On that night when I anxiously published the first Chapter, it was completely impossible to foresee this very moment.

At certain special times, people tend to get a little more sentimental.

With the book already past its halfway mark, I decided to take advantage of this rather special night to chat a bit more with everyone and summarize the nearly three years since I started writing.

Actually, for Zuolun, one phrase fits perfectly: it feels like a lifetime ago.

On that night when I anxiously published the first chapter, it was completely impossible to foresee this very moment.

But I have to say, serializing this book has given Zuolun an unprecedented way of looking at time, along with a much more visceral understanding of what companionship means.

Thank you all for your company. I'm honored to have accompanied you.

More than one reader has asked if Zuolun works in the writing industry.

Actually, no. Zuolun works in a very ordinary industry, doing a job just to make ends meet.

I rarely get to help others, nor do I feel like I create much value.

I was a STEM student in school, and the college entrance exam essay was a real headache for me. I just happened to read a chaotic variety of books growing up.

Then, one day many years later, while accidentally contemplating life, I had a sudden whim that I could write a story.

Giving a group of fictional characters existential meaning on a cognitive level—just thinking about it was incredibly cool. I even had an inexplicable confidence that I could do it well.

And so, this special period of my life began, continuing right up to the present.

Getting back on track to the book itself, the first question I want to talk about most is—

1. What exactly are you reading when you read this book? Is it a "power fantasy"?

This is a question readers should be discussing, so here, Zuolun is just offering a reference from another perspective on "what is being written."

Yes, it is a power fantasy—because my original intention in writing this book was to write the most deeply satisfying story possible.

Tragedy is not a prerequisite for depth.

Although Zuolun has read far too many tragic stories, that only makes me more certain of this point.

"Profundity" and "rationality" are not excuses; making the reader "feel frustrated" has no direct correlation with whether a story is good.

The same goes for how accessible or mainstream it is.

Writing something miserable or obscure is actually a lazy approach a lot of the time. A truly cool and interesting story will inevitably be profound at the same time.

Otherwise, it isn't truly cool and interesting; it's just a clumsy illusion.

When readers spend energy following the plot, sorting out the logic, and feeling out the characters, the very first thing they should get in return is fun—and that fun is an absolutely indispensable component.

Zuolun has read entirely too much and had enough of the preaching, the forced depth, the moral kidnapping... I wanted to make the story purer.

Meaning you don't need anyone to tell you how profound the story is, what kind of humanistic care it possesses, or what its artistic achievements are...

What Zuolun wants to do is have all of those things, while still keeping it fun.

Web fiction is a service industry. The readers are not just a prop in someone's roleplay.

If I can't achieve that, then I just have to try harder, no matter how many brain cells it costs.

A storyteller shouldn't use tears to shirk responsibility, whether those tears are their own or their readers'.

The absolute best-case scenario Zuolun hopes to achieve is that years from now, when readers of this book occasionally think back to their younger selves opening this novel, they won't feel their emotions were exploited, but rather that their emotions were served.

At the same time, they'll be able to say, "That's me for you," feeling proud of their own taste.

But building on that foundation leads to a question: what kind of story is the coolest and most satisfying?

Zuolun is a very serious person. After setting this goal, I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it, hoping to come up with a unique insight.

And I genuinely arrived at a possible answer—which is exactly what it says in the synopsis: "turning the impossible into the possible."

As was mentioned in the [Unclean Ecstasy] instance, what is true depravity? It's that you must be consciously aware that you are falling. The same goes for that "satisfying" feeling.

People can't lie to themselves. Something has to be genuinely difficult; only when it is completed is it truly satisfying.

It's a thrill that goes far beyond the approval of others.

Which is also the answer to the next question—

2. Why the Cthulhu mythos?

Because I needed a world where "difficulty" made sense.

First of all, in Zuolun's limited understanding, the Cthulhu mythos isn't as simple as a few obscure names for a higher entity, or grotesque non-human races.

It isn't even just simple "indescribable" horrors.

A core concept of Lovecraft's work, as Zuolun sees it, is this: the universe is not your nanny.

Humanity stands utterly alone beneath the stars.

God does not love you, and the devil does not hate you.

The entire world is just patched together, a flashy facade.

People who grasp different levels of knowledge possess corresponding understandings of the world, stacked layer upon layer, yet never knowing the ultimate truth.

Order is nothing but a fleeting shadow, and equivalent exchange is already a rare virtue.

Therefore, extreme adversity becomes completely logical.

And from that, the next question arises—

3. Why this kind of protagonist?

Because on the surface, a Lovecraftian world can't possibly host a power fantasy.

Why?

Because it is too chaotic and cruel. Despair should be the overarching theme. Straying from that tone makes it feel fake and illogical—so I had to work hard to make it logical.

But what if it still doesn't work?

Then I keep working hard.

But truly no one could do it, unless they were a madman.

Then let's bring in a madman.

Madmen are very hard to like.

Then I work hard to make him likable.

—That is the storyteller's responsibility.

The Q&A above is essentially a materialization of Zuolun's self-torture. But strictly speaking, even if the protagonist is a madman, that is far from enough to make a "power fantasy" reasonable.

In a true Lovecraftian world, going mad is just self-indulgence, and self-pity is the act of a coward.

It requires a "true badass"—someone with a will so tough they disdain the idea of going mad, arrogant enough to use knowledge and logic to comprehend the "indescribable," and who simply never gives up.

Until the readers truly believe that in the midst of such despair, he actually can pull it off.

And that is only the baseline. The entire process of doing it has to be fun and cool—so cool that it is undeniably a "power fantasy," where all the profound depth is hidden beneath the ultimate principle of "making the reader happy."

This is the most ideal state Zuolun could imagine, even if making it a reality isn't exactly easy.

But self-torture and an arms race are exactly what an author ought to be doing, instead of forcing people to just accept that "this is how the world is, and this is how the story should be."

And taking it a step further—

4. Why the episodic format?

Because it's a perfect match.

Complex backgrounds, conspiracies, and foreshadowing make a story brilliant, and they are extremely well-suited to a Lovecraftian world.

But if I followed a normal linear narrative, all of the above would lead to an unavoidable flaw: every segment of the plot would end up poorly explained and incomplete.

The episodic format perfectly compensates for this. It uses individual, inherently complete stories to sketch out the entire world.

A Lovecraftian background is naturally tailored for fragmented storytelling. When combined with the episodic format of infinite-flow web novels, Zuolun sees it as a mutual attraction, a Match Made in Heaven.

To the point where, upon realizing this, Zuolun was a bit confused as to why so few people seemed to have done it before.

Of course, that confusion was quickly answered—actually doing it is nowhere near as easy as it looks.

The content above is Zuolun's explanation for "why I write it this way."

My purpose in talking about all this is actually very simple—I don't want to emphasize how hard I worked, but rather to help everyone believe in the effort Zuolun put into the logical soundness of the story before putting it in front of you.

So that you can proceed to enjoy the fun of a "power fantasy" with absolutely zero mental burden, without feeling any moral pressure.

Because Zuolun has already done the agonizing over the "profundity" for you.

Aside from that, here are a few other frequently asked questions.

5. Why give it a title like this?

More than one reader has complained that the book's title is a real failure, but this is actually a revised version.

When I first published the book, I wanted to call it "Staring at the Evil God for a Whole Year," and I didn't mean to deliberately leech off the Cthulhu hype.

After a long wait, it was killed by the review process and failed to pass.

Later, I provided an outline as requested, and it was killed and failed to pass yet again.

Then I changed it to this current title, and it still didn't pass.

Later still, I had to bother my editor, Ziliang, and it was only with his help that it finally got resolved.

It was a winding process, but of course, there's fundamentally little difference. I mainly want to explain that when it came to the book's title, Zuolun genuinely just wanted something simple and straightforward.

The story is the same way. I don't deliberately string out emotions, and I don't pretend to be deep. I lay out the way tasks are completed in the most straightforward manner, letting everyone see it as clearly as possible, even though this means it has to withstand a much higher intensity of scrutiny.

6. Is there an outline, and how many words is it?

Yes, but not much. The outline plus the basic setting is about 60,000 words. I rely a lot more on improvisation.

However, Zuolun has a miscellaneous Word document for this book, titled something like "Ten Whys a Day." Usually, when I think of a fun idea or an interesting question, I write it in there and answer it myself.

And now it has split into four documents.

The reason is that after my old laptop had a system update last year, a file with hundreds of thousands of words became incredibly laggy when opening and typing. I had no choice but to start a new file. Later, I realized the lag limit was around 70,000 words, so I kept making new ones.

I just checked, and as of now, the word counts of each file are 442,000, 75,000, 70,000, and 6,000, totaling just under 600,000 words.

I hope this number can help slightly corroborate that earlier sentence: "Zuolun has already done the agonizing over the 'profundity' for you."

7. Why is there a percentage for the task loading? Is that just to pad the word count?

Actually, careful readers might have noticed that the loading progress numbers for a few tasks in the middle were a bit weird.

Because initially, this loading progress was indeed meant to form a standard format. Later, Zuolun felt it was a bit monotonous, so I wanted to create a different mathematical sequence puzzle for each task, to help observant readers reminisce about math class :-D

It's just that later on, I really didn't have enough energy, so I reverted back to keeping only the standard format.

8. How are the results? Have you ever done any promotion?

I'm ashamed to say, but to this day, this book genuinely hasn't had any free or paid promotion, including but not limited to book lists, recommendation accounts, monthly votes... and so on.

Getting to where we are now has relied entirely on word-of-mouth recommendations from readers.

Why do I say I'm ashamed? Because for a long time, this was essentially Zuolun's active choice, stemming from some of the naive principles of a newcomer.

For example, the idea that a story should be pure, that the author should stay as invisible as possible, that the joy of reading shouldn't be tainted by any outside factors, and that one certainly shouldn't talk too much about personal matters.

Or that the results should also be pure, so that under any circumstances, I could confidently say I never relied on the power of promotion.

Or even that I didn't want the pressure to be too great, which might make updates even less smooth...

However, a little while ago, Zuolun realized that there was a problem with this—it was too naive and selfish.

We live in an era of sharing. The joy of reading is actually not limited to the story itself; it's also about finding resonance.

Having the things you like be recognized, and subsequently finding fellow enthusiasts, is an incredibly good feeling. As a gamer, Zuolun knows this intimately.

In fact, this is a psychological need humans have always had, and the information age has only magnified it. For instance, even with a movie you've already seen, you might occasionally want to rewatch it with the bullet comments turned on.

Fundamentally, Zuolun's dismissive attitude toward promotion, along with some pointless principles, actually hurt the fans of this book, greatly reducing everyone's enjoyment in this regard.

Meticulously written analyses could only be seen by a few people, and the emotions that burst forth while reading were met with very little resonance.

Especially since reading this book actually consumes more mental energy, the end result was that readers spent greater effort, but the investment and return were not proportional.

It even forced self-doubt, or even self-denial.

A reader once sent me a screenshot, and I've seen it myself—a rhetorical question that frequently appears in the comment section: "If there's no problem with this book, why can't it be seen on the monthly vote rankings?"

It really is hard to refute, and the Heart-Slaying Power of it is quite strong.

Reading is intrinsically a very subjective thing, so using quantifiable data to compare is, on some level, fair.

Thus, faced with such a question, many readers might not be able to help but wonder—is there really a problem with it?

No story can withstand being questioned like that.

And being forced to deny something you like, to the point of doubting your past affections, is a highly painful feeling. Zuolun understands this intimately as well.

Perhaps the author has a narcissistic level of confidence, but you can't ask the readers to be the same way.

Not to mention that, aside from the promotion issue, this book's negative elements are too numerous to count.

Including but not limited to being a new author, a new book, having few updates, frequently taking leaves of absence, and dropping updates while on the recommended list...

Leaving the comment section unmanaged for a long period, to the point where one reader angrily declared they would never post another comment...

The story format means a very high proportion of readers are hoarding chapters, while Qidian's recommendations are almost entirely determined by follow-up reading rates...

The lazy chapter titles—even though my original intention in being lazy was actually to make it easier for everyone to lock onto the instances—inevitably caused the follow-up reading data to take an even bigger hit, to the point where it was worse than if I had just used pure numbers...

I'm not saying all this to find excuses. To sum it up in one sentence—it's not that everyone's taste is problematic, the responsibility lies entirely with Zuolun. I've stacked up a massive row of debuffs, which has greatly affected the book's performance.

All in all, during the creation of this book, the author was overly simplistic and self-indulgent in his thinking.

But now, Zuolun has decided to shoulder more responsibility.

The readers who read attentively, who spend energy analyzing, and who smile knowingly at the interesting parts shouldn't have to suffer any extra grievances.

As the person in charge of this story and this fun, Zuolun will take a portion of the book's income thus far and use it to do some promotional activities going forward.

And the first step is already clear: completing the level 4 Out of the Circle achievement here on Qidian.

The book has already entered its second half, so doing this might not yield great results. But once completed, there will be at least 20 extra fan titles every month, and the money spent can be given back to the readers to the greatest extent possible.

Also, because the Out of the Circle achievement has a requirement for interaction between readers...

So here, what Zuolun wants to ask of everyone is to drop a like on the brilliant comments and thoughtful interpretations you see while reading.

If possible, please also leave your own insights. The comment section of this book has never had any speaking restrictions.

If you have anything you want to say to Zuolun, you are also welcome to leave a message at any time. Zuolun will answer them all as soon as possible.

Sharing is a very joyful thing. Zuolun has deeply experienced this during the process of writing this book, and I hope readers won't miss out on this kind of fun while reading either.

Every bit of your support will help the cultivation of this story enter a virtuous cycle.

Zuolun bows in thanks once again.

I ended up writing a lot at once. Thank you to the readers who made it this far. For the final, absolute last thing, I still need to promote our reader group chat.

The New Year is in January this year, and it is already the twelfth lunar month. If you are interested, don't forget to lurk in advance to snatch up the New Year's red envelopes.

The size of the red envelopes will be directly proportional to the number of people, so don't worry about diluting everyone's luck.

Happy New Year! Wishing everyone good health and all the best in 2025 ^▽^

The night of December 31, 2024