Taking Leave and a Mid-Volume Summary

As the title says, I said I wouldn't take any leave this month, then shamelessly broke my word, so I could only make up some random excuse.jpg

But it wasn't entirely an excuse. This half-volume was already the same length as the previous volume, and it told a complete story from beginning to end. The host also kicked the bucket. It was just that this volume revolved entirely around the Contract Land, so I didn't start a new volume. Still, there's quite a lot worth talking about.

First, there was Lai Er, the least memorable host in history. Although I never planned to spend too much time on him before writing, once I actually finished, I realized I'd spent far too little. It was hard to say he carried a whole story. Like I said at the end of a previous chapter, this volume's main attraction was more the power struggle among the Corpse Friends in Peach Blossom Paradise, so the host naturally received less focus. It was completely different from the structure of the previous volumes, where the entire story revolved around the host. In the end, he became the sort of character who was bland to keep but a shame to discard.

There was also another point: readers were tired of the "redemption for bad guys" template, and I was tired of it too. Everyone could probably tell that Lai Er's template was very similar to Ulu's. At first, I wanted to recreate another Ulu, but because of both the lack of page time and my own dwindling energy, I really couldn't do it again. That was also why I planned to end the story. I genuinely couldn't think of a better host template, and trying to replicate the earlier ones would only make things worse and serve no purpose.

Of course, like I said before, I'll finish telling the whole story. Barring any surprises, this volume will end, then there'll be Journey to the Netherworld, and that'll be the end.

I hope I can write faster and slack off less.jpg

Oh, right. It only occurred to me while writing this that I'd never reported this book's performance to everyone.

It went premium on July 1st last year. The first-day subscriptions had just passed ten thousand, at 10,500, and the current average subscriptions are 16,000.

These results are pretty interesting too. For those truly amazing big-name authors, once their first-day subscriptions pass ten thousand, they'll hit twenty or thirty thousand within a few months. Then there are stories that focus too much on the beginning, where first-day subscriptions are their peak; by the time they reach my word count, they may have already fallen apart. I'm one of the ones stuck in the middle—not soaring into the sky as a big name, but not collapsing all the way until nobody's left either. The main thing is stability. My ranking has stayed about the same too: around twentieth on the category bestseller list, and between 140th and 160th on the overall monthly ticket rankings. Not too bad, but not too good either.

Just like my updates: very stable, only stable in a not-so-great way.

Of course, if I updated more diligently, my average subscriptions would probably be two or three thousand higher than they are now?

Lazy bastards really deserve no mercy! (Furious