"What? Sold out? They want more stock?" Li Mu looked incredulous.
In all the years the magazine had been running, he had never heard of an entire issue selling out within a week.
It felt unreal.
In the brief moment he spent mulling it over, the head of the Distribution Department took another call.
"Yes, we don't have any printed copies right now. It'll take three days before we have stock."
"Right, I'll try to hurry things along."
He had barely hung up before his phone rang again.
"No, our warehouse is empty too."
After taking three calls in a row,
the head of the Distribution Department finally decided to finish explaining the situation to Li Mu before answering any more.
He put his phone on silent.
"Editor-in-Chief Li, distributors everywhere are asking us for more stock, in varying quantities. Do you think we should print a larger additional run of this issue?"
As head of the Distribution Department,
he could go straight to the printer if only a few small orders needed filling.
But
the additional orders this time were far too large.
Although he had yet to tally the exact numbers,
he estimated that another hundred thousand copies were practically a certainty.
A run that large
wasn't something he could authorize on a whim.
That was why he had come to Li Mu.
"Go ahead," Li Mu said, making the final call.
After the head of the Distribution Department left, Li Mu decided to search online and see whether something had caused this situation.
He returned to his computer,
opened the browser,
and found the specific reason without much effort.
An article posted on Weibo by the editor-in-chief of Education Reference had driven the surge.
Li Mu found the article
and began reading.
Its content
was clear and