March 1st, Tuesday.
Last weekend, the house Pei Qian bought was officially handed over.
After hiring a professional inspection company and completing the formal acceptance, Pei Qian received various certificates and keys for the house.
However, the house had no furniture or appliances whatsoever.
Pei Qian had originally planned to let his parents live in this house, so he didn’t want to purchase furniture and appliances according to his preferences. Therefore, he made a special trip home, gave each of his parents a key, and asked them to help tidy up the place when they had time.
Pei Qian’s plan was perfect:
He would say he was too busy with work to get away (which was true), so although he had bought the house, he had no time to deal with all these miscellaneous matters. He asked his parents to find time to choose furniture and appliances, and once they picked what they liked, Pei Qian would reimburse them.
This way, the furniture style would better suit his parents’ aesthetic tastes.
After everything was properly arranged, he would then ask his parents to stay there for a few days, saying it would add some life to the new house.
Thus, as his parents became accustomed to living there, the house would naturally become theirs.
As for Pei Qian himself, he could find other ways to get a larger place for himself.
After a busy weekend, completely setting aside the company’s troublesome matters, Pei Qian felt much better.
The only unhappy part was that when he went home, his parents kept asking about Fei Huang Studio’s new movie. Pei Qian reluctantly told them the truth, and as a result, his parents were extremely happy and insisted on taking him to see it again, carefully finding Pei Qian’s name in the credits.
Regarding his parents’ behavior of building their happiness on his public suffering, Pei Qian had nothing to say and could only silently weep in his heart.
In any case, after a period of recuperation, Mr. Pei was back at full strength!
The coming month would be the real battle, directly determining the success or failure of this cycle!
The two games developed by Tenda Games and Shangyang Games will both be launched this month.
The OTTO phone should also hold its launch event and officially go on sale.
These were all projects that Pei Qian had once placed high hopes on. If they all lost money, they could completely offset the pain brought by the movie’s high box office performance!
Little Sun drove carefully toward Shenhua Haojing.
Sitting in the back seat, Pei Qian impulsively took out his phone, seeking some mental comfort.
The most satisfying thing recently was his transformation of the Endpoint Chinese Website’s authors’ training class.
Since spreading the Tenda spirit to this training class, all the authors’ update volumes had shown a continuously downward trend—they were writing less and less!
Even the former model worker, Ming Yu, was no longer posting massive updates, now writing only seven or eight thousand words per day.
For other authors, seven or eight thousand words was already a lot, but for Ming Yu, who previously easily exceeded fifteen thousand words in updates, this number had been cut in half.
Pei Qian was especially happy about this.
Although these authors’ reduced updates had minimal impact on the website and were of little help to Mr. Pei’s plans to lose money, seeing the concept of slacking off being spread was in itself a very joyful thing!
It benefited both the present generation and thousands of generations to come!
Now, when Pei Qian opened the Endpoint Chinese Website app, it wasn’t to read novels at all, but solely to see if these authors’ daily update word counts had decreased again.
There was no help for it—Mr. Pei was just such a dull, easily satisfied person.
However, this time, after opening the app, what popped up wasn’t the book list, but a splash screen recommendation.
“‘Butterfly Game’ is now available for subscription!”
“A butterfly flaps its wings, stirring up a storm!”
“Breaking multiple site records since its serialization, this explosive new urban theme is taking the internet by storm!”
“Bookmark and subscribe to receive a random Endpoint Coin gift package!”
Pei Qian was stunned.
The promotional effort for this new book seemed a bit too strong, didn’t it?
The splash screen could be said to be the website’s best promotional resource, and books that received this resource upon becoming available for subscription weren’t common.
“‘Butterfly Game’? Why don’t I have any impression of this book title? Is it a new book that appeared in the last month?”
“The splash screen doesn’t show the pen name. Is it a new author? If the book is well-written, I can’t delay—I must immediately bring them over to learn about the Tenda spirit!”
Pei Qian instinctively clicked on it.
However, when he saw the author’s pen name, Pei Qian was stunned.
“Desperately Typing Tentacle Monster? Isn’t this Cui Geng?”
“He’s still writing books?!”
Pei Qian felt very confused. He particularly favored this author, Cui Geng, mainly because Cui Geng had played a crucial role in spreading the Tenda spirit within the training class.
But Pei Qian’s impression of Cui Geng remained at his “Completion Acknowledgment” and his position as a “Special Observer.”
Pei Qian had looked into Cui Geng’s income. Based on his subscription numbers and slacker-like update speed, his monthly income was at most around ten thousand yuan.
Although the Special Observer’s salary couldn’t reach that amount, when Tenda’s various subsidies and benefits were added, the actual value exceeded it.
Moreover, this position had no specific work tasks. Even if he spent all day playing games, he would still earn the same money.
With such a comparison, what motivation would Cui Geng have to update his novel?
Pei Qian was puzzled. A slacker who had no reason to update his novel had started a new book, and it was now available for subscription. This… seemed like something was wrong.
Looking at the word count of this book:
260,000 words at subscription opening!
The first chapter was posted on Chinese New Year’s Eve, February 2nd!
That meant this book had been written for less than a month and already had 260,000 words. After opening for subscription, there were ten more explosive updates, adding up to 280,000 words!
280,000 words in a month?
This was no longer a slacker—this truly lived up to his pen name “Desperately Typing Tentacle Monster”!
Pei Qian felt dizzy.
Could it be that this fellow had earned some money, gotten cocky, and hired a ghostwriter?
On second thought, that couldn’t be right. Ma Yiqun wouldn’t tolerate such a thing happening.
But no matter what, writing 280,000 words in a month was not the Cui Geng that Pei Qian knew!
Either there was something wrong with Cui Geng.
Or there was something wrong with Pei Qian’s understanding…
Pei Qian quickly clicked on “Butterfly Game” to check the main content of the novel.
Reading chapter by chapter, from the protagonist obtaining a golden finger to accidentally making a game developer, who originally had no intention of making money, gain wealth beyond measure…
The more Pei Qian read, the more he felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
“This… this is fucking me!”
The content of the book seemed to be repeatedly whipping him, and the readers’ comments made Pei Qian feel as if he was being laughed at by countless people.
“My god, this book is so funny, hahahahaha…”
“Pigeon Spirit, update faster, I can’t wait to see which poor guy will ‘have their dream realized’ next.”
“This protagonist is so interesting. You could say he’s doing good deeds, but each time he imagines others’ wishes, he goes in the opposite direction. But if you say he’s doing bad things, he helps others achieve success in the worldly sense, leaving only confused supporting characters behind!”
“I’m curious about how Pigeon Spirit’s brain works. How can he come up with such absurd plots?”
“Still calling him Pigeon Spirit? Call him Tentacle Bro! The guy has been mass-updating for a month straight and opened for subscription. I ask you, are you convinced or not?”
“I’ve been wanting to ask, has this pen name changed owners? Not only is the writing style and subject matter very different, but even the attitude has undergone an earth-shattering change. Before, we were lucky to get one update a day, and we were often stood up. Now, there are often four or five chapters a day!”
“It seems to be thanks to the author training class organized by the website. All the authors who attended that training class have been writing better and better books.”
“I’m going to tag all the books I’m following right now!”
Pei Qian’s gaze quickly scanned these reader comments, reading with trepidation.
It seemed… this book… was highly praised?
Pei Qian felt severely hit.
This matter wasn’t simply about Endpoint Chinese Website gaining a good book. More importantly, was Cui Geng, this “Special Observer,” doing his job properly?
A Special Observer who suddenly started diligently typing explosive updates—could he still be called an observer? Spending all day typing, where was the time to observe?
He had completely betrayed Mr. Pei’s expectations when granting him this position!
Pei Qian was anxious. As a result, with a casual refresh, another announcement appeared.
“I’m here to report some good news to everyone. It’s been exactly 12 hours since the first VIP chapter was officially uploaded at midnight. The book’s initial subscription has already reached 8,000, breaking Endpoint Chinese Website’s previous initial subscription record!”
“There are still 12 hours left. I estimate the final number should settle between 12,000 and 15,000, which is a huge breakthrough for both me and the website!”
“So, before the final results come in, I hope everyone can click in and show support. If you think this book is written well, please subscribe to the first chapter, and let’s create an initial subscription record for the Endpoint Chinese Website together!”
“And I’m working hard on typing. Once it hits midnight, a 10,000-word update will be delivered immediately!”
“Thank you all!”
Pei Qian’s expression was a bit dazed.
“Damn…”
If following the general natural growth rate, the latter 12 hours certainly wouldn’t increase as fast as the beginning, and settling at around 13,000 initial subscriptions would be normal data.
But now, for Endpoint Chinese Website, this was an excellent opportunity, so Ma Yiqun was mobilizing all resources across the network to promote “Butterfly Game”!
The remaining 12 hours still included the afternoon and evening reading peak periods. With this kind of desperate recommendation quota, the initial subscription data might really double again!
The biggest problem with Endpoint Chinese Website before was that while benefits for mid to low-tier authors were good, there had never been a book that truly became a hit.
Cui Geng’s previous book had about 5,000 average subscriptions, already ranking around 40-50 on Endpoint Chinese Website. Among all the authors participating in the training class, Cui Geng’s performance was also quite high.
This point was clear to both Ma Yiqun and Pei Qian.
That’s why Pei Qian rejected Ma Yiqun’s request to poach big-name authors from other sites, telling him to spend money on mid to lower-tier authors instead.
But to everyone’s surprise, after all this effort with the training class, a top-tier author had emerged!
If it were 8,000 initial subscriptions, that might not be much on those large sites—they might have dozens of authors who could achieve such numbers.
But if the initial subscriptions could reach around 15,000, that would be a highly valued author even there!
This meant that from now on, the Endpoint Chinese Website’s situation of having no big-name authors or good books would be gone forever!
And that wasn’t even the most critical part.
The most critical point was that Ma Yiqun used so many resources to promote this one book to create a promotional effect, setting a benchmark for all authors.
The message was: See? Write well on the Endpoint Chinese Website, and you too can achieve 15,000 initial subscriptions!
With this level of initial subscription continuing, reaching 30,000 to 40,000 average subscriptions wouldn’t be a problem!
The Endpoint Chinese Website originally had good benefits for mid to lower-tier authors, but many authors didn’t come simply because they felt the site’s ceiling wasn’t high enough.
But now, someone had proven that the site’s reader base had grown, and the ceiling had been raised, which would certainly attract some authors!
The same principle applies to readers. Previously, many readers felt that the Endpoint Chinese Website didn’t have top-tier good books and only treated this website as a backup, occasionally checking it out when they ran out of books to read elsewhere.
But now, readers’ stereotype that “Endpoint Chinese Website has no good books” would naturally be improved!
In short, for Endpoint Chinese Website, Cui Geng’s “Butterfly Game” could be said to have a profound impact, marking Endpoint Chinese Website’s beginning to move toward the next stage!
Pei Qian looked at the announcement posted by Cui Geng and was speechless.
Mr. Pei’s full-strength comeback didn’t seem to be going particularly smoothly…