Wulin_Jianghu
Oh my God ! I would have died without your note are the end. This is soooo complicated. I have trouble getting attached the the characters because of the omniscient point of view. I wonder if you could cut on the facts, and tell the story from an internal point of view. Yes, we would miss some info due to that shift, but your note can restore them. By doing that, we would dive in the skin of your main hero, and feel involved and read this story more like a story, and less like a politics book.
One thing I found difficult in this chapter is to extricate the past from the present. So, Zixi had had to flee once before, eleven years ago. That 540 BC does it refer to the now or to the past? Did he meet the Yue girl before or is he meeting her now? If he met her before and this is eleven years later, let me go and find my tissue papers because I am ready for the tragedy. If it is now … then I admit I am a bit lost. This being said, what a great way to summarize what Zixi had to do to escape and to underline bits and pieces of his past. I love it when characters slowly take shape. Knowing that he had gone to war, knowing he had also taken part in court intrigues from a young age, all of these details permit to paint a very interesting picture of this Zixi who feels no panic, but is not without fear for his life either. I daresay he would be a difficult man to understand as he seems to travel the waters of court intrigue with a certain ease. He is not arrogant enough to overestimate himself or naïve enough to underestimate those who surround him. And we are FINALLY meeting the famed Yue maiden! And what a maiden! Instead of safely hiding in the forest she is the knight-in-shining armor to our lad-in-distress!