Lao Ao had long since announced several times that this would wrap up around December.
But at the very moment of completion, Lao Ao truly felt emotions surging like a raging tide.
Clan Leader had been conceived in 2018, first written in August 2020, and uploaded that October. Its serialization had now come to an end, taking three years and four months—a colossal undertaking indeed.
Lao Ao had entered the webnovel world back in 2004. Many books had changed my fate, but only Clan Leader had changed my character.
Because I started early and my overall results had been decent, Lao Ao had not been tempered much by society or life.
In truth, Lao Ao had a whole heap of flaws in my personality. I was easily rash when things happened, quick to avoid difficulties, and rarely examined myself when problems arose. When I spotted an issue, I often would not attribute it to myself. Whether writing or doing anything else, I relied entirely on passion; once that passion faded, I easily grew disgusted, then stopped updating and left stories unfinished...
Precisely because of this, Lao Ao's previous books often performed well at the start, only to collapse more and more as they went on. For basically every book, its performance upon going premium was its best performance.
But Clan Leader's early pacing was rather slow, unable to compete with books released around the same time. This resulted in scarce recommendation slots, and after it went premium, its first twenty-four-hour subscription count was only a little over six hundred—lower even than my first novel from 2004...
At that time, Lao Ao was deeply lost and doubtful of my own abilities. I really wanted to cut it off and start over.
But encouragement from some readers and editors made me decide