Page 49

Fortunately, today was the day of X City No. 1 High School's midterm exams. Although many students were curious about Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi, they cared even more about the exams they were about to face. Once they entered the school building, the dean and other teachers constantly patrolled the halls to maintain order, allowing Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi to make their way smoothly to their homeroom teacher Old Yu's office.

Old Yu, who had kept a stern face the entire time, stood at the door watching the commotion caused by Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi. He snorted several times, looking utterly displeased. Seeing the two boys looking increasingly innocent, Old Yu shook his head, handed the admission tickets from his desk to Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi, and said, "Your exam room is Class Three, Grade Two. Go on. Answer carefully, and don't disturb the other students."

Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi obediently nodded again. When they arrived at the Class Three, Grade Two exam room, they caused another small stir among the students. But then the proctor entered with the test papers, his stern gaze sweeping over the students' faces. The classmates who had eagerly wanted to come over and chat immediately wilted and returned to their seats to prepare for the exam.

What Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi did not know was that, outside the school, the reporters had been unable to get anywhere near the Sugar Juice Duo because of the strict guard maintained by the Lu Family bodyguards and the school security staff. Left with no choice, they turned their attention elsewhere... such as interviewing snack vendors, various shops, bookstores, internet cafés, and the like around the school.

Their original plan was simply to avoid making mistakes. They wanted to ask these "neighbors" about amusing stories from the Sugar Juice Duo's school days, then put together a feature on "The Childhood Lives of Rising Idols" to satisfy their editor-in-chief. They never expected, however, that when they interviewed the internet café owner, they would learn that the Sugar Juice Duo not only occasionally skipped class to visit the café, but even wrote novels there...

The internet café owner had a particularly deep impression of this matter. First of all, Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi were both extremely handsome and were practically heartthrobs at X City No. 1 High School. People like them naturally drew attention wherever they went. The owner had become curious about Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi because the young girls who came to play at the café were always discussing them.

Later, the owner was surprised to discover that although Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi often came to the internet café, they rarely played games or chatted online like the other students. Instead, they always opened documents and wrote continuously. Growing more and more curious, the owner liked to wander around near Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi whenever he had nothing to do.

Who would have thought that Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi were extremely cautious? Whenever someone came near them, they would stop typing and open another page. Tang Shi had not deliberately meant to keep anything secret. He was simply a little embarrassed to tell outsiders that he wrote things online. But the more they tried to hide it, the more curious the internet café owner became.

After all, anyone who could run this sort of business in those days had to be fairly quick-witted and know a thing or two about computers. The internet café owner himself had graduated from junior college with a major in computer science. But after graduation, he felt that being a programmer was exhausting and did not pay well, while living in a big city was incredibly stressful. After much consideration, he quit his job at a 4A advertising company in the city and returned to his hometown to open an internet café.

After returning home, the owner conducted several surveys before choosing to open an internet café across from X City No. 1 High School. In those days, internet cafés were still considered high-end establishments and were immensely popular, especially among students. With such a plentiful customer base, the owner could earn over ten thousand yuan every month, far more than he had made after working himself to the bone for a month at the 4A company.

His life had become more and more comfortable and stable, but also far too boring. Now that something had finally caught his interest, the owner naturally did something to satisfy his curiosity. Before long, he installed a camera behind Tang Shi's usual seat, linking it to his own computer.

So when Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi came to the internet café again, the owner aimed the camera at their computer screen while they were online and discovered their little secret.

Later, the owner saw the Sugar Juice Duo competing on television. As their popularity grew and they became more and more famous, the owner, who had become a loyal fan of Prosperous Tang Strategy, felt rather smug and proud.

Thus, when the reporters cast a wide net and conducted their targeted interviews, the internet café owner extremely smugly spilled everything he knew. He even proudly showed the reporters that video clip.

What he had not expected was for the young reporter to pull out a stack of cash from his bag after seeing the video and ask to buy it from him.

Looking at the small stack of bills on the counter, the internet café owner estimated that there were seven or eight hundred yuan. Then he looked at the excited expression on the young reporter's face, frowned uncomfortably, and shook his head. "I can't sell this to you. How could I betray my own idol?"

Seeing this, the young reporter immediately understood that his actions had provoked the internet café owner's resistance. Although he was young, he had already been in this line of work for several years. He often dealt with celebrities and fans, so he could more or less guess what such people were thinking. He smiled nonchalantly and persuaded him, "Don't look at it that way. Think of it from another angle. By doing this, you'd be helping your idol. You'd be letting more people get to know him. And your idol is so talented and so young. Not only can he dance and write songs, he can even write novels... Don't you want more people to know about these things? Don't you want more people to admire your idol too?"

The internet café owner hesitated for a moment. Seeing that he was genuinely tempted, the young reporter spared no effort in persuading him further. As he talked animatedly, his spit sprayed all over the counter.

In the end, the owner's desire to show off his idol won out. He agreed to give the video to the young reporter for free, asking him to help publicize his idol. He even took out paper and a pen from beneath the counter, quickly wrote down a book title and pen name, then said to the reporter across from him, "This is Tang Shi's pen name and the novel he wrote... Honestly, what he writes is really quite good. It has depth, and it has a plot. There are so many customs and folk traditions from the Tang Dynasty that I never knew about before. I only learned about them after reading Prosperous Tang Strategy. I never expected someone so young to know so much. The only flaw is that he updates too slowly... If you ever get the chance to meet him, remember to tell him to post more every day..."

As the young reporter looked at the slip of paper in his hand and the video that had been copied directly onto his USB drive, how could he possibly care about the internet café owner's rambling? He simply rented a computer in the café and immediately searched online. Looking at the web novel whose clicks, favorites, and comments all blatantly screamed "popular," he listened to the owner boast smugly beside him. "Listen, don't look down on web novels. Don't think that just because it hasn't been published in print, it doesn't count as real writing. I'm telling you, not long after Roughwood started writing this book, publishers were already leaving messages online asking to publish Roughwood's novel. It was Roughwood who didn't want it published. He only wanted to put it online so more people could read it. And ever since this novel appeared, paying to read online fiction has become a trend. Haven't you seen all those red donation notices and tipped bombs in the comment section below? I'm telling you, even without counting the actual earnings from the paid chapters of Prosperous Tang Strategy, the Green Coins from those tips alone have already added up to more than a hundred thousand yuan. That's comparable to an ordinary person's hard-earned annual salary."

"And that's only for someone with a decent job and a pretty good income."

"Our Roughwood is the one leading wave after wave of trends in web novels! He can practically be called the founding father of historical transmigration web fiction!"

The internet café owner's bragging was mostly exaggerated. But some of it was true. At the very least, the explosive statistics of Prosperous Tang Strategy could not be faked.

His words also made the young reporter secretly marvel. Sure enough, the Sugar Juice Duo were money-making young masters. No matter what line of work they entered, they would make money.

Besides, with the economy developing, the country was placing more and more importance on the internet economy. He had heard that a few major companies, with government support, had organized some kind of "Internet Forward-Looking Discussion Conference" a couple of months earlier. For a time, the internet had become an especially hot topic.

In the young reporter's view, it did not really matter what Tang Shi had written or whether it was good. But now Tang Shi had become connected to the hottest thing around—the internet. That meant there was a topic to work with and news to hype. Which meant he could get a bonus...

In his excitement, the young reporter immediately called his editor-in-chief.

And when Tang Shi and Lu Hengzhi finally staggered through three days of midterm exams, they discovered that the reporters outside had gone wild again, as if pumped full of stimulants.

Chapter 46

As everyone knew, when a person was in a completely unfamiliar environment, or one they did not consider particularly safe, being able to do something familiar or see someone familiar would give them a relative sense of security.

When Tang Shi had first been reborn, the many years he had spent writing rebirth and transmigration web novels allowed him to accept the fact of his rebirth fairly quickly. But the huge secret hidden in his heart also placed enormous pressure on him. And this psychological burden was something he had no way to tell anyone about.

So, when he could not relieve the pressure in his heart, Tang Shi chose to write novels to calm himself. The benefit of doing so was that it allowed him to find a little confidence amid his bizarre circumstances and face this unfamiliar yet familiar world. It also let him earn some pocket money through his efforts and help support the household.

Later, when Tang Shi decided, at Lu Hengzhi's urging, to enter the Dance Miracle competition and use it as a stepping stone into the entertainment industry, he wanted to turn this side job into a secret weapon for attracting online popularity.

Tang Shi knew that although celebrities of the present still maintained an image of being warm and friendly toward fans while also seeming distant, elegant, and mysterious, in the near future, during the information age when Weibo and all kinds of online marketing became widespread, people would tend to prefer new idols who stepped down from their pedestals and revealed their goofy, awkward sides.

To use a popular internet phrase from the future, it was called being down-to-earth.

Thus, after being reborn, Tang Shi, who had always been committed to being the first to try new things, carefully managed his pen name as well. Although the heavy workload of studying and dance practice occupied most of his life, he still worked hard to ensure he updated three to six thousand words every day. Unless absolutely necessary, he never stopped updating.

When writing, Tang Shi also paid attention to distinguishing between real historical events and his own imagined plotlines. While making sure the story was satisfying and exciting, he also taught readers about the customs and knowledge of that dynasty. This was precisely what the readers of Prosperous Tang Strategy found most gratifying. They felt that when reading Prosperous Tang Strategy, they were not merely reading a mindless, feel-good power-leveling novel. They were learning things as well. And the knowledge they picked up while reading often became conversation material after meals, which they used to show off in front of colleagues, family members, or friends of the opposite sex.

In short, it gave them a higher level of coolness.

That was why, within only a few months of beginning publication, Prosperous Tang Strategy had stood out among countless web novels and become a representative work of historical transmigration fiction.

But such a small matter was not a major concern to the nation's 1.3 billion people, all struggling to make a living. After all, life was stressful, and not everyone had the leisure to spend money reading online. Yet now, a reporter had revealed that the author of this novel was actually the Sugar Juice Duo—the champions of Dance Miracle, whose victory had caused such a huge stir and become known to nearly everyone some time ago.