Taking Leave and a Mid-Volume Summary

As the title says, since I promised not to take any leave this month and then shamelessly broke my promise, I can only come up with a random excuse.

However, it's not entirely an excuse, because this half-volume is already the same length as the previous one, telling a story with a beginning and an end, and the host has also sent it. It's just that this volume revolves entirely around the Contract Land, so no new volume has been started, but there are still quite a few things worth discussing.

First, there's the host, Lai Er, who has the least presence in the entire story. Although I didn't intend to spend too much time on him before writing, I still realized after finishing that I didn't spend enough time on him, and it's hard to say he carried the entire story. As I mentioned at the end of the chapter earlier, the highlights of this volume are more about the power struggles among the Corpse Friends in Peach Blossom Paradise, so the host naturally received less attention. This is completely different from the previous volumes and the structure where the host was involved throughout the entire story, resulting in a character who is somewhat bland but hard to discard.

Another point is that readers are tired of the "bad guy redemption" template, and I am tired of it myself. Everyone can see that Lai Er's template is very similar to Ulu's. I initially wanted to replicate Ulu's story, but due to limitations in writing space and my own energy, I simply couldn't do it again. This is why I'm planning to end the story; I genuinely can't think of a better host template, and trying to replicate previous templates will only make things worse and is pointless.

Of course, as I said before, I will finish telling the whole story. If nothing unexpected happens, this volume will end here, and the next volume will be the Journey to the Netherworld, after which it will also end.

I hope I can write faster and be less lazy. jpg

Oh right, I just realized I haven't shared the book's achievements with everyone yet.

It was launched on July 1st last year, and the first batch of orders just passed (10,500). The current average order value is 16,000.

This performance is quite remarkable. Top-tier authors, after achieving over 10,000 initial subscriptions, quickly reach 20,000 or 30,000 within a few months. Conversely, some authors who overemphasize the initial release and aim for an instant peak in initial subscriptions likely collapsed by the time they reached my word count. I'm somewhere in the middle; I didn't become a superstar overnight, nor did I completely collapse and disappear. My strength lies in stability. My position on the charts has remained consistent: around 20th on the regional bestseller list and between 140 and 160 on the overall monthly ticket list—neither too bad nor too good.

Just like my updates, they're stable, just not very stable.

Of course, if I were to update more frequently, my average score would probably be two or three thousand higher than it is now.

Lazy dogs never get a good end! (Annoyed)