First, I want to explain something to some readers: yesterday's completion announcement was not a spur-of-the-moment decision.
If you have nothing better to do, you can go back and look at the weekly update notice from October 31, 2021. I mentioned back then that the next war would be this book's final battle, and after that, everything would come to an end.
Some particularly attentive readers had already noticed that nearly everything I've been writing during this period was about filling in the various plot holes left by earlier foreshadowing. It was obvious that I was making preparations for the final wrap-up.
As for why I chose to end it here, there are mainly two reasons.
The first is that I want to make money. Everyone understands that, so I won't belabor it.
The second is that, as the plot progressed, the difficulty of writing this book had already exceeded the limits of my ability. Whether it was the challenge of depicting battles at entirely new levels, or the transformation of the protagonist's thoughts and worldview, I found myself struggling more and more with every step. If I stubbornly forced myself to keep writing, there was a very real chance I'd turn everything that had finally stabilized into a complete mess. Better to simply end it here.
First, I filled in the earlier foreshadowing, added some important setting details, then left behind a few hints and suspense for the future, and finally used an open ending as the period at the end of the sentence. That was what I had been doing all this time.
In short, all of this had already been decided last year.
Countless times along the way, I wanted to eunuch the novel and leave without a second thought because of life circumstances, but in the