Chapter 25: The Emergence of Copycat Works

Two days later, Saturday.

Cao Sheng went to the commercial street in the morning to get a sense of the current market for assembled desktop computers.

He went into three computer shops in a row.

After asking the prices, he fell silent.

The prices far exceeded his expectations.

A 15-inch monitor cost over 1,300 yuan; for the 17-inch monitor, he simply didn't ask the price.

A basic motherboard cost over a thousand.

The CPU also cost over a thousand.

Memory cards, hard drives, sound cards, graphics cards, and so on—each one cost several hundred yuan.

Then there were the case, CD-ROM drive, floppy drive, and so on, all priced noticeably higher than he had estimated.

A rough calculation: the total for one computer would be at least seven or eight thousand.

If he wanted a better configuration, the price would climb past ten thousand.

And that was only for an assembled machine; a brand-name one would be even more expensive.

On the bus ride back, Cao Sheng gazed at the scenery outside the window, a self-mocking smile on his face. In his original timeline, he had bought his first computer in 2007.

That year, the Hasee laptop had burst onto the scene, and the news said Hasee laptops had knocked down the inflated price of notebooks.

At the time he hadn't felt much of anything, because the one he bought was a Hasee laptop, costing just over four thousand in total.

During the period when he was buying the computer, he heard people say assembled desktops were very cheap—around two thousand would get you one.

So, recently when he wanted to buy a computer, he had figured in his heart that with a budget of 3,000, he could get an assembled machine that could at least handle typing; he didn't demand much performance, so it should be about right.

After all, in this era, 3,000 yuan was something many rural families simply couldn't come up with.

3,000 yuan in '98 should be comparable to 30,000 yuan in 2024.

Only, he had still underestimated just how expensive computers were in this era.

No wonder internet cafés charged 5 yuan an hour.

Such an expensive computer—he couldn't afford it.

Even if he could afford it, he didn't think it would be worth it.

That boxy monitor, the pitifully small memory, the hard drive with only a few gigabytes of capacity…

Even the best-configured computer today, in his eyes, was an obsolete setup.

For such a junky configuration to ask him to spend seven or eight thousand, even over ten thousand yuan—never mind that he didn't have that much money right now; even if he did, he wouldn't buy it.

Because his memories from before the rebirth told him that computers updated and iterated extremely fast—completely different every year.

The specs of all kinds of components would keep rising, while the prices would keep falling.

Just like internet café fees: now it was five yuan an hour, but in a few years it would be one yuan an hour, and with a membership, only seven or eight mao an hour.

Of course, when it came down to it, it was simply that he had too little money right now.

If he already had several hundred thousand yuan, or even more, then for the convenience of typing out his novels, if you asked him to shell out ten thousand for a computer, he probably still would.

He had to admit, this trip to inquire about computer prices had once again made him recognize his own poverty, and his motivation to make money was several times stronger than before.

……

Days passed one by one; May drew closer and closer, the weather grew warmer and warmer, and everyone's clothing grew thinner and thinner.

Cao Sheng's life seemed to have no changes.

Every day was still the same: get up in the morning and jog on the track, then eat breakfast, go to class… In his spare time outside of studying, he was basically in the Continuing Education building writing his manuscript.

In addition, every two days he would make time to go to an internet café, mainly to update "Those Years I Lived with the Flight Attendant."

On Friday and Saturday nights, he pulled all-nighters, converting his handwritten drafts into electronic files.

During this period, there were two biggest changes in his life.

First, his meals had noticeably improved—at the very least, every meal had meat now.

With some grease in his belly, he finally didn't have his stomach growling long before mealtime every day.

The second change was that novel of his that had long since been completed but was still being serialized on Banyan Tree—"Those Years I Lived with the Flight Attendant."

Anyone who has written web novels knows that the hardest period for building a book's popularity is always the early stage.

Because in the early stage, data growth is very slow (except for the big-name authors).

Just like his "Those Years I Lived with the Flight Attendant"—when it was first posted on Banyan Tree, it could only gain a few dozen readers a day, with only a handful of new book reviews.

But as the number of readers grew and the book reviews multiplied, the growth rate of every metric would accelerate.

Like a snowball, rolling bigger and bigger.

It would soon grow so big it couldn't fit in a single pot.

At the beginning of this month, the book's reader count was only a little over 80,000; now at month's end, over twenty days, he had only updated 12 chapters.

But the reader count had already grown to over 550,000.

He had left the work ranked second in Banyan Tree's reader count far behind—the other side didn't even have a fraction of his numbers.

One could say that, at least on Banyan Tree, this book was already a hit, and indisputably the most popular one—no "one of."

Of course, this had to do with the fact that it was currently the longest work on Banyan Tree.

Currently, over ninety percent of the other works on Banyan Tree were still short stories.

What about the remaining ten percent?

Probably influenced by his "Those Years I Lived with the Flight Attendant," Banyan Tree had recently seen the emergence of one serialized novel after another.

And among them, quite a few had decent writing.

After all, in this era where writing novels made no money at all—when people wrote purely out of love—ordinary folks wouldn't even consider writing this stuff.

Those who actually tried writing were either confident in their own prose, or simply people with a lot of free time.

Interestingly, Cao Sheng had recently spotted a few copycat works under the banyan tree.

The book titles shared a similar style.

One was titled "Days Living with the School Beauty," another "Days Living with the Female Bank Manager," and a third "Days Living with the Cousin."

Surprisingly, although they were copycats, their reader counts were quite good.

Though far from matching the data of Cao Sheng's own book, compared to other works currently on the Banyan Tree, these three books clearly had significantly higher reader counts.

The most popular was "Days Living with the Female Bank Manager."

The reader count for this book had already exceeded thirty thousand.

The reason Cao Sheng noticed these three books was that readers had recently kept mentioning them in his comment section.

The comments went roughly like this:

"This book is still better to read; the male lead in that 'Days Living with the School Beauty' is too lecherous, with no manliness at all! He's simply a hooligan!"

"Author, can you update faster? While I was waiting for your update, I finished reading that 'Days Living with the Cousin' today; although their writing isn't as good as yours, they update much faster than you, with a chapter every day! You should learn from them!"

"I suggest everyone go read that 'Days Living with the Female Bank Manager.' Both are about cohabitation, but that book is written so excitingly; out of eight chapters, six are bed scenes, though the female manager's moans sound a bit fake."

Comments of this sort were something Cao Sheng saw several of every time he recently checked the comment section.

However, before he even got a chance to read "Days Living with the Female Bank Manager," that book was banned by the website and could no longer be searched within the site.

In the blink of an eye, time reached early May.

That evening, Cao Sheng returned from the cafeteria and was busy changing his bed sheets and quilt covers in the dormitory when suddenly a familiar voice came from the dormitory entrance: "Cao Sheng!"

Cao Sheng turned his face to look.

"Oh, Class Monitor, what brings you here?"

"Class Monitor?"

Pang Yunhai and Guan Zhi in the same dorm were quite surprised and greeted the newcomer.

Yes, the one who had just called out Cao Sheng's name at the door was their class monitor, Geng Yong.

Cao Sheng was somewhat surprised that the class monitor had come to the dorm to find him.

He immediately showed a smile and climbed down from the top bunk, "A rare guest! Class Monitor! Come in and sit!"

Geng Yong walked in with a smile, holding a thick kraft paper envelope in his hand; this envelope was much larger than common envelopes, and judging by its bulging appearance, it seemed to contain quite a thick item inside.

Geng Yong approached Cao Sheng and handed over the envelope in his hand, "Cao Sheng! I just went to the guard room and saw a registered letter for you in our class's mailbox; what's inside this? It's so thick and quite heavy!"

Cao Sheng took the registered letter, pinched the thickness of the letter, and already guessed in his heart that this should be the sample copy of the first volume of his new book.

A few days ago, he had received an email from Changqingshu, in which Changqingshu told him that the first volume of "I Wish to Become an Immortal" had been released at the end of April, and the five sample copies promised to him had been mailed, asking him to check for their arrival.

So, although he had not yet opened this registered letter, he had already guessed that what was inside should be the sample copy of his new book.

At this moment, his heart was filled with joy.