After several months of stop-and-start writing, The Tusi Blood Soul Stele, Volume Two: The Imperial City of the Tusi is finally complete.

I’m not satisfied with how it turned out, and the root cause, I feel, is that the more I wrote, the more acutely aware I became of how little I truly understood my own ethnic culture, making the process incredibly cumbersome.

There’s an old saying, "Even the cleverest housewife cannot cook without rice," but for me, it translated into, "Even the earnest fool struggles to cook a decent meal even when he has the rice!"

Throughout the writing process, I received tremendous support from many friends—editors like A Grain of Sand by the Sea, Li Shan, Ning Shuang, and Jiang Huaisha, as well as readers such as Suo Gu Bao Bei, Ye Wu Yao Yao, Li Shan, Yan Wu, and yunzheng75. And then there were the comrades from the group chat—Lie Huo An Ling, San Sheng Wan Wu, Xiao Hong, Fo Zu Shi Ye Men, Qin Fei, Liu Yue Mo Yan, Yuan Yuan, and others. I wish to express my gratitude to all of you here: Truly, thank you for your hard work and dedication!