Chapter 71: Savings Soar, Writers' Association Arrives

Two days later, Cao Sheng received an email notification from Wang Jing at Rongshuxia: the Flower City Publishing House had transferred the 200,000-copy advance payment for the second additional print run into his account; please check and confirm.

Checking the royalty payment was something Cao Sheng enjoyed; that afternoon, on his way to school for class, he stopped by the on-campus ATM to check.

Before buying the house, he had more than 80,000 in his account.

But after buying the house and the computer, his account balance dropped by more than 24,000; adding the furniture, bedding, pots, pans, and other items purchased after the house purchase, his account was left with only around 50,000 yuan.

In fact, if he included the 50,000 yuan he had previously given to his parents, the money he earned in the first half of this year was quite substantial.

It's just that when a poor person suddenly becomes rich, it is very hard to save money.

Unless, after becoming rich, one does not improve their lifestyle.

But if, after becoming rich, one does not improve their lifestyle, what meaning does being rich have?

Fortunately, today his account balance had risen again.

It rose to more than 110,000.

The advance payment from the Flower City Publishing House this time was 60,000.

Cao Sheng looked at the number on his account and thought: My savings have finally exceeded 100,000.

A few days later, he received an email from Xinchang Publishing House as well, also notifying him that the royalty payment had arrived and asking him to check and confirm.

So, the next morning on his way to school, he went to the ATM to check again.

His account had increased by another 14,000.

Of that, 4,000 was the royalty payment for the ninth installment of "I Wish to Become an Immortal," and the other 10,000 was for the first installment of "I Wish to Become an Immortal 2," which is the tenth installment of "I Wish to Become an Immortal."

The total amount in his account became more than 130,000.

Thinking that by using the manuscript for the tenth installment he had secured an extra 6,000 yuan in income, and that every future installment would also bring an extra 6,000 yuan, a smile naturally appeared at the corner of his mouth.

So much money gave him the idea of investing.

He understood that keeping money in the bank would not outpace inflation; it should be invested to make money generate more money.

But he did not have the energy for that right now.

Nor did he want to scatter his thoughts on investments.

He decided instead to focus on writing the novel well first, earn more royalties, and once the funds were larger and he had time during the holidays, then consider where to invest the money.

The simplest and safest approach, he felt, was investing in real estate.

Because the dramatic rise in housing prices over many years in the original timeline had left too deep an impression on him.

Many who sold their houses to invest in business, after struggling and working hard for over a decade, found the money they earned was not even enough to buy back the house they had sold back then.

He had also thought about investing in a novel website himself, then using his own novels to attract traffic, but after careful consideration, he felt this was not a particularly good choice.

First, managing a website would inevitably scatter much of his time and energy; if he handed it all over to others to manage, perhaps at some point the management team would take most of the employees and authors to start their own venture, at which point he would essentially be sewing a wedding dress for someone else.

Second, the money he had now, while a considerable sum for living alone, would be quickly drained if used to launch a website; renting space, buying servers, paying utilities, staff wages, and so on would likely empty him out before long. He did not want the royalties he had worked hard to earn to end up all going to pay rent and support employees.

Third...

He very much liked a line from "Revered Yin and Flipped Clouds," a line describing the male protagonist Lang Fanyun: "Because he could reach the extreme in emotion, he could reach the extreme in swordsmanship."

Because he liked this line, and the philosophy of life it contained, Cao Sheng had always preferred to focus on one thing at a time, firmly believing that only by concentrating on one matter could one achieve the ultimate in that matter.

Except for the accounting job.

In the original timeline, since he became a full-time writer, he no longer distracted himself with other things.

He never engaged in such things as writing two or three books simultaneously.

Even if he produced a flop, he would persist in writing until he gained some insight and felt confident he could write a work with better results; only then would he choose to conclude and start a new book.

He knew his approach was very foolish.

He had also heard of authors who frequently cut their books, and by cutting and cutting, eventually wrote a money-making work, earning far more than him.

But he remained as he was.

Always sticking to the path he had chosen.

Was there any benefit to doing this?

Sometimes, he too wavered, wanting to learn from those clever people: if a new book's results were unsatisfactory, immediately cut it with a sword, then quickly start a new book; perhaps by cutting and cutting, one would step onto the wind and make a fortune.

But he never did that.

Because every time he looked back, he always found that the authors who were his peers back then were becoming fewer and fewer; those clever people, by cutting and cutting, simply vanished without a trace.

And he, Cao Sheng, though still an old flop, could occasionally write one or two works with decent results; after more than a decade in the profession, countless authors had been eliminated, yet he could still continue to eat from this bowl.

Now, he had been reborn.

He still wanted to focus his main energy on writing.

He knew the prospects of this industry.

Authors earning millions, tens of millions, or even over a hundred million yuan annually would appear in the future.

If he, Cao Sheng, could become one of them, he would never lack money in this life.

So, what necessity was there to rack one's brains to manage some website?

He had imagined: if he opened a website and published his own works on his own site, he would become a competitor to other similar websites and would be suppressed and squeezed out by all of them together.

Conversely, he would become an object that all novel websites wanted to woo and treat well.

Perhaps, if the opportunity arose in the future, he would consider taking a stake in Rongshuxia, or Qidian, and similar websites, but only as a shareholder.

Later still, when opportunities arose with enterprises like Alibaba or Tencent, he would also take a stake.

And when the bull market in stocks he remembered arrived, he could simply take the chance to multiply his assets several times over.

Could he possibly lack money in this life?

Compared to racking one's brains to make money, he wanted more to continue improving himself in the online literature industry he had cultivated for many years, and then compete with the heroes of the world.

Time passed day by day.

Cao Sheng spent basically all his spare time outside of class typing up "I Wish to Become an Immortal," while in class he was mostly building the outline for "Divine Tomb."

His "Divine Tomb" and the "Divine Tomb" of the original timeline shared only the title and a similar synopsis.

As for the content within the book, since he truly could not recall how the original work was written, he could only compile the outline based on his own abilities.

This was not something that could be accomplished in a single day.

During this period, two things happened.

One was that on a certain evening, while he was on his way from class to the cafeteria, Chen Shuyun, his first love from the original timeline, called out to him, then, with a red face, handed him a love letter.

The other was that on the noon when the freshman military training was about to end, two fellow townspeople blocked Cao Sheng outside his classroom door.

Cao Sheng had a bit of an impression of these two fellow townspeople.

One was the senior sister who had led him through the registration procedures and taken him to the dormitory when he first arrived at Huizhou Teachers College back then.

The other was a student union cadre; Cao Sheng had seen her once at a fellow townspeople gathering shortly after enrollment, and later had encountered her a few times on campus.

And the purpose of their coming to find Cao Sheng this time was very simple—inviting Cao Sheng to attend this year's fellow townspeople gathering.

But Cao Sheng remembered that in the original timeline, he had only been invited to attend a fellow townspeople gathering once, which was the very first time he entered university.

How is it that in this current timeline, they want to invite me to attend again?

Is it because I am famous now?

So realistic, are they?

He politely declined, but these two fellow townspeople were very persistent; they kept following him, constantly persuading him, and even followed him all the way into the school cafeteria without giving up.

It was only when Cao Sheng's counselor, Lu Xiangwei, and the class monitor, Geng Yong, appeared with a woman of mature charm that Cao Sheng was rescued; this woman of mature charm wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, her face resembled a silver plate, and the moment she appeared, she captured Cao Sheng's gaze.

Because this woman reminded him of a peach.

As everyone knows, veteran drivers generally like this type of woman, and Cao Sheng was no exception.

Lu Xiangwei spoke with a smile: "Cao Sheng! Let me introduce you; this is Officer Huang, from our city's Writers Association. She has come specifically to invite you to join our city's Writers Association, so do not be negligent!"