The authors were all listening attentively, their eyes burning with fervent hope.
“That was brilliant!”
“I told you Old Cui was just being humble earlier. See? You clearly have so much to share! Yet you claimed you had no experience? If this counts as having no experience, then what about the rest of us?”
“Exactly! Do you have any more valuable insights? Don’t hold back, embody the Tenda spirit and help us out!”
“So Mr. Pei had already planned the creative direction for the Inspiration Class all along, and I never knew…”
“Yes, when I think about how I spent my days in the Inspiration Class watching dramas, claiming I was collecting material when I was actually just slacking off, I feel like I’ve really failed Mr. Pei’s expectations and nurturing…”
“Old Cui is still the most reliable. Last time when Yu Fei came back, we asked him to share some insights, but not only did he refuse to share, he went on a humblebragging spree—it was truly infuriating!”
Cui Geng was surprised: “Yu Fei came back? What did he say?”
Since Yu Fei had become the main designer at Tenda Games, Cui Geng hadn’t seen him.
The authors indignantly said: “We asked him to share his creative insights and philosophy, to talk about the connection between games and novels. Guess what he said?”
“He said he doesn’t have any creative insights, that ‘Eternal Cycle’ was purely written as fan fiction without any creative philosophy.”
“He also said that the success of ‘Eternal Cycle’s’ game adaptation was entirely thanks to Mr. Pei and had nothing to do with him.”
“Oh, and he also mentioned that he’s been fumbling through his role as the main designer, that he doesn’t understand game design at all, and that he’s only been able to barely complete his work tasks because Mr. Pei has been guiding him and the rest of the project team has been supporting him.”
“Old Cui, tell us, how can there be such a person in this world?”
“It’s one thing to show off, but at least do it smoothly! But Yu Fei was so rigid about it, not smooth at all! Isn’t that just deliberately aggravating?”
Cui Geng nodded in agreement: “Yeah, that is aggravating!”
“But I think there’s a bit of truth to what he said. Mr. Pei must have guided him through a lot of design work, otherwise he couldn’t have gotten up to speed so quickly.”
The authors all sighed: “Ah, he became Tenda Games’ main designer just by writing books. So enviable!”
Of course, they were just saying this. Tenda Games’ main designer did indeed earn more and worked on bigger projects, but everyone felt that not just anyone could handle the position.
Yu Fei might say he didn’t know anything, but he must have had the potential to be discovered by Mr. Pei.
Rather than envying Yu Fei, they might as well continue creating seriously and write the next work that could secure adaptation rights.
If the authors had to choose between the two paths, they would choose Cui Geng’s path, not Yu Fei’s.
How comfortable was Cui Geng? He could slack off every day while happily collecting his commissions—it was the perfect life in the authors’ imagination.
Cui Geng’s previous speech had greatly inspired the authors in the Inspiration Class!
Since the successful adaptation of the three works, Terminal Chinese Network authors had become extremely eager to apply for the Inspiration Class.
For many high-performing authors who had made a name for themselves this year, their first aspiration was to enter the Inspiration Class.
The authors who hadn’t produced anything in the Inspiration Class before had lost their qualifications, regretting it painfully. They were now focused on preparing new books, hoping to achieve success with their new works and once again earn the opportunity to study in the Inspiration Class.
Even many authors from other sites chose to switch to Terminal Chinese Network!
The online discussions about the Inspiration Class had further increased Terminal Chinese Network’s website traffic.
Now, apart from the topmost tier of authors who might still lag slightly behind big sites like Infinite Chinese Network, the income of mid-tier and lower-tier authors had completely caught up or even surpassed them, as Terminal Chinese Network offered authors a larger share of the earnings.
As for those top-tier elite authors, Terminal Chinese Network’s appeal was equally strong.
For a large portion of them, while manuscript fees were certainly an important source of income, the highly successful adaptation rights held even greater appeal!
Most reputable websites would consider selling adaptation rights once an author achieved success, but the question was: what would the adaptation be like? Authors had absolutely no confidence.
Some adapted works ended up with poor results, possibly due to the production company’s inadequate capabilities, or because of capital intervention, which prevented the essence of the original work from being portrayed.
This situation didn’t exist in the Inspiration Class, as the three successfully adapted works had already proven that Tenda was at the national cutting edge in animation, film, and games!
In reality, the major aspects of adaptation rights were animation, film, and games.
At most, you could add comics, but the domestic comic industry was generally not very prosperous at the moment, so no one expected comic rights to sell for high prices.
As for other formats like audiobooks or physical books, they weren’t even worth mentioning.
Therefore, when many top authors saw that all three works from Terminal Chinese Network’s Inspiration Class had been successfully adapted—even “The Successor,” which seemed completely contrary to traditional web novel concepts—it was an extremely shocking event for them.
This was clearly not a production company dragging them down, but one elevating them!
If there were a few major companies in China that could compete with Fei Huang Studio in the film industry, then in game adaptations, Tenda stood alone—no other domestic game company could compare!
Moreover, the adaptation revenue offered by Tenda was truly tempting.
Most other websites offered a fixed price for adaptation rights; whether the film made a profit or loss basically had nothing to do with the original author.
But Tenda was different—the original authors participated in revenue sharing, and the sharing ratio was very high!
How much revenue could Yu Fei and Cui Geng get from their works? They would certainly never disclose this to the outside world, but everyone could guess it was an astronomical figure, completely overshadowing the manuscript fees of these top authors, and likely higher than the adaptation fees for well-known works.
To put it bluntly, these three people could live comfortably for the rest of their lives just from the revenue share of these three adapted works.
How could other authors not be tempted?
Even authors from other sites were flocking to join, not to mention those already in the Inspiration Class.
Cui Geng’s previous guidance had enlightened them, helping them find their direction.
Previously, everyone had been somewhat confused, not knowing exactly what the Inspiration Class was meant to create, just aimlessly collecting inspiration without a clear overall direction.
But now, they had direction!
After Cui Geng’s lecture ended, some authors eagerly went to collect inspiration and start creating, while others surrounded Cui Geng, asking him more questions.
Cui Geng was also warm-hearted and welcomed everyone.
As a result, the conversation went from morning until lunch, and then continued from lunch into the afternoon.
This teaching session exhausted Cui Geng.
When everyone finally dispersed, Cui Geng checked the time—it was almost five in the afternoon.
“Damn, today’s plans are ruined.”
“I thought I’d at least be able to create a new folder today.”
“But this isn’t my fault. The other authors were just too enthusiastic. I had to delay my writing time to convey Mr. Pei’s creative philosophy to them.”
“Ah, I’m just such a selfless person.”
“I’ll have to wait until next week.”
Cui Geng prepared to leave.
The Inspiration Class didn’t work on weekends, so Cui Geng would have to create his new book folder on Monday.
Just as he was about to leave, he received a phone call.
It was from Huang Sibo.
“Old Cui, this Sunday, the 20th, there’s a gathering at The Nameless Restaurant. Would you like to join? Yu Fei, Lu Zhiyao, Zhang Zuting, and the core members of Fei Huang Studio will all be there.”
When Cui Geng heard this, he immediately perked up.
“Of course I’ll come!”
Who could refuse a feast at The Nameless Restaurant?
It had to be said that Lu Zhiyao and Zhang Zuting were quite clever—they had clearly figured out the pattern.
They all knew that Mr. Pei reserved the entire restaurant on the 20th of each month. If they came on this day, they would definitely get free food!
No need to guess, these two actors must be using the excuse of thanking the production team and Mr. Pei as a pretext to freeload food and drinks.
Was that gratitude? It was obviously just craving The Nameless Restaurant’s food! Everyone saw through it!
But this was good too—please continue with greater intensity!
If they didn’t come to freeload, how could Cui Geng have a justified reason to go to The Nameless Restaurant?
Cui Geng happily left and headed straight for Slackin’ Internet Café to continue playing games, while looking forward to Sunday’s feast.
…
…
January 20th, Sunday.
Zhang Yan sat in the G-Force seat as usual and started streaming.
Since the game’s release, she had been grinding for three consecutive days.
She simply couldn’t stop!
When she first started playing, she felt the game was quite bizarre: the prologue was a sting operation, you needed to get a driver’s license before officially hitting the road, and if you accidentally killed a driver on the road, you had to start over…
It was ridiculous!
Other racing games didn’t dare to do this, but “Safe and Civilized Driving” was unique.
However, once she accepted this setup, it was actually quite engaging!
It was precisely because there was a driver’s license test before hitting the road and penalties for accidents on the road that Zhang Yan drove carefully, striving for zero accidents and improving her driving skills.
Maintaining zero accidents on the road also brought a unique kind of joy.
After completely adapting to running the ride-sharing car, Zhang Yan had spent the last two days seriously tackling the licenses for large trucks and long-distance buses, and had begun learning about track racing.
Zhang Yan had previously practiced drifting on a track, but only for a few hours total, and the skills she learned were very basic and superficial.
After all, the cost of getting on a real track was too high. Even though Zhang Yan’s family background was decent, they couldn’t afford to spend that much money.
Moreover, her family didn’t support it at all. On one hand, her parents felt it wasn’t proper for a girl to be into racing, and on the other hand, they considered the sport somewhat dangerous.
After watching many videos of race car drivers crashing, Zhang Yan’s parents were even less supportive.
But there were no problems in the game!
Zhang Yan was clearly hooked. Besides streaming her driving, she would also search online for tutorials published by professional drivers. The new in-game streaming system that Rabbit Tail Streaming had launched for “Safe and Civilized Driving” had significantly reduced her learning curve.