Chapter 26: If You Dare to Use Me, I Dare to Spend

"Retail, you can earn seven or eight yuan a day at most, and you have to deal with street hooligans.

Wholesale starts at a hundred catties, and you can clear the money and goods in five minutes if you find the right person......."

Li Ye gave Hao Jian a lecture on business, and within a few minutes, Hao Jian's eyes were shining brightly.

The various wholesale markets that emerged in the Great Heavenly Dynasty in the late eighties gave birth to countless "wealthy families," the typical representative of which is the place where the story of "Chicken Feathers Flying to the Sky" happened.

These wholesale markets still have strong vitality many years later, so facts have proved that wholesale is a relatively easy way to make money.

The provincial capital is only forty kilometers away from Qingshui County, with a large population and a group of middle-to-high income people, which is a potential treasure land waiting to be developed.

Although malt candy is an inconspicuous snack, it meets all the requirements for opening market channels and initial capital accumulation, so Li Ye chose Hao Jian to let him stand in front and test the water for himself.

Hao Jian was already moved, but he didn't blindly agree to Li Ye, but stated his own difficulties.

"Brother, to tell you the truth, my family is in great need of money, and I am willing to go to the provincial capital to break through, but I have no capital!"

Hao Jian usually only tosses a basin of malt candy, twenty catties at most. The cost is five or six yuan, and the turnover is more than ten yuan. If he wants to do a wholesale business of a hundred catties, he can't take out so much money.

Li Ye thought for a while and asked: "How much capital do you lack?"

Hao Jian gritted his teeth and said: "At least fifty yuan, and a bicycle."

After making these two requests, Hao Jian

After all, just calculating the cost of over a hundred jin of hemp candy, one knows that the two requests Hao Jian put forward basically mean that he himself is not willing to spend a single cent.

But Li Ye said, "Then hurry up and go to the provincial capital! If you feel it's feasible, come find me at the County No. 2 Middle School."

Hao Jian watched as Li Ye dropped that one sentence and walked away, and he didn't snap out of it for a long while.

【Did he... agree?】

Hao Jian still found it hard to believe.

If it had been an hour ago, Hao Jian would have still regarded Li Ye as a "child" easy to fool, but now, there wasn't a shred of belittling in his heart.

Li Ye first took Hao Jian to retrieve the hemp candy, then explained the concept of "wholesale" to him, and then gave Hao Jian five yuan in "activity funds."

This series of decisions was so crisp, decisive, and efficient that it made Hao Jian feel he wasn't facing an eighteen or nineteen-year-old youth, but the village chief who had the final say in the village.

After being dazed for a long time, Hao Jian finally shook off his stupor and walked toward the county hospital against the cold wind.

He had to get medicine for the children at home first; since he had money in hand anyway, he might as well get a few more bottles and spend a yuan or two.

Hao Jian had never been a pedantic person. Although he still didn't quite understand why Li Ye trusted him so much, he had a vague guess that there must be something on him that Li Ye needed, something of value for Li Ye to utilize.

If you dare to use me, I dare to spend.

Lice don't bite when there are too many, and debts don't worry when they are too many; what else can you do to me?

Anyway, I'm not losing out.

On this side, Hao Jian felt he wasn't losing out, and on that side, Li Ye also felt satisfied.

Hao Jian only calculated the financial costs and felt that this partnership was a loss for Li Ye.

But Li Ye had calculated more comprehensively the labor costs and the more important risk costs.

In this day and age, there are still risks in running a private business. He intended to cultivate Hao Jian as an agent while he stayed hidden in the background; if any problems arose, there would be room for maneuver and mediation.

Li Ye knew Hao Jian was a "crafty merchant," but for their "entrepreneurial" type of business, what was needed wasn't an honest and loyal ox, but rather a fierce general with ambition and courage.

In this day and age, it's not that you have ambition that's scary, but that you don't dare to act. As long as you "act," you have taken the most important first step.

As for whether Hao Jian could be controlled by Li Ye in the future, that was a matter for later. To earn the first pot of gold, one must take a step and try, right?

Returning to the County No. 2 Middle School, Li Ye headed straight for his dormitory.

After arriving at the dormitory, he took out a stack of banknotes from the cotton batting inside his pillow and counted them; there were one hundred and five yuan in total.

This was all the capital Li Ye could currently mobilize, most of which he had saved over the past few months.

After all, there used to be Lu Jingyao, so he couldn't keep much money in his pocket.

Now his family gave him thirty or forty yuan every month; meal money for two dishes a meal was only ten-something yuan a month, and a pack of Daqian Sect every two days was only six or seven yuan a month.

At this time, there were no pay-to-win games, so no matter how he spent it, he couldn't finish it; he simply couldn't spend it all.

But if he really started the money-making plan to the provincial capital with Hao Jian, this "huge sum" of over a hundred yuan wouldn't be enough.

The capital for small-scale operations in the early stages should be enough, but if they were to diversify and do something else later, or even send Hao Jian south to catch the tide and stir the sea, it wouldn't be playable without ten thousand or eight thousand in capital.

【Let's leave it at that for now; earning some pocket money is also not bad.】

Li Ye thought for a moment and wasn't too anxious. His basic requirement was to earn enough money to live comfortably before getting into university next year.

"Wrapped in a hundred thousand strings of cash, riding a crane down to Yangzhou"—he had tasted enough of the difference between a college life with money and one without in his previous life.

In the afternoon, as soon as Li Ye entered the classroom, he saw a circle of people around Xia Yue, among whom were many from other classes, all excited and envious, looking very abnormal.

Li Ye glanced a few times and didn't pay attention, but after walking to his seat and sitting down, Xia Yue began to speak strangely with pointed remarks.

"As educated youth of the new era, we must use our own knowledge to create a beautiful life. Ten years of hard study has condensed our fighting spirit and given us the power of pride..."

"We must never be like parasites, relying on our parents and family, enjoying superior material conditions while still unsatisfied, and even looking down on our classmates spiritually..."

Li Ye coldly raised his eyelids and happened to meet Xia Yue's provocative gaze, immediately understanding that she was pointing at the mulberry to curse the locust tree.

It was just that perhaps Li Ye's gaze was too sharp, or perhaps Xia Yue had been scared by Li Ye recently; she only had eye contact with Li Ye for a fraction of a second before turning her head to look elsewhere.

It was like a little Teddy dog with a rope around its neck, barking joyfully, suddenly seeing a "down-to-earth" Chinese rural dog and instantly feeling suppressed.

But Xia Yue's words resonated with many people around, who chimed in one after another, making Li Ye feel somewhat ridiculous.

Ten years of hard study is indeed worthy of affirmation, but family conditions should not be despised.

Countless students from humble backgrounds become first-generation wealthy through their own efforts, so shouldn't their next generation spend their father's money with peace of mind?

Looking at problems rationally and constantly making up for one's own shortcomings is the only way to surpass those pioneers and beat the waves of the past to death on the beach.

A person may be poor but not lack ambition; the key lies in "ambition," not in poverty.

Li Ye was in no mood to argue with them. Xia Yue and the others hadn't named names, so why bother stepping in that dog shit?

But he still wanted to know the ins and outs of the matter, so he asked his deskmate Watching Wen Leyu what was going on.

Watching Wen Leyu curled her lips and said, "Lu Jingyao wrote a letter to Xia Yue, showing off that she published a poem and earned five yuan and fifty cents in royalties... She spent so much of your money before, and now that she's earned money once, she feels free and noble..."

"Royalties?" Li Ye felt a sudden flash of insight.

"Yeah, only five yuan and fifty cents?" Watching Wen Leyu said in a low voice, sounding quite comforting.

But Li Ye's mood was different now.

That's right, I can earn royalties!

Is the "copycat" routine tacky?

Tacky, very tacky.

Is the model of earning royalties rotten?

Rotten, very rotten.

But it cannot be denied that earning royalties in this era is the most direct, simplest, most effective, and risk-free way to make money.

No need to run errands, no need to go out, no need to bow and scrape to customers; as long as you have paper and a pen, and stories in your head, you can exchange them for money.

Li Ye felt it was reliable, especially now that the government had just clarified the royalty standards.

Actually, if one were to discuss it seriously, the royalties in the Great Celestial Empire have always been declining.

Not to mention the days when Lu Xun became a celebrity through royalties, even after '77, authors who lived on royalties experienced a very nourishing spring.

In '77, the State Publishing Administration issued the "Notice on Trial Implementation of Newspaper and Publishing Remuneration and Subsidy Measures," stipulating that author royalties were 2-7 yuan per thousand words.

In '80, the State Publishing Bureau formulated a new royalty standard, raising it to 3-10 yuan per thousand words. For the next ten-plus years, author royalties were in the form of "basic royalties + additional print run royalties."

And by '84, this standard was raised again to the level of 6-20 yuan per thousand words.

In this era where a jin of pork is less than a yuan and rice is two-something mao a jin, this royalty standard is extremely high.

Think about it! A worker's monthly salary is only thirty or forty yuan, which is only equivalent to an author's royalties for a few thousand words.

How scarce were the "ten-thousand-yuan households" in the eighties? Compared to later generations, they would at least count as middle-class, right?

But many authors could reach this standard with just two books.

However, by later generations, "author" was almost directly equated with "poverty," which shows how big the gap is.

Of course, in this era, the number of publications is small, and the book numbers of publishing houses are few, so it is difficult for authors to publish articles and novels.

But this difficulty for Li Ye... is at most "a little bit" difficult.

In his previous life, Li Ye wrote web novels in his spare time and earned royalties; his writing routines and reading accumulation were more than enough.

In this era where second-rate Hong Kong and Taiwan martial arts novels can run rampant, wouldn't those high-quality web novels with novel routines from later generations kill everything if brought out?

Don't look down on web novels; web novels and martial arts novels are both popular literature, and web novels were carried forward on the basis of martial arts novels.

Those high-quality web novel authors might not be as good as Gu, Liang, or Jin, but they can definitely compare with other martial arts authors.

And when "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" came out, wasn't martial arts literature not recognized by mainstream literature? But wasn't it still popular all over the country?

【Hmm, how many words is "Battle Through the Heavens"? Is it a bit ahead of its time? "A Step into the Past"? Still ahead of its time?】

【Then how about "Lurk"? Is it consistent enough with the era background?】

Li Ye pulled out a stack of letter paper and began to list and analyze the works most suitable for this era.