Chapter 24

The number of people who pre-registered for the game continued to rise over time.

The entire afternoon.

The two happiest moments for Cai Qiu and Chen Wei were staring at their computer screens, refreshing the backend data every few minutes, and watching the numbers climb as they grinned uncontrollably.

They would occasionally pinch each other to confirm they weren’t dreaming.

Only heaven knew how much pressure they’d endured over the past year of entrepreneurship.

Graduates of a prestigious 985 university, from an A+ major.

Since childhood, they had been the “other people’s children” neighbors used as examples to scold their own kids.

Originally, after graduation, they should have landed respectable, enviable jobs at high-paying prestigious companies.

But in reality, none of that had anything to do with them over the past year.

During the toughest months, they were so destitute that even eating became a serious problem.

Their classmates who graduated with them had long left them far behind; every day the class group chat overflowed with good news.

One classmate joined a major company’s core team, another reached a salary of so-and-so, and so on.

Added to that, their families didn’t understand either.

As a result, last Lunar New Year, neither Cai Qiu nor Chen Wei dared to go home.

Once.

In the quiet of deep night, they had doubted themselves, wavered, and even recently, after Qin Xiaoyu’s car accident and injury, they seriously considered giving up their pursuit.

But in the end, they gritted their teeth and chose to take one last gamble. Now, it was clear they had won.

The painful past was about to fade; the dawn of hope was slowly drawing near.

Over a million pre-registrations.

According to the lowest industry standard, at least thirty percent of those would become actual players.

That still meant tens of thousands of users!

Besides,

the number kept rising, though the growth rate might slow slightly in the later stages.

But Cai Qiu and Chen Wei were certain the final player count would exceed half a million.

Even they themselves couldn’t believe such a number.

Even many renowned game studios, with major launch events, established reputations, and massive advertising campaigns, might not achieve such results.

After all,

many games from major studios failed every year.

With this volume of pre-registrations, even if only one-tenth of them became paying users, they’d make a fortune.

Perhaps

Qin Xiaoyu’s earlier promise of a Kulinan for everyone as a year-end bonus wasn’t just empty talk.

“Fish Brother, let’s revise the pre-registration reward—it’s already reached its peak!”

Cai Qiu, eyes fixed on the backend data, suggested excitedly.

When Qin Xiaoyu first instructed them to set up the pre-registration channel, they had never dared to set the target too high.