Hello hello! Lilies and Dragons is officially one year old! How time flies. It feels like just yesterday when I first introduced Song Suwan and Li Ling. So much has happened since, here's some interesting facts relating to the story:

• Qiu’s first design looked much younger and her role in the story was likewise very different. This was before I properly worked out my cultivation system. As I'm sure we’re all aware, cultivation slows aging and Qiu has been a prodigy ever since she started cultivating. It took me a while to justify why she’d look the same age as Ling while being a child prodigy until I finally settled on a valid explanation: cultivation only begins to slow aging once a sufficient foundation has been reached, namely physical maturity. What this means in my setting is that cultivation only begins to slow one’s aging sometime between the age of 18-25 depending on the individual regardless of their prowess. Of course, how much it’s slowed will depend completely on how skilled the cultivator is.

• On a similar note, Bao’s design was very different too. She was originally going to be described as a stereotypical jade beauty and would not have had a role at all in the story, in fact, both of Hu Qing’s siblings were made up purely to have matching numbers for the important personnel in the delegation! This can still be seen even after her design was changed, she got a brief description whereas Hu Qing got five entire paragraphs. As fate would have it the situations changed from Hu Qing quickly joining the group to her maintaining a strained relationship with Ling for more than fifty chapters. Instead Bao snuck in during her interrogation, something that wasn’t intended to happen either!

• Talking about things that changed what was supposed to happen while writing them (like almost everything that involved Gao Mu) we can’t forget one of Ling’s conversations with Xueya, more specifically this part: ‘Ling asks with feigned indifference, hemming her in. Either Xueya admits her own incompetence, piles the blame on Cai or makes an excuse. Either way Ling will gain something from her reply.’ This was originally meant to have Ling force Xueya into a corner until while writing it I thought ‘But wait, if Xueya replies like this it wouldn’t work!’ Given that I like my antagonists competent and firmly dislike characters being smarter than their opponents purely for plot instead of winning in a logical way Xueya ended up causing Ling to nearly snap in public instead, further unbalancing and speeding up her loss of control.

• Zhi is one of the wealthiest characters in the setting. With not only a spatial ring in her possession but also a large collection of medical manuals she has a veritable treasure trove at her fingertips. Spatial rings are incredibly difficult to create and the amount of living craftsmen capable of making any can be counted on one hand. 

Of course, it wouldn't be a birthday without presents! I'll be writing a bonus chapter, the contents of which are to be decided by the poll below. The options are as follows:

- A lesson by Song Huan on all things cultivation and cultivation accessories, lack of fourth wall may ensue.

- AU chapter of Ling, Suwan and their respective groups in college. LnD will be the Tabletop RPG they're playing.

- A Collection of short stories set in the earlier lives of some of the LnD cast