Only last night, his group chat friends had teased him, "If your numbers won't improve, shouldn't you reflect on yourself?" Then he had gone to sleep, woken up, and somehow reached the top... Chu Ge sat stunned for a moment, then shook his head with mixed feelings.
In the past, when this kind of external "traffic boost" improved his numbers, he had felt uncomfortable, as though his work hadn't earned the credit. But now that similar things had happened one after another, he had grown numb to it.
His ultimate goal was to expand his world's influence anyway. He couldn't worry about the means, and it wasn't as though he had deliberately engineered any of this. Whatever.
The honor of reaching the top was real enough.
What writer hadn't dreamed of this?
And just like that, the dream had inadvertently become reality.
In that moment, countless things flitted through Chu Ge's mind: his literary dreams as a boy, working to put food on the table after entering the workforce, the hardship of writing on the side, his resolve after quitting his job. He had said he couldn't manage both and ultimately had to choose, but choosing writing over his job had, in the end, reflected his love for this profession.
Then came years of drifting, scraping by, and the way he and Zhang Qiren had worn themselves sick through days and nights of hard work.
Saying goodbye to his friend, and everything up to now.
He leaned back in his chair absently for a while, thumped his lower back as though out of habit, then slowly closed the webpage and opened his document.
Write. Why think about all that?
This kind of popularity was only temporary, meaningless. Fundamentally, it proved nothing. All it could stir were his own feelings, unknown