I originally had quite a lot I wanted to say, but when it came down to it, it suddenly felt too sentimental.
Now that these words are written and put here, whether they are good or bad is for the readers to judge. I will just briefly touch on three points.
First, many people say this book puts the protagonist through too much suffering.
I do not quite agree. There are twists and turns in the process, but if you look through each plot arc, you will find that the protagonist manages to overcome every obstacle and accomplish what he sets his mind to.
Having everything go one's way is something that only happens in stories, after all.
That this impression arose is likely due to my narrative style.
I realize now that an author's descriptive emphasis can truly sway the readers' emotions. But I am still quite inexperienced and cannot lay down any systematic rules, so I will just have to keep learning and improving as I go.
Second is the matter of the protagonist's Core Formation.
What I am most proud of is that the plot direction barely strayed from the outline, and I managed to pull off a proper narrative arc.
And precisely because of that, Volume 1 ended up spanning six hundred chapters before I even realized it.
When I first drafted the outline, I lacked experience and had little sense of how many words a plotline would take. My only thought was to enrich the story, weave in every thread I wanted to explore, and establish connections between the lines so that every development would have its groundwork laid.
Looking back now, there are certainly places that could have been streamlined.
Third is the only plotline that did not follow the outline—which is also the primary reason I wanted to write this summary. That is the storyline where Qin Sang was judged to have no spiritual root in Great Sui and was denied entry into the Han clan.
The original outline was: that fat cultivator from the Han clan was bribed by Princess Dongyang with a piece of top-grade spiritual material to crush Qin Sang's hopes and keep him in Great Sui.
When the story progressed to the point of revealing the truth, I hesitated.
Because in cultivation novels, there is a saying: "Severing someone's path of cultivation is akin to murdering their parents."
Whether the princess did it for profit or for affection, doing something like that seemed almost unforgivable.
Writing it that way had one advantage: it would have fit the princess's characterization very well as a ruthless figure in power who stops at nothing to achieve her goals.
Yet beyond creating a vivid character, how much would that have actually benefited the story as a whole and the protagonist?
Aside from leaving the protagonist and the readers feeling conflicted, it did not seem to serve much purpose.
Over this tiny stretch of plot, I could not sleep at night. After tossing and turning for several days, I decided to change it, cutting out several subsequent scenes involving Senior Brother Han along with it.
That section ended up somewhat anticlimactic, as some readers may have noticed.
Even now, I still do not know whether that choice was good or bad.
What is done is done.
If there is ever a chance to revise it in the future, we will see then.
Summary concludes here—the journey continues!
Chapter 611