That evening, Father Wang had his regular meeting with his editor Lie Mengmeng, and they discussed the setting for the next character. None of the characters in his novel were redundant. Whether it was the villain, the protagonist, or a minor role, they each had their own wonderful story and character setting, so it was especially important to determine how the characters would be positioned in the overall story.
The two men were on a video call that evening. These days, Lie Mengmeng seldom came by to press Father Wang for the manuscript, mainly because the website had recently been doing a strict audit of their novels. This was the law of nature, the survival of the fittest – authors who couldn't do it would be 404'ed.
It might sound a little cruel, but this was reality.