There have been quite a lot of comments lately. Even A-Gua, who loves reading comments, has been struggling to keep up.
The main reason I'm posting this now is to answer a few of your questions. So many dear readers have asked the same questions that I can't reply to everyone individually, so I thought I'd answer them all at once today. If the same questions come up again, I won't go out of my way to answer them.
After all, when you dear readers suddenly notice a plot hole while reading, it might take A-Gua several days to come up with a suitable answer...
Next, I'll respond to some of the recent comments. There are quite a few, and I don't know whether I've missed anything. If I have, please leave a comment on this paragraph.
1. Why include players? The players' growth rate and their influence on the plot.
2. Is this a game world?
3. Reading it is no different from not reading it.
4. Why create so many original characters?
5. Why does a fight take a whole chapter?
6. Why is the protagonist called Yue Shen?
For now, I'll pick six that left a fairly strong impression on me. If I wrote down all the others one by one, I'd probably be up all night...
Answers:
1. Why include players? That's a good question. When A-Gua saw it, he spent several days thinking about it. Yeah, I must have had a brain fart back then. Why did I write players into this?
But after writing for all these days, I found the answer: to flesh out the plot. I imagine most of you dear readers have never tried writing a novel, so I'll explain as simply and clearly as I can.
The pacing of Divine Throne was already very tight. Once I left out Long Haochen's storyline, there really wasn't much content left in the whole book. Unless I followed his group the entire time, like the other Divine Throne fanfics you've seen, but that wasn't what I wanted to write.
But since I'd chosen not to follow his group, how was I supposed to write the plot? I couldn't just conjure up a Divine Seal Knight father for the protagonist out of thin air...
If I'd done that, I'd probably have been roasted to death by now.
So I turned my attention to the protagonist. Since he'd transmigrated while playing a game, I figured I'd add a few entertaining oddball players to flesh out the plot.
Of course, I don't know whether this was a good way to handle it. But I've already written this far, and there's no changing it now, so please bear with me... If it really bothers you, all I can suggest is that you move a finger and remove A-Gua from your bookshelf.
Next is the players' growth rate. You can rest assured on that point. Surely I wouldn't write a novel where any random nobody could climb over the protagonist's head and shit on him...
Life is hard enough already. I don't want to write a novel that makes readers suffer along with me.
Everyone keeps saying the players have freely assignable stat points too, so everyone will be a Child of Light later on. Honestly, when I saw this question, I was stunned too.
I wondered whether I'd had another brain fart. How had I created another earth-shattering bug? This wouldn't do. With so many bugs, I'd have to drop the book and run again.
I fell apart, but that's okay. I used superglue to patch up this cracked cucumber. As for how exactly I patched it, please pick up your calculators and follow along.
First, as you all know, Innate Internal Spiritual Power represents a person's cultivation talent. Let's leave aside monsters like Long Haochen and Sheng Cai'er, whose Innate Internal Spiritual Power easily exceeds ninety, because the vast majority of people should actually have Innate Internal Spiritual Power in the single digits.
But since these people are players, let's give them a minimum of thirty points of Innate Internal Spiritual Power for now (individual players might have more if the plot calls for it). Any lower, and there'd be no point in having them appear.
Whenever players advance to a new tier, they receive freely assignable stat points corresponding to that tier, just like the protagonist,
which can be used to improve their various stats. So let's do the math. Assuming players enter the game at the Third or Fourth Tier (surely nobody wants to attend classes in a game? The protagonist was testing things out with an alt, and an accident happened), they won't receive the stat points awarded for those earlier tiers.
5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 35. That's how many stat points a normal player can get by reaching tier nine. Is that fewer than you expected? I certainly didn't expect it.
Take Gandalf as an example. There's nothing wrong with giving a player who can enter the Demon Hunt Squad Selection Tournament and pass the preliminaries a slightly higher Innate Inner Spiritual Power value, right?
Suppose I set his Innate Internal Spiritual Power at fifty. Then, through grinding monsters, cultivating, and leveling up later on, Gandalf gains thirty-five stat points and puts them all into Innate Internal Spiritual Power. That still only brings him to eighty-five. He isn't a Child of Light.
Problem solved. The author has found a reason to keep typing.
Next is the players' influence on the plot. You don't need to worry about that at all. Unless there's something wrong with my brain, I won't let any player other than the protagonist affect the plot's development. Why would I make things that difficult for myself?
2. Is this really a game world?
I don't think you need to get hung up on this question. You can look at the great Qi Peijia's The Legendary Mechanic, which also involves transmigrating into a game. Whether this really is a game world isn't that important. After all, what I'm writing is Divine Throne, and I definitely won't pull anything disgusting with the plot later on. You can rest assured about that.
If it really bothers you, I don't think we need to keep arguing over it. Just move a finger, dear readers. You know what I mean.
3. Reading it is no different from not reading it.
Honestly, that really hurts...
But you can go back and take another look at Divine Throne. Long Haochen fought Han Yu for four chapters. Before that, he fought a random Fourth Tier nobody for two chapters. When Long Haochen broke through from the Fourth Tier to the Fifth Tier, he spent an entire chapter gaining insights...
After reading that, come back and look at mine. Maybe you won't feel that way anymore. I can't resolve this issue, so I won't respond to it again.
4. Why create so many original characters?
I think I get it. You want me to take every member of Long Haochen's Demon Hunt Squad wholesale and make him form a squad with Random Nobodies A, B, C, and D.
I won't write that. I can't write that.
Because of what the plot requires, I won't choose to write it that way, so I can only create some original characters with potential.
5. A fight takes a whole chapter.
My answer to point three, plus: I did my best.
After all, I can't just write nothing, can I?
With Yue Shen's current strength, he really is in a completely different league from everyone in the Knight Temple. Only Cai'er could pose a threat to him in the finals, so there isn't much need to describe the circumstances of his fights. I imagine you don't enjoy watching him one-shot heaven, earth, and everything in between either. More importantly, I don't enjoy writing that stuff.
6. Why is the protagonist called Yue Shen?
Why is my pen name Lonely Cucumber?
Let me briefly explain where this name came from. It came from an earlier discarded draft of mine. I thought it was a very good idea, but unfortunately, I was too inexperienced and didn't feel capable of handling it. What a shame.
I don't know whether I'll get to use that idea later, either. After all, even if I do, it'll have to be after the million-word mark. I don't know whether I can write that far, since I've never written a million-word novel before.
Finally, I'd like to ask those readers who love picking things apart to please go easy on me. It really isn't that my writing is riddled with plot holes. There are just that many holes to begin with.
I never knew until I started writing, and then I was dumbfounded. There are simply too many to discuss here. We'll talk about them another time.
If you keep zeroing in on little details that take me a whole day of combing through the original novel to find, I really will drop dead on the spot...
If you really want to be this exacting, then once the new-book period is over, I'll follow the top-rated authors in the group and switch to updating monthly. I'll write one chapter every time I reread Divine Throne from start to finish. Only then can I guarantee you won't find even the tiniest plot hole.
Rather than worrying about finding plot holes, you might have to worry more about not being able to find me, A-Gua.
That's all for today. Writing this nearly gave me a brain hemorrhage.
After typing up this chapter, I suddenly felt a little regret. What I'd thought would be a quick and easy response chapter ended up being several hundred words longer than a regular chapter...
In that time, I could have written at least a chapter and a half for my backlog. My heart hurts so much I can't breathe.JPG
2022/7/17
What an unforgettable early morning.
Before you continue