The Complete Betrayal: On Shangguan Ding's "Demon Sword and Heavenly Sword"

I recently finished reading Shangguan Ding's "The Demon Sword and the Heavenly Sword", and I felt very special. It didn't seem like I had finished reading a story. Instead, I was thinking about how many kinds of betrayals there were in the book. To be honest, I seem to have read a complete book of betrayals. This is also a really big topic.

My understanding of Shangguan Ding started with martial arts novels, and an amateur author like me would of course find his writing process amazing. It is said that Liu Zhaoxuan, formerly known as Liu Zhaoxuan, worked together with two brothers to publish martial arts novels in the name of "Shangguan Ding" at the age of seventeen in order to earn royalties. Struggle, successively served as the president of Taiwan's Tsinghua University and Soochow University, and served as the president of the Executive Yuan. After retiring from politics and academia, he resumed writing novels, and at the age of 70, he released a set of five-volume masterpiece "The Sword of Kings", and then explored different types of themes and published many works. This way of writing is really exciting.

Speaking of "The Demon Sword and the Heavenly Sword", I thought it was a martial arts novel just by reading the title. The story revolves around the lifelong skill competition between Weng Yihuang and Muramasa Umenosuke, two great swordsmiths in China and Japan, in order to create the world's best weapon. , launched a series of fierce battles, and Shang Qiongbi fell to Huang Quan to find secret skills that surpassed the opponent, and finally forged a demon sword and a heavenly sword, but this competition spanning decades is only one of the main lines of the novel. This sword and sword drew out Zheng Zhilong, who was proficient in Portuguese and came to Macau many times to deal with the Portuguese at that time, and then wrote that the Ming Dynasty subsided, Zheng Zhilong and his son Zheng Chenggong faced the life and death choices made by the change of dynasties. At this time, the demon sword and the sky Although the sword also plays a key role in the story, the martial arts element is rare. Instead, the psychological transition between Zheng Chenggong and the Ming Dynasty relics is written from a new perspective, and the layout of the historical novel is clearly visible. But Shangguan Dingji didn't stop there. He also wrote that two great weapons and weapons reappeared in the sky more than 400 years later, which triggered a unique business war story.

Although the novel presents different genres and involves multiple elements, showing that the author is not satisfied with just writing martial arts, but also demonstrates a variety of writing skills, but throughout the book is always a matter of trust between people. Shangguan Ding strives to describe various forms of betrayal. Between fathers and sons, husband and wife, friends, rulers and ministers, whether it is for selfish desires, maintenance of face, or even national affairs, there may be different forms of betrayal, even in a modern and civilized society. Between bosses and subordinates, secretaries and bosses, business partners and competitors, the plot of betrayal still occurs at any time. With the author's senior-level experience, writing about the dark side of human nature is naturally familiar. What is rare is that his description is very restrained, and he will not criticize the betrayal one-sidedly. Instead, he will present the situation of the parties in different ways, so that readers can understand these people. reality when making a decision.

One of the things I got from reading this novel was that I learned about the relationship between the historical figure Zheng Zhilong and Macau. From this, I could also understand the status of our small fishing village as an international business port in the late Ming Dynasty. This clue is actually a good novel theme. , you can come up with unexpected plots. There are definitely many elements to be discovered in the story of Macau. I hope that in the future, there will be local novelists who learn from the experience of their predecessors and write beautiful works!