Special author's note ([Must read] Concerning the story's future direction) and taking today off

Today's author's note is crucial to how I write the rest of this book, so please, dear readers, leave plenty of comments here and share your thoughts. Guagua thanks you all.

After posting yesterday's chapter, I, A-Gua, went back and reread the story from the end of the Military Mission at Zhennan Pass onward. Personally, I felt as though I'd found the feeling I had when I first started posting this book again, except the pace of the plot had slowed down noticeably.

Of course, there were upsides too. I planted some foreshadowing for later.

But that brings us to the problem: at the current pace, even a conservative estimate puts the completion of this book at July next year...

Everything seems fine for now, but I'm a little worried I won't be able to keep writing until then. The reason is that I have a few too many classes this semester. On top of that, when I, A-Gua, started this book, I only had a beginning and an ending in mind. The middle was basically a blank slate, so all I could do was plow through the original every day while trying to figure out where the protagonist, Yue Shen, could stir up trouble at that point in the timeline. (Rereading the original is just about driving me insane.)

After repeatedly going through it over these past few days around the Mid-Autumn Festival, I've more or less worked out the upcoming plot. Probably.

The original is 2.63 million Chinese characters long, and I definitely can't write that much. Its plot is also extremely tightly packed, so I can't find many openings to insert my own storylines and have some fun with it. Plus, the competition arcs in the original are fairly long and relatively padded out. I can't just