Afterword (I Was So Flustered I Forgot the Category, So I'm Posting This Again for Free...)

This was by far the longest book I had ever written, and the one that had left the deepest impression on me. You could call it a model of twists and turns...

When I first started writing it, I solemnly promised my readers it would be all about showing off and slapping faces...

But I soon discovered that, damn it, even writing scenes like that took skill, and apparently I wasn't very good at it. On top of that, the internet was being cleaned up at the time. Every rustle of wind sounded like a crane's cry, and every blade of grass looked like an enemy soldier.

So I figured I might as well stop writing urban face-slapping and switch to my old trade: xianxia...

That was the first major overhaul of the book's framework. I changed so much that even the main plot became something else.

So plenty of readers cursed me out: "Where did you steal this book from, you plagiarist? Nothing connects, and it's riddled with bugs."

Back then, someone was cursing me in the reviews almost every day!

After the switch to xianxia, there was a long stretch when I hadn't figured out what to write after such a sudden change. Readers started finding the story dull, with nothing much worth reading...

It wasn't until I gradually sorted out my thoughts and got writing again that the story became interesting once more. The results reflected that too: average subscriptions rose by quite a bit.

In the blink of an eye, more than a year had passed, and the book had reached three million Chinese characters.

I swore I had never intended to write it this long, and I certainly hadn't expected the story to turn out like this.

You might not know this, but I absolutely