Chapter 8#

It wasn’t until 008 finally calmed down and explained the sequence of events to him that Qiao Jing let out a sigh of relief.

He thought something major had happened.

“How much have you collected over there?” He was also a bit curious.

“Several hundred points! It seems there are still quite a few people who recognize talent.” 008 perked up its whiskers, its coal-like cat face showing a look of full confidence in Qiao Jing’s work, as if the cat that was screaming about being doomed earlier wasn’t it. “It hasn’t even been listed yet, and your favorites have already increased by over ten thousand. It will surely grow more and more in the future!”

Qiao Jing was puzzled: “How did it increase so much overnight?”

He didn’t seem to have done anything other than adding a line to the synopsis, right? He hadn’t written anything too explosive in the new chapters either.

—His confusion was answered in the comment section of “Song of the Earth.”

These new readers who popped up overnight seemed to harbor some kind of unspoken consensus, uniformly using a combination of uppercase letters and a string of numbers as their IDs. Some with the same letters even started a large-scale “relative recognition” scene in the comment section—however, this behavior, unrelated to the article’s content, was soon discovered and stopped by the editor Don’t Pigeon, who was constantly monitoring the comment section.

So, in the spirit of catching the big shot’s attention, they began a heated discussion about the plot of “Song of the Earth” and even split into different camps based on the letters.

For a time, various theoretical formula derivations and proofs flew all over the comment section. Just the string of symbols and letters alone made Qiao Jing’s eyes dizzy.

Of course, these debates were within the scope of normal discussion.

Any individual whose words were too radical and started personal attacks was basically muted for 48 hours by 008 using its automatic sensitive word detection system.

Qiao Jing looked carefully for a long time before he realized that those uppercase letters were the English abbreviations of universities, and the numbers were student IDs.

However, there were also those who were too lazy to use student IDs, using names like “Wudaokou Vocational Electric Drill,” “Fujian Third-tier Civil Engineer,” “Finance University is Awesome,” and so on—a wide variety.

Moreover, because these students were still relatively young, their ways of following the story were far richer than those of Gao Xinglu and his peers.

Some wrote doggerel poems to Qiao Jing to urge for updates; some wrote short essays in the comment section to stir things up; and there was even a PhD student near graduation who tipped five or six “deep-sea bombs” (expensive tips), pleading with Qiao Jing to please write less about a certain area. He didn’t want to be like the unlucky agricultural student next door whose cornfield was stripped bare—only one step away from failing to graduate.

“Is this a university team-building event?” Qiao Jing was a bit amused.

But regarding that PhD student’s request, he heartlessly decided to pretend he didn’t see it.

What’s a stripped cornfield?

Back when he was in school, a student from the astronomy department next door worked hard on data for an asteroid for several years. Then, just a few days before submitting his graduation thesis, boom—his research object exploded.

Literally, exploded.

“In scientific research, one must keep pace with the times.” Qiao Jing opened a Word document, smiling as he coded. “Even if you encounter some force majeure, you must have a strong heart. At worst, ‘borrow another five hundred years from heaven’—after finishing the extension, you’ll be a hero again.”

008: “…”

How scary! The expression on your face when you say those words is really scary!

But it was indeed impossible for Qiao Jing to easily change his set outline because of a reader’s idea. After more than a month of serialization, the protagonist Yang Liu had already experienced the first setback in his brief 19-year life, which was also a problem that had plagued countless researchers in reality for most of their lives.

Experiments, of course, inevitably involve failure.

There’s a saying that failure is the mother of success, but for some people, after failing, there is never another chance to start over.

A nuclear experiment failed due to a design oversight. At the critical moment, a researcher risked radiation exposure to enter the experiment site and emergency-stop the equipment, preventing a larger crisis.

When he walked out of the experiment site and faced a group of staff wearing thick anti-radiation gear, he could still smile and tell them he didn’t feel any discomfort. But everyone present had a PhD-level knowledge base; how could they not know the consequences for someone who suffered close-range nuclear radiation?

Because he was too young to be the project leader this time, Yang Liu raised a ruckus at the CAS for over half a month, almost finishing off all the sparrows at the entire CAS with that replica Condor air rifle. In the end, he was still very defiant when his head was held down to write a self-reflection in his supervisor’s office.

But when Yang Liu looked through the glass window of the isolation ward and saw the researcher who used to smile and work overtime with him eating instant noodles, now twitching and ulcerating all over due to extreme pain on the hospital bed, he fell silent.

He finished two cups of instant noodles brought from his backpack alone in the hospital. After returning to the lab, he reorganized various data, read through papers, and summarized the lessons from the failure… Just like that, step by step, he grew up and transformed into a true, respected scientist.

Although he would still take out the air rifle when frustrated, he no longer aimed it at the chirping, annoying sparrows outside the window, but at a target hung on the wall. Although he was still sharp-tongued and gave no “face” to seniors when discussing experimental content in meetings, he would obediently apologize afterwards for his poor attitude.

With Qiao Jing’s realistic yet somewhat humorous and warm writing, readers seemed to be seeing a sharp-edged raw stone being gradually polished, revealing the hidden brilliant sharpness beneath the surface.

In the comment section, readers discussing the protagonist and the plot also gradually increased.

After all, not everyone could understand the new theories Yang Liu spoke about incessantly during meetings.

More readers were still attracted by the story of “Song of the Earth” itself.

They liked watching Yang Liu rebut people, seeing him make progress in research that amazed those around him, and even more, they liked reading descriptions of Yang Liu’s rare daily life—being rolled eyes at by an auntie for using solid geometry mental math for the volume of a winter melon while buying vegetables; being smug for several days in the office because a junior sister gave him a gift, only to find out it was a colleague’s prank and becoming so angry he hacked the other party’s computer to publicly play an adult video…

It was these little things, bit by bit, that constructed the image of a flesh-and-blood, high-spirited genius researcher.

Even Gao Xinglu liked a young man with a personality like Yang Liu’s, and often used him to lecture the students under him:

“If you were even half as worry-free as Yang Liu, I’d be satisfied!”

Ding Qi and several seniors had bitterness they couldn’t express.

Supervisor, we are real living people! The kind who need to eat, sleep, and stay up late grinding papers!

Comparing us to a fictional character, seriously?

“Anyway, everyone pull yourselves together!” Gao Xinglu didn’t need to look to know what they were thinking, but he wasn’t incapable of distinguishing fiction from reality; he was just giving these boys a nudge. “The simulation experiment is about to enter a critical stage. Our data here has to be taken to the Northwest Laboratory for them to carry out with real blades and guns!”

“If something like what happened in ‘Song of the Earth’ occurs, no one will be able to take that responsibility!”

Even now, people still occasionally hear news about laboratory explosions at universities. Even ordinary fuel tests can kill people, let alone experiments related to nuclear energy.

History has already told everyone with painful lessons that once such a dangerous experiment has a glitch, it basically affects everything within a radius of thousands of miles and lasts for tens of thousands or even millions of years!

Ding Qi and the others immediately stood at attention: “Understood, Supervisor!”

“That’s more like it.”

Driving the students back to their workstations, Gao Xinglu contentedly pulled out his phone, put on his reading glasses, and continued reading the newly updated novel…

Reputation points were slowly being gathered into 008’s pocket like a steady stream.

“Every update brings in new reputation points,” 008 lay on Qiao Jing’s chair, imagining the future. “An average of dozens of points per time. If you update 20 chapters a day, that’s thousands of points!”

Qiao Jing was silent.

“Updating 20 chapters a day,” the corners of his mouth twitched slightly. “Even a donkey in a production team wouldn’t dare think that way.”

He didn’t want to die young just yet.

Writing is a very mentally exhausting task, which is why writers always have various mental problems.

Although Qiao Jing was not the type to get stuck in a rut, for two or three days after every listing bonus update, his brain felt like an overclocked CPU, unable to perform any complex thinking.

“But if you only update two chapters, can your income beat that Sa’en?” 008 was still thinking of the grudge from the bookstore and wished it could rush in front of that villain right now and scratch his face until it bloomed. “I went and flipped through his draft box; he has a full fifteen chapters updated!”

008 wagged its tail and opened its round cat eyes, revealing an innocent and cute expression of “I really want to delete them all.”

Qiao Jing: “…”

I think you’re the real devil.

However, updating a dozen or twenty chapters upon listing was a common operation for Sa’en. Including editing time, if Qiao Jing’s hand speed was fast, it could reach 1,500 words per hour; if slow, there was no lower limit—one “pigeon” (skipping) could last for several days. The key was what plot he was writing that day and whether he had writer’s block.

In short, if it weren’t for the help of the virtual world, the army of update-urging readers would probably have already risen up in the comment section.

…Though there were plenty now too.

By contrast, Sa’en was a famous “writing machine” of Xingchen Web, the type who did four or five thousand words an hour.

In his most famous instance, he even created a miracle of sixty thousand words in one day.

—It had to be said that in terms of hand speed, Qiao Jing was thoroughly crushed.

But he actually didn’t care about this.

Because how much Qiao Jing coded always depended on his mood. He didn’t want to force himself to write absolute rubbish just to compete with others or to get a full-attendance bonus.

So, even though “Song of the Earth” was going to be listed tomorrow and Sa’en had several times more drafts than him, he still calmly took a sip of the goji berry health tea in his thermos and said: “Don’t worry, a good—”

008: “A good story can break through, I know.”

The innocent kitten tilted its head: “But didn’t you promise to update two bonus chapters? Why haven’t I seen where the drafts are?”

Qiao Jing was silent.

At that moment, his heart was frantically spammed with a title—

“What to do when a ‘pigeon’ author has a reader who urges for updates 24 hours a day.”

…Help.