Chapter 14: Recommendation Slot? A Sign of Catching On

But the next day, when Cao Sheng came to the track for his morning run, he never saw Tan Lei's figure; even after he finished his thousand meters for the day, she still hadn't shown up.

On his way back to the dorm, Cao Sheng thought of how Tan Lei had nodded firmly yesterday after her run, indicating she'd come morning-running again today, and he couldn't help but laugh.

He had long known that Tan Lei during her college days had a little interest in him.

Coming to morning-run with him yesterday was probably also a deliberate attempt to get close to him.

But for her, running a thousand meters every morning was probably too painful, so although she said yesterday she'd come again today, she didn't actually show up today.

Maybe after she went back yesterday, the more she thought about it, the more she felt that running a thousand meters every day just to get close to him wasn't worth it!

It's also possible that this morning she wanted to get up and come run with him, but lacked the strength—lying in bed with her eyes open, her mind urging her to get up quickly, yet her body refused to move.

All of these were possible.

Just like in his original timeline, he too would occasionally get the urge to wake up early and exercise, but almost every time it stayed at the urge stage, his body always resisting action.

He figured, in the end, it was still that his charm wasn't enough to make Tan Lei overcome her inner laziness.

At this, Cao Sheng gave a self-mocking laugh.

……

In the days that followed, he still came to the track for his morning run every day, as long as he hadn't pulled an all-nighter at the internet cafe the night before.

In the blink of an eye, another half month passed, and Tan Lei never came to morning-run with him again.

And during this half month, he finally finished writing "Days of Cohabiting with a Flight Attendant."

He wasn't sure how many words the whole piece had in total.

Because most of his saved manuscript still only existed in his draft notebook and hadn't all been uploaded to the internet, and the saved manuscript on draft paper made it hard to count the exact word count.

He only knew the story was written in 82 chapters.

Each chapter was about five or six pages of manuscript paper; he estimated each chapter was around three thousand words.

Therefore, he estimated the total word count was probably a little over two hundred thousand, and should be under three hundred thousand words.

This length was within his plan.

The night he finished writing the whole piece, he brought part of his saved manuscript and came to the internet cafe to pull an all-nighter again, planning to upload another ten thousand words or so to his email tonight.

Next, he planned to rest two or three days, and then start writing the main text of "I Desire to Become Immortal."

By the time he arrived at Starry Sky Internet Cafe tonight, it was almost midnight.

After paying the all-night fee and booting up a machine, he instinctively logged onto Under the Banyan Tree first, wanting to check the current stats for his "Days of Cohabiting with a Flight Attendant."

This book had been published on Under the Banyan Tree for over a month, updating one chapter every three days on average, and had now serialized to chapter 11.

Two days ago, when he came to pull an all-nighter, he saw this book's reader count had already exceeded 2,500, with over 600 comments.

His feelings at the time were complicated.

He was both gratified by the 600-plus comments, feeling a sense of accomplishment, thinking his book had touched readers' hearts and stirred their desire to comment.

And also disappointed that after serializing for over a month, there were still only a little over 2,500 readers.

Could a little over 2,500 readers count as popular?

In his feeling, this reader count was too few! Not even a fraction of any random work he'd had before transmigrating.

He began to suspect his book might never catch on online at all.

Maybe, after Pizi Cai's "First Intimate Contact" became popular online, most netizens would still, just like in the original timeline, consider "First Intimate Contact" to be the first web novel.

Never knowing there had once been a "Days of Cohabiting with a Flight Attendant" published even earlier than "First Intimate Contact."

Just like some Miss he had dated before—clearly he was her first boyfriend, but after they broke up, she never admitted he was her first love, only because when they were together, hardly anyone knew about it.

However……

Tonight, when Cao Sheng logged into the Under the Banyan Tree author backend, he suddenly discovered his author backend had received a site message.

What's going on?

With a bit of curiosity, he clicked open this message.

"Dear Zhongyuan Yidianhui, hello! In view of the fact that Your work 'Days of Cohabiting with a Flight Attendant' has been highly praised, this site has decided to give it a featured recommendation. We hope you will continue to create, and wish you a pleasant mood and an endless flow of inspiration! — Under the Banyan Tree"

After reading this site message, Cao Sheng was stunned for a while.

Three words popped into his head: a recommendation slot?

In his original timeline, he was a contracted author at Qidian Chinese Network, and every time he opened a new book, after signing the contract, he could get a recommendation slot.

Every time a recommendation slot was arranged for him, his author backend would receive a message notification.

Logically speaking, he should have long been used to such message notifications and shouldn't have found it strange.

But it was early 1998!

Under the Banyan Tree had only been founded a few months ago total—had it even been two months?

Besides, he hadn't signed any contract with Under the Banyan Tree either; he could only be considered a resident writer on the site, and it was impossible for him to get any manuscript fees from this website.

He was purely generating electricity out of love.

Under such circumstances, Under the Banyan Tree actually arranging a recommendation slot for him was completely beyond his expectations.

But he knew this was definitely a good thing.

The promotional effect of having a recommendation slot versus not having one was absolutely worlds apart.

He suddenly saw hope for his book to catch on.

Yes!

These days there was no ready-made web novel reader base, and Under the Banyan Tree, having just been founded not long ago, didn't have many readers either.

But Under the Banyan Tree was, after all, the first Chinese-language literary website, and naturally attracted all Chinese-language literature enthusiasts who went online.

Moreover, these days, the things people who went online could do were too few.

Besides playing games, watching movies and TV shows, or listening to music, there weren't many forums online to browse.

There weren't even any chat software.

In his memory, in this day and age most people surfing the web wandered all over the internet, searching here and there for sites and forums that interested them.

As the country's first literature website, although Under the Banyan Tree's daily traffic wasn't all that high, it was still possible for it to boost a novel to popularity.

After all, his book "The Days I Lived with the Flight Attendant" was the very first web novel, with no competitors whatsoever.

Cao Sheng suddenly thought of something, squinted, and carefully checked the date this site message had been sent, discovering it had been sent the afternoon before last, a little past four.

In other words—Under the Banyan Tree had very likely arranged a recommendation slot for his book the afternoon before last.

Thinking of this possibility, Cao Sheng hurriedly clicked open his book's page to check the current number of readers, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the reader count had already surged to 9,766.

The number of comments had also increased quite a bit, climbing from the previous 600-odd comments to 2,332.

At a glance, he saw several comments like these.

"Which big shot wrote this? The site actually gave him such a prominent recommendation? Does anyone know which big shot wrote this?"

"Is this commemorating his own love story? Has the author already broken up with Ran Jing now? Is Ran Jing a pseudonym?"

"Author! The site's already promoting you this much, and you're still writing so slowly? Where's Chapter 12? By my count, it should be posted today, right?"

"Author, if Ran Jing is a real name, I suggest you change it to something else! Even if she broke up with you, you still have to protect her privacy! You can't just because you know how to write, expose her online like that—it's really immoral of you!"