Heads up. This manhua has been abandoned by the author due to lack of readers.
Here's the machine translation of the full announcement:
Ending Thoughts
This is the end of Sword Empire. Seven years ago, I was watching the Sword Art Online anime and I suddenly had a flash of inspiration: if you can write a story of an immersive RPG game, why not write a strategy game story? So I did, and after a few drafts, I tried to combine immersive games with strategy games to see if I could come up with a more original manga story.
Sword Empire wanted to use a teenage comic to build a hero that lurks in every boy's heart, where the a general points his banner and a thousand armies follow his orders. In the virtual world, he can either command a thousand armies and conquer a city, or turn the tide with his wisdom. This comic book is a representation of this inner ambition and dreams.
As this is a relatively uncommon topic and setting, there are few precedents in Chinese and foreign comics and even in online literature, so I had to spend all night alone thinking about the structure of the story and the ambiguities and read hundreds of books to deduce the feasibility and development of the story. Later on, I incorporated the ancient Chinese military culture into the story to give it more depth. After a few months of polishing, I apprehensively sent what I thought was a somewhat original story to my manga editor, and it was approved and started to be serialized.
Would anyone really like this kind of story? With a mixture of anticipation and anxiety, the manga went live. In reality, it exceeded my most optimistic expectations, and many of my work friends and fans seemed to have found their happy place, leaving comments on the book group's work, pointing out battle tactics and strategies. Many friends helped to promote it, which made me happy and pleased.
Thanks to the full support and help of the editor-in-charge, it was possible to get this story on the platform, and thanks to the support of the fans, it is with your encouragement that this story has come this far.
However, the online comic market is changing, fast-paced and high value works and cool comics have become the mainstream today, and the niche nature and high reading threshold of the Sword Blade genre is gradually becoming a barrier to gaining traffic.
Although the editor has made every effort to maintain the work, and I have tried to optimize and extend the life cycle of the work, it has been affected by platform changes and loss of core readers. After seven years of serialization, Sword Blade had to end early with some regret.
I'm sorry to those of you who are still with the story, and I thank you for your tolerance and support.
I look forward to future opportunities to write similar stories!
Thanks to the editor and all our readers!
Crazy Horse Circle