There's something particularly agonizing about a long, drawn-out flashback laying out in perfect clarity a system, designed to grind people down, fulfilling its purpose while the protagonist struggles blindly against it. And then the transition back to the present is so jarring and devoid of recap that I had no idea what was going on for a bit, but at least from that point forward the story was less emotionally draining.

I'm not sure how I feel about the abrupt change in chapter structure this volume. On the one hand, it's nice having the book divided into smaller, more manageable chunks; on the other hand it's much easier to see the rhythm and pitfalls of the serial format, which takes me out of the story a little bit. Hua Cheng is still the best either way so that's all that really matters!