Today Er Gen began his new xianxia novel called Outside of Time《光阴之外》. You could also translate it as Beyond Time. The description of the novel, such as it is, is this:

Heaven and Earth is the guesthouse for all living things. Time is the sojourner of since time immemorial.

The difference between life and death is like the difference between waking and dreaming, diverse and confused and changing.

So then transcending life and death, transcending heaven and earth, what awaits us beyond time?

I also took the liberty to translate the first chapter, just so people can get an idea what it’s like. I don’t plan to translate any more of this novel, but who knows when (if?) anyone will translate it, so I thought I’d translate the first chapter anyway as a short teaser. Pretty interesting so far, actually.

Anyway, here it is:

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The third month, beginning of spring.

In a corner of the eastern part of South Huangzhou.¹

Hazy sky, a sheet of slate, like a heavy weight pressing down, as if someone had splashed ink on fine writing paper,² ink soaking the cerulean vault,³ smearing the banks of clouds.

Cloud layers rose in peaks, mingling together, diffusing a streak of stammel-red⁴ lightning, accompanied by the rumble of thunder.

Like the low roar of the gods resounding among the human world.

Bloodcolored rain carried with it dreariness as it fell on the mortal world.

On dim land, a ruined city was utterly lifeless among the reticent, dusky red blood rain.

Within the city, buildings in ruin, all living things withered and decayed, collapsed houses everywhere, as well as bluish black corpses, chopped flesh, like shredded autumn leaves silently strewn about.

The once bustling streets, now just a rustle of wind.

On the sandy dirt road where people used to come and go, there was now not a sound.

All that was left was broken flesh, dirt, paper, and blood in a shocking, indistinguishable mash.

Not far away, a brokendown horse-drawn carriage sat deep in the mire, suffused with sorrow, only a forsaken rabbit figurine left dangling from the carriage shaft, swaying in the wind.

Its fine white fur long since soaked red, gruesome and strange.

In its cloudy eyes seemed to be a lingering resentment, forlornly gazing at the mottled stone before it.

Over there, sprawled a human figure.

A boy of thirteen or fourteen, tattered clothes, filthy all over, a worn leather bag tied around his waist.

The boy squinted, unmoving, a bone-piercing chill penetrating his old and shabby outer garment from all sides, a full-body assault, seeping away his bodily warmth.

But even though the rain fell on his face, his eyes didn’t blink, just coldly stared far off like a hawk or falcon.

Following his line of sight, seven or eight staves⁵ away, an emaciated vulture pecked at the rotted corpse of a stray dog, looking around from time to time in vigilance.

As if in these dangerous ruins, it would take to the skies at the slightest puff of wind or rustle of grass.

And the boy, like a hunter, patiently awaited an opportunity.

After a long while, the opportunity came. The greedy vulture finally sank its whold head into the stray dog’s stomach cavity.

In the blink of an eye, a cold gleam appeared in the boy’s squinted eyes.

He moved like an arrow loosed from the bowstring, straight for the vulture. He flicked his right hand and drew a black iron stick from his leather bag.

The iron stick’s pointed end shone with a sharp, cold gleam.

Perhaps it perceived murderous intent, because the second the boy charged, the vulture realized it at once and startled, it flapped its wings and took off.

But it was too late.

The black iron stick was flung by the expressionless boy and became a shooting black streak.

Whumpf!

The sharp iron stick in an instant pierced the vulture’s head, shattering its skull, and it was dead at once.

The powerful blow knocked its body sideways as it fell and with a bang it was nailed to the carriage closeby.

The bloodcolored figurine swayed with the jolt of the carriage.

The boy’s face was calm, but from start to finish he didn’t slow down in the slightest but ran straight over and picked up the vulture and his iron stick.

The force of his throw lodged the iron stick in the carriage so that a small piece of wood was splintered up.

After this, he ran full speed down the edge of the street without looking back.

The wind at this moment seemed to increase, and the bloodcolored figurine, swaying, seemed to be watching the boy from afar.

He ran farther and farther.

The wind really did increase, carrying with it the chill of the rain which lashed against the boy’s thin clothes.

The boy involuntarily shivered and his brows scrunched slightly as he huddled into his clothging and sucked in air through his teeth.

He hated the cold.

And his method of combating the cold was to find a place shielded from the wind and rain to rest, but right now the boy sprinting down the street did not slow down in the slightest, and the dilapidated shops swept past him one after the other.

He didn’t have much time.

Because it had taken him a long time to hunt down the vulture, there was one place he hadn’t been to yet today.

“It can’t be far,” the boy muttered to himself as he sped down the street.

On the road before him he could see blue-black corpses everywhere, their faces drained of hope looked ferocious, as if they had turned into an air of despair that threatened to infect the boy’s state of mind.

But the boy was used to it and didn’t even look at them.

Till as time passed little by little. the boy every now and then looked to the sky, looking a bit worried. It seemed the changing color of the sky was more frightful to him than the corpses.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before he spotted a medicine shop, and the boy sighed in relief and dashed toward it.

The medicine shop was not large, and there were many medcine cabinets strewn about on the ground giving off the musky stench of mildew, as if somone had opened a coffin chamber. It was a mess.

In one corner there was the body of an old man, black and blue all over, leaning against the wall. He had seemingly not had time to die in peace with his eyes closed, just staring lifelessly out at the world.

The boy stepped insided and scanned and immdiately began rummaging.

The medicinal herbs here were for the most part like the corpses, turned blue-black. Only a few were still normal.

The boy took a long time carefully identifying the normal-looking herbs.

He recalled his past experience and finally picked up the common metal wound grass and took off his thin shirt, revealing an enormous scar on his chest.

The scar had not completely healed, and it was already beginning to blacken at the edge of the wound. Even a bit of bloof oozed out.

The boy looked down at it, pinched up the herb, then took a deep breath and clenched his teeth as he daubed the wound.

In the blink of an eye a severe pain surged through the wound, coming on suddenly, making the boy shake uncontrollably. But he bore with it, though he couldn’t stop his forehead from sweating, drop after drop running along his cheek and dripping on the dark ground.

Becoming blotched ink.

The whole process lasted a dozen breaths or so, until he had smeared all of the herb onto the wound. The boy seemed to have used up all his strength, supporting himself on a medicine cabinet as rested for a long time, then took a deep breath and slowly put his clothes back on.

Once again he looked to the sky outside, and after a moment of thought he drew a tattered map from his leather bag and carefully unfolded it.

The map was simple; it depicted only the ruined city.

The medicine shops throughout the city were marked, and many of the locations in the northeast quadrant had been scored with an X by a fingernail, leaving only two places unmarked.

“The ones I’ve found the past few days must be in these two areas.” The boy’s voice was hoarse as he mumbled in a low voice, putting the map away, ready to leave.

But before he left, he looked back at the body of the old man, and his eyes fell on the body’s clothes.

It was an animal-hide jacket. Perhaps because of its special material, the jacket had not suffered much decay.

The boy thought for a moment, then went over and took the jacket off the old man’s body and put it on himself.

The jacket was a bit big, but after wrapping his small, thin frame up in it, the boy finally felt a bit warm. And so he looked down at the old man’s open eyes and gently brushed his hand down to close them.

“Rest in peace,” the boy said softly. He tore down an inner door curtain and draped it over the body, then turned and left the medicine shop.

When he stepped out, a faint glint of light reflected from the ground caught his eye. The boy looked down and saw in the bloody mud a piece of broken mirror about as big as the palm of his hand.

In the mirror he saw his own face.

The face reflected in that broken mirror was dirty, but one could faintly detect an exceedingly refined, handsome face.

It just lacked the tender immaturity of a boy of thirteen or fourteen, replaced instead by cold detachment.

The boy quietly regarded himself in the mirror for a time, then raised his foot and stepped on it.

A snapping sound.

Crack after crack appeared.

After stomping the mirror to pieces, he darted off in a flash and ran off into the distance.

On the ground, the mirror was covered with cracks, but it still shot back from the cerulean vault the seemingly godlike incomplete half of a vast human face that seemed to shroud the world, shroud all living creatures.

An incomplete face, eyes closed, cold and detached, high above, only strand after strand of withered, decayed distorted threads of hair hanging down.

This was the natural state of this world and sun and moon alike.

As if all living things beneath him were ants, wakened insects, the manifestations of all living things influenced by it, impossible not to transform.

And at this moment, the sky under the god’s incomplete face was gradually losing light.

The shadow of the setting sun was like a black haze spreading throughout the ruins of the city, covering the earth, as if it would swallow up everything.

It rained harder.

Along with the progressive engulfing of night, came the wind, in gust after gust of piercing wails.

As if the howls of malevolent ghosts began to rouse strange state of this city, making every horrifying, hair-raising sound echo in terror.

The boy ran picked up his pace, moving in more of a hurry, racing the night itself as he deftly shot down a street.

Till he neared a caved-in house and was itching to get there, when the boy’s pupils suddenly contracted.

In the diminishing light not far off among the ruined wall, was a person.

From a distance the person’s clothes were in good order, as if uninjured, sitting leaning against the wall.

Most importantly, the person’s exposed skin looked normal, not blue-black!

A figure like this, in this city, could not appear unless that person were alive!

A living person… In the past few days, the boy had not come across another living person besides himself.

This scene shook him, and he seemed to think of something, as his breathing quickened slightly.

He wanted to go closer, only the hazy black night behind was engulfing.

The boy hesitated, remembered the location, then left in a hurry.

Sprinting down the road, he finally beat the pursuing night and made it back to his temporary home in this city.

It was a hole in the ground, cramped inside, filled with bird feathers.

The entrance crevice was not big; an adult would not be able to squeeze inside. Only a boy could force his way in.

Once inside, he proficiently used books and stones and other odds and ends inside the hold to stop up the entrance.

Once blocked up, the outer dark of night instantly spread over.

The boy didn’t let down his guard, gripping the iron stick tightly, holding his breath, squatting there listening carefully for a long time.

Gradually, the howls and plaintive wails of strange animals sounded, occassionally mingled with odd sounds of laughter.

Till an even more distinct howl resounded, which to the keyed-up boy seemed to pass by in the distance. Once it receded, he finally relaxed and let out his breath and sa down to the side.

It was pitch-black in the burrow. To the boy sitting there quietly, time seemed to stop.

He was lost in a daze, relaxing his nerves that had been taut the whole day. He grabbed a water jug off to the side and took a few sips, ignoring the sounds outside, and took the vulture from his leather bag.

In the dark, he put it to his mouth and tore at it bite by bite.

His throat was filled with a rank, tart taste, but he slowly, calmly swallowed it down his throat and forced it into his stomach.

His stomach churned, trying to digest it to allieve his hunger.

He finished off the vulture quickly. He took a deep breath and a wave of fatigue overtook him and he slowly closed his eyes.

But his hand ever held the raven-black iron stick in a death grip, like a dozing lone wolf.

As if he would start awake at the slightest abnormality.

The world outside now was a curtain of black night covering the city, covering the earth, and also covering the cerulean vault.

The world below the cerulean vault was a vast expanse, and South Huangzhou beyond the sea was only one part of it.

Few knew just how big the whole world was, only the stately incomplete face in the cerulean vault, endowed with intense awe, everyone could look up and see.

It was impossible to know when precisely the incomplete face arrived.

People only knew from depictions in classic books that long long ago, the world was permeatd with transcendent numinous qi, it was thriving and prosperous, full of vitality, until… this enormous incomplete face was drawn out from the deep recesses of the remote void, bringing with it destruction.

In the course of its arrival, all living creatures of the world did all they could to stop it, but everything failed. Finally, only a small number of ancient emperors and sovereigns took part of their clans and abandoned all the living creatures and decided to move.

Soon, the incomplete face arrived, suspended on the horizon. Then, the nightmare descended.

From his breath, spreading across the entire world, mountain chains, the open sea, all things, all living creatures, even the cultivators relying on their cultivation, were infected.

Everything withered, the living died out, barely one in a hundred survived.

After this, those who struggled to survive this calamity called the half of a human face… God.⁶

The world, the called Endland, and the place where the emperors and sovereigns has gone, was called Holy Land.

These terms of address passed down through many eras, generation after generation.

And the calamity that God brought was not limited to this. His awe-inspiring bearing pressed down on all the living incessantly, because…

Every few years or decades or even centuries, he would at unfixed times open his eye and continue to breathe.

Every time he opened his eye and looked at a place, that place would at once be contaminated with his intense breath.

That place would be plunged into misery and would become an perpetual forbidden zone.

For many eras the world’s forbidden zones became more and more, and the placed where people could live became fewer and fewer.

And nine days ago, God opened his eye again, and the region he eyed was the area the boy was in.

Within this region, all species and dozens of human cities, no matter where they were, whether inside the cities or outside in the slums, in the blink of an eye all were intensely contaminated and turned to zones forbidden to life.

This horrible contamination broken down some living things immediately to a bloody mist, while some were mutated into strange, mindless beasts, while the souls of some left their bodies and they were left as only blue-black corpses.

Only a very very few people and animals were fortunate enough to survive.

The boy was one of them.

Now, in the pitch-black outside the burrow, a distant, yet nearing wail woke the boy from his deep slumber and his eyes shot open.

He instinctively raised the iron stick in his hand and alertly watched the clogged up crevice.

Only when the wail circled around and gradually faded did the boy sigh in relief.

Not feeling like sleeping, he felt around in his bag and took out a slip of bamboo.

In the dark, he rubbed the words on the slip. A gleam seemed to appear in his eyes and he sat upright, closed his eyes, and regulated his breath.

The boy’s name was Xu Qing. Since he was young he had been alone, scracthing out a hard living in the slums outside the city.

Nine days ago, during the great sudden catastrophe, he hid in a crevice in the rocks, and unlike the other panic-crazed people, he calmly looked at the open-eyed God in the cerulean vault, looked at God’s eye at sky’s edge, that peculiar 十-shaped pupil, and he seemed to lose his fear.

Till he saw a purple beam of appear from the sky and descend on the city’s northeast section.

In a flash, he fainted.

When he came to, he was the only one living either inside or outside the city.

But he didn’t leave at first.

Because he knew that an area made forbidden by God’s eye would first be shrouded in a rain of blood and would turn into a restricted area.

People inside could not leave, and people outside could not step inside until the zone had been thoroughly restricted.

When the blood rain ceased was the sign of this.

This great catastrophe, for Xu Qing, who had grown up in the slums, was nothing.

Because in the slums, vagrants of all stripes, stray dogs, or a bout of disease, even the frigid night could cause anyone to lose their life at any time. It was very difficult to survive.

And even if you lived, it didn’t mean much.

of course there was some occasional solace within the brutal slums.

Like some down-and-out scholars would teach his group of kids to read to make a living, but aside from that there was only recollections of family.

Only in Xu Qing’s mind, memories of family faded with time, so that now he struggled to recall them, and over time they became a blur.

But he knew he wasn’t an orphan. He still had relatives, they had just become scattered.

So his goal was to keep on living.

If he could live just a bit better, if he had a chance to see his family, that would be even better.

And so he, lucky to be alive, decided to enter the city.

He wanted to go to the houses of the upper class men and seek out the ways of strengthening one’s body that were told of in the slums. More than that, he wanted to find that beam of purple light that descended into the city.

The way of strengthening one’s body spoken of in the slums was longed for by all. They called it cultivation, and those who grasped the means of cultivation were called cultivators.

So becaome a cultivator was Xu Qing’s greatest desire, outside of his recollections of family.

Cultivators were not rare. Xu Qing had seen them in his year in the slums, watching them enter the city from afar.

You could tell which ones they were because when you watched them attentively, your body would instinctively shiver.

Xu Qing had even heard people say that the lord of the city was a cultivator, and his bodyguards were also cultivators.

And so after searching the city for a long time, five days ago he finally found this bamboo slip in the hand of a corpse in the city lord’s manor.

It was very dangerous there; it was where he had been wounded in the chest.

On the bamboo slip was written the method of cultivation he longed for.

He had long since memorized its contents, and a few days ago he had even began an attempt at cultivating.

Xu Qing had never seen any other cultivation methods; this slip was the only one he found, and he didn’t know how to proper practice it.

Fortunately, it was described in simple words that were easy to understand, focusing on visualization and breathing.

So following it as written, he reaped some rewards.

This method was called Mountain and Sea Instructions.⁷

The cultivation method was to visualize the totem carved on the bamboo slip in coordination with the prescribed breathing technique.

The design was bizarre. It was strangely-shaped with a big head and small body and only one leg. Its whole body was black, and its face was ferocious like a malevolent ghost.

Xu Qing had never seen a creature like this. This slip called it imp.⁸

He cultivated following these instructions, and not long after conjurijng the image in his mind, Xu Qing’s breathing began to change and a hidden current gradually filled the air around him.

From all directions numinous⁹ energy streamed in, slowly broing into him, flowing throughout his body, spreading a bone-piercing cold that was like being in ice water wherever it went.

Xu Qing couldn’t stand cold, but he bore it and didn’t give up, persisting as before.

After a long while, in accordance with the requirements on the bamboo slip, he finally finished his cultivation session, and he was drenched in cold sweat.

And his stomach, that had just had its fill of the vulture, once again transmitted pangs of hunger.

Xu Qing wiped off the sweat and rubbed his belly, a determined look appearing in his eyes.

Ever since he began practicing this method, his appetite had clearly increased a lot, and he moved more nimbly than before.

All this made him more forebearing with the icy cold that accompanied his cultivation.

Now he looked up and looked outside the crevice at the outside.

The outer world was a sheet of pitch-black, only the frightening howls rising and falling, resounding in his ears.

He didn’t know the real reason why he had survived. Maybe it was it luck or maybe it was because… he looked at the purple beam of light.¹⁰

So these past few says as he looked for a method for cultivation, he would constantly look to the northeast region, looking for the spot where the purple light had descended, but unfortunately he never found it.

Lost in thought, Xu Qing listened to the howls outside. In his mind the image of the corpse he had seen leaning against the wall at sunset on his way back appeared, so he slowly squinted his eyes.

The person had been in the northeast region, and… seemed to be alive.

“Could it have something to do with that purple light?”

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1. The Huang in Huangzhou 凰洲 means “female phoenix”.
2. Xuan paper, high quality paper made in Xuancheng, Anhui.
3. i.e. the sky
4. stammel translates 緋, the medium-red color used to dye official’s robes of 4th & 5th grade officials during the Tang dynasty. Also refers to cloth dyed that color. Stammel is an old word that is a cloth and the red color of such cloth, thus the translation.
5. My translation of 丈, which is cognate with 仗, which means staff, stave, walking stick. So I went with stave. Ten spans equals a stave. Equivalent to about 3.33m.
6. The word used here is 神靈, a general term of gods, deities. Since it is one specific one, I give it the proper name God.
7. 海山訣. 訣 are instructions, private teachings passed down from a master to chosen initiates. AKA “acroama”. Often given in the form of rhymed verse so it’s easier to remember.
8. 魈, aka 山魈. Imp or mountain imp. An elemental spirt of the mountains described in Ge Hong’s Baopuzi as being a mountain elemental in the form of a small child with one leg that likes to attack people at night.
9. “Numinous” translates 靈 (ling). Spiritual power or efficacy, vital principle, The spirt of the body after death, or the spiritual prowess/power/vitality of the natural world, etc. Often just translated as “spirit” but there are many Chinese words that can be translated that way. Numinous might be unfamiliar to some readers, but it’s a bit more precise. From “numen”, a guiding principle, force or spirit.
10. For what it’s worth, purple in Daoist (Taoist) symbology represents the color of the celestial pole and is associated with the heavens, astral divinities, celestial phenomena, spectral visitations, magic auras, emanations, etc.