This book has reached a stopping point here. Thank you all for supporting me all the way to now, or2!
I originally wanted to say a lot-share my feelings, air my grievances, and so on-but I've been writing books for so long, and this isn't my first or my last. I'll save the emotional appeals and sob stories for coaxing first-chapter subscriptions out of you. Let's stick to the important things.
Regardless of its results, Ming Dragon was the book I prepared most thoroughly and gave the most complete structure.
The reason the later parts weren't quite satisfactory wasn't a problem with the book, but with my poor ability to handle pressure. After Volume Three, my writing condition fell apart, and I was completely sleepwalking through it. Years of shutting myself away and building a cart behind closed doors without reading meant I'd never learned how to write high-level fights, either. The battle scenes couldn't keep up with the stature of the heroes and villains, and quite a few things never made it onto the page.
In terms of the main plot, one thread actually ran all the way from Taishu Dan to the Corpse Ancestor, from beginning to end. The very first chapter already echoed the ending, and the framework was highly complete. But with my condition in pieces and my brain short on processing power, I could only devote all my limited mental resources to the female leads, so the main plot inevitably ended up a weakling.
As for the female leads, Ling'er was comparatively thinly developed. But that wasn't because I didn't want to write her. In the earliest version, Zhao Ling was central, with a role roughly equivalent to A Piao plus Empress Dowager Guo, and she was also the childhood sweetheart.
But once A Piao's