Chapter 8: Publish

At 11 p. m., the teaching building's lights went out.

Cao Sheng, who had written two chapters of manuscript tonight, packed his things, left the teaching building, and walked unhurriedly toward the school gate.

The reason he walked unhurriedly was that he estimated the all-night internet cafe shift hadn't started yet at this hour; arriving early would be useless.

Once outside the school gate, one could immediately see several snack stalls set up on the sidewalk not far away, where some young men and women were already eating.

Cao Sheng felt a bit hungry, so he walked over and ordered a portion of spicy hot pot.

On a late night in this season, it was still quite cold; eating some hot spicy hot pot would make his stomach feel more comfortable and his body warmer.

Eating scalding hot spicy hot pot in the cold night wind felt uniquely flavorful.

After eating and drinking his fill, he walked forward along the school's western wall; he remembered there were several internet cafes in that direction.

However, this was outside the school, and Huizhou was no major city; the streetlights at night were dim, and some were even broken.

Those with timid hearts might not dare to walk this road alone at night.

Cao Sheng didn't care.

He didn't know whether it was because domestic security was too good, or because he himself carried an air of aggressive poverty; in any case, in his original timeline he lived to be forty, walked many night roads, and never encountered a single bad person.

Occasionally, when meeting strangers on the road at midnight, the other party would usually keep their distance with an alert expression.

Moments later, Cao Sheng arrived at a small internet cafe named Starry Sky.

This internet cafe was a self-built house converted for the purpose; each room inside held about ten computers, and the boss was an older young man wearing glasses, with an honest-looking face.

In his original timeline, whenever Cao Sheng went out to surf the internet, it was to this internet cafe; he had a good impression of the boss, so tonight he came here.

After asking the boss a couple of questions and paying fifteen yuan for the all-night fee, the boss opened a computer for him, and Cao Sheng's all-night session officially began.

Cao Sheng noticed that most people in the internet cafe were playing games.

He had little interest in games and knew little about them, recognizing only "Red Alert" and "Age of Empires."

He also saw people watching movies and TV dramas on computers, while others browsed forums or listened to music.

No one was chatting on QQ.

Because QQ did not exist yet this year.

Cao Sheng opened a document on his computer, flipped through the manuscript he had brought, and, using the light from the computer screen, typed one sentence from the manuscript onto the keyboard blindly for every sentence he read.

It was very awkward.

First, the manuscript written on scratch paper required him to lean close to see clearly under the light of the computer screen.

Since it was already all-night hours, the boss had turned off most of the lights in the internet cafe; at this hour, even if the boss were willing to turn the lights on, the other all-night patrons would protest.

Therefore, Cao Sheng did not suggest to the boss that the lights be turned on.

Second, the keyboard in this internet cafe was very difficult to use.

Before his transmigration, because he typed full-time, he used keyboards that were carefully selected.

Although they were not expensive, each time he changed keyboards he only bought ones costing around a hundred yuan, but what era was that? The keyboard quality around 2020 was far superior to the keyboards used in internet cafes now.

Moreover, the keyboards he bought were short-travel, electrostatic-capacitance types very suitable for typing.

The effort required to type was about the same as that of a laptop's built-in keyboard.

And now?

The key travel on the keyboard before him was so long that typing with the force he was used to previously simply wouldn't register characters; to make characters appear, he had to strike the keys hard, and after typing only a few hundred characters, Cao Sheng felt his fingertips going slightly numb.

Very unaccustomed!

But he knew he had to get used to it, because the computer hardware level of this era was limited; even if he changed to another internet cafe, the keyboards would be much the same.

Only after he earned money and bought a laptop would the feeling of typing become somewhat comfortable.

Time passed slowly.

In the internet cafe, some people were still playing games; some quietly watched movies and TV dramas; some got up to buy instant noodles from the boss, filling the internet cafe with the smell of instant noodles, and of course, cigarette smoke.

Since its inception, the internet cafe seemed to have carried the smell of smoke.

Cao Sheng wore headphones, listened to looping music, blocked out external sounds, and still gradually typed the manuscript from the scratch paper into the document on the computer.

He had gradually adapted to the keyboard before him.

It was just that his typing speed was still not as fast as before his transmigration.

Before his transmigration, he could type about two thousand five hundred to three thousand characters per hour.

And tonight, without needing to think about the plot, merely transcribing the manuscript into the computer, he could only barely input about two thousand characters per hour.

After inputting every two thousand characters, he would take a temporary break.

When the sky outside the window began to lighten, he had only uploaded ten thousand characters to the computer.

To prevent the manuscript uploaded to the computer from being lost due to a sudden computer crash in the internet cafe, after uploading every two thousand characters, he saved a copy to his email account.

Yes, email accounts already existed now.

Tonight, he had specially registered an email account.

Before registering the account, when he searched for email, he discovered that China's first email service had only gone online last November.

It had only been a month or so since then.

If his transmigration point had been a little earlier, there would have been no email available.

At this moment, Cao Sheng, having already uploaded ten thousand characters, relaxed completely.

He did not plan to continue uploading the manuscript today.

He was tired.

After sitting in his seat for a while to rest and drinking two sips of cold boiled water, he logged into the Rongshu Xia website.

Silently, he registered an author account, browsed the site for a while; on this still very primitive literary website, what was currently published were all short pieces.

There were short essays, there were poems, and there were diary-style mood shares.

The only thing missing was a medium- to long-form story.

At least, he hadn't found one.

A speck of ash on the Central Plains…

Cao Sheng glanced at the pen name he had just registered, smiled silently, and began posting his new book, *The Days I Lived with a Flight Attendant*.

He didn't know whether this book of his would ever get a chance to be published.

If there was no chance of publication, then posting this book online now would earn him not a single cent — it would be pure passion-fueled creation.

That was also the main reason he only planned to write this book to a length of two or three hundred thousand characters.

Passion-fueled creation, after all! The wattage produced is naturally limited.

If it weren't for snatching the title of "founder of online literature," he wouldn't have written this book at all, let alone posted it online right now.

To make the serialization run of this short work last a bit longer, Cao Sheng didn't post much today — besides the title and synopsis, he only posted the first chapter today.

Moreover, he didn't plan to update every day.

He had long since decided: at most, one chapter every three days.

If circumstances required, he could even update just one chapter a week.

Anyway, since that book *First Intimate Contact* hadn't been posted yet, his *The Days I Lived with a Flight Attendant* was very likely the first online novel, with no competitors — so of course there was no need to compete with others on update speed.

Most importantly — he wanted to give this book a longer time to spread.

If he updated too fast, the book's fame might not have had time to spread before the serialization ended.

And a work that doesn't catch fire during its serialization is hard for people to remember and discuss with others.