Chapter 62 On-Sale Afterword Prodigy’s Playground

Chapter 62 On-Sale Afterword

We’ve finally reached the on-sale afterword stage—at last, I can have a proper chat with everyone.

I’ve always felt that posting single, standalone chapters inside the main text seriously damages the reading experience and immersion, so for this entire book I’ll only ramble a bit in afterwords and end-of-volume summaries.

Because I, the author, have a fairly strong urge to vent, this afterword is a bit long. Let me put up a table of contents first—feel free to jump to whatever you want to read:

【1. The Creative Concept Behind This Book】

【2. Details on Releasing 60,000 Words in One Go After Going On Sale】

【3. Extra-Update Rules and Daily Updates】

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【1. The Creative Concept Behind This Book】

After finishing my previous book Genius Club, I rested for a full year before starting the serialization of Prodigy’s Playground.

To be honest, during that year, I only truly rested for two or three months. The rest of the time was spent working hard on the new book. The process was extremely tortuous—and extremely painful.The enormous success of Genius Club put a lot of creative pressure on me. Even though I always sounded relaxed when talking about it, deep down I couldn’t actually be that calm. I kept wanting to write something even more successful, more popular, with even better results.

And so I fell into a long-term vicious cycle.

Starting in May this year, I began discussing outlines and settings with my editor and writing opening chapters.

Over the course of several months, I don’t even know how many openings I scrapped or how many story frameworks I changed—only to abandon all of them in the end. The reason was simple, to the point of brutality—

【They weren’t good.】

A novel doesn’t actually need that many techniques. Judging it purely on whether it’s good or not, interesting or not, is more than enough.

A lot of the time, the person inside the situation can’t see clearly. I didn’t know why what I was writing wasn’t good—until one day, my editor said this to me:

“You’re just trying to write a novel that matches the status of a Galaxy Award winner and top-tier author.”

That sentence was, of course, very uncomfortable to hear. I immediately denied it, said no, said my original intentions were still there.

Here, I have to mention my editor 【Luming】—a chief editor with extremely high professional standards, a razor-sharp eye, and the ability to hit the nail on the head with brutal accuracy.

Before Genius Club was published, I was just a brainless wish-fulfillment web-novel author barely surviving on an outside platform. Luming was my patron. He saw my potential and believed I could write a good story. That’s what led to my later meteoric rise on Qidian—one book, and I was “sealed as a god.”

Of course, the communication process along the way was very rough. There were plenty of arguments and debates. Fortunately, the final outcome was worthy of all that hardship and turbulence.

Now, back to this book.

After failing again and again to write a story that both my editor and I were satisfied with, I chose to stop writing for two months and seriously think about where the problem actually lay.

Gradually, I realized that Luming had been right. I really had been thinking about too many things while writing—results, subscriptions, copyrights, whether the opening would “explode,” whether it would be easy to adapt… and so on, endlessly.

I had neglected the most important thing in creation—the very sentence I wrote from the bottom of my heart in the first standalone chapter of Genius Club—

“I want to tell a truly good story.”

At that moment, something clicked.

I finally understood why what I had written before wasn’t good, why I myself was so dissatisfied… It was because my creative intent was no longer to tell a good story, but to produce a product that could sell for a good price.

Thinking back to when I was writing Genius Club, I never thought about things like a hundred-thousand average subscriptions or selling big copyrights. At the time, I felt that even 1,000 average subscriptions would be fine. Results were secondary—I was genuinely full of passion and wanted to tell that story spanning 600 years well.

So.

After resting for two months, I picked up the pen again and set out once more.

This time, I didn’t consider so many things. I just wanted to write a story I wanted to tell—a story that could at least move me, a story I would be very proud of after finishing.

And then I started writing.

After writing a few chapters, I showed them to many people. The feedback was mixed.

But my heart was calm as still water, completely unaffected.

Because at that moment, I was very certain, very confident, very clear—

【This is the story I want to tell, and want to work hard to tell well.】

Irrelevant to results. Irrelevant to business. Irrelevant to the market. Irrelevant to profit.

I just want to tell a good story properly.

That’s all.

Of course, this kind of creative “willfulness” inevitably comes with a price.

The new-book-period data for Prodigy’s Playground hasn’t been very ideal, and objectively speaking, it probably didn’t meet many people’s expectations.

But honestly, I don’t care about any of that at all. Data and results are truly irrelevant to me.

Because I simply want to tell my story. No matter what the numbers are, they won’t affect my passion to finish telling this story with burning intensity.

【Telling the story you want to tell, writing the scenes you want to write—it’s truly a very happy thing.】

Writing Prodigy’s Playground, I felt joy from the bottom of my heart. More than anyone else, I’m eager to write out the exciting plot points ahead and to serve up the shocking ending I’ve already envisioned as early as possible.

Ah~ it’s really exhilarating. The moment you write it out, it’s pure satisfaction.

So, after rambling on for so long, I hope you can like this book too!

Mwah!

【2. Details on Releasing 60,000 Words in One Go After Going On Sale】

When I did the new-book preview before, I promised everyone that I’d release 10 updates totaling 20,000 words when the book went on sale. A bunch of people roasted me, saying, “Who is 20,000 words even enough for?”

I have to say, this year Qidian has too many tentacle monsters, and everyone’s tastes have been spoiled. I clearly remember that last year, 20,000 words absolutely counted as an explosive on-sale update.

But readers come first. If 20,000 words isn’t enough, we’ll directly super-size it—40,000 words!

Then we’ll also make up the three extra chapters owed to the Silver Alliance leader brother 37 Days Unmatched (the other alliance leaders’ owed chapters will be gradually made up over the next few days).

And then we’ll add one more Monthly Ticket Extra.

In total: 【12 full chapters, 60,000 words】! All of it will be released in one go at 0:00 on December 1, letting everyone binge to their heart’s content!

Because of system delays, it might be a few minutes late—not likely to be perfectly on the dot—so please be patient. All 60,000 words will be there, not a single one missing.

One very important reminder—

【Only by voting monthly tickets via the button at the bottom of the “Monthly Ticket Extra Chapter” page can you unlock the monthly ticket extra! Remember this! Remember this! The author has no way around this bizarre design either!】

【3. Extra-Update Rules and Daily Updates】

Readers who followed the previous book Genius Club all know that the author’s daily update volume is solid, and all extra-update promises are fulfilled promptly. Daily word counts are basically always over ten thousand.

The extra-update rules are the same as the previous book:

【3,000 monthly tickets = one extra chapter】

【Alliance leader = one extra chapter】

From here on out, the fixed daily update time will be 6:00 p.m.

If there are extra updates, those chapters might come a bit later.

But the base update time is guaranteed to be 6:00 p.m., ensuring that every day at that time, there will be a new chapter to read.

That’s all.

See you tonight at midnight—we won’t miss each other!

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