Before I knew it, I had reached four million characters. According to what I said before, the story was scheduled to end at around four and a half to four point six million characters. Looking at it now, it would definitely exceed that length, though not by much. In other words, I had officially entered the final eight hundred thousand or so characters. And from three million to four million characters, this had been the most difficult million characters I had ever written. As some readers put it, I had spread the stall too wide, making it difficult to keep everything under control. It had become harder—or perhaps I no longer knew how—to take every aspect into consideration. Take the character development, for example. In the past, I could look after many characters, but now I could only do my best to focus on a few. The fights had become increasingly mystical, so I could only simplify them as much as possible; the blood-pumping excitement was no longer there. And when it came to controlling the pacing, Zhang Yichi had become difficult to handle.
So, my plan for the next book was to try writing a story with a smaller scope, make up for the helplessness I was feeling now, accumulate more experience, and work hard to improve myself. Since I had entered this line of work, I had not done so to make quick money. Summarizing and improving was only proper, and I hoped that every book would show progress in some aspect.
From August the year before last until now, we had walked together for almost two years. As long as this book had brought you some laughter, happiness, or emotion, I would be satisfied. I would slowly write the remaining content of this final volume well. I