Chapter 12#
As the boss of Liuliu Web, Liu Huayi had been very proud of himself recently.
Not only had he secured a large sponsorship, but the once old and broken servers were finally being upgraded. Just the revenue Qiao Jing brought to Liuliu Web this month was already quite substantial!
Because of his happiness, the way he looked at his employees became much “gentler.”
In particular, editor Don’t Pigeon received greetings and care from the boss that were like a spring breeze.
Don’t Pigeon: “…”
He really wanted to escape, but he couldn’t.
But the boss had ordered that he must get closer to Yan Heqing and under no circumstances let this golden goose that lays golden eggs run away.
Especially, he mustn’t let Xingchen Web poach him.
Don’t Pigeon had no choice but to follow the boss’s request and chat with the big shot online every day about the story.
Although the big shot often spent most of the day coding without replying, and when he did, it was usually just a few words…
But Don’t Pigeon didn’t expect that people from Xingchen Web had actually contacted Qiao Jing long ago.
Qiao Jing only discovered this by accidentally seeing the private messages in the author’s back end.
Since he hadn’t registered a Weibo for the pen name “Yan Heqing,” and it was even more impossible for Liuliu Web to tell his competitors his QQ and phone numbers, people from Xingchen Web could only contact him through this method.
The person writing the private message was an old acquaintance, Wang Cheng.
As a veteran editor who didn’t know how many corners he had poached, Wang Cheng first used a very sincere tone to praise Qiao Jing’s writing style in the private message, praising his results as excellent and his potential as huge, and so on.
Next was where Wang Cheng’s cunning lay. He didn’t directly invite Qiao Jing. Instead, he frankly told him that continuing serialization at the current rate, “Song of the Earth” would soon hit the traffic ceiling of Liuliu Web. The number of readers for a small website was limited after all, while a novel of the same level would gain more resources and have a broader prospect on Xingchen Web, blah blah blah.
“He’s still the same as ever.”
Qiao Jing looked at the earnest short essay on the screen, his face showing not much expression.
Wang Cheng was the best editor Qiao Jing had seen in all his years of writing web novels, bar none.
He had a very sharp eye. Besides Qiao Jing, several big shots on Xingchen Web were personally discovered by him.
As an efficiency-first minimalist, he believed in getting straight to the point and putting interests first. Therefore, unlike most editors, Wang Cheng usually wouldn’t waste time communicating with authors to build rapport.
Because he firmly believed that people are profit-driven, and Xingchen Web was the best novel website in the country. As long as he clearly laid out the gains, losses, advantages, and disadvantages before the authors, they would naturally know how to choose.
So Qiao Jing saw clearly that, in essence, Wang Cheng and Xingchen Web’s CEO, Yao Jing, were actually the same type of person.
Except Yao Jing was more direct and had even once publicly made a boastful statement—
“When the dog is hungry, it will naturally come back.”
In all his years in the industry, the only author Wang Cheng had failed to retain with interests was Qiao Jing.
But perhaps in the man’s eyes, this didn’t count as an error, because after leaving Xingchen Web, Qiao Jing indeed had no visible presence on the surface, which proved his theory was still correct.
008 looked at him with some concern: “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
As Qiao Jing spoke, he directly clicked the ‘X’ on that private message and threw it into the trash bin.
008 watched his operation, wagged its tail with some concern, and whispered: “But I think what he said makes quite a lot of sense.”
“Indeed,” Qiao Jing said.
For him a year ago, Wang Cheng’s so-called “ceiling theory” would certainly have been correct.
Because for a book, besides the author’s own level, one indeed had to consider the website’s audience and traffic. Works that could achieve “breaking out of the circle” (becoming mainstream) were a tiny minority throughout history, and even for the most talented authors, it was something that could be wished for but not sought.
But now?
“If it reaches the ceiling, then break the ceiling.” The black-haired young man’s tone was flat, his slender fingers on the mouse, his eyes reflecting lines of the plot on the screen. “Or, to put it more arrogantly—”
“In this industry, I am the ceiling.”
As the reader base for “Song of the Earth” grew day by day, it was clear that just urging for updates in the comment section could no longer satisfy their appetite.
They established a “Super Topic” on Weibo and also built reader groups in private. Although many hoped the author would step forward to create an official one, Qiao Jing had already said he wasn’t interested. Therefore, they could only settle for the next best thing and find like-minded people online themselves.
But so far, only a tiny fraction of people had discovered the true value of the novel “Song of the Earth.”
Ji Nanqiu was one of them.
As a military fan, his room was plastered with posters of various tanks, fighter jets, and aircraft carriers. Ji Nanqiu could almost recite from memory the development history and parts of most thermal weapons that could be searched on the market from World War I to the present.
To better understand the principles of these weapons, he even got his university textbooks from his nephew, a national defense student, and read from high school physics all the way to graduate courses. When he couldn’t understand something, he would shamelessly ask online, and if no one online could answer, he would write letters to university professors.
After more than a dozen years of persistent study, Ji Nanqiu’s level was even better than many current undergraduates!
It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about going to university, but first of all, the questions on the Gaokao (college entrance exam) were in two different directions from what he usually learned. Furthermore, as the pillar of a family with elderly and young to support, it was already not easy for his family to support his frequent purchases of various warship and aircraft models.
So, Ji Nanqiu could only regretfully abandon the idea.
He joined many military fan groups online and frequently posted actively in forums, quickly being called a big shot due to his mastery of “hardcore” knowledge. Ji Nanqiu was very proud of this and would also consciously find news reports, data papers, and even novels on domestic and foreign websites to send to other military fans for discussion.
And Yan Heqing’s “Song of the Earth” bumped into Ji Nanqiu’s eyes at this time.
“Holy crap, which CAS big shot has come to write a novel?”
When he saw the twenty-seventh chapter, just like Ding Qi back then, Ji Nanqiu also gasped on the spot.
After hurriedly finishing dozens of chapters, his performance was even more exaggerated than Ding Qi’s back then. He was in a daze all day, his mind filled with various “Holy crap” spamming frantically. He even suffered being called out by his boss for slacking off at work and almost had his salary for this month deducted.
But Ji Nanqiu didn’t care about any of that.
His only thought now was: if these theories were applied to the military, wouldn’t their country be about to develop nuclear submarines, nuclear-powered rockets, and even large carrier-borne platforms driven by nuclear fusion?
This was incredible!
Ji Nanqiu was, after all, a self-taught amateur, so he didn’t think too much. If information could be seen by an ordinary citizen like him, could it be any kind of secret?
After returning home, he immediately excitedly recommended this novel to the military fans on the forum.
Sure enough, it immediately garnered a bunch of shocked and “Holy crap” emojis.
A “white” (newbie) asked excitedly: “Big shot, I heard before that an engineer from CAS wrote a story online and even won some award for ‘Strengthening the Nation through Technology.’ Is this ‘Song of the Earth’ also written by an industry big shot? I can’t find a lot of the information in there on the internet at all!”
Ji Nanqiu naturally didn’t know either.
But facing the newbie who was humbly asking for guidance, he still put on the air of a big shot and the usual tradition of the “Strategic Deception Bureau,” saying mysteriously:
“Don’t worry, the state is playing a very large game of chess.”
To support this, he even cited the tradition of holding military technology exhibitions—anything that could be put on an exhibition for the public to visit was basically no longer the latest type of technology. What you think is advanced has actually already been phased out by the army and the state; the next generation, or even the generation after that, is already in research and development trials.
His statement immediately gained unanimous approval from the military fans.
After determining that it was indeed a story written by an internal state big shot, the military fans transformed into Sherlock Holmes on the spot and began analyzing the content of “Song of the Earth” word by word.
In particular, several keywords in the story—“Nantianmen Project,” “Luanbird Large-scale Strategic Aerospace Carrier Platform”—made a bunch of military fans scream with excitement, wishing they could travel to a dozen years later right now to catch a glimpse of their style.
“Times have changed!” an older military fan lamented on the forum. “Back in the early 2000s, we were even cautious in our fantasies, only hoping that twenty years later the country could have three or four Type II destroyers and 052C air defense ships produced by itself. As a result, now even controlled nuclear fusion and nuclear-powered rocket aircraft carriers are coming out.”
A young military fan below echoed: “Yeah, the state’s research departments are too amazing. I hope to see ion thrusters, wormhole shuttle ships, curvature engines, and antimatter rockets make a shining debut on Earth in my lifetime! Let the ‘Eagle Sauce’ (USA) taste the fear of fire suppression too!”
“But at this rate, maybe quite a few of these have already been developed?”
Rabbit (China): ? How come I didn’t know about this?
Military Fan: I don’t care, if I say they exist, they exist!
They even started a heated discussion about these weapons. Combining news and press conferences from relevant state departments, they summarized a decent-looking weapon research and development schedule, as well as the important mission carried by this book “Song of the Earth”—
That’s right, the forum members unanimously believed that this novel was the first step for the rejuvenated nation to officially challenge the position of its “big brother,” the Beautiful Country (USA), and test the waters for its rise!
What? You say why use a web novel to test the waters?
That’s naturally because… because the state has its own considerations!
While they were discussing fervently over there, 008, who had been peeking at the screen, was giggling uncontrollably, making Qiao Jing somewhat baffled: “What are you laughing at?”
He looked at the content on his screen. He had just posted a “knife” (sad plot twist)… there shouldn’t be anything funny?
008 immediately turned serious: “Nothing.”
It decided not to tell Qiao Jing about the forum for the time being because 008 really wanted to know the consequences of further fermentation of public opinion.
These military fans who sincerely believed in the content of a novel, plus the foreign spies and the “Strategic Deception Bureau” stirring the pot in between—it was simply too much fun!