Cold Earth

The so-called Cold Land was originally a world without light. Opposite the Cold Land lies another world of brightness: the Cloud Realm. All the people of the Cold Land are exiles from the Cloud Realm. Yet the Cold Land was not always a place of pitch-black darkness. Those exiled there invented science and technology, and invented electricity and light. In time, the once barren world of the Cold Land, because its rulers encouraged every kind of creativity, came to display extraordinary technological capability. In the Cold Land, all imagination and exploration are encouraged; desire is encouraged, and there is no fixed standard of taste. The Cloud Realm is the opposite: its rulers do not encourage innovation and impose the aesthetic sensibilities of the ruling class itself as the law of the world; those who violate that law are exiled to the Cold Land. Thus the people of the Cloud Realm grow fewer and fewer, while the people of the Cold Land gather in ever greater numbers. Over time, the balance of power between the two worlds shifted. When the rulers of the Cold Land believed they had gathered sufficient strength, they would attempt to open the door to the Cloud Realm and try to reclaim the bright world that was theirs. That is exactly what happened twenty-six hundred years ago, and the outcome of that history was the defeat of the masses of the Cold Land and their being driven back to the Cold Land once more. Twenty-six hundred years later, the rulers of the Cold Land are once again stirring, but this time not everyone is willing to return to the Cloud Realm; some have long grown accustomed to this world. Thus contradictions intensify, and the book's plot unfolds against this background.