Chapter 659: I

"Little Joy" reached its narrative conclusion on July 23.

The final few children all successfully passed their entrance exams and enrolled in their dream universities, and all the conflicts and difficulties among the three families were smoothly resolved.

Originally, during the week following that, "Little Joy"'s influence, bolstered by its second broadcast run, remained strong, but it could no longer trend daily as it had during its premiere.

But on the evening of August 1st, a week after the drama's first run ended and the second run had already reached episode sixteen, another topic related to "Little Joy" climbed onto the trending list.

But this time, it had nothing to do with the plot.

Instead, it involved the original author of "Little Joy," who hadn't trended in a while.

【Author Chongran of "Little Joy" gives live bonus chapters for 985 university freshmen at signing event】

The popularity began rising in the afternoon and peaked by eight or nine at night, reaching fifth place on the trending list.

Clicking in revealed footage from the signing event: fans pulling out their admission letters while Li Luo walked over to carefully inspect them.

But entering the comment section was even more overwhelming—hundreds of people were posting their own admission letters.

To be fair, this kind of thing should normally appear under topics about university admission letters, yet here it had gathered under this particular trending topic.

Some even uploaded proof videos holding their admission letters, so readers of "Night Watch of Great Qian" could use them to request bonus chapters.

After all, the author's bonus chapter condition required first joining the full-subscription group.

In plain terms, you had to be at least a legitimate reader.

This had already filtered out many people.

But the top-performing students who read pirated copies still managed to get their admission letters out and asked fellow readers to help them.

So from the moment this trending topic went live and continuing for the following days, Ying Chanxi was utterly swamped.

After the news spread first among the students of Fuyi High School, many who loved to stir up trouble rushed to join in.

Although Fuyi High School sends only a handful of students each year to Tsinghua or Peking University—sometimes depending on luck and performance—it still produces about a hundred students annually who enter 985 universities.

Of these, seventy to eighty are headed to Qianjiang University; the rest go to lower-tier 985 universities outside the province with relatively lower admission scores.

With admission letters arriving recently and word spreading in the class group, everyone rushed to join the trend.

Even those who didn't read "Night Watch of Great Qian" or had always read pirated copies, unwilling to spend the subscription fee, could ask their full-subscription classmates to help.

There were countless people trying to take advantage.

Fortunately, Li Luo had entrusted this task to Ying Chanxi.

Ying Chanxi initially thought the task was simple—just verify whether the person was real.

She figured asking them to take a selfie holding their admission letter and comparing it to their photo would be enough.

But Ying Chanxi quickly realized this wouldn't work.

Because there were simply too many people.

If she approved them all, the number might reach over a thousand!

If Li Luo added one bonus chapter per person, that would mean at least one to two million words!

His current book had only reached eight or nine hundred thousand words so far!

Thinking of this, Ying Chanxi felt a pang of pain.

So she set up a stricter threshold.

Not only would they check the admission letter, but she would also make a video call to confirm the person's identity.

Even so, some might slip through, but at least she'd filtered out a large number of people just causing trouble.

After several days of frantic work and organization, as the popularity faded and fewer people came forward, Ying Chanxi finally reported her results to Li Luo.

"Three hundred and forty-seven people," Ying Chanxi said helplessly. "I've made a spreadsheet and sent it to your email. You handle it yourself—they're all verified as real."

Li Luo was mid-writing when he heard her, and immediately sucked in a sharp breath.

"How are there so many?"

"What did you expect?" Ying Chanxi rolled her eyes at him. "Bro, think for a second—you've got over sixty thousand average subscriptions for your new book. Of course there are a lot."

"My highest subscription is only a bit over one hundred thousand," Li Luo said, dumbfounded. "That means, counting everyone who paid even one jiao, there are only a hundred thousand or so legitimate readers."

"And out of them, over three hundred are 985 freshmen from this year's college entrance exam?"

"All of them are such good students—and they still read online novels?!"

Ying Chanxi gave him another look, too tired to argue, and walked sluggishly to the bed, plopping face-down with a thump: "I'm exhausted from these past few days. There might still be a few stragglers, but not many."

Seeing how worn out she was, Li Luo set aside the bonus chapter issue for now, walked over to the bed, and began massaging her shoulders: "You've worked hard—let me give you a massage."

"Mmm~" Ying Chanxi let out a soft hum, closing her eyes in pleasure. "Actually, my hands are killing me—I've been clicking QQ nonstop. My fingers are numb."

"I'll rub them for you," Li Luo said, taking her small hand and sitting beside the bed, gently kneading it. "Better?"

Ying Chanxi buried her face in the pillow, nodding slowly to show she was comfortable.

Then she pulled her hands back, rolled onto her back, and placed both palms into Li Luo's hands.

While enjoying his massage, she asked: "So what are you going to do now? Really add three hundred and forty-seven chapters?"

"After all, I promised the readers," Li Luo said with a smile. "But I'll need to impose some limits."

"What do you mean?"

"Qidian's full-time standard is four thousand words per day—that's the daily minimum, like You Yu," Li Luo said simply. "Any words written beyond that will count as bonus chapters."

"At the normal minimum of two thousand words per chapter, three hundred and forty-seven bonus chapters equals about seven hundred thousand words…"

"Seven hundred thousand…" Li Luo couldn't help letting out a bitter laugh.

He'd truly dug himself a hole.

Originally, he thought students who read novels and were willing to pay for legitimate copies were rare.

Moreover, students with better grades usually spent less time immersed in online novels.

Even if some did, they were few.

He'd assumed the maximum would be forty or fifty.

Even if it's a hundred or more, it's still barely acceptable—just an extra two or three hundred thousand words.

His backlog can easily handle it.

It could also generate another wave of heat, riding this momentum to push up the average subscription count.

At this stage, Li Luo actually had a small ambition: to challenge the first 100,000-average-subscription milestone on Qidian's main site.

After all, in his previous life, Qidian's first 100,000-average-subscription novel, I Am Really Not a Star, hadn't even been published yet.

Only after I Am Really Not a Star concluded at the end of 2018, and some time passed afterward, did the novel slowly surpass the 100,000-average-subscription mark after its completion.

Even then, it achieved this only because I Am Really Not a Star seized the peak moment of the Chapter Comments feature, stood out with its meme-driven, humorous style, repeatedly battled for the monthly vote rankings, and received a series of heat boosts.

Even The Holy Land, which was then at the height of its popularity, failed to reach this goal—making it clear how difficult it was.

After all, in this era, finding pirated resources of a novel was simply too easy.

But as time progressed, the audience for online novels was gradually being dominated by post-90s and even post-00s readers.

These people grew up in relatively better living conditions and had far stronger awareness of legitimate copies than the older generation.

Combined with later anti-piracy policies, this allowed Qidian to enter the era of 100,000-average-subscription novels.

And Li Luo knew well that to achieve 100,000-average-subscription in this era of rampant piracy, internal site traffic alone was far from enough.

That's why he launched his new novel right when Chapter Comments first emerged, to reap the first wave of its benefits.

He repeatedly leveraged Yuan Wanqing's concerts, the college entrance exam, the provincial top scorer's identity, the traffic from Little Joy, and this time's admission letter exchange for extra chapters—all for the same purpose.

This caused his novel, since its launch on June 1st, to rise from under 30,000 initial subscriptions to nearly 70,000 average subscriptions in just two months.

His current word count, though he updates ten thousand words daily, is still only 950,000 words.

Tremendous potential remains!

But now he's gone too far.

He's fallen behind by 700,000 words of extra chapters…

It seems he won't be able to relax for half the summer vacation.

Li Luo squeezed Ying Chanxi's small hand, feeling a mix of amusement and helplessness.

But the good news was, for I Am Really Not a Star, Li Luo had always kept a backlog of roughly 300,000 words.

And that novel only required four thousand words of daily updates—enough backlog to last two or three months.

So after organizing his thoughts, Li Luo had made his decision.

"From now until school starts, I plan to lock myself in and write," Li Luo said. "After tonight's graduation banquet ends, I'll attend Professor Kong's wedding, and after that, I won't leave home again."

As he spoke, Li Luo traced his hand along Ying Chanxi's wrist, down her arm, then shifted to her thighs, massaging slowly, all the way to her toes.

Ying Chanxi had been listening attentively to his plans, but gradually realized this troublemaker had slipped his hand onto her feet, gently playing with them in his palm.

In the past, even though she was shy, Ying Chanxi had always wished Li Luo would play with and touch her feet more.

But since Yan Zhusheng said she was only attractive to Li Luo because of her feet—since she had no other appealing qualities—Ying Chanxi now felt a little unhappy whenever Li Luo touched her feet.

So she huffed, pulled her feet away, sat up on the bed, jumped off, and said, "You go ahead and write hard—I'll go cut you some fruit."

Li Luo had just gotten his hands on them when Ying Chanxi slipped away. He sat on the edge of the bed, momentarily stunned, thinking: This script doesn't feel right.

In the old script, wouldn't Xixi have blushed and let him play with her feet?

Why did she run off?

Li Luo stood up from the bed's edge, returned to his desk with regret, sighed softly, still feeling unsatisfied.

Finally, he refocused his attention back on writing.

But before that, he opened his email, pulled up the list of admission letters Ying Chanxi sent him, and copied eight names.

Then he opened his author backend, selected four of his backlog chapters, each around four thousand words.

After adding the phrase "Extra chapter for student XXX," Li Luo posted a total of 16,000 words of extra chapters in one go.

Immediately after, he wrote a special chapter note, briefly outlining his upcoming extra-chapter plan.

He stated he would update at least 20,000 words daily: 4,000 as base update, and the remaining 16,000 counted as eight extra chapters.

He also revealed his current deficit: a staggering 347 chapters!

In word count, that's 700,000 words!

This instantly set readers' blood boiling.

Li Luo also mentioned that on August 26th, he would be starting university and had to attend military training, with a flood of new tasks awaiting him.

So in the next twenty days, he would try his best to write more, hoping to repay the 700,000-word deficit as soon as possible.

To be honest, from both readers' and other authors' perspectives, Li Luo's decision seemed insane.

After all, at this time, Eagle was still writing Rebirth of Wealth Rolling In, and hadn't yet awakened his "monster who writes 20,000–30,000 words daily" soul.

Right now, the only author on the entire internet who could achieve such extreme bursts might be Li Luo alone.

Especially since he had already once burst with 100,000 words in a single day over a month ago, and had largely maintained ten-thousand-word daily updates for over two months.

And yet, he was still raising his burst output even higher.

And still maintaining a remarkably high level of plot quality.

This was utterly insane.

But for Li Luo, who possessed the Memory Palace, he truly had an enormous advantage.

Merely recalling memories without consuming mental energy already made him comparable to a human computer.

So what limited his writing speed was often just his typing speed.

Otherwise, with his Memory Palace operating at full efficiency, he was practically an all-around author equipped with AI retrieval capabilities.

"I saw your special chapter note," Ying Chanxi walked in with a fruit tray after cutting the fruit, her face filled with concern. "You must prioritize your health—don't push yourself too hard with burst updates."

"I know," Li Luo nodded and smiled. "There's nothing else left to do now anyway. Focusing on writing isn't bad."

"If you need anything, just tell me," Ying Chanxi said gently beside him. "If you're locking yourself in to write seriously, I'll stay by your side the whole time."

"Hmm... if you must know what I need, there is indeed one thing."

"What?"

"First, sit down."

"Mm."

"Then take off your slippers."

"Like this?"

"Yes, now lift your foot up—perfect."

"You... why do you like touching my feet so much!"

"Hey, don't go! Didn't you promise you'd fulfill any request I make?"

"Get away!" Ying Chanxi stormed out of the room, thinking: I'd have let you touch my chest, and this is all you want? "We're heading to the hotel for the graduation banquet soon—go write your damn words!"

(End of Chapter)