A Phenomenal Novel

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

"I finally finished writing it."

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

And during those three days, he hadn't just been writing. He'd also been stirring up discussion online, constantly bringing up hot topics and making sure his novel appeared in countless netizens' feeds.

The results were excellent. Almost every major forum and message board was discussing his novel, and its title had even become a trending search term. It had brought him an unknown number of readers.

Ding!

Just then, a call request rang on Xia Ping's phone. He saw that it was from his editor, Meng Fei, and tapped to answer.

A middle-aged man's figure immediately appeared before his eyes. Virtual projection technology was now highly advanced: people could project images into the space around them, or project them directly onto their retinas to keep them hidden from everyone else.

"Teacher Black-Hearted Wolf."

Meng Fei was so excited he could barely contain himself. Waving his arms about, he exclaimed, "Your novel has blown up! It's not just popular—it's insanely popular. Do you know that?"

He could hardly believe what had happened over the past three days. He'd had high hopes for Xia Ping's novel, but there was no way to know how it would actually perform until it got a recommendation.

But who could have expected that, before Penguin had even started promoting Xia Ping's novel, the whole internet would be buzzing about Teacher Bai Rong over the past three days, boiling like a pot of water.

The click count kept climbing, the number of bookmarks skyrocketed, and reader comments poured in like a plane taking off. Even Penguin's hottest novels couldn't compare to this new release.

At first, he'd wondered if something was wrong with the site's data. But after the technical department investigated, they found no problems at all. Everything was perfectly normal.

Although he didn't know why this was happening, Meng Fei was absolutely certain that the novel had become a hit—an unprecedented phenomenon, the kind that came along once a decade.

"Oh."

Xia Ping replied calmly. Of course he knew how much buzz his novel had generated online. He was the mastermind behind it all; he'd created the buzz himself. Naturally, he wasn't surprised.

"Teacher Black-Hearted Wolf."

Seeing how calm Xia Ping looked, Meng Fei couldn't help feeling a little frustrated. "Haven't you checked your author dashboard? Your novel's sales over the past three days have gone through the roof. It's even broken the sales records of many novels on Penguin. This is what a phenomenal hit looks like!"

Since it was an adult novel, only readers aged twelve and up were allowed to read it. It had been on sale from the very first chapter, with no free chapters at all.

That meant it had been a paid novel from the start.

"My author dashboard?"

Xia Ping blinked. For the past three days, he'd been busy writing the novel and drumming up publicity. As for uploading the chapters, he'd left that to his editor, Meng Fei.

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

"Go check it right away," Meng Fei urged.

Hearing that, Xia Ping opened his author dashboard, and countless notifications immediately popped up.

"Congratulations, author Black-Hearted Wolf! Your novel has reached a total of 1,000 average subscriptions, 1 million clicks, and 10,000 bookmarks."

"Congratulations, author Black-Hearted Wolf! Your novel has reached a total of 10,000 average subscriptions, 10 million clicks, and 100,000 bookmarks."

"Congratulations, author Black-Hearted Wolf! Your novel has reached a total of 30,000 average subscriptions, 30 million clicks, and 300,000 bookmarks."

By the end, Xia Ping saw that his novel had reached a staggering 223,565 average subscriptions. It had over two million bookmarks, and its click count had topped one hundred million!

"Teacher Black-Hearted Wolf, do you see that? Three days—just three days! It hasn't even had a single recommendation, and it already has over 200,000 average subscriptions. It's unbelievable!" Meng Fei was beside himself with excitement. "I've been in this business for over ten years, and I've never seen numbers like these. It's terrifying."

What did over 200,000 average subscriptions mean? It meant that more than 200,000 people had bought every chapter of the novel. Simply put, they'd bought the book.

For a print book, that would be the equivalent of selling over 200,000 copies in three days!

Online novels were priced at 0.05 Federal Coin per thousand words. This book had 500,000 words, making its price twenty-five Federal Coins.

In other words, it had earned over five million Federal Coins in sales in just three days. After the website's fifty-fifty split, Xia Ping would take home at least two million Federal Coins.

And that was only its sales for the first three days. If the site kept recommending it, even more readers would come to buy it as time went on.

"Th-this!" Xia Ping finally understood why his editor, Meng Fei, was so excited.

In just three days, the novel had made over five million Federal Coins in sales, earning him more than two million. Anyone would be thrilled by a figure like that.

His father was a city management officer, a government employee who earned 6,000 Federal Coins a month—a middle-class income, putting him squarely in the middle of society.

Even so, it would probably take his father twenty or thirty years to earn two million. But Xia Ping had made that much in just three days—the equivalent of thirty years of his father's hard work. It was terrifying.

Xia Ping had known that writing novels could make money, but he'd never imagined it could be this lucrative. It was beyond anything he'd expected.

"Teacher Black-Hearted Wolf."

Meng Fei said excitedly, "This is only the beginning. If our site promotes it heavily, there's no problem with this novel reaching ten million average subscriptions. It's bound to be the hottest adult novel on Yanhuang Planet this year."

Ten million average subscriptions would be the equivalent of selling ten million books. Even on Earth in his previous life, a book that sold ten million copies would be considered an enormous bestseller.

Of course, on Yanhuang Planet, with its population of over thirty billion and almost no piracy, books had even sold over a billion copies. Ten million sales was only enough to make a book a hit.

But for adult novels, ten million sales would already make it a phenomenon. Even a master adult novelist like Jia Zhiwei had only sold over a hundred million copies across all his books.

"Ten million copies sold?!"

Xia Ping clenched his fists, excitement creeping into his eyes.

What would it mean to sell ten million copies? Sales would reach 250 million Federal Coins, earning him 125 million. He'd become a billionaire overnight.

"At this rate, I might become a billionaire? Sure enough, knowledge is the greatest treasure in the world—and priceless," Xia Ping couldn't help reflecting.