The word count is similar to the previous volumes, except for the fourth volume.
The fourth volume has a long time span and many events, so the number of words has exploded.
Volume 5 is just one season, and what it says is very simple:
Leeds City won the Europa League, achieving a golden age achievement, and the relationship between Hu Lai and Li Qingqing was confirmed.
However, despite the fact that there are not many things explained, the fifth volume is indeed a connecting volume.
Because in this volume, the fate of the main characters will change.
In addition to Hu Lai and Li Qingqing, of course, Zhang Qinghuan, Wang Guangwei, Chen Xingyi and other international players are gradually adapting to European football.
In fact, I originally wanted to write about these processes in detail with a lot of pen and ink, but then I considered that the pace was too slow, so I abandoned a lot of things.
Instead, we describe it when it is related to Hu Lai, and compress the long process into the time and space of a game.
I don’t know if this is a good idea, because some things still feel like they haven’t been written thoroughly.
But the author's views and readers' views are sometimes different.
In some places, the author feels that he has not written it thoroughly, but readers feel that the author describes the same thing repeatedly and is too verbose.
Sometimes the author feels that he has explained everything clearly, but the reader is confused...
For example, I never wrote about Hu Lai's use of the [Marrow Cleansing Potion] after he obtained it. I thought everyone should be able to guess that he would drink it immediately after receiving the reward. But later I found that readers were very concerned about this matter, so I had to
Mention it later...
In addition to the personal fate of the players, the fate of Chinese football also completed the transition from previous to next in the fifth volume.
In fact, I thought about the replacement of the Chinese team's head coach for a long time at the beginning.
Option A: Directly let Dillon succeed Shi Wuyin, and then follow his request, skip the Asian Cup, and let Zhou Zijing become the protagonist of the Asian Cup and run the team. But I will not write about this process in detail.
Option B: Let Dong Jianhai take over the team, then suffer a disastrous defeat in the Asian Cup, and then dismiss the team amidst the roar of the fans, let the Football Association realize their previous mistakes, and then invite Dillon.
If you choose A, you can avoid "torture" and "trouble", but I always feel that this cannot reflect growth. Everything goes smoothly and everything is carried out according to the optimal route. It is safe, but also boring.
If I choose B, it means that I have to spend pen and ink writing about a failure, which is also a irritation to the readers' nerves.
After much deliberation, I chose B, but I didn’t exactly follow the original plan B and ended up writing it like this:
Dong Jianhai took over the national team and wanted to make changes, but after failing, he immediately gave up the idea. Then his unsatisfactory performance in the Asian Cup made everyone see that he was going to be dismissed.
But I didn't just continue to write like this. He failed all the way and was eventually kicked out.
Instead, I specially arranged the match with the Japanese team and arranged it in that way.
Let Dong Jianhai, a transitional character, have his own highlight performance.
Because I don't want to simply write Dong Jianhai as a "tool man" who only appears to pave the way for Dillon to come to power.
He is always a living person, with his own thoughts and unwillingness. This struggle was reflected in the game against the Japanese team. The person who was ridiculed as a coward and a coward also had a crazy side in the end.
In the end, he chose to resign instead of being dismissed by the Football Association, which was also my arrangement for the above purpose.
At the same time, we will use this Asian Cup to reflect the growth and reflection I mentioned in the summary of Volume 4.
Let Chinese players gradually transform and grow.
After all, if we just ask the players to suddenly start to reflect when they are chatting, I always feel that it is too blunt and not profound enough.
It would be more authentic and credible and more powerful to let them reflect after their failure in the Asian Cup.
As long as readers outside the book and fans inside the book can feel that this Asian Cup was not a failure in vain, then it will be considered as achieving its goal.
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Let’s talk about the emotional drama between Hu Lai and Li Qingqing.
This section also cost me a lot of effort, which made the already poor hair on my head even worse...
As everyone knows, I am not good at writing emotional dramas.
Because in reality, I am a straight man, and my wife always complains that I don’t understand romance at all.
So in order to write about the development of the relationship between Hu Lai and Li Qingqing from "not yet full lovers, but above AUO" to lovers, I racked my brains, was cautious, and discussed it with my wife several times.
I know that many readers, when I wrote the scene where Li Qingqing went to Leeds to see Hu Lai, expected that the two of them would have sex that night.
When I was writing the part where Hu Lai sent Li Qingqing to the hotel and asked Li Qingqing to return to Hu Lai's house on her own initiative, I felt very uneasy and didn't know whether readers would accept this arrangement.
Because I actually aroused the readers' thoughts, but when I turned to the next chapter, I found that there was no conversation all night and nothing happened between the two of them.
Will it make readers feel huge disappointment and resentment like "I've taken off my pants and you're just going to show me this?"
But I still insisted not to write them together at that time.
Because I don’t want to destroy the beautiful and youthful feeling between two people, I think there should be a reasonable transition.
Using this night to evoke a different kind of emotion between two people is equivalent to planting a seed and waiting for the right time to sprout.
If they just hug each other and have sex, I always feel that it doesn't match the style of the two people in this novel.
After Liz's overnight preparation, it would be much more logical to arrange for Hu Lai to discover his true feelings for Li Qingqing.
But how to confess?
I thought about it for a long time, how to confess, how to confess...
I once thought that I should let Li Qingqing confess to Hu Lai, but no matter how I thought about it, I felt something was wrong: Why? Why should Hu Lai get a beauty without giving anything?
Since you like it, of course you have to say it, but if a boy says it first, isn't it a sign of respect for the girl?
So I arranged a dialogue between Hu Lai and Song Jiajia to let Hu Lai review his feelings for Li Qingqing and discover his true self.
Through this conversation, the emotional issues were placed directly in front of him, making it inevitable for him to avoid them.
When it comes to the confession chapter, I wrote it after listening to Karen Mok's "So Many People in the World" over and over for a day. So much so that my wife complained: It's so poisonous, and all I can hum is this song when I open my mouth!
If there are careful readers, they will be able to find clues of this song from Hu Lai's confession.
When I wrote it, I was very satisfied. I couldn't wait to update it for everyone to see...
Instead of simply saying "I love you" to complete the confession, he combined Hu Lai's character to show a boy who once had low self-esteem and is now not emotionally confident.
The reaction of the goddess.
So I used the name of the song "This is the Bravest Moment of My Life" by Prism as the title of that chapter.
For Hu Lai, who has been looked down upon and unpopular since childhood, and has to rely on lying and bragging to maintain his poor self-esteem, bravely pursuing the goddess can indeed be regarded as the "bravest moment".
In short, I am not good at emotional scenes, but the emotional scenes between Hu Lai and Li Qingqing are my favorite part in the fifth volume.
After seeing everyone's feedback after the update was released, I was deeply relieved that all the money I paid for my hair was not wrong after all.
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As for Leeds City winning the Europa League, there is actually nothing logical to say. Everyone knows they will win.
After all, if you spend hundreds of thousands of words writing about a season and end up with nothing, then that is the real water...
It’s just that the fifth volume I originally thought didn’t actually end here, there will be more later.
But I also feel that continuing to write is just a repetitive cycle.
It's ok, but not necessary.
So I decided to end the fifth volume here and start a new volume.
As for what Volume 6 is about, I won’t spoil it. Anyway, the problem of Hu Lai’s lack of growth mentioned by some readers will be solved in Volume 6, as he has not yet been completely finalized.
In addition, I roughly estimated that if there are no changes to the outline later, there will be about three volumes left in the novel.
The number of words in each volume should only be more than 700,000 words, and it is unlikely to be less than this.
So there are about two million words left in this book, and it will be finished in another year.
I am very much looking forward to the day when I finish the book, and I will once again review the story of Hu Lai and his friends with you, and make a summary with you, but that is not a summary at the end of the volume, but a summary at the end of the book.
Thank you for your support and please continue to support me.
Will resume two updates tomorrow.
Another: According to my statistics, as of the end of the 2026-2027 season, Hulay's total career goals have reached 241. There are also 24,100 trees in the Hulay Forest.