Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 434: First-Order Subscription Record of Terminal Chinese Web
March 1st, Tuesday.
Over the past weekend, the apartment that Pei Qian bought was officially handed over.
After hiring a professional inspection company to carry out a formal acceptance check, Pei Qian received all the documents and keys to the apartment.
However, the place had no furniture or appliances whatsoever.
Pei Qian had originally planned to let his parents live there, and since he didn't intend to furnish it according to his own tastes, he made a special trip home and gave each of them a key, asking them to drop by whenever they had time to help tidy things up.
Pei Qian's plan was perfect:
He would say that he was too busy with work to handle these trivial matters (which was actually true), so although the apartment was bought, he had no time to deal with furnishing it. He asked his parents to choose the furniture and appliances themselves, and once they decided, he would reimburse them.
This way, the style of the furnishings would match his parents' preferences.
After everything was set up, he would let his parents stay there for a few days, saying it was to "bring some life" to the new home.
And once they got used to living there, the apartment would naturally be given to them.
As for Pei Qian himself, he could always find another way to get a bigger place.
After a busy weekend—completely putting aside all the annoying matters at the company—Pei Qian felt much better.
The only unpleasant part was that after returning home, his parents kept asking about Feihuang Studio's new movie. Helplessly, Pei Qian told them the truth, and instead of reacting negatively, they were overjoyed. They even insisted on dragging him to watch it again and carefully searched for his name in the credits.
Regarding his parents' behavior of building their happiness on his suffering and publicly "executing" him, Pei Qian had nothing to say—he could only cry silently inside.
In any case, after a period of rest and recovery, President Pei was fully revived!
The coming month would be the real battle, directly determining the success or failure of this cycle!
Two games developed by Tengda Group and Shangyang Games would both be launched this month.
The OTTO phone would likely hold its launch event and officially go on sale as well.
These were all projects that Pei Qian once had high hopes for. If they all failed, it would completely offset the pain caused by the movie's high box office performance!
Xiao Sun drove carefully toward Shenhua Prestige.
Sitting in the back seat, Pei Qian suddenly took out his phone on a whim, hoping to find some emotional comfort.
Recently, what satisfied him the most was the transformation of the Terminal Chinese Web Online Authors Training Camp.
Ever since spreading the "Tengda Group spirit" to this training program, all the authors' update frequencies had been steadily declining—their chapters were getting shorter and shorter!
Even Ming Yu, who used to be a workhorse, no longer mass-updated. Now he only wrote about seven to eight thousand words a day.
For most authors, seven to eight thousand words was already a lot, but compared to Ming Yu's previous bursts of fifteen thousand words, it was effectively cut in half.
Pei Qian was extremely pleased.
Although the decrease in output had almost no impact on the website and did nothing to help his grand plan of losing money, seeing this "slacking-off" mindset spread was, in itself, something that made him very happy!
A contribution for the present, a benefit for the future!
Nowadays, when Pei Qian opened the Terminal Chinese Web app, it wasn't to read novels at all—it was purely to check whether the authors' daily word counts had decreased again.
However, this time when he opened the app, instead of the usual book list, a splash-screen recommendation popped up:
"The Butterfly Game is now released!"
"A butterfly flaps its wings, stirring up a storm!"
"A brand-new urban-themed novel that has broken multiple site records since serialization and taken the entire internet by storm!"
"Add to favorites and subscribe to receive a random Terminal Coins gift pack!"
Pei Qian froze for a moment.
This new book… was getting way too much promotion, wasn't it?
A splash screen was basically the best promotional resource on the site, and not many books got that kind of exposure right when they were launched.
"The Butterfly Game? Why don't I remember this title? Is it a new book that only appeared within the past month?"
"There's no pen name listed on the splash screen—could it be a new author? If the book is good, I can't let this slip by. I have to bring them in immediately to learn the Tengda Group spirit!"
Without thinking, Pei Qian tapped into it.
But when he saw the author's pen name, he paused.
"'The Tentacle Monster Who Writes Like Crazy'? Isn't that Cui Geng?"
"He's still writing?!"
Pei Qian was puzzled. He had always held Cui Geng in high regard, mainly because Cui Geng had played a crucial role in spreading the Tengda Group spirit within the training class.
However, Pei Qian's impression of him was still stuck at his "completion speech" and his role as a "Special Observer."
Pei Qian had looked into Cui Geng's income before. Based on his average subscriptions and his extremely laid-back update speed, he only earned around ten thousand a month at best.
Although the salary for a Special Observer wasn't that high, when combined with Tengda Group's various subsidies and benefits, its actual value clearly exceeded that amount.
Moreover, the position didn't even have specific work tasks—he could spend all day playing games and still get paid the same.
With that comparison, what motivation would Cui Geng possibly have to keep updating novels?
Pei Qian was confused. A slacker who had no reason to keep writing had suddenly started a new book—and even launched it. Something didn't feel right.
Then he looked at the word count.
260,000 words!
The first chapter was released on Lunar New Year's Eve—February 2nd!
In other words, in less than a month, the book had already reached 260,000 words. And after going premium, it had another ten chapters released in a burst—bringing the total to 280,000 words!
280,000 words in a month?
This was no longer a slacker—this actually lived up to his nickname, "The Tentacle Monster Who Writes Like Crazy"!
Pei Qian felt dizzy.
Could it be that this guy made some money, got arrogant, and hired a ghostwriter?
But thinking about it again, that didn't seem possible either—Ma Yiqun would never tolerate something like that.
No matter how you looked at it, writing 280,000 words in a month was clearly not the Cui Geng that Pei Qian knew!
Either something was wrong with Cui Geng—or something was wrong with Pei Qian's understanding.
Pei Qian quickly opened The Butterfly Game and started reading.
Chapter by chapter, from the protagonist obtaining a special ability, to accidentally causing a game producer—who originally had no intention of making money—to earn huge profits…
The more Pei Qian read, the more he felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
"This… isn't this basically me?!"
The content of the novel felt like it was repeatedly "whipping his corpse," and the readers' comments made him feel as if countless people were laughing at him.
"OMG this book is hilarious hahahahaha~"
"Update faster, you pigeon! I can't wait to see which unlucky guy gets his 'dream fulfilled' next."
"This protagonist is really something. You could say he's doing good deeds, but every time he just imagines what others want—and ends up going in the exact opposite direction. But if you say he's doing bad things, he actually brings others success in a worldly sense, leaving him completely dumbfounded!"
"I'm really curious how this author's brain works, how do you even come up with such absurdly funny plots?"
"Still calling him 'pigeon'? Call him Tentacle Bro! The guy exploded updates for a whole month and went straight to premium—what do you say to that?!"
"I've always wanted to ask—did someone else take over this pen name? Forget the completely different writing style and genre—even his attitude has changed drastically. Before, we were lucky to get one chapter a day and often got ghosted. Now it's four or five chapters daily!"
"It seems like it's thanks to that Online Authors Training Camp run by the site, any author who attended it is writing better and better books."
"I'm going to go subscribe to all the books I'm currently following!"
Pei Qian quickly skimmed through the reader comments, feeling increasingly uneasy.
It seemed… this book… was extremely well received?
Pei Qian felt deeply shaken.
To him, this wasn't just about Terminal Chinese Web gaining a good new book. More importantly, it raised a serious question: was Cui Geng, the "Special Observer," even doing his job properly?
A Special Observer who suddenly became hardworking and started churning out massive updates—could he still be called an observer? If he spent all day writing, when would he have time to observe anything?
This was a complete betrayal of the expectations President Pei had when assigning him that role!
Pei Qian was getting anxious. Then, with a casual refresh, a new single-chapter update appeared.
"I'd like to share some good news with everyone. It has been just 12 hours since the first VIP chapter was uploaded at midnight. The first-day subscriptions for this book have already reached 8,000, breaking the previous record of Terminal Chinese Web!"
"There are still 12 hours left. I estimate the final number will land somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000. For both me and the website, this is a huge breakthrough!"
"So before the final results come in, I hope everyone can click in and show some support. If you think the book is decent, please subscribe—let's create a new first-day subscription record for Terminal Chinese Web together!"
"And I'm working hard on writing as well—once midnight hits, a 10,000-word update will be delivered immediately!"
"Thank you all!"
Pei Qian looked dazed.
"Damn it…"
Under normal growth trends, the next 12 hours wouldn't possibly increase at the same rate as the initial surge. Settling at around 13,000 first-day subscriptions would already be considered a normal outcome.
But right now, for Terminal Chinese Web, this was a perfect opportunity. So Ma Yiqun was practically mobilizing all available resources across the platform to promote The Butterfly Game!
The remaining 12 hours included both the afternoon and evening peak reading periods. With this kind of aggressive promotion, the subscription numbers might actually double again!
Previously, Terminal Chinese Web's biggest issue was that while mid- and lower-tier authors had decent benefits, it had never produced a truly blockbuster hit.
Cui Geng's previous book had around 5,000 average subscriptions, already ranking somewhere between 40th and 50th on the site. Among all the authors who attended the training class, his performance had been near the top.
This was something Ma Yiqun knew—and Pei Qian knew as well.
That was exactly why Pei Qian had rejected Ma Yiqun's request to recruit top-tier authors from other platforms, insisting instead that resources be invested in mid- and lower-tier writers.
And yet, against all expectations, after all this effort with the training class… it had actually produced a top-tier author anyway!
If the first-day subscriptions were around 8,000, then on a major platform like Infinite Chinese Web, that wouldn't really be anything special—there might be dozens of authors there who could achieve that.
But if the number reached around 15,000, then even on the Infinite Chinese Web, that author would be considered highly valued!
In other words, from this point on, Terminal Chinese Web's lack of top-tier authors and great books would be a thing of the past!
And that wasn't even the most critical part.
The most crucial point was that Ma Yiqun was using so many resources to promote this one book in order to create a publicity effect—to set a benchmark for all authors.
The message was clear: "See this? If you write seriously on Terminal Chinese Web, you can reach 15,000 first-day subscriptions too!"
With that level of first-day subscriptions, maintaining it and reaching an average of 30,000 to 40,000 subscriptions wouldn't be a problem!
Terminal Chinese Web had already offered pretty good benefits to mid- and lower-tier authors. The reason many hadn't joined before was simply that they felt the platform's upper limit wasn't high enough.
But now, someone had proven that the site's reader base had grown and that its ceiling had risen—so naturally, some authors would start coming over!
The same logic applied to readers. Previously, many readers felt that Terminal Chinese Web didn't have top-tier books. They treated it as a backup option—only checking it occasionally when they ran out of things to read on Infinite Chinese Web.
But now, that stereotype—that "Terminal Chinese Web has no good books"—would naturally begin to change!
In short, for Terminal Chinese Web, Cui Geng's The Butterfly Game had far-reaching significance. It marked the platform's transition into a new stage!
Pei Qian stared at the author's announcement chapter, speechless.
President Pei's "full recovery" didn't seem to be going very smoothly…
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[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/157991757?collection=1399284
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