Chapter 788: Taking Shape

After a brief chat with the Platinum big shot, Li Luo used his afternoon class time to contact several staff members from the Writers' Association secretariat via WeChat.

After being elected vice-chairman of the Online Novel Writers' Association, Li Luo had added a bunch of people on WeChat, including the other vice-chairmen and the chairman, some council members, and various casual association members.

In addition, there were the WeChat contacts of the staff responsible for the association's daily operations.

Many people misunderstand this, thinking that once a writer joins the association, it's like passing some kind of civil service exam and earning a fixed salary.

In reality, even the chairman of the association receives no salary unless they are a full-time, resident position holder; at most, they get symbolic meal and transportation subsidies when attending association meetings or events.

Only positions like the standing vice-chairman, which require daily on-site office duties within the association, receive regular salaries.

As for ordinary association members, they get no subsidies or salary—they even have to pay membership fees themselves.

Li Luo is currently a part-time vice-chairman; this position is purely voluntary and public-service oriented for him.

But since he holds this position, there are naturally some implicit benefits.

For example, right now.

After chatting with the secretariat staff, Li Luo quickly received an email from them with a document attached.

It was a blank form titled "Recommendation Letter for Key Support Works in the Qianjiang Province Cultural Excellence Project."

This round of key support projects has fifty slots total across the province; as the provincial capital, Yuhang City was allocated fifteen slots.

Of those, ten slots belong to the city's Writers' Association, and their Online Novel Writers' Association received only five.

But even these five represent a huge step forward for online literature.

After all, not long ago, online novels weren't even allowed to sit at the same table as traditional literature.

Now being able to share slots is already quite good.

Li Luo had just been elected vice-chairman and hadn't yet enjoyed this benefit; if he submits a work now, and the other vice-chairmen and the chairman don't interfere, selection is guaranteed.

This is one of the implicit advantages of serving as a part-time vice-chairman.

If there were no benefits, how could any writer who earned the vice-chairman position by merit possibly be earning less than a few million a year?

Once you have money, you want power—it's always been this way since ancient times.

In his past life, Li Luo had little interest in the Writers' Association; back then he was a nobody, and Xu Youyu had taken him to one writers' gathering, which was an unpleasant experience.

At the time, he felt joining the association brought zero tangible benefit to his online novel writing, so his impression of it was mediocre.

But now that he sits in the vice-chairman's seat, his perspective has naturally shifted with his position.

The association is great.

Contributing to the association's development is only natural.

As Li Luo thought this, he was already planning how to fill out Xu Youyu's recommendation letter.

While pondering these things, the afternoon class ended quickly.

Ying Chanxi drove to his classroom building, picked up Li Luo, and headed to Shidai Tianjie.

But this wasn't a date—they had scheduled a meeting with the office building manager at Shidai Tianjie; the meal was for business, discussing future office rental arrangements.

"Didn't we already rent space for an office?" Li Luo asked as he stepped out of the car and followed Ying Chanxi into the elevator.

"We only rented fifty square meters back then," Ying Chanxi said, hugging his arm and pressing against him. "We gave it all to Zhao Rongjun's small team—they're five or six people, and it's already packed. We'll definitely need to rent more."

"Planning to start hiring?"

"Mm." Ying Chanxi nodded lightly. "I wrote a few job postings today and plan to post them on a few websites."

"Here, I expect to hire fifteen to twenty employees, so we'll probably need another three hundred square meters of office space."

"We need to plan for offices for each department, as well as places like livestream studios."

"Livestream studios?" Li Luo raised an eyebrow. "We're doing that too?"

"Of course," Ying Chanxi rolled her eyes. "TikTok livestreaming—you don't know about it?"

"I thought TikTok hadn't launched livestreaming yet," Li Luo mused, stroking his chin. "But the contract mentioned…"

"I mean Yuan Auntie's livestream," Ying Chanxi reminded him. "TikTok wants to pilot livestreaming, and the best way is to use Yuan Auntie's popularity to break in."

Livestreaming is already dominated by several big companies; for TikTok to overtake them, they have to do something.

This is a great opportunity for them.

"That's true," Li Luo nodded in understanding. "Then go ahead as you said—I'll rely on you for this stretch."

"You'd better appreciate how hard I'm working," Ying Chanxi huffed, clinging to his arm. "So how are you going to repay me?"

"Like this?" Li Luo smiled, leaned down, and kissed her soft cheek.

Just then, the elevator stopped at the first floor; the doors opened and two girls walked in, seeing the scene.

Ying Chanxi blushed instantly, gave Li Luo a light punch, and whispered, "Don't kiss me like that in public—everyone saw!"

"Is this repayment good enough?" Li Luo whispered with a chuckle near her ear.

"How can this count?" Ying Chanxi huffed. "It's clearly a reward for you—not repayment."

"Then what should I do?" Li Luo laughed. "Offer myself to you?"

"Well…" Ying Chanxi was tempted, and her lips slipped out an answer: "It's not impossible."

"Does this count as the CEO sexually harassing an employee?" Li Luo teased.

"What?" Ying Chanxi widened her eyes, scowled at him. "You're the company's major shareholder—you're the one sexually harassing me."

"Am I sexually harassing you?" Li Luo chuckled, his left hand around her waist squeezing firmly. "I haven't even done anything worse yet."

"What are you talking about…" Ying Chanxi blushed, pushing him away.

The elevator reached the fourth floor; they stepped out together, pausing their teasing, and arrived at the reserved restaurant to meet the building manager.

Over dinner, Ying Chanxi secured a three-hundred-square-meter office space on the tenth floor, to sign the contract tomorrow.

Since office renovation and layout are involved—especially for specialized spaces like livestream studios—there are many complicated procedures.

All these matters require Ying Chanxi to oversee personally.

And she was happy to be busy with these tasks, helping Li Luo shoulder the burdens; otherwise, even with his Memory Palace, if Li Luo tried to handle everything alone, he'd be utterly exhausted.

Ying Chanxi didn't want to become a disposable ornament, though she knew Li Luo was now very wealthy, and that wasn't a reason for her to slack off and enjoy life.

"When do Junge and the others usually stay in the office?" After dinner, Li Luo had nothing else to do, so he asked Ying Chanxi.

"They should be there right now." Ying Chanxi thought back. "Yinghuan said they're basically always in the office except when they're in class or sleeping."

"Oh wait."

"They even sleep over there—sometimes when they work late, they're too lazy to go back to the dorm, so they just bought a few folding beds in the office and drop right to sleep."

"So hardworking?" Li Luo was surprised, a little amused and exasperated.

"It's a proper school project," Ying Chanxi said. "The team members were introduced by Xin Yan—she even asked me about it back then."

"We had some contacts in the Student Union Secretariat at our Zhu Institute, so we helped connect them."

"The seniors on the team have each participated in at least two official competitions; one even won an award."

"They all seem to have high hopes for this project and are fully committed."

Li Luo hadn't expected such passion from them—after all, the school had only allocated a few ten thousand yuan in project funding.

Even if they made it to the Dandelion Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, how far they'd go was still uncertain.

But for these third- and fourth-year students, having such an opportunity was already rare.

Especially the experience of directly participating in a school project—it could all go on their resumes later.

With nothing else to do, Li Luo took Ying Chanxi's small hand and walked with her to the tenth floor of the Shidai Tianjie office building.

Under Ying Chanxi's guidance, they found the office where Zhao Rongjun and the others worked.

Pushing the door open, Li Luo saw the team members furiously typing on their keyboards.

So absorbed were they that they didn't even notice someone had entered.

Only when Zhao Rongjun spotted Li Luo and Ying Chanxi did he immediately stand up to greet them, and the others snapped back to awareness.

Li Luo gave a simple greeting, signaled them to keep going, and said he'd just take a look around.

Not long after, footsteps sounded outside the door.

"Hello~"

Xu Yinghuan burst in full of energy, two large bags of boxed meals in her hands. "Dinner's here! Huh?"

As soon as she spoke, Xu Yinghuan noticed Li Luo and Ying Chanxi too, and her face lit up: "Why are you here? Have you eaten yet?"

"We already ate," Li Luo waved his hand. "You guys eat first."

While they ate, Li Luo briefly learned about the progress of the software design.

But since he didn't understand computers, he could only grasp a few basic things.

After a quick overview, he patted his butt and took his leave, telling them to keep going.

After delivering dinner, Xu Yinghuan didn't linger—she was heading back to the dorm anyway, so she hitched a ride with Li Luo and Ying Chanxi.

On the way, Xu Yinghuan asked Li Luo some questions about Douyin videos.

Li Luo, reminded by her, suddenly thought of something and turned to Ying Chanxi: "Didn't Douyin have some kind of warm-up campaign?"

"They have lots of warm-up campaigns— which one are you talking about?" Ying Chanxi asked, puzzled.

"The one about shooting collaborative videos," Li Luo reminded her. "Didn't they say they wanted to find some currently popular Douyin influencers and film simple collabs with Aunt Yuan?"

"There is something like that," Ying Chanxi nodded. "Over the past week, quite a few influencers will probably fly to Yuhang City specifically to meet Aunt Yuan."

"Then isn't this perfect?" Li Luo raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Would it be too much to ask Douyin to add one more person?"

"You mean…?" Hearing this, Ying Chanxi instantly understood, turned to look at Xu Yinghuan in the backseat, then looked away. "I get it. I'll ask Miao Yifeng tomorrow when I have time."

"Yeah, ask them—it's just about shifting a bit of traffic."

"What? What?" Xu Yinghuan was completely lost, having no idea what was going on. "Are we shooting a collab video? And it's related to Aunt Yuan?"

"Aunt Yuan is officially joining Douyin," Ying Chanxi explained simply. "Last week we went to Jingzhao City specifically to sign contracts—including Zhu Sheng and Li Luo too."

"Ohhh!" Xu Yinghuan suddenly got it. "I think I saw news about this these past two days—so that's what it was!"

"Douyin's promotion push will be huge. If you can film a collab video with Aunt Yuan and have it placed in Douyin's backend-tagged traffic pool, the benefits will be substantial," Li Luo analyzed simply. "Tell Junge about this—if it's feasible, you two should find time to shoot one."

"No problem!" Xu Yinghuan patted her chest enthusiastically. Then she hesitated, thinking of something, and added, "But if that's the case, shouldn't we discuss something?"

"Huh? What's up?"

"It was Junge who privately reminded me," Xu Yinghuan whispered. "He said all our video ideas came from you, and now you're giving us this kind of resource…"

"So I agree with Junge—why don't we sign an agency contract with your company too?"

"Like Zhu Sheng did—she told me she signed an artist contract with your company, right?"

Hearing this, Li Luo frowned slightly, thinking Zhao Rongjun was being too formal.

But after a moment's thought, he understood something, and his brow relaxed. He turned to Ying Chanxi: "What do you think, Xixi?"

"I think it's fine," Ying Chanxi nodded. "We can make the profit split more generous, and in return, the company's obligations can be reduced."

"Business is business—this way, when you give them ideas in the future, you won't have to worry about them feeling awkward."

Ying Chanxi understood Zhao Rongjun's personality well—he was uncomfortable always taking advantage of Li Luo.

Signing a contract would benefit everyone.

"Then it's settled—Xixi, have Tian the lawyer draft a contract."

"No rush," Ying Chanxi smiled. "Once I've built up our company's legal department, these small things can be handed off to them."

Ying Chanxi was thoughtful—her planning for Chongran Culture was becoming increasingly seamless.