, a novel, or a collection of poetry, but no matter what I am watching, the purpose is not "entertainment", but "learning".

When reading a novel, it is necessary to make reading notes.Record sentences, disassemble the outline, and make character cards.And when watching a movie, if I think the movie is good, I will try to make a beat table of the movie, discuss the specific meaning of the character or plot of a certain scene, find the driving force of a certain character, a certain plot rhythm and speed.

At that time, I deeply felt the lack of knowledge, so I helped my classmates take the Erya general education course for free-it was a kind of online open class that every student had to watch every semester.I learned a lot in this process, which has a considerable influence on my later creations.

And after I learned to a certain level, I started to use these two hours for writing training.The model I adopt is the "three-word training method", that is, open a book at random, turn over three pages, and construct a new story from the three words I saw at first sight in these three pages.Make the story as short as possible with those three words, have twists and turns, and be funny.

This kind of training lasted for about half a year, and it can be said to be very effective.After I finished "Blood of Mercury", the three books I wrote, with a combined content of 600 million words, all exceeded 450 average subscriptions.Among them, [-] million are original novels, which have been successfully completed.

And this kind of training mode makes me especially good at short story structure.

For example, the nightmare dungeon in "Player Super Justice"... In fact, all the nightmare dungeons of the player, including the "Gallery" dungeon, don't have any outline.It was an improvisation I made the night before after I settled on the name and the lead-in for the nightmare.

Including the pre-determined "theme" of each book, including the title of each volume of each book, the name of the nightmare, is a constraint I give myself.This kind of constraint can make my imagination more active.

And the motivation for creating "The Overturned Tower" also comes from this kind of day-to-day learning.

I saw a book called Metamorphosis of Science Fiction: A Poetics and Genre History of Science Fiction.His author, Darko Suenwen, is the founder of the cognitive alienation theory of science fiction. I think this is the group of people with the highest level among contemporary science fiction literature researchers.

He proposed a theory, which is "cognitive alienation".Su Enwen's concept of alienation comes from Shklovsky and Brecht's "defamiliarization" theory, among which Brecht's "defamiliarization" is an upgrade of Shklowski's theory, while Su Enwen's theory is go one step further.

In this theory, the world shaped by science fiction is actually the alienation and defamiliarization of real life, and cognition of reality in a roundabout way.

Han Song, an excellent contemporary Chinese science fiction writer, once said that one of the significances of science fiction works is to give early warnings of threats that mankind may face in the future.Song Mingwei, a scholar of science fiction research, believes that the world created in science fiction is just the realization of a certain idea and thought in our hearts. Through the cognition of defamiliarization, we can in turn confirm what we have turned a blind eye to. Criticize accordingly.

From this perspective, although science fiction is different from fables, the process of its cognition is realized through fables.One of my favorite sci-fi works, Teacher Liu Cixin's "Poetry Cloud", is an extremely allegorical and romantic sci-fi.The inner nature it highlights comes from this core.

Because of this, from "Dune", we can see the plunder and control of the oil country by the big powers, rather than "the interstellar age full of superpowers and feudal countries"; from "The King of Light", we can understand the importance of religion. The essence is just an absurd illusion, not just a "myth stitched with modern nouns"; what "Three-Body" discusses and criticizes is human morality itself, not "aliens with advanced technology invade the earth" simple story.

The essence of science fiction is not technological fantasy, but scientific fantasy.It is a fantasy literature with scientific thinking, under the cloak of science, it still has a soft humanistic core.In the final analysis, its essence is still fantasy literature.

The difference between science fiction and fantasy is that its core is human curiosity about the unknown and the scientific spirit of "if so, then what will happen".Rather than a cold pile of elements such as steel and computers, spaceships and aliens.

Arthur Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." There is no doubt that modern technology has touched the edge.

It is becoming more and more difficult for people to understand the top science and technology. Some bloggers, some UP masters, and some professionals with explanatory skills are needed to make people understand as much as possible in a way that ordinary people can understand and with less rigorous metaphors. What the hell are they doing.The general public's understanding of a certain cutting-edge technology is usually abbreviated as "I don't understand, but it is useful/useless" after an explanation.

From this point of view, people who blindly worship technology are the people who have the least scientific thinking.

However, the rapid development of China's science and technology and the popularization of network knowledge have allowed the type of imagination to break through—no longer the clichéd topics such as "cosmic navigation", "discovering the new world" and "artificial intelligence", and readers' acceptance of science fiction. is also widening.

But at the same time, with the popularization of science and technology, face recognition, Skynet positioning, scanning QR code or even scanning face shopping, drone delivery, automatic driving, smart home, Alpha Dog... many things that existed only in imagination before Everything has become a reality.It will also become difficult to carry out further science fiction creations within a recognizable and understandable range.

This is a challenge.It is not a challenge to contemporary science fiction authors, but a challenge to the entire category of science fiction.

Readers who are familiar with the sci-fi circle must know about the vigorous New Wave movement in the sci-fi world.

In my opinion, the existence of the New Wave movement itself is a kind of rebellion against the golden age of science fiction in 1940-science fiction should naturally have new categories, and with the development of the times, newer categories should continue to appear.

Many sci-fi readers believe that there is a "master" in the category of sci-fi, and the orthodoxy is what they like to read and admire.But this kind of criticism is often a kind of meaningless criticism in order to maintain its own aesthetic status.

Category differentiation is undoubtedly conducive to the development of the industry.Science fiction literature is originally a kind of young literature, a literature full of young people's imagination.When it will be understood by young people as "an old thing", it is when its vitality begins to decline.

You can't enclose yourself, but ask for common ground while reserving differences.As Teacher Liu Cixin said, we need to broaden the scope of science fiction literature.

According to strict classification, "Tower of Overturning" should belong to "Kocchi", that is, science fiction works, and at the same time, it has some socialist blood.The core inspiration of this book comes from the popular board game rules "Shadow Run" in the 90s of last century, very classic cyber fantasy rules.Of course, the specific settings are not the same, just a source of inspiration.I have sent the settings that can be disclosed in this book to the relevant works, and those who are interested can pick them up by themselves.

For example, many readers may not know that the source of inspiration for "Blood of Mercury" is actually the Aion... When I saw the hourglass-like world map, I thought this is so cool.Then rationalize it, and there will be the prototype of the "eggshell world", and all subsequent settings will be based on this.

As for the inspiration of "Player Super Justice", many people think it is a black contract, but I haven't actually watched that episode.Its real inspiration was a game called Soul Sacrifice.

The bearing and inheritance of the curse, the curse is power, the loss of control of desire, the duality of the hero who saves the world and the demon king who destroys the world, each other's exterior and interior, and the time loop that goes back and forth but can connect the entire story.This is the core of what I want to talk about in "The Player".