This chapter is free.
It really hadn't been easy keeping this book going for so long. I started it in 2021, and now it was already in its third year. It would probably run until at least 2025. Looking back, it really had been a fascinating journey.
If you'd been following me since The Mechanic, you probably understood that while writing this book, my personal life had gone through quite a few ups and downs. So for me, simply persevering was my greatest achievement.
When I wrote The Mechanic back in 2016, I think, my salary was low and my job was easy, so I could guarantee three updates a day, sometimes even pushing out four or five. Now that I was writing Fourth Calamity, things weren't nearly as easy as before. Work was busier, and the pressure of raising a child was greater. Fortunately, the family crisis that started during the latter half of The Mechanic had more or less been resolved. Things were still tough now, but at least the two of us were facing them together, and I felt much more at ease mentally.
Back to Fourth Calamity—I was truly grateful that everyone had supported me all this time. Naturally, I would do my utmost to repay you with better stories, and I would definitely keep going until the book was finished. I'd actually talked about the general outline of the later story during some occasional livestreams before. After defeating the Galactic Empire, there would be all that mess involving the Rebel Alliance and the Zann Consortium, followed by the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, ending in a grand, climactic finale. Tang Xiao's personal transformation would also be woven into it all. He would find his own path. Though at the moment I personally leaned toward not giving him