Half-Month Dividend Over 40,000

Why did Tao Chenggang want to merge the first few servers two by two?

Because the free players were leaving quite seriously. Not to mention those who quit the game directly, some ran to new servers to create new accounts, and some ran to other private servers.

The "other private servers" mainly consisted of three games, all adopting the Abyss Dungeon gameplay. They were clearly copycats.

The first one died very quickly, with bugs flying everywhere.

The second and third ones, however, were carefully polished.

Especially the third private server, which advertised "get an Abyss ticket upon entering the game," was very attractive to free players.

Shanda was not Chen Guiliang's enemy; his competitors running private servers were!

December 11th, Wednesday.

The 13th day since "Legend of the Abyss" launched.

Chen Guiliang was preparing for his monthly exam. He hadn't finished his lunch when he received a call. Chewing on his twice-cooked pork, he asked, "Brother Gang, has Shanda's lawyer letter arrived?"

"Can't you say something good?"

Tao Chenggang didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "The server merge originally scheduled for Friday night has been canceled."

"Are there new players joining the game again?" Chen Guiliang was quite surprised.

Tao Chenggang said, "The interview article about us in 'Popular Software' was published in the second issue of this month, which was this Monday. That night, some new players flooded in, and even more players came on Tuesday and Wednesday. I estimate it will increase again this weekend, so there's no need to rush the server merge."

Although the magazine "Popular Software" had begun to decline, its single-issue circulation was still over 150,000 copies.

Many of these readers had computers at home.

"An unexpected pleasant surprise," Chen Guiliang laughed.

Tao Chenggang continued, "I'm still contacting more internet cafes for cooperation. Although internet cafe players' ability to spend is slightly insufficient, their presence in the game creates a great active environment. With a large number of internet cafe players, the rich players can have fun."

After chatting for a few more minutes, Tao Chenggang said, "I'm going to hang up. Boss Shi has a QQ message!"

Tao Chenggang put his phone in his pocket and typed on the keyboard: "Good afternoon, Mr. Shi."

"Your private server is still alive? Shanda doesn't seem to care about you."

"They are rich and powerful, they look down on our small-scale operations."

"Have you thought about it? Come and cooperate with me to develop games."

"I'll think about it."

"Alright. I'll leave you my office number. When you come to Modu to play, you can call me for a meal..."

"Thank you for your appreciation, Mr. Shi. This is my mobile number..."

Boss Shi had already confirmed that he would go to Beijing next week to sign a contract, selling Brain Gold in a package to a friend and 75% of Golden Partner's shares to Sitong Company.

After selling these, he would start to enter the online game market.

As for leaving his phone number for Tao Chenggang, it was purely due to Boss Shi's personality. He didn't value status when making friends, but rather whether he found them agreeable. Sometimes, a drink would make them friends.

Even if Tao Chenggang refused to cooperate, he could still go to Boss Shi for a meal.

Twenty years later, Boss Shi was forcibly executed for 1.765 billion yuan, all stemming from him blindly acting as a guarantor for others. It was simply because he made too many messy friends. As long as they had a happy drink together, he would lend millions of yuan without hesitation and sign guarantee contracts casually while in high spirits.

People who rose from the grassroots era were just that casual in their actions.

Saturday.

The peak concurrent online users for "Legend of the Abyss" reached over 8600.

Chen Guiliang, on the other hand, welcomed his second exam since his rebirth.

The monthly exam.

First and second-year high school students had the weekend off, which conveniently freed up classrooms for the third-year students to use as exam rooms.

The exam numbers were completely random and not assigned based on midterm results.

Among the guys in Dorm 302, only Liu Zhihong was in the same exam room as Chen Guiliang.

"Are you confident?" Chen Guiliang met Bian Guanyue in the hallway.

Bian Guanyue said, "It's okay. I've made great progress during this time, asking Wu Meng for help with many difficult problems every day. How about you?"

Chen Guiliang said, "I'm okay too."

"Good luck."

"Good luck."

Bian Guanyue was actually a bit nervous.

She used to be an art student and had now transferred to being a regular student. Even with great effort, it was difficult to keep up.

This was her first exam since transferring schools.

Chen Guiliang, however, walked into the exam room full of confidence, but the Chinese test paper actually left him a bit confused.

He wasn't sure about the first multiple-choice question (character pronunciation).

There was also a multiple-choice question in the reading comprehension section. Although he knew which option to choose to get the points, he still felt that all the options were correct.

The question wasn't rigorous!

Additionally, there was another question where, from the perspective of the question setter, he knew he had to choose D to get the points. But answer D itself had a logical error of confusing cause and effect.

These situations left Chen Guiliang speechless.

He even wanted to curse the question setter as an idiot!

In the afternoon, he took the math exam.

Chen Guiliang could only skip around, completely stumped by the knowledge points he hadn't reviewed yet.

He could manage about seventy to eighty percent of the questions related to the knowledge points he had reviewed.

Next was English.

He mostly guessed on the listening comprehension.

Well, he guessed on many of the subsequent English questions too...

Then came the comprehensive humanities exam.

Chen Guiliang felt quite smooth, at least he wrote down answers for all the questions.

The two-day exam ended.

The guys in 302 were quite excited, all feeling they had performed above their usual level.

This could only mean that the monthly exam questions were simple, intentionally designed to boost the students' confidence.

"Chen Daxia, how many points do you think you'll get this time?" Xu Haibo asked.

Chen Guiliang said, "I don't know, just so-so."

Xie Yang boasted, "I felt particularly smooth doing the questions this time. I estimate I can get back above the first-tier university line."

"I also think I can pass the first-tier university line," Yang Hao said happily.

Yang Hao's scores fluctuated greatly. When the questions were simple, he became more confident as he worked. When the questions were difficult, he would get nervous. The more anxious he was, the worse he performed, even making mistakes on questions he knew how to do.

While everyone was excitedly discussing the monthly exam, his uncle Feng Tao suddenly called.

Chen Guiliang ran outside to find a signal for his PHS phone, and Xie Yang sneakily followed him out.

"Uncle, is something urgent?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Feng Tao said, "The profit from the first 15 days of the private server has been settled. Brother Gang specifically asked me to handle the settlement to put your mind at ease."

"The most players recharged on the weekend. Especially the day before the siege event, the highest single-day amount exceeded 40,000 yuan. Those rich players were like crazy, bringing their entire guilds to farm dungeons together."

"Usually, there are fewer recharges, sometimes two to three thousand a day when it's low, and five to six thousand when it's high."

"Over the past half month, the total recharge amount is over 256,000."

"After deducting the private server production costs, platform promotion costs, server rental costs, as well as internet cafe commissions, bank fees, employee salaries and bonuses, the four of us partners net 158,000."

"Your share is 28%, which translates to over 44,000, and it has already been deposited into your bank account."

Chen Guiliang said happily, "Uncle, you've worked hard."

Feng Tao said dejectedly, "Uncle hasn't worked hard, Uncle regrets it very much."

"Hahaha!"

Chen Guiliang laughed heartily.

Feng Tao's investment in the private server was only a symbolic 2,000 yuan, so his share of the profit was almost negligible.

Tao Chenggang gave him an additional three thousand this time, counted under salary and bonus expenses.

In addition, Tao Chenggang also rented a civilian house and equipped it with several computers to serve as a command center. Tao Chenggang bore these costs himself, because the rent wasn't much, and the computers and desks could be moved to the internet cafe.

Chen Guiliang was in a great mood, getting a dividend of 44,000 yuan in half a month!

Moreover, the private server production costs were deducted in one go, so they wouldn't need to be calculated for future dividends.

From now on, besides operating costs, everything else would be pure profit.

Feng Tao quickly poured a bucket of cold water on him: "This weekend, two more private servers focusing on dungeon gameplay were launched. One of them was even made by the DuDu Legend team. Our competitors are increasing!"

"It was bound to happen sooner or later. We'll make as much as we can," Chen Guiliang said with a relaxed attitude.

He hung up the phone.

Xie Yang eagerly asked, "Got your dividend?"

Chen Guiliang nodded, "Yeah, I got three or four tens of thousands."

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap..."

Xie Yang was already at a loss for words. Tens of thousands of yuan was an astronomical figure to him.

And Chen Guiliang earned it in just half a month.

"Let's go, time for evening self-study," Chen Guiliang patted his shoulder.

Xie Yang finally snapped back to reality. "You better treat me to lunch tomorrow!"

"No problem."

"Plus a pack of Hongtashan."

"Minors shouldn't smoke."

Evening self-study.

The homeroom teacher, Liu Shuying, came in with test papers. "I'll announce the English scores directly. This monthly exam was relatively easy. The overall class performance has improved compared to the midterm."

"The most commendable is Peng Yang. He's always been weak in certain subjects, and his English has consistently hovered around 100 points. Through his hard work, he scored 118 points this time! Let's give him a round of applause!"

Clap clap clap clap...

A sparse round of applause sounded.

Peng Yang was beaming, but too embarrassed to show off, so he straightened his back with a serious expression.

"Now I'll hand out the test papers, from highest score to lowest. Wu Meng, 148 points, first place again!"

Wu Meng, like a proud little princess, went up to get her paper with her head held high and chest puffed out.

"Li Rui, 145 points, great improvement."

Li Rui grinned and ran up to get his paper.

Two minutes later, Liu Shuying said, "Chen Guiliang, 93 points."

Seeing the teacher's displeased expression, Chen Guiliang cheekily said, "Teacher, I improved. I only got 82 in the midterm."

Liu Shuying said irritably, "The monthly exam was easier. You need to take responsibility for yourself, I can't manage you."

"Bian Guanyue, 92 points. There's still a lot of room for improvement."

Bian Guanyue was very happy. Her English scores used to be only in the seventies or eighties. Her hard work during this period had indeed paid off.

The next day, scores for other subjects were announced one after another.

Chen Guiliang's monthly exam scores were as follows:

Chinese 136, Math 68, English 93, Politics 75, History 79, Geography 85. (The monthly exam didn't have a comprehensive humanities paper; Politics, History, and Geography were all tested separately.)

Total score 536.

It seemed like a decent score, but because the questions weren't difficult, all the students performed well overall.

Based on the specific situation, the school roughly estimated and drew a few lines.

The second-tier university line was set at 535 points.

Chen Guiliang just barely scraped by, right at the tail end of the second-tier line.