Sell the Books

Bai Ge had even considered buying lottery tickets to get enough money.

He could hack into the Welfare Lottery Center's database, insert a record showing that he had bought the first-prize ticket, and then forge the lottery ticket.

However, the moment sales were completed, the Welfare Lottery Center backed up all its data onto optical discs and hard drives before storing them offline.

Besides, claiming the prize required the winning ticket, whose barcode was an important anti-counterfeiting measure.

Without an inside contact, he had no way to forge that.

Rather than take such a huge risk, he might as well use the perfect criminal method: coincidence.

He could make the winning numbers happen to be the ones Bai Ge had bought.

However, he did not want to create an artifact just to win the lottery.

So he still chose to sell novels and music.

Even games and movies.

With sufficient knowledge, technical ability, and a certain degree of imagination, making these things was easy for Bai Ge.

If he left it to Bell, it would be even more terrifying.

Bell alone was an entire team.

It could handle everyone's work at the same time: programming, copywriting, art, music, post-production...

A product that took someone else ten years to hone took Bell only one second.

And it could mass-produce them.

As long as Bai Ge had enough ideas, he could create works he had once imagined but that had never existed in reality.

"As for music... forget it. Quantity can't make up for quality. Even if I push my skills to the limit, it still sounds this bad... I really have no talent in this area."

There were hundreds of songs on the hard drive, all mass-produced by Bell.

Compared with novels that played with language to the extreme, the music should have been excellent too.

But the truth was that the music was too mediocre—so mediocre that Bai Ge could not even bring himself to embarrass himself with it.

He really had no musical talent at all.

"I'll sell the books first..."

Using his hacking skills, Bai Ge directly hacked into the largest literary website in the country.

He quickly found the operating company's database center.

It contained the personal information of all contracted authors, as well as that of all the editors...

As long as he wanted, he could directly insert the book into the database, forge an electronic contract, and change the work's status to "published"...

He could even... inflate the subscription numbers.

However, that would be meaningless. Comparing them with the offline backups would reveal the anomaly immediately.

"For now... I just need a pseudonym."

He registered an account as quickly as possible, using the pen name A Million Updates Daily Is Not A Dream.

Bai Ge selected his finest work. It was a historical novel titled The Fallen Emperor, and he uploaded only the opening chapters.

Then he found the automatic publishing software Bell had created on the hard drive.

The software would automatically log into the account and upload new chapters to the backend every day.

"I'll start with ten thousand words a day."

"If the account receives a private message about signing a contract, have it call my phone through an internet phone line."

Bai Ge was not worried about whether the book would fail. As long as the editor was not blind, they would take it seriously.

Whether in writing skill or accumulated knowledge, it was a top-tier work. At most, its ideas were relatively ordinary, but they were more than enough to captivate readers.

Novels came from life. The plots Bell had written could almost all be traced to historical prototypes.

Historical fiction could never be exhausted. So many things had happened throughout the ages. Aside from some famous eras, many other periods had been just as fascinating, only unknown to people.

Those stories became excellent plotlines simply by changing the time, place, and characters.

History itself was the best novel.

Bell had taken events that had happened throughout history, ground them up, and artistically reworked them into the protagonist's experiences. Unless someone had studied history thoroughly, they basically could not recognize the originals.

As a result, the vast majority of people would think the plots were original.

Once it went online, Bai Ge decided to update a million words a day. At the same time, he would start another new book; by the time the first was finished, the second would have gone online as well.

With Bell around, writing a book of a hundred million words was not impossible.

"But no matter how fast it is, I won't earn anything until a month from now. Hmm, I'll sell the books directly to publishing houses."

One serialized novel was enough.

Bai Ge searched and quickly found several of the largest publishing houses in the country. He sent the openings of nine books in other genres to their email addresses, each under a different identity.

He planned to sell the books outright, one complete book at a time, because publishers could pay him the fastest.

Even if the per-thousand-word rate was pushed down, it did not really matter.

The nine books totaled more than a hundred million words. At one hundred yuan per thousand words, that still amounted to ten million yuan.

These books were all excellent and had nearly exhausted Bai Ge's ideas in other genres.

Although Bell could still mass-produce books with different content in the future, they would probably just be different dishes made from the same ingredients, following a familiar formula.

For a steady stream of income, one book was enough. Historical fiction's ideas would never be exhausted.

For three consecutive days, Bai Ge signed buyout agreements with various publishing houses one after another.

Although the books were exceptionally well written, he was still a newcomer, and the price was pushed down to as little as twenty yuan per thousand words.

That was a price Bai Ge could not accept. He still wanted to buy several more generator sets immediately. How could this little money be enough?

Fortunately, Bai Ge did not care about any of the rights to these books. Only after he sold all the adaptation rights and even gave up the right to be credited as the author were they willing to offer three hundred yuan per thousand words.

In the end, the nine books sold for more than thirty million yuan.

The cost... was merely a few dozen yuan in electricity.

Since Bai Ge had made enormous concessions in other areas, the publishers felt they had come out far ahead and paid extremely promptly.

Moreover, he had sold the nine books to different publishing houses. That very afternoon, he entrusted lawyers in various regions to sign the buyout agreements.

To reduce the tax burden, the money would be transferred to him in thirty installments. After deducting the agency fees, Bai Ge would receive more than twenty million yuan at the latest, just as the generator sets arrived.

Bai Ge desperately needed the money and could not keep it in his hands.

"Hello, I'd like to order eight more 2,000-kilowatt generator sets!"

June 16.

Bai Ge's generator sets finally arrived. Although he had temporarily purchased eight more, he had ordered so many that he could practically build a power station.

The energy company had urgently transferred the equipment from other locations and delivered it within the deadline.

"Boss, it'll still take a few hours. We'll install them for you."

"No need. You can leave. I'll install them myself." Bai Ge could not wait any longer.

The delivery technicians froze. Install them himself? This was no joke.

"Are you sure you don't need our help?" The technician glanced around. Bai Ge had arrived alone.

Bai Ge smiled. "My people will come and install them. Just leave them here for now. Sorry for the trouble."

"No trouble, no trouble. Then we'll be off?"

"Goodbye."

After sending the technicians away, Bai Ge locked the factory doors. The windows were more than three meters high, so he did not have to worry about anyone seeing him.

After confirming that no one was nearby, Bai Ge turned his gaze to the large crates.

"Send them all into the Imagination."

Bai Ge walked over and pushed the crates with his head, sending the equipment away in batches.

Once installed, a generator set was extremely massive. With Bai Ge's limited strength, he could not send it in as a whole.

That was why he had to drive the workers away. Individual pieces of equipment were much lighter and smaller, allowing him to send them into the Imagination and assemble them there.

In only a minute, the factory was empty.

Finally, he sent himself into the Imagination as well.

Bai Ge had not been idle these days aside from selling books.

He had spent most of his time absorbing knowledge.

He had not stopped studying for even a moment.

Assembling this equipment was child's play. Bai Ge could handle it alone; it simply required a lot of time.

But things were different inside the Imagination. By expending some energy, he could effortlessly manipulate physical matter.

More than a hundred crates floated through the Imagination's universe. With a single thought, Bai Ge dismantled them all.

"Would you like me to handle it?" Bell asked.

Whether Bai Ge or Bell did the work, the energy consumption was the same.

It was safer to let Bell do it, because it would not make mistakes.

"I'll leave it to you."

As soon as Bai Ge finished speaking, all the equipment began moving on its own, fitting together and assembling itself automatically.

In less than a minute, the ten high-power generator sets were fully assembled.

If the delivery technicians had done it, more than a dozen people would have needed several hours.

"Ten 2,000-kilowatt generator sets produce twenty thousand kilowatt-hours in one hour at full load."

"That comes to four hundred and eighty thousand kilowatt-hours in twenty-four hours."

"The fuel consumption is two hundred grams per kilowatt-hour. For ten units... that's four tons of diesel per hour? Ninety-six tons a day..."

"At the current oil price, I'll spend five hundred and eighty thousand yuan a day on diesel alone? Good heavens!"

Generating electricity with diesel was definitely much more expensive than buying it from a power plant.

But for the equipment to generate electricity inside the Imagination, Bai Ge could only accept it.

He contacted Zhuang Ze. His family sold fuel, and Bai Ge now needed nearly a hundred tons a day, so he had no choice but to find someone he knew.