For those who don’t care about AI-assistance writing, or any backstories (such as why you find odds when reading) before jumping into the story, you may skip all the babbles at the bottom and proceed with Chapter 1. Thank you and wish you a nice reading journey!

  Now, as for those who are concerned about the AI thing - since I know there’s many conflicts and arguments that have happened since the rise of AI, I would like to tell you something about myself first.

  I am a Chinese Malaysian (A fourth generation Chinese that grew up and lived in Malaysia for her entire life) who had only one year gap year experience (working holiday) in Australia. Just to clarify that, I do not live in an English environment, I have minimal knowledge about English circles and I mainly get in touch with English through the reading materials and YouTube videos. I speak mainly Cantonese in my daily life while writing in Mandarin, and I watched videos mostly in English and Mandarin, and occasionally in Cantonese, Malay, and Japanese with subtitles. (Yeah, quite a complicated language set, but that’s the basic package a Chinese Malaysian usually has.)

  I have been writing Chinese webnovel since high school (actually, secondary school is a much more precise term, but I guess most people understand high school better?). Haven’t managed to get myself famous, I’m just saying that I consider myself quite skilled in writing Mandarin stories that fit into Chinese webnovel circles. And up until now, my only experience in writing an English novel from scratch was a fanfic (and here’s the link, for whoever is interested [https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/91929/my-life-in-the-harry-potter-universe]). And before that, I have tried to translate some of my old short stories from Mandarin to English - that happened when ChatGPT, the AI first came out.

  (Apparently, translating my old short stories doesn’t really improve my English writing, heh.)

  I have always tried to write in English, but I have no one to check if I’m writing it right. ChatGPT just waltzed into this position nicely, so now I can have someone to check my writing! FREE! (I don’t have the money to hire any reviewers to check my work… How I wish I have -wryly smile-)

  So, yes, my English writing as a bit crappy in grammar, and the sentences are quite bland since my vocab pool is shallow (I’m already trying to fill it up, but it takes time and it’s wasn’t easy to turn my Mandarin-functioned brain into an English-driven one.)

  And here’s how I make use of ChatGPT (actually, I would occasionally make use of Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Grammarly, DeepL, so it’s just a broad term):

  – I would first write a draft (with my best effort in better English sentences).

  – After I accumulate a bunch of chapters, I’ll put it into the AI part by part.

  – AI replied to me with the grammar-fixed and sentence-smoothed version of my draft.

  – I type in the fixed version into a new file - no copy paste, I retype it all letters by letters, just so that I can understand how I can improve in writing better sentences. So, the typos you’ll see in the story, mostly because of this. And also there’s British English and American English with some minor difference in spelling, which in theory I learn in British English, but I hang around with American English daily, so there’s a fusion here and it’s normal.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  – When I retype my entire chapter, I would review it at the same time, questioning myself if the AI had understood my meaning, do I need to restructure my sentence to make it clear, would there be a better way to convey the message/image in my mind, etc. AI will sometimes remove all those parts where I overly spoon-feeding readers with excessive unnecessary information. But there might be cases where I would like to keep it or add in more information, or I’m stuck at a certain paragraph and jumping between different AIs to get the result I want by editing the same sentences over and over again. So it’ll take time at this stage as well.

  (Oh, I’ve put the raw draft into my Patreon page, so if you’re interested in comparing the raw draft and the refined uploaded chapters, you can consider subscribe, TQ~ [Ov<] )

  So, I won’t ask it to generate any content, if this is your concern when you see the AI tag in the front page. The AI does not fix my plot holes, it does not point out if there’s any illogical parts in my story, and it definitely does not warn me if I misused some historical reference. If you noticed any of these, then it’s definitely my bad. : P

  Also, I would like to point out that, the main reason this is a Victorian-ish story, and not exactly a Victorian Era historical story, is because I have poor knowledge about it.

  “Then why would you write it if you’re not familiar with it?” You might ask. And let me tell you, I liked to know why as well. For this is a calling that comes to me suddenly, telling me that I might do myself some good if I write an English historical story based on Victorian Era vibe… probably some deity in charge of inspiration passed by my rooftop that day idk… -shurg-

  I do tried to look for some historical stories on the webnovel sites that interested me, but maybe because I did not search for it actively, or that I search with a wrong tag or in a wrong site, I did not find those that intrigued me - I just don’t like the typical “poor girl marry rich guy” just because they’re in love for some reason, and oh my, there’re tons of those love struggles and love triangles…

  (Though I am actually writing about a poor girl marrying a rich guy here, but I tried my best to display it differently, at least love wasn’t the main theme of this story. : ) )

  Anyway, I had tried to suppress this urge to write something set in a time period and culture foreign to me, but alas, I stabbed my keyboard with my fingertips after two months of suppression. To avoid any silly mistakes that I might’ve made - that’s totally not accurate to the history - I took an easy steps by setting it in a Vistorian-ish Era, though I have tried my best to watch a bunch of Victorian Era’s explanation videos and materials, and keep on consulting ChatGPT and Gemini about the details… Just so you understand, I tried my best.

  Okay, I guess that’s all I would like to babble about before the beginning of the chapters. With all the spoilers alerted (actually, does these count as spoilers? I mean, Chinese webnovels would have put these as spoilers, not sure if the English circles would think the same…), I wish you a happy journey in reading my story.

  TQ and have a nice day~!

  PS: I didn’t fix this Disclaimer with AI, so this is my true capability in writing English. The sentence flow might be quite different from what’s in the chapter…

  PS 2: If anyone is interested in one of my sources for writing this story, do check out Ellie Dashwood () in youtube where she shares the background of Jane Austin’s stories. Though mostly on Regency Era, but I not actually writing a Victorian Era anyway, so I do refer to her content greatly [OvO]