"If you sell retail, you'll be lucky to move eight or ten jin a day and make seven or eight yuan at most. You'll also have to deal with thugs and street punks.
Wholesale starts at a hundred jin. Find the right people, and in five minutes, the money and goods can both be settled."
Li Ye gave Hao Jian an on-the-spot lesson in business. Within minutes, Hao Jian's eyes were shining brightly.
The various wholesale markets that sprang up across China in the late eighties gave rise to countless "wealthy households." A typical example was the place where the story of "Feather Flying to the Sky" took place.
Those wholesale markets remained highly vigorous even many years later, proving that wholesale was a relatively easy path to making money.
The provincial capital was only forty kilometers from Qingshui County. It had a large population and enough middle- and high-income groups. It was a treasure trove of potential awaiting development.
Though malt candy was an inconspicuous little snack, it met every requirement for opening market channels and building up initial capital. That was why Li Ye had chosen Hao Jian and sent him out front to test the waters for him.
Hao Jian was already tempted, but he did not blindly agree to Li Ye's proposal. Instead, he voiced his difficulty.
"Brother, I won't hide it from you. My family desperately needs money, and I'm willing to go to the provincial capital and give it a try, but I don't have any capital!"
On ordinary days, Hao Jian could at most peddle one basin of malt candy—twenty jin at the absolute limit. His capital was five or six yuan, his turnover a little over ten yuan. If he wanted to do wholesale in quantities of over a hundred jin, he simply could not come up with that much money.
Li Ye thought for a moment and asked, "How much capital are you short of?"
Hao Jian gritted his teeth and said, "At least fifty yuan, and I'll need a bicycle too."
After making those two demands, Hao Jian felt deeply uneasy. He was afraid Li Ye would fly into a rage and leave on the spot.
After all, anyone who calculated the cost of over a hundred jin of malt candy would know that Hao Jian's two demands essentially meant he would not be putting up a single cent himself.
But Li Ye merely said, "Then hurry to the provincial capital! If it seems feasible, come find me at County Second High School."
Hao Jian watched Li Ye toss out that sentence and leave. For a long while, he could not snap out of his daze.
He agreed?
Hao Jian still could not quite believe it.
If, an hour ago, Hao Jian had still regarded Li Ye as an easily fooled "kid," then now, he no longer had even the slightest thought of looking down on him.
Li Ye had first taken Hao Jian to retrieve the malt candy, then explained the concept of "wholesale" to him, and then given Hao Jian five yuan in "operating expenses."
That string of crisp, decisive, efficient decisions made Hao Jian feel that he was not facing an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boy, but the Village Chief back home, whose word carried the weight of nine tripods.
After standing dumbfounded for a long while, Hao Jian finally came back to himself and headed toward the county hospital against the cold wind.
He needed to get medicine for the child at home first. Since he had money in hand now, he might as well get a few extra bottles and spend another yuan or two.
Hao Jian had never been a rigid, pedantic person. Though he still did not understand why Li Ye trusted him so much, he vaguely guessed that there had to be something Li Ye needed from him—some value worth using.
You dare to use me, so I dare to spend.
When lice swarm, they stop biting; when debts pile up, they stop worrying you. What, are you going to bite me to death?
Either way, I'm not the one losing out.
Hao Jian felt he was not losing out, and Li Ye was satisfied as well.
Hao Jian had only calculated the financial cost and felt that Li Ye was getting the short end of this partnership.
But Li Ye had more comprehensively calculated the labor cost, as well as the even more important risk cost.
Doing private business still carried risks in those days. He intended to train Hao Jian into an agent while staying hidden behind the scenes himself. If anything went wrong, there would still be room to maneuver and mediate.
Li Ye knew Hao Jian was a "crafty merchant," but this sort of entrepreneurial business did not need honest, dutiful oxen. What it needed were precisely fierce generals with ambition and courage, men who could charge into battle.
In those days, ambition was nothing to fear. What mattered was whether you dared to do it. As long as you did it, you had taken the most important first step.
As for whether Hao Jian could remain under Li Ye's control afterward, that was a matter for later. If he wanted to earn his first bucket of gold, he had to take a step and try, didn't he?
After returning to County Second High School, Li Ye headed straight for his dormitory.
Once there, he pulled a stack of banknotes from the cotton stuffing inside his pillow and counted them. There were a total of one hundred and five yuan.
This was all the money Li Ye could currently use. Most of it had been saved over the past few months.
After all, when there had been a Lu Jingyao before, he could never keep much money in his pocket.
Now his family gave him thirty or forty yuan a month. Two dishes per meal cost only a little over ten yuan a month, and one pack of Da Qianmen every two days cost only six or seven yuan a month.
There were no pay-to-win games these days, so no matter how he spent it, he could not possibly spend it all. He simply could not spend it all.
But if he truly launched the provincial-capital money-making plan with Hao Jian, this "huge sum" of just over a hundred yuan would not be nearly enough.
It should be enough for some small-scale early ventures. But later, if he diversified into other things, or even sent Hao Jian south to chase the tides and make a splash at sea, he would need at least ten or twenty thousand yuan in capital to get anything going.
For now, this would do. Making some pocket money was not bad either.
Li Ye thought it over and did not rush. His basic requirement was simply to earn enough money to live comfortably before getting into university next year.
With a hundred thousand coins girded around his waist, riding a crane down to Yangzhou—he had more than tasted the difference between a university life with money and one without in his previous life.
That afternoon, as soon as Li Ye entered the classroom, he saw a crowd gathered around Xia Yue. Quite a few were from other classes. Every one of them looked excited and envious, which was rather unusual.
Li Ye glanced over a few times without paying much attention, but after he reached his seat and sat down, Xia Yue began speaking in a strange, pointed tone.
"As educated youth of the new era, we must use our own knowledge to create a beautiful life. Ten years at the cold window have forged our spirit of struggle and bestowed upon us the strength of pride."
"We absolutely must not be like parasites, relying on our parents and families, enjoying superior material conditions yet remaining unsatisfied, and even placing ourselves above our classmates spiritually."
Li Ye coldly lifted his eyes and met Xia Yue's provocative gaze. He immediately understood that she was pointing at the mulberry tree while cursing the locust tree.
Perhaps Li Ye's gaze was too sharp, or perhaps Xia Yue had been frightened into submission by him lately. After only a fraction of a second of eye contact with Li Ye, she turned to look elsewhere.
It was like a little Teddy with a rope around its neck, barking joyfully away, suddenly spotting an "honest, well-behaved" Chinese rural dog and instantly feeling suppressed.
Yet Xia Yue's remarks struck a chord with many people around her. They chimed in all at once, making Li Ye find it rather laughable.
Ten years at the cold window were indeed worthy of recognition, but family circumstances should not be something people despised.
Countless students from poor families relied on their own efforts to become the first generation of wealth. Then should their children not be perfectly justified in spending their fathers' money?
Only by viewing problems rationally and continuously making up for one's shortcomings could one surpass those who came before and slap the old waves dead upon the beach.
A poor man's ambition was not short. The key lay in ambition, not poverty.
Li Ye had no interest in arguing with them. Xia Yue and the others had not named him directly, so why bother stepping on that pile of dog shit?
Still, he wanted to know what had happened, so he asked his deskmate Wen Leyu.
Wen Leyu curled her lip and said, "Lu Jingyao wrote Xia Yue a letter, showing off that she'd published a poem and earned five yuan and fifty cents in royalties. She used to spend so much of your money, and now that she's earned money once, she thinks she's free and noble."
"Royalties?" Li Ye suddenly felt a bright light break through the clouds.
"Mm, only five yuan fifty?" Wen Leyu said softly, sounding rather as if she were trying to comfort him.
But Li Ye felt differently.
That's right, I can earn royalties!
Was the plagiarism route cliché?
Cliché. Extremely cliché.
Was the model of earning royalties worn-out?
Worn-out. Extremely worn-out.
But there was no denying that in this era, earning royalties was the most direct, simplest, most effective, and risk-free way to make money.
No running errands, no going out, no bowing and scraping to clients. All it took was paper and pen; as long as there were stories in his head, he could exchange them for money.
Li Ye felt it was reliable, especially since the state had just clarified the royalty standards.
If they really wanted to discuss it seriously, royalties in China had actually been declining all along.
Leaving aside how Lu Xun had become famous through royalties in his era, even writers who made their living from royalties after 1977 had experienced a very comfortable spring.
In 1977, the National Publishing Administration issued the "Notice on the Trial Implementation of Remuneration and Subsidy Measures for News and Publishing," stipulating that authors would receive two to seven yuan per thousand characters.
In 1980, Group D of the National Publishing Administration established new royalty standards, raising them to three to ten yuan per thousand characters. For the following decade or so, authors were paid through a system of "basic royalties plus royalties for additional print runs."
Then, in 1984, the standard was raised again, reaching six to twenty yuan per thousand characters.
In an era when a jin of pork cost less than one yuan and rice cost just over twenty cents a jin, that royalty standard was extremely high.
Think about it! A worker's monthly salary was only thirty or forty yuan, equivalent to the royalties for merely a few thousand characters from an author.
How rare were Ten Thousand Yuan Households in the eighties? Compared with later generations, they would at least count as middle class, wouldn't they?
Yet many authors could reach that standard with just two books.
But by later generations, "author" had become almost directly synonymous with "poverty," showing just how vast the gap was.
Of course, there were not many publications in this era, and publishing houses had few book registration numbers. It was still difficult for authors to publish essays and novels.
But for Li Ye, that difficulty amounted to no more than "a little bit."
In his previous life, Li Ye had written web novels in his spare time and earned royalties from them. His writing formulas and accumulated reading experience were more than sufficient.
In an era where even second-rate Hong Kong and Taiwanese wuxia could swagger everywhere, would those later web novels with their fresh formulas and polished quality not slaughter the competition with ease?
Do not look down on web novels. Web novels and wuxia were both popular literature, and web novels had carried forward and expanded upon the foundation of addictive wuxia novels.
Those authors of polished web novels might not compare to Gu Long, Liang Yusheng, or Jin Yong, but they could absolutely measure up against other wuxia writers.
And when "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" first emerged, wasn't wuxia also unrecognized by mainstream literature? Yet hadn't it still swept across the land?
Hm, how many characters was Battle Through the Heavens again? Was it a little too ahead of its time? "A Step into the Past"? Still too ahead of its time?
Then what about "Lurk"? That fit the background of the era well enough, didn't it?
Li Ye pulled out a stack of letter paper and began listing and analyzing the works best suited to this era.
Before you continue