Dominion’s End V1Epilogue: Afterword

posted in: Dominions End | 22

Dominion’s End Volume 1: Raining Stars at World’s End

Original novel in Chinese by: 御 我 (Yu Wo)


Epilogue: Afterword—translated by Elkin (proofread by Arcedemius; C/E edited by Doza & lucathia)

The appearance of Dominion’s End was as shocking as the end of the world for me. When I first got struck by inspiration, I immediately started tapping away (sound of typing) and wrote feverishly every day until ungodly hours like I was nuts. But I had almost finished writing 70–80% of an entire book after a week, so it was no different from being crazy.

Even the various names came up smoothly. In the past, I’ve had to open up a Chinese name generator and spend half the day just choosing surnames and given names, but I hardly had to use it this time. Even the title just popped into my mind.

Dominion’s End [Zhong Jiang, 終疆]: “zhong/終” means “end,” while “jiang/疆” means “territory.” In this context, I used it to mean the world, so “Dominion’s End” actually just means “The End of the World.” Using simplistic titles like “I Am a Knight”1 would cause the author to be ridiculed for being uneducated, so I end up having to twist the titles around to pretend like I’ve got some semblance of sophistication.

When I came up with the title, I took the opportunity to look up the meaning of “jiang” and discovered it could be used as a surname. So that’s the story behind the surname of the three Jiang siblings. Come to think of it, the name of the male protagonist—er, sort-of-male protagonist—Jiang Shuyu (疆書宇), sprung to mind just as quickly.

With “Shuyu” as a base, the big brother’s and little sister’s names were easy as well. The big brother is the family’s pillar of strength holding up the sky, so naturally he became “Shutian” [書天, with “tian” meaning sky]. For the younger sister, I used “jun/君” from “Guan Weijun” [關薇君] to make Jiang Shuyu reminisce about the past. That is how the Jiang siblings were named.

It didn’t stop there, either. I had accumulated bits and pieces of plot, to the point where I had almost finished planning out the entire series, and it was just waiting to be written.

This all went so smoothly I was really kind of freaked out, but I had the feeling that I definitely had to write this book, Dominion’s End, and the Jiang siblings were going to be born no matter what.

Rain will fall when the heavens dictate, and your mother will marry when she wants to; some things are just meant to be. There was no helping it, so I let them be born. That was how this baby of mine, Dominion’s End, appeared. Fortunately, it was a very easy delivery for the author. It had its entire life planned out ahead of it from the moment it was born, so all that was left was for the parents to foot the bill for school fees.

My only worry was that there were rather a lot of combat scenes. Because I write out fights by first thinking out the movements in my head, then describing them, writing those scenes was like having a battle fought out in my brain. This really gave me headaches to no end.

But when I was posting the story online, the readers really enjoyed the fight scenes, which was totally unexpected for me. I even got comments like “Jiang Shuyu is the coolest protagonist,” so I could only keep fighting on.

Because this series is in first person, to allow everyone to see the stories of characters besides Shuyu, each volume will have side stories. This volume’s side story, “The Journey Home,” is about Dàgē.

The side stories’ length or number of parts is all up in the air, and it’s possible that one volume will have quite a few side stories. Everything will depend on when and where different characters clamor for an appearance. Alternatively, if you have a character you’re fond of, feel free to leave a comment on my website as inspiration for the side stories.

Originally, I wanted to have the entire “The Journey Home” in the first volume, but I realized I couldn’t stop writing. So I ended up splitting it into halves. Fingers crossed that there won’t be a third part, because while Dàgē is plenty cool, other characters want their turn in the spotlight too.

“One Day in the Apocalypse” was a bolt out of the blue, but you can more or less guess where the story is going from it (actually, not at all) and the true nature of various characters (this one’s more believable). But because this was a spontaneous idea, how many parts there’ll be or whether there’ll even be a second part are all unknown.

Aside from that, this is a serial story, which means none of the volumes will have its own ending other than the final one. And the overall series will be quite long, at least seven or eight volumes.

Sigh, I don’t know if I’ve missed anything. But if you have any questions, please feel free to ask on my website.

Hope everyone enjoys Dominion’s End!

By Yu Wo

Website: http://blog.xuite.net/kim1984429/yuwo
Plurk: http://www.plurk.com/pinkcorpse
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamYuwo

Are [Character Introductions] like these really okay?

Jiang Shuyu

18 years old. A beautiful young man. The middle child of the three siblings. Because he was hit on the head by a falling tile, his inside was switched to a female soul. His body is a sis-con, while his soul is a bro-con. He likes both women with hot figures and handsome, muscular men. He is frequently troubled by his own queer tastes and lack of shame.

Jiang Shujun

15 years old. A pretty girl. The youngest of the three siblings. She is gentle, cute, wise, forgiving, lively, and adorable (to Shuyu). She loves Èrgē the most. She looks gentle and frail on the outside, but she dares to challenge Dàgē and fights to protect her Èrgē, to prevent him from being teased to tears by Dàgē.

Jiang Shutian

27 years old. The mighty Dàgē. The eldest of the three siblings. There’s no need to describe all the many ways he is awesome and mighty. There’s no need to describe the various ways he could take over the world. He’s a complete boss-level character. He is extremely biased toward his own people and extremely merciless toward outsiders. His dìdi and mèimei are his heaven and earth respectively. Not someone you want to mess with.

Footnotes

1 “I am a Knight”: The intended meaning behind The Legend of Sun Knight’s Chinese title, Wuming Qishi (吾命騎士), which was worded to sound more sophisticated.

22 Responses

  1. [PR]elkin

    A depressed translator notes that Yu Wo has more recently updated the expected series length and it’s projected to be at least 15 volumes.

    • Chay

      @[PR]elkin
      (⊙…⊙ ) I am both thrilled and devasted at the news…. Wow soooo looonnng.. Im in heaven.. And yet…wow thats very long..

    • Cloverlin

      Aahhh…15 volumns…and its been over 7 years then? And the volumn is still on V8? This year..right? I’ve got bits of pcs. from her Facebook page..🤔😅..
      The translation is already v6 currently.

      We’re half way to go 😂.. hopefully covid19 wouldn’t take my life ..lols..

      Thankfully, Taiwan is more safe place from that virus. Wishing the author’s good health and long life

  2. dollyfishe

    eh … the pretty boy looks pretty (what kind of comment is this) …. I mean, it’s far from my imagination after all hahaha in my mind, he’s handsome, not pretty (is there a difference ?) but long hair … that’s totally my favourite !! all in all, this is cool ! if only there’s it’s manhwa as well. eeer wait, it would be as scary and bloody right ? I forgot about the aberrant after all. it’s ok to read, since I can avoid the real.ikagination running through my mind. but in manhwa, I will ‘see’ them directly no matter how I dont want too. *sigh* so do I want the manhwa after all ? emmm … ….

  3. Aravis29

    Yahoo!!! I didn’t expect the supersuper almost girly looking Shuyu, but it’s not bad… Okay, it’s freakin hot!
    Anyway, love this series, it’s probably one of my most favorite.
    Thanks for the translations!

  4. Ayariaki

    Haha omg Shutian’s description is hilarious! XD
    Thanks for your hard work both PR staff and Yu Wo-sama! =)

  5. Suz

    We love you and thank you for all your hard work!! ????❤️
    Really loving this series and can’t wait for what happens next!

  6. Rain

    *Hails the mighty dage*! Thanks for the translations! *Hails the mighty PR*! Really happy that you’ll take the time to translate afterwords, love reading Yu Wo’s thoughts.

  7. erycka

    i waited sooooo long (it felt like forever) and all though the side stories are nice i read them in less then 5 minutes ;/ and i really was looking forward to find ing out how the fight at the police station ended T T
    :p anyways thanks for the hard work translating and stuff

  8. Ryuu52

    Reading this makes me think that the reason I love this story so much is due to the author feeling the same way. The only way to have such a natural feel for any story(at least in my opinion) is to be completely in love with every aspect of it. I have been reading off of this site for a year or two, but this story makes me want to ignore everything else just to read more….but I know only so much can be translated at a time. I want to thank everyone on this site for all the work they do translating. I can’t wait for more chapters(especially of Dominions End) to read so keep up the good work! :)

  9. Yuuen

    Thank you for writing this story. I absolutely LOVE it! My all time favorite character is definitely Jiang Shutian. He is super cool and I love that he is merciless towards those that harm his dìdi and mèimei.
    I definitely would like to request more side stories form Jiang Shutian point of view.
    Thank youuuuu!!!!! (^////^)

  10. Jatron

    Really wish the big brother would be beefy! He’s good at.unarmed.combat and built, he shouldn’t be so skinny, alecially with everyone else like that. And JunJun has the problem of being described as so beutiful that the expectation exceed reality.

  11. SeiraJLoyard

    Thank you for the translation! i can’t believe it, 15 volumes?! ah! makes me happy but sad as well… >~< *conflicting feelings*

  12. Luna

    Thanks for translating this! I always enjoy hearing Yu Wo’s thoughts, her way of thinking is almost as interesting as her novels; I feel she’d be a lot of fun to talk to.
    The illustrations are also quite lovely, though a bit different than I pictured. Junjun is about what I thought except I picture her with her hair down and with a headband. On the other hand, the bros fit for me in terms of their outfits and body shape (maybe a tad buffer for Dage) but their hair kind of reversed. I think of Shuyu with this hair cut close to just under his/her ears, while I thought of Dage with long hair tied much like it is illustrated on Shuyu, but less layered and more tidy. Sometimes I picture him with glasses too. ^^

    A part of me feels bad for you guys with the extended length of this series, but I’m also still really grateful you picked it up as I feel like I took to this story right from the get go and would like to see it through. So please continue to put your usual tlc into this story, it’s very much appreciated :D

  13. passerbyB

    Dage is so OP that even the author feels no need to describe how awesome he is. Haha.
    Thanks for translating the first volume of DE! Please don’t be depressed over the length; just take it one at a time. We sincerely appreciate the hard work!

  14. Kim Andar

    In memory of the day I decided to learn written Chinese: Roughly a year ago, I liked this story so much, that I bought volume 1-4 untranslated, thinking that I could learn to read it one word at a time. Boy, was that naïve. After 30 minutes trying to look up a single character in the dictionary, I finally decided to start with a book on Chinese characters first.

    A year later, I know about 200 characters, and I still can’t read all of the character introductions from vol. 1… But I can’t stand to give it up! *Sob* Yu Wo, it’s all your fault for writing such a good story!

    Maybe I’ll at least be able to read the character introductions by the time PR finishes volume 4…

  15. Kryo

    Oh, Dage! Why are you wearing jungle pants and desert vest???

  16. Miaka_Mei

    I just wanted to know… why did the author made Shuyu turn out into the rebellious young villain at the very beginning? Does he really had no choice, but to sneakily ate away the crystals?

    Yeah i know he’s desperate to get stronger as quickly as possible, using whatever means available. But i still couldnt completely swallow it SOBSSSS

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