Chapter 55: Release Remarks

After a year and a half, returning to the starting point to begin a new book feels like I am rebooting myself.

During this year and a half, I often thought about just retiring—traveling, raising cats, playing games, and happily wasting away this life.

But I always felt there were still stories left untold, and that included this story of Chen Ji.

From the very beginning of the fantasy stage, this story stepped outside my comfort zone, because I truly wanted to write something different from my past work. As for whether I can write it well, that remains to be seen.

In my past creations, I would frequently overlook logical plot progression; some storylines were too contrived, making them feel awkward.

There were issues like writing for the sake of "coolness," writing for the sake of "hype," or writing for the sake of "comedy," and so on.

This is a matter of how a creator handles scale and balance. Clearly, I did poorly in the past, and in this book, I want to try to improve.

A person must progress; even if it is exhausting, one cannot stop.

In my past creations, I was often too eager to push the plot forward, thereby neglecting detailed descriptions, which resulted in a lack of visual imagery.

Of course, as you can see with this book, I am also working hard to improve. I spent several months first gathering a vast amount of information to construct a solid, imaginary version of Luocheng in my mind.

While writing, I try my best to immerse myself in that environment, thinking about how a certain character would move or what kind of words they would say in that setting.

I am still learning this part, and I hope I can learn quickly.

In my past creations, my characterization was somewhat opportunistic. I would devote a lot of words to important characters, such as Yingzi or He Jinqiu.

But for characters who were not considered important to my creative goals, I would be lazy and turn them into mere labels, resulting in insufficient character detail.

I failed to consider the growth experiences of each character within their specific era, or their true personal motivations.

But that was wrong.

In this book, I am attempting to make a change. I want every character in this book to be vivid and bright, even if they only appear once in the early stages, like the Paoge and Erdao, or the Uncle and Aunt.

The workload this time is enormous. Taking She Dengke and Liu Quxing as examples: although they are just minor characters, I have written character biographies for them—what kind of families they were born into and what kind of life experiences they had. Even as minor characters, they have their own joys and sorrows.

There are also Yun Yang, Jiao Tu, Jin Zhu, Bing Hu, Tian Ma... so many, hundreds of them.

I want them to live "complex" lives in this world, rather than merely serving my creative purposes or serving to advance a certain plot.

This is a massive amount of work, but while writing this book, I find it tireless and enjoyable; I have truly felt the joy of this method of creation.

In my past creations, I didn't have a complete, clear outline, only detailed outlines.

As a result, as I wrote, even I wouldn't know what kind of story I was creating or what tone I was setting.

This was the biggest problem facing *The Nomenclature of Night* and *Spare Me, Great Lord*. Therefore, I have returned to the creative mode of *The First Sequence*: first establishing the ending I want most, and only then creating the outline and the story.

However, writing this way also presents problems. As the creator acting as an observer of the story, I know too much, and I can't help but accidentally spoil plot points that should only appear much later...

Or, I become too eager for that ending, wishing to arrive there a day sooner.

I am slowly adapting, and I hope I can do better in this regard.

In past works, due to the unique serialization method of web novels, readers have very high requirements for update volume. But regarding this book, I want to talk to everyone about this issue first.

During *The Nomenclature of Night*, as you know, I held the number one spot on the charts for a long time.

Being number one has a certain magic. When you update 8,000 words, you are number one; when you update 4,000, you drop to number two. Once you fall to number two, you will fight desperately to get back.

During that period, I was updating 12,000 words a day; I felt like my entire being was being sublimated...

But in reality, an author's energy is limited. Once the update volume is pushed to that level, one naturally abandons control over the details because there is no time to review the entire story.

Therefore, since the start of this book, I have not asked for a single monthly ticket, a single collection, or a single recommendation. I am not paying attention to any charts. I hope to settle my heart and write a story that does justice to myself.

I will not deliberately "slack off," but I will simply post whatever I write each day, ensuring that the quality of what is written is something I can be satisfied with.

Of course, if I write poorly, it is simply due to my limited skill. I greatly envy those gifted writers whose stories are full of twists and turns and whose prose is magnificent—things I cannot learn no matter how hard I try.

I can only start by learning to do my best.

The performance of this book is currently similar to *The Nomenclature of Night* before it went paywalled, and actually a bit higher. This was unexpected, as the protagonist's life has been very bumpy and the updates have been slow... I would like to thank all the readers here; I hope I can write an ending that does justice to myself this time.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you again.

See you at midnight; there is one more chapter coming at midnight.

(End of Chapter)