Time for the usual wrap-up. I'll keep it short, of course.
For this volume, I currently give myself six points.
Four points for the earlier part, two for the later part.
The earlier part flowed fairly easily, but honestly, I also felt the closing stretch of this volume dragged a little. Mainly, as I wrote, I strangely kept wanting to go into detail, and kept feeling there was still a lot of foreshadowing I hadn't managed to work in. In the end, there was too much description, which disrupted a narrative that had originally been just about passable in its flow, and dragged the emotion out of it too.
I only noticed these problems while writing the last three chapters of this volume.
I also wanted to pick up the pace and cut the subplots, but after thinking it over, I decided to finish writing them. After all, it already had a tiger's head and a snake's tail; if I suddenly skimmed over things too, that imbalance would only get worse.
Even so, I still cut quite a few details. I'll find ways to gradually work those things in later.
In short, let me first apologize to all the brothers who have supported Fish Head this far. Sometimes the writing really does flow so easily that I fail to notice the traps.
I failed at something as basic as knowing what to expand on and what to keep brief. I really shouldn't have.
I'll definitely learn from this and work on fixing that problem going forward.
You're all kind enough to put food on my table, and I'll do my best to accommodate both sides. If I really can't, I'm still grateful that you can respect a few little ideas of my own.
Next, let me talk about the Qin