A man yawned as his eyes lingered on the laptop screen in front of him for a while before turning sideways to look at the clock.
It was already midnight but sleep still seemed like a long way ahead. He frowned, blaming his bad habits yet again.
The man worked in an company.
His bad habits had made him procrastinate when he should be preparing a presentation tomorrow. But to his defense, a football match was going on and it had gone to a penalty in the end, something he would have regretted not watching.
Though now, he had to say goodbye to his sleep to complete his presentation. He had been working on it for 3 hours already and it was still only half done.
Lowering his head in dejection, he frowned once again. His neck was hurting a bit from sitting at the table.
He tried to ease the pain by sitting a bit more upright and looked at the presentation. It depressed him instantly.
His eyes glanced towards his phone at the next second. A sudden urge came up to take a small break.
He tried to resist it but he didn't feel like he could push through.
Cursing his procrastination habits, he picked up his phone and started browsing through it. Though, there was nothing on MeTube.
He scrolled through Sparrow too but it was boring for him. In the end, he decided to open up the website that he wanted to avoid.
Wuxia Updates.
The reason he was avoiding it was because everytime he would stumble upon a novel, he would just keep reading without a sense of time.
'I should check up on newer novels as they won't have a lot of chapters. Maybe, I will stumble upon something good.'
He thought in his mind.
Scrolling through the latest uploads tab, he saw a few novels that looked good but they didn't look like anything he hadn't read before.
"Ain't there something good and unique?"
As soon as he muttered that, he saw a novel title that attracted his interest.
<Archer's Ascension.>
It was a pretty cool title and the cover looked pretty great too. It was the art of an archer aiming at someone with a bow with one of his eyes glowing.
It gave the impression of a serious, gritty novel.
Reading the synopsis, he found out that his thoughts were right. Though, the synopsis made it look a bit more lighthearted than what he was expecting.
The thing he was most impressed with was the fact that the main character was an archer. There weren't a lot of novels that have him play an archer, so he was intrigued as to how it would turn out to be.
Especially in an eastern fantasy setting.
'The author seems new. The Dreamer. It looks like a simple pen name.'
The man thought and wondered if he should read it. There were no reviews of the novel yet, so it could be a hit or a miss.
In the end, he took the chance and started reading the first chapter.
To his surprise, the writing was pretty intricate. There weren't any grammar mistakes and even if it was written in a simpler way, the flow was on point.
It was something that not a lot of beginner authors have (The man assumed the author was a beginner).
Before he knew it, the man had completed the first chapter. It was the same with the second and the third.
By the end of the fourth chapter, the man was already booked.
The story started out straight away without taking any time to set up the world. It had instead decided to set up the main character, the second and third chapters have already laid down the ambitions and powers of the main character.
In the fourth, the first major arc had already begun in which he was in a competition to get into a sect. It was pretty fun because the main character, Lu Ren would use unexpected tactics to fight his opponents who are way stronger than him.
Though, the best part of the novel seemed to be the supporting characters. The few of them that were introduced all looked quite different from the typical characters in this type of novel.
Those were more like caricatures than characters but the author of this novel seemed like he knew how to put soul in his characters.
Before he knew it, the man had read the fifth chapter but there was no option to read the next one.
He clicked on the chapters list and realised that only 5 chapters were released till now.
He sighed in dejection.
'I wanted to read more.'
There was no other way than just waiting and the man was already used to it, thanks to being a fan of web novels for a long time.
He left a review on the main page of the novel, giving it a 5 star rating and turned on the notification settings, so he gets an update whenever a new chapter drops.
It was only then that the man noticed that a lot of time had passed.
"What the hell? It's already been an hour."
He muttered in frustration, looking at the clock that was slowly going towards the 4 AM mark.
He had again lost his sense of time due to a novel.
At least this time it was worth it.
***
In an online web novel forum, a lot of people were talking about different types of novels in each thread and even roasting a few of them because of how bad they were.
It was a normal day for the forums as a lot of readers come here to either find new novels, have a discussion on them or bash a novel.
In that forum, someone created a thread titled, "Guys, you should read <Archer's Ascension>. It's one of the best novels I have read."
Normally, a thread like this won't get any traction as there were a lot of threads like this. A lot of authors would even try to promote their novels like this.
But these sorts of threads hardly get any comments.
But this one was made by a very famous user who was known to unearth underrated novels that were good. His recommendations were always good and he had gotten a reputation for it.
His username was 'WuxiaCreator69'. Seeing his post, a lot of people commented and only a few knew which novel he was talking about.
<Archer's Ascension> was extremely new with less than 10 chapters and readers would mostly like to read something with a lot of chapters.
So, they were a bit surprised as to why the user was recommending such a novel. Even before, 'WuxiaCreator69' hadn't recommended a novel with so many chapters.
[My Korean friend died Su Yung: Does 'WuxiaCreator69' really don't have novels to read? He is reading a novel that just started three days ago? Or he got paid by the author?]
[If you sleep with a girl, you gay as she likes what gay people like: I don't think someone like 'WuxiaCreator69' could be paid. He is on the path of achieving the dao of virgin monk. Then again, he borrowed money from me. So maybe, he's doing a paid post to pay me back.]
[Lazy enthusiast: Guys, I read the novel. It's actually pretty good. I'm going to wait for more chapters but it already looks to be better than most novels.]
[Harem Protagonist's dingdong: There's a reason why experienced readers don't usually give chances to novels with fewer chapters even if it interests them. It's because they are dropped a lot and it's better to wait, especially if there's an unknown author. This novel has all those red flags. I'm going to wait for more chapters even if it looks good.]
[The MC is too OP: Well, I don't really care about that tbh. I liked the synopsis. Seems like someone is trying something new. Always open to that if they do it right.]
[My Dao is Supreme reading: Meh, I trust 'WuxiaCreator69'. He's never wrong about a novel. I'm off to read this novel.]
[Dark fantasy villain: I gave up on cultivation a long time ago. It got too repetitive. Not gonna touch it just because of that. The cover is great but it's not enough.]
[Need a protagonist halo: Well, I might try it after reading my current novel. A new, promising novel is always nice. Let's see if the author updates more soon.]
[Want 10 updates a day: I will get it on my reading list. Currently reading a showbiz novel that's pretty great. Loving the progression till now.]
As people were discussing his web novel more and more, Aiden was trying to write a lot more chaps. It was more fun, the more he wrote.
With web novels, he felt a kind of flexibility that he rarely got before. Anything could happen in his novel and the tonal shifts were something he was enjoying a lot.
From two chapters a day, he was moving towards four chapters a day.
