When I got into the zone, I would avoid reading comments. Doing so helped me stay in the best state to move the plot forward, but the downside was that I didn't understand what readers truly wanted.
Some readers started finding things boring from the Sea God Island arc onward. Especially after Sea God Island: once the protagonist was invincible, why was there still political scheming?
I realized I had fallen into a problem! What makes a power fantasy satisfying is the rush, not the process of political intrigue!
Many readers knew that in my previous novels, the story would usually settle into the rhythm of a continental war near the end. But this story was essentially moving that later plot forward.
And many readers seemed able to tell what I was going to write next after just one glance.
But the reason I had been building up these plotlines was truly not to write about political maneuvering.
It was because I wanted to blend in some modern and historical references, some fresh, original ideas I had never written before—
Some readers said: after reading the earlier parts, they already knew what would happen later, because I had written many similar plotlines before. But that wasn't the same as the plot I was currently pushing forward.
The contradiction was that these plotlines had to be developed, yet those ideas couldn't simply appear out of nowhere. Even I wasn't very confident in my new concepts now.
I was trying to expand in new directions, but I also realized that readers wanted plots where Tang San, Yu Xiaogang, and Shrek got humiliated. They seemingly weren't very interested in these other ideas.