A Rambling End-of-Volume Note That Was Almost Skipped

I had originally planned to write a witty, absurd, goofy battle opening about Jin Jin Ou and Ci Pang Jiang to draw you all into reading this volume's ramblings,

but on second thought, forget it. It was just me talking to myself anyway, so it did not matter if no one read it.

More importantly, the exhaustion left over from being stuck on the story a while ago had not faded yet. I really could not summon the energy to come up with interesting bits for anything outside the plot.

Ha, yes, you heard that right. Even my previous end-of-volume chats, whether their content, structure, or the inserted emoticons, had involved a little thought and effort. I would even revise them, all in hopes that you would find even the author's nonsense entertaining.

But not this time. I was truly exhausted in both body and mind. Even if this chapter had typos, I would not fix them. If not for sticking to my long-standing habit, I might even have decided not to write any rambling nonsense for this volume.

The less trouble, the better. After updating, I felt exhausted all over, even though I had been looking forward to writing this before.

All right, sorry for complaining so much. As usual, let's talk about this volume's story.

Spring turned to autumn, and in the blink of an eye, I had finished another volume.

A story that had run off into the non-main-story volumes—this was already the eighth volume.

Without realizing it, a long time had passed.

What did I write in this volume? According to my personal outline, it was divided into three major parts: all sorts of follow-up matters after the return, preparatory breathing room before the National War began, and the National War itself.

The first part included