Chapter 257: Volume 4 Postnote - SPOILERS FOR V4!
This post note has huge spoilers for volume 4, do not read unless you have finished volume 4!
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Volume 4 complete!
As usual, I'll summarise this volume and talk about my plans for Volume 5 (vaguely and without spoilers). I'll also talk about the release of Desolate Fate.
The fourth volume took place on the Blood Plane. The world is beginning to expand as Yaan is introduced to characters on a higher stage, and of course, a big plot point was finally revealed - Yaan is actually the Primordial Devil's heart demon!
Did anyone guess this? Was anybody surprised? It was hinted throughout the novel, but nobody commented this as a guess at least.
I've planned this plot point and the ending to Volume 4 for a long time now. When I started writing the novel, this felt like something far away, so it feels crazy that we've actually reached this point!
In this volume, Yaan slowly lost his mind, whilst falling into an endless fight against the world and against himself. He killed more than he has ever killed before, and in the end...it completely broke him.
I've said this before, and I hope it has become clear now - Yaan is a continually changing character. He is not 'good' or 'evil' in the traditional sense you would find in these novels. He is not a perfect hero who always succeeds and never experiences failures. He is a person who is continually changing as he experiences more of the world...ironically, he is very human.
Yaan's was motivated to fight on through this world because he wanted to discover the truth, and he wanted to fight against his fate. However, the truth that he discovered was too bitter to accept, and he realised that all this time, he had been playing into his fate unknowingly. He has lost everything that drove him to fight and to live, and in the end, he died...
Volume 5 is definitely going to be interesting.
But, before Volume 5, something else will come first...Desolate Fate!
Desolate Fate is the rebranded version of 'A Desolate Life'. I am going through the whole novel, editing, polishing and improving everything. There won't be any huge changes, so you don't need to reread it, but you absolutely can reread it if you want to! Nothing major will be changed, but I will post a note somewhere detailing all of the changes that I do make if I think it's necessary.
DF is my attempt to increase the popularity of the novel. I made many mistakes writing ADL early on, such as not making the first few chapters hooking enough, writing some things weirdly, and making it too grim too quickly (some people really didn't like how I wrote Yaan's murder spree in Zong Village haha. I'm not removing it though, just toning it down.)
My early mistakes caused the novel's rating to tank. The fact that I took a 3 month break also negatively affected things, making it such that the novel got buried under the algorithm on both of the sites I use (RR and WN).
The new title, cover, synopsis and tags should all help. Mostly though, just reposting the novel after fixing the early mistakes should be enough to help tremendously.
After DF has caught up to ADL, I'll continue on with Volume 5, which will be released as part of DF. I don't want to make people wait for too long until then, so my goal is to get DF caught up within 3 months. That might be overly ambitious, but I'll try...at the very least, I'll upload daily, and I'll try my best to upload 3 chapters per day.
I'll start posting DF chapters publicly tomorrow.
Now then, what can we expect from Volume 5? I don't like giving spoilers, but I want to give everyone something to look forward to.
Yaan died at the end of Volume 4, but he was seemingly saved by a mysterious entity.
In Volume 5, we will see Yaan starting to learn about himself properly, without any illusions clouding his vision. There will be more dao seeking / comprehension / understanding in Volume 5, both in terms of the dao heart and the earthly daos. In fact, dao will probably become a more prominent point from here onwards.
Volume 5 will also expand the entire world of the Four Planes (I know I've said that before, but I really mean it this time!) We will learn more about the world that Yaan lives in, and we will learn more about some of the most prominent figures in the world.
Yaan failed his immortal tribulation, and now, all he has left is a damaged dao soul. But at the same time, his understanding of himself and the world has undergone a huge change. Let's see how this plays out.
I hope everyone enjoyed the volume, and I hope you will continue supporting Desolate Fate!
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