The story of "One Man Attains the Dao" had come to an end.
It had strayed far from my original plan, and along the way I lost my outline and stockpiled chapters. Even so, I had written most of the story I'd envisioned. For me, the greatest difficulties with this book lay not within its pages, but outside them.
While writing it, I got married and started a family. We also welcomed a new member: a little rascal who wouldn't sleep at night. My parents each suffered a serious illness, one after the other. On top of that, repeated waves of the pandemic hit both my company and my takeout shop hard, causing heavy losses.
Just today, we finally finished the celebratory banquet under the shadow of the pandemic. Three tables of guests couldn't come because their health codes were yellow.
All of this consumed a great deal of my time and energy—most of it, in fact. I had pitifully little time to write each day, so for much of the book's later run, I could barely manage one update a day. Thank you all for understanding. Even the ending felt a little rushed.
Under my original agreement with my editor, Huya Da Wang, the book should have ended in late June. But that was right around the due date. I also discussed the story with a friend partway through and revised the outline. As a result, it was only now that the book had finally come to an end.
As for some plot threads that seemed unresolved, apart from those I genuinely overlooked or couldn't fit in, most were addressed in the book. The answers were simply scattered through the details, too subtle to stand out. An old habit of mine: foreshadowing that didn't look like foreshadowing, and resolutions