Who is spreading rumors that my filial piety towards them has changed?

Chu Mingkong naturally wouldn't object. He had put a lot of effort into the matter of the Dream of the Enchanted Realm so that he would have more options in the future and be able to experience more colors.

This is a choice, not a forced path you choose for yourself.

"Then let's wait until Master, my darling, and Aunt Donglu have settled down before going to the Dream Realm of Illusion."

Let's go back and eat now. By the way, Grandma Basheng, you've heard the stories from this teahouse so many times, haven't you gotten tired of them?

After saying that, Chu Mingkong slowly helped the pregnant beauties on either side to their feet, then went to Ba Sheng's side and helped her up from her seat. As he did so, his hand naturally slid down from her slender waist to her full, round breasts.

Ba Sheng seemed to have long been used to it, indulging his willfulness without showing any displeasure.

She merely gave Mingkong a subtle warning look, telling him not to misbehave in front of the baby, and then said casually:

"The same story, but each teahouse tells it differently, each with its own unique charm, and the children at home love to listen to it."

But let's go back now, so as not to keep our families waiting."

Just as Chu Mingkong was about to leave with his family, the storyteller suddenly shouted in a loud voice:

"The scene 'The Prince of Xiling Enters the Harem and Single-handedly Possesses Thousands of Concubines' is about to begin. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your children and leave the stage!"

Then, the storyteller began to take out another set of shadow puppets.

Chu Mingkong glanced at it and thought, "Good heavens, it looks like a live sex show!"

"Why don't you guys go back first? I'll see how these guys are making this up. If there's anything too outrageous, I, as the person involved, will have to personally show up and condemn them!"

However, if he were to show up, the entire capital city would probably be in an uproar.

Unfortunately, his beloved master didn't give him the chance to say those words from many years ago again—"The Chu prince I just mentioned is me!"

Zuo Qiuchi stopped pretending to be slow and strode over, grabbing his ear with a seemingly strong grip, but actually not using much force.

"What are you looking at? Go back right now!"

Chu Mingkong chuckled:

"It was just a joke, why take it so seriously? Let's go back—"

--------

P.S.: I thought I could finish writing it soon, but it took much longer than I expected. I'll post a closing statement during the day to express my feelings. One last thing:

(The End)

Author's Closing Remarks

Oh no, I was filled with so many emotions when I released the final chapter last night, but now I suddenly don't know what to say anymore.

I published the book on December 11th last year and it was available in early February, taking about a year and four months to complete. Actually, my previous books took about the same amount of time, finishing in a little over a year and a few months. However, this book has reached 3.3 million words, almost double the previous amount. Looking back, I'm exhausted. So how do those super-strong authors who update 400,000 words a month manage to do it?

It seems like a very fulfilling thing, but looking back, it was still very tiring. I even had several months of depression, and I would be in an unusually low mood for several days. It was a state that I still feel very bad when I think about it.

Looking back now, I think that situation was probably because my daily life consisted of writing. I would write from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep, and during my breaks I would think about the next part of the story. Plus, my days and nights were reversed, to the point that I didn't even have time to go out and bask in the sun.

Back then, when I couldn't write anymore, I would motivate myself by opening Chen Dong's new book and looking at his daily update volume, telling myself: even such a super master can update 7000+ words a day, why should I slack off?

Surprisingly, despite being in such a bad state, I still managed to complete the first 150 million words of the emperor-killing plot. The plot didn't suffer any major setbacks, and even my terrible mental state in real life didn't affect the content of the chapter updates. The female characters' character development was also worthy of all the slice-of-life stories I had written before.

I talked to my classmates about that terrible situation. They said, "Your situation is similar to someone who has graduated and then stayed home to take the postgraduate entrance exam or the civil service exam, especially someone who is taking it twice. They are trembling with fear, worried about their failure, and doubting their own value and feeling lost about their future in the daily review."

That does seem to be the case.

Some readers may not have reached this stage yet and may not understand, but I hope that my readers will never encounter this situation in the future.

Successfully passed the postgraduate entrance exam, professional certification exam, civil service exam, and public sector exam on the first try.

However, if one encounters setbacks and is forced to attempt a second attempt, and their mental state gradually deteriorates...

I hope everyone can spend more time chatting with trusted friends, just aimlessly talking.

This is really important. Spending too much time alone can make a person's mindset strange. It's essential to communicate with others more often.

As for the issues that arise after the book reaches 150 million words, as mentioned earlier, there are gains and losses.

My limited abilities dictated that this was the only way I could handle the plot at the time, adding a large amount of daily life and driving scenes.

In the common practice of online novels, changing the setting often means changing the female lead, but I was reluctant to let characters like Aunt Gu, Jin Yu, and Zhi'er Baobao fade into obscurity in the book, so I thought about it for a long time.

The entire plot has been stalled for more than two months, but the word count is already close to 250 million.

As the story reached its final stages, around December of last year...

Also, the female characters in Sword Dynasty, including Grandma Basheng, were handled a bit too simply, but there was really no other way. The plot has reached this stage, and it's difficult to expand on any more romantic storylines. Plus, after a year of updating at this pace, my brain is probably exhausted, and I really can't write well anymore.

The main plot can be presented in a straightforward manner, and it doesn't matter if it's written in a bland style. At least the readers know how the plot is designed. However, if the emotions between the characters cannot be conveyed, the author's emotions will not be generated, and the daily lives of the characters will really become filler.

The distinction between everyday life and superficiality is inherently difficult to define. Only interesting everyday life can be considered authentic, but it is very difficult for an author whose work is declining to write interesting everyday life.

Therefore, in the end, Grandma Basheng and the others could only be mentioned briefly, and readers are encouraged to imagine a good emotional development process for themselves!

*

About the new book.

In terms of length:

Learning from the lessons of this book and assessing my own abilities, if I were to write a long novel in the future, I would keep it to around 200 million to 250 million words, and if it were purely slice-of-life, I would cap it at around 100 million words.

In terms of general themes:

The campus and urban themes of pineapple buns are showing a decline. Although there are still one or two books on the bestseller list, on a single light search bookstore, only one or two campus and urban themes remain on the bestseller list, which is already a rather bleak situation for this genre.

After reading this book, I realized that if I want to write about the charm of girls better, I need to improve my ability to write the main plot; relying solely on daily life isn't enough.

This is not only to give the girls more screen time, but also to alleviate readers' fatigue. Readers get tired of seeing the same thing every day... and lose the strong motivation to follow the updates, and then they just glance at it when they feel like it.

I need to train my main storyline writing skills, including creating exciting moments and maintaining pacing.

In terms of specific themes:

In the days I've been writing the epilogue, I've also had some inspiration for a new book. (In no particular order)

1. A fantasy MMORPG similar to Sword Art Online, where the male protagonist specifically seeks out beautiful older women to team up with.

2. Urban Rebirth Profession: Fitness Instructor, Teaching Aunties to Work Out Glutes...?

3. Urban rebirth, illegitimate child, tycoon novel. It can be understood as a modern version of Chu Mingkong, but it focuses on the chaos within the tycoon, that is, the power struggle in Xiling, finding the traitor in Xiling, and the brutal sexual assault on the enemy's beautiful woman. See "Brave New World".

4. Urban e-sports: I've actually come up with quite a few ideas for the exciting aspects of this genre, but I haven't fully grasped my ability to create the right rhythm for those exciting moments (i.e., my actual writing skills).

5. Urban legal profession, a lawyer specializing in handling cases involving fairy-like girls, but this is a long-term plan, even more far-reaching than the above concept, belonging to a boss that surpasses the current level of the author.

6. Wuxia (fantasy) genre, traveling the world with your master's wife? (The Legend of the White Snake?)

7. Western fantasy, with a focus on farming and slice-of-life elements. It aims to make up for the lack of nuns and succubus maids in *The Evil God's Disciple*. The author seems to have a special fondness for maids and nuns, as seen in *Assignment Guaranteed*. I also really like the sassy royal maids in *Azur Lane*.

Wait, wait, wait...

......

But inspiration is just a fleeting moment of inspiration, not enough to support a complete plot. It needs to be refined and refined to see which one can build a complete development and which female lead under which inspiration is more in line with my preferences.

For me, writing is an expression of emotions, and emotions are desires. Right now, this book has really drained my inspiration. "Filial Piety" covers too many types of female protagonists, and it has almost emptied my collection of favorite female protagonists.

Fortunately, some of the characters were still poorly developed, and those are things I can work on to improve and reconstruct them.

Just like the Queen Mother of the West in this book, there aren't actually many real interactive scenes, but the personality type of this character is actually similar to the bad aunt in the book "Living with Teacher".

Speaking of the character of west Wangmu, I'm still a bit angry. I originally wanted to develop this character more in the later stages, but the website's review process has become stricter, which is something I can definitely feel.

This somewhat affected my subsequent performance. In the first 150 million words, I wrote without restraint, and I wondered why the review hadn't come yet. But later on, even the slightest deviation from the mark would result in a notice to the backend to make corrections.

Just now, when I opened the backend, I was notified that the chapter in the epilogue where I asked my master for water had been removed...

Constantly worrying about being penalized while writing is quite disruptive to my thinking.

I wonder when pineapple buns will return to the size they were during last year's Lunar New Year.

I still remember,

Back then, I was cautious and overly conservative, which even led to me being criticized by readers as a "castrated male protagonist."

So I looked at the books from the same period and exclaimed, "Wow, what's with the level of explicitness here?"

Since everyone's doing it this way, let's step on the gas and see who has the best driving skills.

Then Jin Yu was brutally raped not long after (laughs).

*

Finally, let's talk about the book's performance. It was a dismal failure when it was first released. The average number of subscriptions per chapter on the first day was only around 600 to 700. There weren't even any pre-orders. Some readers might still remember that.

Subsequently, it inexplicably rose all the way up, reaching a peak of around 3600 average subscriptions.

However, the subscription rate declined in the later stages, dropping significantly starting in December. This is something I don't understand. There were quite a few controversial plot points earlier on, but in December of last year, there weren't any particularly controversial plot points, and I didn't see any reader complaints in the chapter reviews. However, the subscription rate suddenly dropped a lot for no apparent reason.

It's made me feel numb. From December to April, I haven't opened the backend to check the data, for fear of affecting my mood.

It's like hiding the test paper because you got a bad grade, unwilling to face the truth.

Looking back now, it was because the main plot wasn't well established, and the story was too long.

Improving the main storyline capabilities is of paramount importance!

The average daily subscriptions fluctuated around 1000 during the final stage. It felt like many of my readers were old friends from my previous books during this period. It basically returned to the level of my older books, focusing on companionship.

*

Now that it's completely over, I need to adjust my schedule, get some exercise every day, get more sunshine, read more books, download more movies, and go to bed earlier.

Take care of your health and continue writing about more older sisters, beautiful women, aunties, and wives.

Thank you for your support over the past year!

(PS: I accidentally wrote too much about the female lead in this book, and I even forgot to give Wan Hua's mother a chance to appear in the final chapter...)

(PS: →)