I must be sick. Looking at the bookshelf on Qidian, no matter how I tossed and turned, I couldn’t fall asleep.
I’d already caught up with the updates for the old books, and I’d lost the motivation to follow any new ones.
I kept refreshing the page, but what popped up were still the same books I’d already finished.
A baseless sadness welled up in my heart, and my mind was filled with the same two words over and over.
Book drought~
So I wanted to write a book I myself wanted to read. If other people happened to like reading it too, that would be even better—and that’s how this book came to be.
At first, the author submitted it internally. Over half a month, I tried every editorial group: submit, rejected, submit again, rejected again, until in the end it was completely dead.
But during that process, many editors gave me a lot of helpful advice. I’m very grateful for their suggestions, which made me change my approach to both the opening and the writing afterward.
In the end, with internal submission hopeless, I risked my life and posted it directly. At worst, I’d just go all in on Mysterious Revival, writing for love alone. Fortunately, I was eventually picked up.
Thank you to Editor Shiguang for picking me up. Otherwise, Wang Liang in this book really would have become a wangliang.
The author is not some max-level great cultivator reincarnated, just a newbie.
Although I did write a proper outline, a lot of plot details still have to be thought up on the spot. Some plotlines are sudden inspirations, and I only know them one day earlier than you do.
Stumbling my way to this point, I’ve discovered that writing a book and reading a book are completely different things.
I thought that, as a ten-year veteran bookworm, I could empathize with some readers and avoid quite a few toxic points when writing.
In the end, I hadn’t taken into account that different people have different levels of tolerance for toxicity, and with some oversights in the details, I still unintentionally created some toxic points, haha.
In the early stage of writing this book, I read every single one of your comments.
Later, there were more people, but I still saw most of the comments.
At present, there are two places in this book that have caused the most controversy. One is when the protagonist was attacked by the Wishing Ghost and, after counterattacking, told Zhao Kaiming to get lost. The other is the transaction with Wang Xiaoming.
The Wishing Ghost part was one thing. There were comments from people who were unhappy, but not too many. At least the protagonist’s tone when facing Zhao Kaiming was still fairly forceful, so it didn’t feel too stifling, and most people could accept it.
But the Wang Xiaoming part was a bit serious or2
I reckon quite a few people left at the time. The next day, the follow-up reads dropped by one or two hundred, and there were a bunch of comments shouting that it was a loss.
As a newbie, if there’s a problem, I do think it’s my problem, so I’ll listen to advice.
In the draft, the trade with Wang Xiaoming was originally only for one red candle. Haha, I was afraid I’d be cursed to death, so I changed it to one red and three white candles, plus retaining the right to recycle them. After the chapter was posted, I still got cursed to death.
So I listened to advice. I took one reader’s suggestion and changed it overnight, adding half the ghost money in. The voices quieted down a lot, but there are still some. This can be considered the most controversial part so far.
Most of the remaining issues—being watery, too much foreshadowing, and so on—can basically be attributed to insufficient updates.
Oh, there’s also one more issue. It’s a problem for some people, while for others it isn’t: too much depiction of supporting characters.
Mm, those who’ve read this far should have noticed that in many places, I like unfolding things from the perspective of the “victim.”
I write in detail the scenes where supporting characters face the protagonist or attacks from other malicious ghosts, spending a lot of words building a terrifying atmosphere, just like in a horror movie, using that to create satisfaction and emotional value.
Instead of whoosh whoosh, bang—whether it’s small fry or the final boss, everything gets instantly nailed to death by the coffin nail, the result comes out immediately, and they don’t even have time to show a panicked expression. (Though that is indeed the most stable way to do it.)
When I read, I especially enjoy gaining satisfaction through other people’s attitudes—commonly known as manifesting divinity before others—so the coffin nail will only be used when it’s one hundred percent confirmed that the other party has a physical body and the protagonist believes he can’t contend with them.
But judging by this writing style of mine, there will be a lot of supporting-character depiction. During that time, the presence of the protagonist’s ghost is still fairly high, but the protagonist himself may have a weaker presence.
Those who dislike it will think it’s very watery, and may even say the protagonist has gone missing. But I think this part shouldn’t count, since the protagonist’s ghost is still there. The protagonist’s ghost is also the protagonist, after all, hh.
I probably won’t change this part. It’s a matter of style, and changing it would be a bit difficult, so please be mentally prepared or2.
For most of this month, this book has been first on the new suspense books ranking, and recently it rushed into the top hundred of the overall new book ranking. Thank you all very much for your support. This is a result I never imagined before.
After all, at the start, I was just writing something I wanted to read myself, with the attitude that it’d be fine as long as someone came to read it, hh. Thank you so much.
At present, there are 8,800 collections and around 2,000 follow-up reads. From what I’ve seen online, the collection-to-subscription ratio is generally ten to one, so I’ll roughly estimate the first subscription at 800.
If the actual first subscription is decent, then I’ll go crazy typing these next few days and update a few more chapters for you.
Mysterious Revival and the number “seven” have quite the affinity, so I’ll first offer seven bonus chapters! (Holding head, trembling, doing my best to type or2)
It includes the entire plot of the confrontation with the ghost controllers from Yongsheng Club, so you can read it all in one go.
Okay, if you’ve read this far and didn’t quickly skip the release remarks, today’s update should be out by now. (There may be a slight delay.)
Begging for a wave of first subscription support!
Begging for recommendation tickets, monthly tickets, tips, collections, follow-up reads, blah blah blah—begging for everything.
For those who like to stockpile chapters, support the first subscription first before you stockpile.
Over.