Phenomenal Novel

Two days later, one morning, during the break at Tianshui City No. 95 Middle School.

"Finally finished."

Xia Ping sat at his desk and stretched his back. After three days of continuous, grueling hard work, he had finally finished writing the entire 500,000-word novel.

Moreover, during these three days, he hadn't just been writing; he had also been constantly hyping it up online, stirring up topics everywhere to ensure his novel appeared in the field of vision of countless netizens.

The result was a success. Almost every large forum and message board was discussing his novel, and the title had even hit the trending search keywords, bringing him an unknown number of readers.

Ding!

Just then, a communication request rang out on Xia Ping's phone. He saw it was his editor, Meng Fei, and tapped to connect.

The figure of a middle-aged man immediately appeared before his retinas. Current virtual projection technology was highly advanced; it could project externally, or be projected onto the retina via a chip to remain hidden from others.

"Teacher Black-Hearted Wolf."

Meng Fei's expression was incredibly agitated, his excitement almost impossible to suppress. He gestured wildly and shouted, "Your novel has taken off! Do you realize it's become a massive, explosive hit?"

He could hardly believe what had happened over the past three days. Although he had been very optimistic about Xia Ping's novel, he knew that the true results would only be clear after it received official promotion.

But who could have guessed? Penguin hadn't even begun promoting Xia Ping's novel yet, but for some reason, the entire internet had been filled with topics about the novel Teacher Bai Rong for the last three days, boiling over like a pot of water.

The click-through rate was climbing steadily, the number of bookmarks was increasing crazily, and the number of reader comments was rising as if it were taking off in a plane. Even the most popular novels on the entire Penguin platform couldn't compare to this new book.

At first, he thought there might be something wrong with the website's data, but after the technical department investigated, they found no issues at all; everything was perfectly normal.

Although he didn't know why this had happened, Meng Fei was absolutely certain that this novel had become a hit—a phenomenal, once-in-a-decade kind of success.

"Oh."

Xia Ping said calmly. Of course, he knew how high the level of discourse surrounding his novel was online, because he was the mastermind behind it. Since he was the one who had single-handedly manufactured this level of engagement, he naturally didn't feel very surprised.

"Teacher Black-Hearted Wolf."

Seeing Xia Ping's calm expression, Meng Fei felt a bit frustrated and immediately said, "Haven't you checked your author dashboard? Your novel's sales over these three days have gone off the charts. You've even broken many of Penguin's sales records. This is the hallmark of a phenomenal work!"

Because this was an erotic novel, only readers over the age of twelve could view it, so it had been monetized from the very first chapter with no free public chapters.

Precisely because of this, it had been a paid work from the very beginning.

"Author dashboard?!"

Xia Ping blinked. Because he had been busy writing the novel and managing the hype for the past three days, he had left the task of uploading chapters to his editor, Meng Fei.

Consequently, he hadn't paid any attention to his author dashboard.

"Hurry up and take a look," Meng Fei urged.

Hearing this, Xia Ping opened his author dashboard, and countless notification messages immediately popped up.

"Congratulations to author Black-Hearted Wolf for reaching 1,000 average subscriptions, 1 million clicks, and 10,000 bookmarks."

"Congratulations to author Black-Hearted Wolf for reaching 10,000 average subscriptions, 10 million clicks, and 100,000 bookmarks."

"Congratulations to author Black-Hearted Wolf for reaching 30,000 average subscriptions, 30 million clicks, and 300,000 bookmarks."

By the end, Xia Ping saw that his novel had actually reached 223,565 average subscriptions, the number of bookmarks had reached over two million, and the clicks had broken one hundred million!

"Teacher Black-Hearted Wolf, do you see it? Three days! It's only been three days, and without a single bit of promotion, you've reached over 200,000 average subscriptions. This is simply too exaggerated," Meng Fei said, trembling with excitement. "I've been in this industry for over ten years, and I've never seen data like this. It's terrifying."

What did over 200,000 average subscriptions mean? It meant that over 200,000 people had purchased every chapter of the novel—in simple terms, they had bought the book.

In terms of physical books, that was equivalent to selling over 200,000 copies in three days!

According to the online pricing of 0.05 Federal Coins per thousand words, and with the book totaling 500,000 words, each book was priced at 25 Federal Coins.

This meant that in three days, the sales revenue had reached over 5 million Federal Coins. Based on the website's 50/50 revenue split, Xia Ping could take home at least 2 million Federal Coins.

And this was just the sales from three days. If the website continued to promote it, as time went on, there would likely be even more readers coming to buy it.

"This, this!" Xia Ping finally understood why Editor Meng Fei was so excited.

In just three days, it had sold over 5 million Federal Coins worth of content, and he personally could earn over 2 million. Anyone would be excited to see such a figure.

One had to know that his father was a city administrator, a government official with a monthly salary of 6,000 Federal Coins, which was considered middle-class in this society.

Even so, to earn 2 million would likely take him twenty or thirty years of work. But now, in just three days, Xia Ping had obtained such an income—equivalent to his father's thirty years of struggle. It was a bit terrifying.

Even though Xia Ping knew that writing novels could make money, he hadn't expected it to be this powerful; it exceeded his imagination.

"Teacher Black-Hearted Wolf."

Meng Fei said excitedly, "This is just the beginning. If our website promotes it vigorously, this novel could easily reach ten million average subscriptions. This year, it will undoubtedly be the most popular erotic novel on Yanhuang Planet."

Ten million average subscriptions would be equivalent to selling ten million books. Even on Earth in his past life, a book with ten million sales would be considered an extremely best-selling work.

Of course, on Yanhuang Planet, with a population of over 30 billion and almost no piracy, there were books with over a billion in sales, so ten million was just the threshold for being a hit.

However, for the category of erotic novels, ten million in sales was already a phenomenal achievement. Even for a master-level erotic novelist like Jia Zhiwei, the total sales of all his books combined only exceeded one hundred million.

"Selling ten million books?!"

Xia Ping couldn't help but clench his fists, his eyes burning with excitement.

Selling ten million copies—what kind of concept was that? The sales revenue would reach 250 million Federal Coins, and he would receive 125 million. He would become a multimillionaire overnight.

"Just like that, I could become a multimillionaire? As expected, knowledge is the greatest wealth in the world; it is priceless," Xia Ping couldn't help but sigh with emotion.