The overnight success of Shiao's first book immediately brought him a lot of attention from other publishers, and his second novel The Seven Fists of Ching () was also very well received in the market. In 1961, Shiao had already returned to college and had been writing in his spare time, but he decided to quit school again to pursue writing Wuxia novels as a professional writer. For the rest of Shiao's career, he was a professional writer, making him the one and only Wuxia novelist in Hong Kong and Taiwan who never had a second career or worked a single day doing any job other than writing.
