After a year and a half, returning to the starting point to write again feels like I've rebooted myself once more.
During this time, I often thought about simply retiring, traveling, raising cats, playing games, and happily wasting away this life.
But I always felt there were stories left untold, including the story of Chen Ji.
From the very beginning, this story stepped out of my comfort zone because I truly wanted to write something different from my past works.
Whether I could do it well or not was another matter.
In my previous creations, I often overlooked logical storylines, and some plots felt too forced, making them awkward.
Writing for the sake of excitement, for the sake of passion, for the sake of humor—these were all issues.
It's a matter of how a creator balances these elements, and clearly, I didn't do well in the past.
With this book, I want to try to improve.
People must always strive to improve, even if it's exhausting; we can't stop.
In my past works, I was too eager to push the plot forward, neglecting the details, which resulted in a lack of vividness.
Of course, in this book, as you can see, I'm also trying to improve.
I spent several months gathering a lot of information, building a solid, fantastical Luo City in my mind.
When writing, I try to immerse myself in that environment, thinking about what actions a character would take and what they would say in that setting.
This is still a learning process, and I hope I can learn faster.
In my past works, I sometimes took shortcuts with character descriptions.
For important characters, I would spend a lot of effort, like with Shadow and He Qiuqiu.
But for characters who weren't as crucial to my creative goals, I would lazily label them, resulting in insufficient detail.
I didn't think about each character's growth experiences in their current era or their true desires.
But that's not right.
In this book, I'm trying to make a change.
I hope every character in this book is vivid and bright, even if they only appear once early on, like Pao Ge and Er Dao, or Uncle and Auntie.
The amount of work this time is enormous.
Take She Dengke and Liu Quxing, for example.
Although they are minor characters, I've also written character profiles for them—what kind of family they were born into, what life experiences they had.
Even if they are 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, not just serve my creative purposes or push a certain plot forward.
This is a lot of work, but I find it enjoyable and have truly felt the pleasure of this creative approach.
In my past works, I didn't have a complete, clear outline, only detailed outlines.
But this way, as I wrote, even I didn't know what kind of story I was creating or what tone I was setting.
This was the biggest issue faced by "The Naming of the Night" and "Spare Me, Great Lord."
So, I returned to the creative mode of "The First Sequence," starting with the ending I most desired, then creating the outline and the story.
But writing this way also has its problems.
As the creator and observer of the story, knowing too much, I couldn't help but spoil some plot points that should have appeared later...
Or, being too eager for that ending, hoping to reach it sooner.
I'm slowly adapting, hoping to do better in this regard.
In my past works, due to the unique serialization method of web novels, readers had high demands for update frequency.
But with this book, I want to talk about this issue first.
During "The Naming of the Night," as you know, I held the top spot on the rankings for a long time.
Being number one has a kind of magic.
When you update 8,000 words, you're number one; when you update 4,000 words, you're number two.
When you drop to number two, you desperately want to climb back up.
During that time, I updated 12,000 words daily, feeling like I had transcended...
But in reality, an author's energy is limited.
Once the update volume increases, you naturally lose control over the details because you don't have time to review the entire story.
So, with this book, from the very beginning, I haven't asked for a single monthly vote, haven't asked for collections, haven't asked for recommendations, and haven't paid attention to any rankings.
I hope to settle down and write a story that I can be proud of.
I won't deliberately slack off; I'll just write as much as I can each day, ensuring the quality is something I can accept.
Of course, if it doesn't turn out well, it's due to my limited abilities.
I envy those naturally talented writers whose stories are full of ups and downs, with gorgeous prose—something I can't seem to learn no matter how hard I try.
I can only learn to do my best.
The current performance of this book is similar to "The Naming of the Night" before its release, even slightly better, which I didn't expect, given that the protagonist's life has been quite rough and updates have been slow...
I thank all the readers here, hoping I can write an ending that I can be proud of this time.
Thank you all.
Thank you again.
See you at midnight tonight; there will be another chapter then.
(End of Chapter)