[Chapter 0: Little Summary]
Recently, I had my final exams, which happened to coincide with the end of the team writing event, so I took a brief pause.
The opening was rushed, but fortunately, I managed to sign a contract. Next, I need to revise and polish the opening chapters.
Then I'll flesh out the outlines and detailed outlines for the first two volumes.
Family cultivation stories have actually existed for a long time; they just weren't as popular as they've been in the news these past two days.
It was because of a completely different family-cultivation novel by Xuan Jian that everyone was inspired to open up new stories.
Everyone transformed into all kinds of strange, bizarre, and sacred objects, traveling to a certain family in another world and becoming the treasures that guarded the lineage.
Or becoming spirit beasts that guarded the lineage.
I also hope this family-cultivation story will have something a little different.
So I'll say this first: it may not meet everyone's expectations.
As for some of the elements that appeared in the early settings, some people may have noticed them, while others may not have.
[Demon Subduing Hall], [Sky Pillar], [Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King], [Earth Hero Star Heavenly Eye General], and so on were actually elements from Water Margin that I had been imagining and looking forward to for many years. I kept revising them, and only recently decided to use them this way.
The books of Water Margin that I read and the games such as Water Margin Divine Beasts that I played were all memories from a very long time ago.
At first, I wanted to write about a family in some alternate world, struggling upward from the bottom before encountering these demon spirits.
The concept of demon spirits was also only incorporated recently. Before that, I never knew what would be a good name for them.
While writing my previous book, I gained experience and inspiration.
Only then did I come up with the setting that all things possessed spirits.
Demon spirits, ghost spirits, magic spirits, and divine spirits will all make their appearances.
Behind the first volume, some powerful figure is pushing things forward, helping Ming Shu, who has no goals or direction at all, establish a lineage.
Some related settings are still being refined and will gradually surface. I'll try to make things more reasonable and not overly fantastical.
By the second volume, the protagonist should still be alive. Then he'll gradually retreat behind the scenes, and the protagonist will change. For now, it's tentatively Little Zhao, but that hasn't been confirmed yet.
If you find contradictions between what the story says in different places, then my memory must have gotten muddled and I wrote something wrong. Once a story gets too long, this sort of thing becomes easy to do. It happened several times in my previous book, and I often had to flip back through it repeatedly.
Every day, I'm constantly using the search function to look through what I wrote before.
Especially after five hundred thousand words, mistakes become even easier to make. That's also the advantage some authors have when they decisively change maps: they can decisively say goodbye to all the characters from the previous map, leaving only a few members of the protagonist's group, which makes things easier to handle.
Above all, I have to prevent characters who were written to death from suddenly appearing again later. I'd be so embarrassed that I wouldn't sleep well for several days, and in the end, I'd have no choice but to revise things and awkwardly patch the plot back together.
I've heard that a few great authors have a habit of opening summary lists for their esteemed readers.
But this summary is mostly something I wrote for myself, a way to give myself an account of my progress at each stage.
I haven't been examining myself three times a day, but looking back once a month is still very necessary.
Based on my experience with my previous book, updating four thousand words a day is still achievable.
However, I need to raise my standards, carefully polish the story, and then set aside time each day to fix typos and contradictory plot points.
The fifty thousand words from the opening to now all need to be revised from beginning to end. It's no small project. I'll talk about it after tomorrow's exam.
Please help point out ambiguities or typos in the comments.
Don't click that error-report button—the author can't receive those reports. I've tried many times myself, and I can't see anything submitted that way. I do read the comments.
I'll correct any typos.
I'll give every attempt my all and trust in the power of progress and accumulation.
The padding that happened in my previous book definitely won't happen in this one. Even if I can't update on time, I won't make up the numbers with filler.
Updates will stabilize after the New Year. Before the New Year, I'll do my best to keep updating, but there are still some other matters to deal with.
My initial plan is for at least three volumes.
There'll be a small family by the later stages of the first volume.
Let's go over a few easily confused concepts once more.
[Academy] can refer to a seat of power similar to the [Demon Subduing Hall]. [Academy Institute], on the other hand, is a general term; beneath it are different academy institutes in various places, and they physically exist.
That's why the Academy is extremely divided internally. Even within the same academy institute, there are different factions.
The highest institution of learning in the world is the [Imperial Academy].
Apart from the [Imperial Academy Palace], other forces on the same level as the [Demon Subduing Hall] include the [Demon Locking Pagoda], [Ghost Refining Prison], and [Ancient God Temple].
The power specifically refers to the [Imperial Academy Palace], while the faction is the Academy. But in truth, the Academy refers to all scholars; there is no faction actually called the Academy.
There's no need to get hung up on this.
The three main factors that inspired me were Water Margin, family cultivation, and the Life Book.
The story I had conceived earlier was Jin Xian · Fate Book, but it didn't incorporate any of the other elements. I thought about it for a long time without coming up with any ideas, except for the opening where the dying protagonist swallowed an Immortal Pill.
I started following Xuan Jian when it had fewer than a thousand subscriptions. By the time I caught up, I had joined the second full-subscription group. The group's current rank is already Purple Mansion.
All right, no more padding. I'll finish things one by one. Don't stay up late; your health comes first.
Good night! Get some rest early!
[Star Year, the Year of the Tiger,
End of the Black Pig Year.]
Before you continue