People always said Lao Ao was no longer as dedicated as before, that the content was no longer as exciting as it had been, that the results were this or that, and so on.
First, let it be stated: Clan Leader was the novel Lao Ao had written with the most care and poured the most heart and soul into in his life. Even now, in its later stages, he spent three hours every day designing the plot, sometimes pushing entire plot outlines back to square one.
Limited by a poor opening, this book had only 500 twenty-four-hour follow-up subscriptions at the start, dipping as low as 430. By the middle, it had risen to around two or three thousand, but now, at roughly five million characters, it had reached its peak of more than 8,000 follow-up subscriptions.
The beginning of a novel was the easiest part to write, because it was a blank sheet of paper where one could freely let loose, piling up all kinds of inspiration and designs to one's heart's content.
But once it reached the middle stages, the difficulty became ten times greater than before. Many fresh plot devices had already been used, and it was easy to create the weary feeling of reusing old moves. One mishandling at that point could easily trigger an avalanche in follow-up subscriptions.
Yet in the later stages—such as now, when it had already surpassed five million characters—the difficulty rose geometrically again. At that point, it was not only readers who suffered from aesthetic fatigue; after writing for several years, the author himself could also easily fall into numbness and weariness.
Moreover, the further it went, the higher the content entropy became. Character relationships, the world setting, and all kinds of factors grew increasingly complicated. Handling them well and