Afterword
The book was finally finished. I could at last breathe a sigh of relief, and I'd given everyone an answer.
I'd originally planned to write more about the Shrouding the Heavens arc. The Perfect World arc, where the story went back against the flow of time, could've easily run another three hundred thousand words, bringing the total to two million.
And if I'd added the originally planned World of Immortals arc and the Shrouding the Heavens arc, the book would've been at least three million words.
But now it was all over, at 1.66 million words.
At the start of the month, my editor had suggested I cut this book short and start a new one. This one wasn't worth it anymore.
I said I'd wait a little longer. Everyone had followed the story for so long. Sure, hardly anyone was reading it now, but I still had to see it through to the end, didn't I? I had to have at least a shred of decency.
So I dragged it out for another month, all the way to the end of the month.
I had a lot of reasons for finishing early.
For one, I'm really not good at Chen Dong's lofty, abstruse style. I'm much better suited to the passionate, simple style of Little White's books. I just wanted to try something new.
As it turned out, it was a failure. A complete failure.
Of course, I'm just not capable enough, and there's nothing I can do about that.
For example, my health. I've been suffering from nervous exhaustion for a long time.
Stress, anxiety, trouble falling asleep, feeling drowsy all day, and so on.
I had to take quite a few breaks from updating along the way. The longest lasted more than a month. And I'm