While Jin Yong was writing and serializing his novel Tianlong ba bu , there was a period during which he had to leave Hong Kong to go abroad. He therefore recruited the Hong Kong science fiction author Ni Kuang to "stand in" for him while he was away. Taking its lead from the several chapters that Ni Kuang wrote for Jin Yong while Jin Yong was away, this essay explores a set of broader issues involving the nature of literature itself. More specifically, this essay approaches the serialized version of Jin Yong's novel (including the chapters that Ni Kuang wrote for him) as a literary resource out of which the eventual revised version of the novel was constituted, and it uses the practices of serialization and "stand-in writing" to consider the status and significance of canonical literature itself.