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Cui Yujin was caught off guard and startled, but he quickly struck back once he recovered. The three teenage boys rolled around on the bed and roughhoused for quite a while. It was not until Li Mei came over and knocked on the door, saying she was off work for the day and asking Cui Yujin whether he wanted to ride back to Grandma's house in her car, that Cui Yujin reluctantly climbed off the bed. As he packed his things, he told the other two, "Get some proper rest. I'll come keep you company again tomorrow."

Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi obediently saw Li Mei and Cui Yujin to the building entrance on the first floor, thanked them once again, and only turned back to their room after watching them get into the car and drive away.

It was already past seven and nearly eight at night. News Broadcast had just ended, and the television was filled with pre-show advertisements. With the commercials playing in the background, Lu Hengzhi and Tang Shi unpacked their luggage and wiped down the room before going to the bathroom to shower and change.

By the time they finished all that, it was nearly nine again. The hamburgers and chicken wings in their stomachs had long been digested. Fortunately, there was hot water in the room. Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi made two cups of instant noodles and ate them with the leftover bread and sausages from the train. Only after filling their stomachs did they have the energy for serious business—

A high school student's life was always orderly and tedious. Even though Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi had come all the way to Apple City to take part in a talent show, they could not escape their heavy schoolwork. Especially Tang Shi, who still had to write a chapter of Prosperous Tang Strategy on schedule after finishing his homework.

Without a computer or the ability to look up reference materials whenever he wanted, Tang Shi wrote far more slowly than he had in his previous life. Luckily, he had written this story before and still remembered it vividly. After nearly two months of steady work, he had nonetheless accumulated nearly two hundred thousand words of manuscript.

By now, this transmigration novel called Prosperous Tang Strategy had already drawn attention within a small corner of the internet. Its fresh premise, its cheat-code plotlines that seemed clichéd and tacky in hindsight but still satisfied readers immensely, its waves of melodramatic face-slapping conflicts, its painstakingly detailed research with mostly accurate background information, and its logically sound plot development all made this newly released webnovel deeply popular with readers. Less than two weeks after publication, the site had offered it a contract. Various physical publishing cooperation agreements had also come in, while the prominent recommendation slots it had received ever since signing had pushed its statistics to an almost unbelievable height just one month after release. The site had even started urging Tang Shi to put it behind a paywall as soon as possible.

And by sheer coincidence, today was the first day Prosperous Tang Strategy went premium.

☆, Chapter 17

In his previous life, when the habit had become second nature, Tang Shi would always check his backend immediately after uploading VIP chapters. He would watch the earnings rise, whether quickly or slowly, read the readers' feedback below the chapters, then set aside time to write the next installments.

That entire routine was simply part of Tang Shi's daily life.

But in this life, Tang Shi did not yet have the money to buy a computer. He usually wrote and built up drafts on scrap paper during breaks, then typed them into documents in the school computer room, or handed the manuscripts directly to Lu Hengzhi, who typed up the chapters and uploaded them online.

The upside was that repeated revisions made it easier for Tang Shi to spot typos and omissions, making the logic smoother and the plot more complete. The downside was that Prosperous Tang Strategy updated several times more slowly than other authors on the same site.

That led many readers to leave teasing comments, saying that Roughwood was indeed a plant—his reaction time was longer than that of ordinary humans. They had even given Tang Shi a nickname: "Tang Shi Slow."

Tang Shi did not know whether to laugh or cry.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it. The conditions at this stage were simply too harsh.

Tang Shi sighed, took Lu Hengzhi's laptop from the luggage bag, walked over to the desk, plugged in the internet cable, and turned it on. More than a minute later, the familiar Windows XP desktop appeared before him.

Tang Shi logged into the site with practiced ease and opened the backend. The three VIP chapters scheduled for upload already had purchase records. In just four or five hours since going premium, subscriptions had already reached several thousand, and the earnings, converted into yuan, amounted to over twelve hundred. That figure was nearly on par with the level Tang Shi had reached when his novels had been at their most popular in his previous life. Thrilled yet deeply moved by such prosperity, Tang Shi could only marvel that the first people to eat crabs really did get to taste the freshest meat.

Sensing Tang Shi's delight, Lu Hengzhi, who had been busy with his homework beside him, leaned over and stuck close to him. Resting against Tang Shi's shoulder, he craned his neck to look at the computer screen. When he saw that string of numbers in the earnings record, he froze briefly, then squeezed himself fully over and wrapped an arm around Tang Shi's shoulders, shaking him again and again. "Whoa, we're rich! We're rich! Great author, hurry up and treat me to dinner!"

Tang Shi came back to himself. Looking at Lu Hengzhi, who was even more excited than he was, he shook his head and laughed. "No problem. It's just dinner. Half the credit on this medal belongs to you anyway. Tell me what flavor of instant noodles you want. I'll make sure you're stuffed."

At that, Lu Hengzhi shook his head with an exaggerated look of disbelief. Possessed by the spirit of poverty, he clutched Tang Shi's neck tightly and said, "You beast! Who shared hardship with you when you had no money? Who stood by you in our humble little shack? Now that you've made it rich, you're only treating me to instant noodles? I refuse to believe it! I refuse! Were all those vows you made to me beneath the flowers and moonlight fake?"

With that, he pounced and pinned Tang Shi facedown onto the desk. Tang Shi let out a miserable cry and struggled fiercely to fight back.

The two of them started fooling around again like fighting puppies, rolling about as they vented their joy over the explosive sales on their new novel's very first day of premium release.

When Tang Shi had suddenly decided to make money by writing online, Lu Hengzhi had always been worried. Unlike Tang Shi, he had no memories or experience from a previous life, so making money from writing fiction was not something he could take for granted. When he had first learned about it, he had thought it rather unreliable. And when he found out that Tang Shi had even turned down a physical publishing contract in order to serialize his novel online, willingly accepting a lower first-publication rate than magazine serialization pay, he had understood even less.

Lu Hengzhi did not believe Tang Shi could make money online, yet he could not bear to pour cold water on him. The only thing he could do was help Tang Shi as much as possible, whether by providing his family's computer or becoming a typing laborer himself. At the time, Lu Hengzhi had only wanted to share Tang Shi's burden, so Tang Shi would not devote all his energy to this and neglect his studies. The reason Lu Hengzhi had done all this was also because he feared the matter would ultimately come to nothing. If Tang Shi invested too much, he would inevitably be disappointed.

Lu Hengzhi had even worried that Tang Shi would feel that all his efforts had been wasted and that he had embarrassed himself before his friends.

That was why he had firmly stood behind Tang Shi without considering any other factors. Lu Hengzhi thought that, whether it succeeded or failed, the two of them being foolish together would be easier to bear than having one person face the consequences alone.

For the past two months, Lu Hengzhi had remained anxious. But today, the results were finally out, and he could at last set down all his worries. He began to feel purely and wholeheartedly happy for Tang Shi—

He had personally witnessed Prosperous Tang Strategy grow from nothing: from its lonely beginnings of a few bookmarks, dozens of comments, and hundreds of clicks, to its current glory of over ten thousand bookmarks, over a million clicks, and such wildly popular subscriptions. Lu Hengzhi suddenly felt the pride of having "witnessed a miracle."

Tang Shi, completely unaware of Lu Hengzhi's emotional ups and downs, felt nothing but pure happiness. The two of them wrestled and rolled around the room for ages, until they finally lay sprawled on the bed, panting and grinning foolishly. Sweating all over again, Tang Shi wiped his face with slight distaste, sat up, returned to the computer, and pulled up the reader comments in the backend. Lu Hengzhi from the other bed immediately stuck close again, pressing his chest against Tang Shi's back, resting his chin on Tang Shi's head, and stretching his neck to read the messages on the screen.

The tens of thousands of comments flooding the comment section made Tang Shi dizzy. From the red-highlighted donation notices at the top—"XXX threw a Depth Charge at you. Congratulations, author, on going VIP," "I came to see you carrying a rocket launcher. Hand over the updates and nobody gets hurt," and "XXX donated XX Green Coins to Prosperous Tang Strategy. Congratulations, author, on going VIP"—all the way down to messages such as "Clapping in admiration, this novel belongs only in heaven," "Author, please accept my knees," and "Throwing flowers, making up points," Tang Shi read them one by one with care until his eyes nearly crossed.

Driven by the exciting earnings, Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi felt as energized as if they had been injected with chicken blood while reading all those comments praising and supporting the novel. Filled with vigor, Tang Shi made an absolutely impulsive, hot-blooded decision that he would never regret—he would post an extra chapter.

For Tang Shi, who updated at a turtle's pace in this life, it was usually difficult enough just to maintain regular updates, let alone add extras. Yet now he wanted to release an additional chapter on the very day he had already uploaded three premium chapters... There was no denying that the earnings had absolutely spurred him on.

Tang Shi shoved Lu Hengzhi, who was still plastered to his back like a pancake, into the washroom to shower, then sat down and began typing. Thanks to his detailed outline, familiarity with the plot, and convenient tools, Tang Shi wrote the new chapter quickly. In only an hour and a half, the lean and punchy three-thousand-word chapter was quietly uploaded online, drawing a fresh wave of playful comments below: "Roughwood is showing his power," "Did Roughwood take something today? He actually updated this much," and "XX donated X thousand Green Coins to Prosperous Tang Strategy. Roughwood, do you dare add another chapter?"

After showering, Lu Hengzhi, who had been lying on the bed watching Tang Shi type the whole time, came over and squeezed Tang Shi aside. He lay in front of the computer and quietly read the newly uploaded chapter.

Because the two had always been inseparable, Lu Hengzhi was probably the only person around them who knew Tang Shi was writing webnovels. Naturally, having not been exposed to all the cliché webnovel tropes of later years, Lu Hengzhi had also become a devoted reader of Prosperous Tang Strategy. Besides getting the privilege of reading chapters first, he was responsible for proofreading Tang Shi's work, checking for typos and ensuring the plot and logic flowed smoothly.

But Tang Shi had been so fired up today that he had written and uploaded the new chapter in a short time without letting Lu Hengzhi review it first, so it naturally contained several more typos. Although such minor errors did not matter much in webnovels, Lu Hengzhi, ever meticulous in his work, still opened the backend and corrected them one by one. As a result, another batch of miserable readers began wailing below: "Author actually fake-updated! We need an extra chapter to heal our wounded hearts!"

Lu Hengzhi coldly ignored those comments, shut the computer, dragged Tang Shi, who was still dawdling on the floor, and pulled him onto the bed to sleep.

They called it sleeping, but neither of them could actually fall asleep. Moonlight, silver as frost, poured in through the window like a thin veil, illuminating the dorm room brightly. With their eyes closed, Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi chatted idly now and then. In the end, neither knew who fell asleep first and stopped responding. Only then did they drift off into a muddled sleep.

Early the next morning, they were awakened by loud banging on the door. Tang Shi, the lighter sleeper, was the first to hear the awful noise. With his eyes still closed, he shuffled into his shoes and stumbled sleepily to the door to open it. Cui Yujin was already standing outside, energetic and bright-eyed, carrying a plastic bag full of breakfast. Seeing Tang Shi's utterly drowsy state, Cui Yujin widened his eyes in disgust and said, "Damn. What did you two do last night that you're still asleep at this hour? It's almost eight, you know?"

Too lazy to respond to Cui Yujin, Tang Shi rubbed his eyes and yawned as he returned to the room, flopping onto the bed in preparation to continue sleeping. Lu Hengzhi, on the other bed, did not react in the slightest either. He merely rolled over and kept sleeping.

Cui Yujin waved a hand in front of his nose, set the breakfast on the table, and walked over to the balcony. He first pulled open the curtains and opened the window, letting a roomful of sunlight pour in. The glare made Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi squeeze their eyes shut in discomfort.

Cui Yujin turned around and switched on his camera, recording the two lazybones' morning routine. Then he took out the tea eggs and pan-fried dumplings Grandma had made that morning and waved them beneath their noses. Sure enough, he saw the two of them sniffing around with their eyes shut, acting adorably.