When I received the editor's notification, I honestly found it hard to believe.
I never expected this little project born on a whim to go premium so quickly.
Even less did I expect this book to receive so much support, with so many readers following it and voting for it.
The truth was, I started writing this book because I had run out of things to read.
I liked reading novels. I'd been reading for more than a decade, ever since elementary school—every kind of book imaginable—so I could be said to have read quite a lot. The reason I wrote this book was also because I liked reading fan fiction, especially Hokage fan fiction. But there were very few quality Hokage fanfics, and the handful that existed were terribly padded. So, in a fit of frustration and guided by the philosophy of "If I can do it, I'll do it myself," I painstakingly registered an author account, came up with a title, and began the first book of my life.
My author name, "Mountain Ape Valley Bird," came from Bai Juyi's Letter to Yuan Weizhi: "Again I hear mountain apes and valley birds, their mournful cries chirping without cease." Choosing this name was, in some way, a response to the times.
And so, just like this, I kept writing, and nearly fifty days passed.
During this process, what satisfied me most was all the readers' comments. Every time I opened Writer Assistant and saw everyone's messages, I was especially happy. I read basically every comment, carefully considering my replies to some of them. The ideas everyone suggested were also quite interesting. If nothing unexpected happened, you should be able to see the corresponding scenes in later chapters~
It was just that my writing skills were limited. Although I had