February Summary and a Last-Day Plea for Monthly Passes

February summary and a last-day plea for Monthly Passes. I updated 283,995 characters this month, barely maintaining ten thousand a day. Mainly because there was too much going on during the New Year, and this book had entered its late stages. Some key foreshadowing had to be wrapped up, some plot holes needed filling, and the content was getting harder and harder to write, so I frequently got stuck.

It's the last day. We're currently at 9,200+ Monthly Passes. Comrades, if you still have any votes left, please cast them and let's make one final push for ten thousand. If you don't, that's fine too.

As of now, this book has reached 4.8 million characters. Because I updated it too quickly, and because my skills were limited—when I started writing this book, I was only a novice who had been writing part-time for a year—many parts were far from polished.

The prose, characters, satisfying moments, and plot all had too many shortcomings. Once I finish this book, I'll take a proper break to practice, recharge, and improve myself.

The one thing I'm relatively satisfied with is that the worldview I wanted to present from the very beginning has, at nearly five million characters, basically been fully realized. Most of the setups I planted along the way have also been resolved.

I remember that early in the serialization, before the protagonist had an Origin Soul, quite a few readers complained that the book's perspective was always limited to the protagonist's cultivation within the Wizard Civilization, without conflicts or games between civilizations.

That was indeed the case.

Because this book was structured to run beyond five million characters, and the protagonist needed to grow. It was difficult for him to accomplish much in the early stages. Other than keeping his head down to develop and occasionally showing off before others, there didn't seem to be much to write.

I basically never read wizard novels, but while writing this book, I got to know many authors in the wizard genre. I even went to meet my idol in person—Gun Kai, the founding patriarch of the wizard genre—and learned roughly how other wizard novels were written.

In many wizard novels, a first-level wizard might already be able to slaughter and dissect gods. The plots are often similar to infinite-flow stories, with the protagonist constantly traveling through different worlds to grow stronger and show off, while the Wizard Civilization begins as the strongest in the universe.

But many readers have also noticed that my approach is more like the conventional progression stories of mortal-cultivation fantasy or Mystical Fantasy. This is also the only kind of growth-and-development story I'm good at writing. In the early stages, there was no real chance to break beyond the civilization or have games between different civilizations.

What I wanted to present was a civilization like our current human civilization, one that went through a process of continual growth. During that process, the individual protagonist and the society behind him grew together, gradually stepping from behind the scenes into the spotlight and ultimately leading the era.

Colossal Worlds such as the Astral Realm, Abyss, Nightmare, and Underworld were like the terrifying things early human civilization encountered: natural disasters, fear, war, and death. Humanity kept advancing through constant exploration and struggle.

By now, most of this book's mysteries have been solved, including the protagonist's Golden Finger and the thread of Sauron that ran through the entire story.

In short, this book is closer to its ending.

For this final stretch of the journey, I hope everyone will continue to support it!

Lao Tian offers his thanks!

I won't keep track of owed updates for Monthly Passes and Recommendation Tickets anymore. In any case, this March, Lao Tian will still do his best to maintain a daily output of ten thousand characters, with updates no lower than seven thousand.

Oh, right. Next month, I'll be away in Beijing for half a month for training at the Lu Xun Literary Academy, and then I'll take my wife to the Northeast for about a week. I've been sitting at home grinding away for over a year, so I need a change of pace. Please forgive me if updates become unstable.

Finally, please give Monthly Passes, Recommendation Tickets, and full subscriptions!

------February 29, 2024, Tian Li