**Speaking Pig Trotter:**

After a year and a half, returning to Qidian to start a new book feels like I’ve rebooted myself.

During this year and a half, I often thought about simply retiring: traveling, raising cats, playing games, and happily living a leisurely life. However, I always felt there were still untold stories, including this one about Chen Ji.

From the moment I first conceived this story, it pushed me out of my comfort zone because I genuinely wanted to write something different from my past works. Whether I can write it well is another matter.

In my past works, I often overlooked logical plotlines. Some storylines felt too deliberate and consequently, a bit awkward. I often made things exciting, passionate, or humorous purely for their own sake, among other issues. This is a question of how a creator balances these elements, and clearly, I’ve done poorly in the past. With this new book, I aim to improve. One must always strive for progress, even when exhausted.

In my past works, I was too eager to advance the plot, neglecting detailed descriptions, which resulted in a lack of vivid imagery. As you can see with this book, I am actively striving for improvement. I first spent several months gathering extensive information to construct a solid, fantastical Luocheng in my mind. While writing, I try my best to immerse myself in that environment, considering what actions a character would take and what they would say in that setting. I’m still learning this aspect and hope to grasp it more quickly.

In my past works, my character descriptions sometimes cut corners. I would devote significant effort to describing important characters, such as Shadow and He Jinqiu. However, for characters less crucial to my creative goals, I would lazily label them, resulting in insufficient detail. I failed to consider each character’s life experiences within their respective era and their true motivations. But this approach is incorrect.

In this book, I’m attempting to make a change. I hope every character, even minor ones like Paoge and Erdao, or the uncle and aunt who only appear once early on, feels vibrant and vivid. The scope of creation this time is vast. Taking She Dengke and Liu Quxing as examples, although they are minor characters, I wrote short biographies for them, detailing their family backgrounds and life experiences. Even minor characters have their joys and sorrows. There are also Yunyang, Jiaotu, Jinzhu, Binghu, Tianma… hundreds of them. I want them to live complex lives within this world, rather than merely serving my creative purposes or advancing a specific plotline. This entails a considerable amount of work, but I tirelessly enjoy writing this book and have truly found joy in this creative approach.

In my past works, I didn’t have a complete, clear overall outline, only detailed chapter outlines. As a result, I would sometimes find myself not even knowing what kind of story I was writing or what tone to set. This was the biggest problem faced by *Night’s Nomenclature* and *My Lord, Spare Me!*. So, I returned to the creative mode of *The First Order*, first conceiving the ending I most desired, and only then did the outline and this story emerge. However, writing this way also presents challenges: as the creator and observer of the story, knowing too much makes it hard not to inadvertently spoil plot points that should only appear later. Or perhaps, I become too eager for that ending, wishing to reach it sooner. I am slowly adapting and hope to improve in this aspect.

In my past works, due to the unique serialization method of web novels, readers had high demands for update volume. However, with this book, I want to discuss this issue with everyone first. During *Night’s Nomenclature*, as you know, I was ranked number one for a long time. Being ranked #1 has a kind of magic: if you update with 8,000 characters, you’re #1, but with 4,000, you drop to #2. When you’re #2, you desperately want to get back to the top. During that period, I updated 12,000 characters daily, and I felt as though I had pushed myself to new heights.

But in reality, an author’s energy is limited. Once the update volume escalates, they naturally sacrifice control over details because there isn’t enough time to review the entire story. Therefore, since starting this book, I haven’t asked for a single monthly pass, favorites, or recommendations, and I haven’t paid attention to any rankings. My hope is to calm my mind and write a story I can truly be proud of. I won’t deliberately slack off; I’ll simply publish whatever I write each day, ensuring the quality I produce is something I can feel good about.

Of course, if I don’t write well, it’s due to my limited ability. I greatly admire talented writers whose stories are full of twists and turns and whose prose is magnificent—skills I can never learn, no matter how hard I try. I can only focus on doing my best.

The current performance of this book is similar to *Night’s Nomenclature* before it was listed, and even a bit higher, which was unexpected, especially since the protagonist’s life has been tough and updates have been slow. I want to thank all the readers, and I hope this time I can write an ending I can truly be proud of.

Thank you all.
Thanks again.

See you at midnight tonight; there will be another chapter then.

**Novel Information:**
This novel is a stirring and captivating masterpiece by the author Speaking Pig Trotter.