Cultivation Struggles of a Lowly Fox

Rant and Addressing readers concerns!

First thing first, thank you so much for reading~! <3

FOR THOSE WHO ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE STORY, PLEASE READ! AND ALSO RANT INCOMING!

Now for the more important stuff. It has come to my attention that there are quite a few misconceptions about my story, which is fine, until you twist it too much and make in into a negative by not actually reading my story. I won't address that part, since I don't see the point in having a discussion with someone that doesn't want to have one.

But it is also important to address certain parts, since this would not be the first time someone asked about it and I know that most readers won't read the comments below. (This also might be my personal bias, one of many that I will address.)

First! Dysphoria:
Quite a few kind readers asked if it will ever be relevant. Yes it will be, as I wrote many times, once we get a PROPER Human form, Aiko will get her memories back and the confusion and shenanigans will begin, there will be questioning, insecurities, hiding and so on. I have said it many times and will do it again, I am a Novice Author. [Cultivation Struggles of a Lowly Fox] is my first work, as such, there are many things that I will naturally not know how to express. Even so, I pride myself in being able to at least express my creativity when it comes to solving these kinds of barriers. That is why I was buying myself time with this and didn't include it in the beginning, since let's be honest. The beginning is great filter and also painful to read. (I do however believe that it improved over time. ^-^)
PS: What? I'm supposed to look at my hearts? I'm not a Novice Author, since I have such an insane number of hearts!? Fuck! *Sniffles*

Second! Rapists:
Xianxia... or at least the old ones I read many, many years back contained quite a lot of it. You didn't like someone? Cripple their cultivation and throw them into the slums, so the homeless can have a piece of meat. Prideful daughter from wealthy family? Drug her and one guest you don't like and lock them in the room.
So yeah, that's my depiction of how things in Xianxia usually go about, but I know that most individuals find this disgusting. So there won't be any written depictions of this as even me, the author, finds the notion of this to be appalling and nauseating.
Aiko sways more into the way of FLAGS than to the other ways, but it is something you have to keep in mind that it won't lessen. My World is filled with scum. We will cleanse this world partially, but since the Heavenly Dao favours those scums, you can't expect me to just erase them or lessen them when they are the majority! If this breaks your reading enthusiasm, I'm sorry, there will be one more story about a Kitsune, with 2x times the shenanigans since she will be joined with her mother and that world will be completely different to this one. Yes, Kitsunes will still be 'bed warmers', but it won't be openly written like in this story.

Third! Describing things:
I suck at describing. That's it. This is Xianxia, so I thought we are all in the Chinese architecture type of deal, since there was no mention what kind of world I'm creating.
It also came to my attention that there is a certain type of reader that once they imagine how the characters look, they have a hard time accepting or changing their 'dreamed' image. (My apologies once again Crim... ;-;) I did not know there was this type of reader and that comes back to me being a Novice Writer. I never engaged with readers before and when I engaged with authors... they just ignored me, that is also one of the reasons I'm replying to every comment. I don't want to leave you guys hanging and I want you to enjoy my story even with all the hiccups...
I do believe I made progress in describing things, but it's far from hitting the 'good enough' mark, so I will keep working hard and improve upon it! ^-^

Fourth! We'll find out later/We will know in time: (Excuse my crude language)
This is a fucking story! Not an info dump! I LOATHE, DESPISE AND HATE INFO DUMPS! Even the history chapter I hated! It could've been done better, but I don't have enough experience to make it better, which makes me hate it even more! I like explaining things over time, slowly, since it allows my fragile brain to comprehend it better! ;-;
This is my style of doing things. There will be more info chapters once we get into the normal Cultivation stuff and I'm learning and gearing up for it so we can pass it without the "I skipped most of the chapter since there was just too much info-dump" kind of thing!
Other things that we will know in time are MAJOR SPOILERS! It makes no sense for me to describe something that our cast doesn't know, since it would complicate things for both me as writer and you as reader. You would know the end of the arc since I gave you that info and I would have to play around it since it would be bad if I left plot holes.

Five! Author introduces characters only to abandon them:
This world is huge, that's it. Everyone will have their limelight. I have not forgotten anyone. I did not forget the Archer who shot Aiko, nor the Starting Village we encountered, we will encounter and visit all of them, but give it time! My world is huge and it will only become bigger, as such the characters will come and go. You can't expect me to introduce characters and keep them in the limelight forever, they come and go in waves or this might be one of the biases I talked about...

Six! Six? Six...? I think I will stop here... This is... long... I'm so sorry.
If you have any misconceptions or question about the story's course, please do write them down below! I will address all of them and place them into tomorrows and days after author note. Your feedback is important to me since I'm not professional, everything I have written comes either from my Dreams or my bias as a long time reader.

If you read all of this, thank you so much and I'm sorry for torturing you with my rant, but I felt the need to address this since... well, a lot of kind readers asked for it previously and it would be bad if this lead to even more misunderstandings in the future. As such, addressing this early is my way of saying that I understand your concerns.
Thank you for being awesome and kind readers, I love ya all guys and I hope you will enjoy the future chapters~! ^-^ <3

Editors note~☆:
Hello there everyone, I am esThr or Placeholders as many will come to know. I am one of the three editors of this story and usually does the fixes for most of the chapters. To address the concerns of the author and readers, yes, in hindsight it is partially the fault of the editors that something like this happened. We are editors, but we aren't omnipotent. Although we can help to reduce the amounts of errors in every chapter, it is by no means saying that we can fix everything.
A personal note here, as an editor who has helped to do things, I have always been conflicted on two sides when it comes to editing. The side of me that wants to preserve the author's style of writing and the side of me that wants to flesh out the writings more for a more 'enjoyable' read. In my opinion, an editor helps to flesh out an author's work and nothing more than that. I am just an editor, not a co-author or the story director. As such, the two sides are always in heated debates whenever I find errors or things that lack context. "Should I just correct it slightly and keep the author's style or should I flesh it out more in the name of the story quality?" Of course, I am by no means a good writer and it is impossible for me to replace Ezy as the story writer.
The most important part to remember that this is Ezy's story. It is up to the author, Ezy to decide however the story will go. As such, I will and have always respected that ever since I (unwillingly, heh.) became an editor. On a side note, I have seen and understand the concerns of some people about the earlier chapters lacking context or outright not being understandable. As such, earlier chapters will be revisited for edits to make it more bearable and appropriate with similar quality to that of the latest chapters.

Finally, this might be ignored by many but... we are aware that the story's growth has been very abnormal. We are blessed with many amazing readers and Ezy is thankful for it. Unfortunately, this growth comes with envy and hate. It can't be helped, it is human nature to be hateful on successful things. Even so, I hope that some people will tone down or outright stop attacking the author for nonsense or made up concerns. If it's valid criticism, we will address it. Otherwise, don't come to the author's doorstep and pick a fight for your fragile ego's envy. The royal road incident was enough. That's all and I hope you continue to support/enjoy the story.

Another Editor's note:
Since we're doing this now... I'm known as Brick Turtle here who may have been mentioned a few times. I've helped a few times to edit the chapters and would like to follow up on Ezy's and esThr's comments. As editors, we mostly just started out by helping the author with fixes, word corrections and small polishings. As said before, there's an internal conflict between staying true to the author's original work and making changes to make it better for the readers. Personally, I prefer to leave the story to the author and then clean things up afterwards... except this time the mess is nothing if not unpleasant to deal with, but it is something to address. In the end, not everyone will be happy. There will always things which could be better, or more suitable, clearer, the list goes on. That doesn't mean we won't try to satisfy as many readers as possible, but at the end of the day this is a creative work driven by the author's desire to spread their ideas to the world - their opinion is the most important, and we should respect that. All we as readers need to do, is to enjoy what we can, and if you find it lacking then you can move on to a different story. Alternatively, you can come join us on discord and provide your own suggestions, and if they're good then it might be implemented. I'll say that intrusive readers/editors who insist on having their opinions put in are the worst people for authors to deal with. They're still human, and are trying their best to create something new with absolutely no experience in it before. That's absolutely incredible, it takes a lot of courage to write something and then publish it online - I respect that. As for some of the inconsistencies and admittedly fairly poor information in the earlier chapters, we're working on sorting that out too, but can't promise anything.

Finally, thank you to all the people who have stayed with us so far, to read these very long rants, and this novel. It means a lot to the author to become so popular in a short time, and know that simply having people read their sometimes incoherent ramblings makes them very happy and able to enjoy their own life. Maybe one day, we can fully clean up everything and create something worthy of being a top tier novel, but for now, just continue to bear with us~

FINAL NOTE: The actual chapter will come some time later, since this turned from author's note into full blown chapter, my apologies for this inconvenience!

THIS CHAPTER UPLOAD FIRST AT NOVELBIN.COM