Update Arrears and Plan

First, a word about the update arrears:

This month brought 54 new Alliance Leaders and 4 Silver Alliance Leaders. I owed 94 bonus chapters for Alliance Leaders, totaling 376,000 characters.

Monthly votes would add roughly another 210,000 characters.

Plus the 25,000 characters owed from August.

That brought the total outstanding to 610,000 characters.

In September, I updated 347,000 characters.

Shamefully, after subtracting the guaranteed 240,000 characters, I had only repaid around 107,000.

Doing the math, I still owed 500,000 characters—roughly 125 chapters at 4,000 characters each. What?! I owed that much already?!

The Commandant felt like the "Purple Bone Celestial Venerable" from the book right now, and deeply understood the feeling.

I have to say, everyone has been incredibly supportive!

As of the time this single chapter was posted, the average subscriptions stood at 65,000, while twenty-four-hour follow-up subscriptions were a little over 37,000. Including all iOS readers still following along, it was probably around 44,000.

Thank you all so much!

Honestly, even the Commandant never expected these results. Especially getting first place on both rankings—it felt like a dream.

At the beginning of the month, I thought I would probably rank about the same as in August, somewhere around seventh or eighth.

Seeing everyone running giveaways, I followed the trend and held one too.

Then I accidentally wrote too much and gave away 16,000 yuan in prizes.

And somehow I even took first place in monthly votes.

First place is not easy to get. Whoever gets it ends up being labeled a vote manipulator.

The funny thing was that Qidian's tech department messed up in the middle of the month and gave me the first-place monthly vote badge,

then changed the rules mid-month and lowered the Upper Limit for monthly vote red packets to 200.

Well, that was like getting mud in my pants—whether it was shit or not, everyone would think it was shit.

People said all sorts of things. Things like, "Netherworld Soldiers are voting. The votes surge after midnight." I thought, isn't that when I always update? Staying up to read through the night, with tens of thousands of follow-up subscribers—if the votes did not rise after I updated, that would be the strange part, wouldn't it?

Others claimed my chapter comments were too low. Would a Fighting and Killing novel have as many chapter comments as a mystery-solving novel packed with memes?

After readers got their thrill, they just went off to do other things.

Some even said the Commandant had spent hundreds of thousands on this.

That really made me laugh. If I had hundreds of thousands, would it not be better to go all-in on the A-share market?

If you ask how 37,000 follow-up subscribers compared to the big names, to borrow the words of a certain big shot, over 30,000 follow-up subscriptions already put you in Qidian's top ten.

And among Qidian's top ten, besides Yan ZK's Peace Edict, who else updated as much as I did every single month? Note: every month!

This book had only been premium for five months. Average subscriptions rose quickly during its growth period. Was I definitely buying votes just because I got lucky and took first place?

And then there was Qitian Hall, which people claimed was a vote-buying organization. They had already been Alliance Leaders on Qidian in 2019. Saint Immortal even gave Brother Dong a Gold Alliance—what vote-buying organization was that generous?

Please, bring me more of that!

As for competing with giveaways and monthly vote red packets, everyone was doing it. How could I not? The Commandant was not that high-minded either. I had handed out several thousand yuan in red packets across several reader groups. I really did want readers to vote.

Actually, none of this really mattered. Those who wanted to read could read, and those who needed to write could write. Everyone could just live their own lives.

The Commandant also planned to shut down the other social media apps and focus on repaying the updates.

Let's talk about the October update plan:

Since I already owed several hundred thousand characters, the original bonus update plan no longer meant much. Just like in August, I would put the bonus update plan aside for now and spend two months steadily repaying the update debt.

October had a double-reward event, and it was already up, so I would give it a try. Here was the goal: 15,000 characters a day during the National Day holiday. If I was in good condition, I would split it into two 10,000-character chapters.

But 20,000 characters could only be considered a challenge, not a guarantee. After all, I had been pumping out extra updates for five straight months.

I would also try to stabilize the update schedule. For the specifics, I would first see how things went with the adjustments over the next couple of days.

In short, I would strive to return to life and not turn everyone into "Netherworld Soldiers."

That was all. My deepest thanks!

PS: It was too late today. Once I got up, I would come to the group and send out National Day red packets.