The First Pot of Gold

Just as his homeroom teacher, Hu Jie, had said.

Zhou Yuwen had been raised by his mother alone. As for his father, when Zhou Yuwen was three, he had started a new family with another woman and had other children.

From then on, it was as though his father had vanished from Zhou Yuwen's life altogether.

Before Zhou Yuwen learned to write novels, life had been genuinely hard for him and his mother. Her salary of two thousand yuan simply wasn't enough to support the household.

With no other choice, his mother had gone to his father to ask for some child support.

His father had replied, "Sigh, life isn't easy for me either. I have a whole family to feed. Give me a few more days."

Finally, when she could bear it no longer, his mother went to court to have the payments enforced.

Even then, Zhou Yuwen's father dragged things out whenever he could. Only when he absolutely couldn't stall any longer would he give his mother a thousand or two.

At the end of her rope, Zhou Yuwen's mother told him to pay thirty thousand yuan in one lump sum, and she would never ask him for child support again!

Hearing that, his father hurriedly had her put it in writing, sign it, and stamp it. Only then did he pay her the thirty thousand yuan, in three installments.

From then on, the two families had nothing more to do with each other.

It wasn't until Zhou Yuwen graduated from high school that his father sought him out once.

The selfish, cunning old man wanted to have it both ways. He refused to pay, yet wanted his ex-wife to raise his son for him for free. Then, once the boy turned eighteen, he would come running back in floods of tears and take his son to acknowledge his ancestors and return to the family.

Zhou Yuwen certainly wasn't that foolish. He was young and hot-blooded at the time, and he was full of loathing for his biological father. His father had sent someone to pass along a message.

He wanted to meet Zhou Yuwen.

Zhou Yuwen sent back his answer: "There's no need to meet."

Even though Zhou Yuwen had lived to thirty in his previous life, the number of times he had met his father could be counted on one hand.

With his parents divorced and his family poor when he was little, Zhou Yuwen had been extremely insecure and sensitive.

Back then, whether they were teachers at school or other adults around him, whenever they talked to Zhou Yuwen, they would always say, "Good boy, it hasn't been easy for your mother to raise you. When you grow up, you must repay her."

Zhou Yuwen, of course, wholeheartedly agreed.

In elementary school, Zhou Yuwen had scored at least ninety-five in Chinese, math, and English, and had been named a Three-Good Student every year.

Then, after fifth grade, his family got a computer.

Although Zhou Yuwen knew how important studying was, desire ultimately triumphed over reason.

Come to think of it, that Ma Huateng was partly to blame. All he did, day in and day out, was copy other people's games. One day he copied Audition Online, the next it was QQ Speed, and then came CF and Dungeon Fighter Online.

Anyway, new games came out every year back then, and studying was a strange thing too, especially math.

Zhou Yuwen remembered that one day, he had been so absorbed in a game that, in a moment of inattention, he forgot to do his math homework.

The next day, when he listened to the teacher's lesson, he couldn't understand it no matter how hard he tried.

And so, things went from bad to worse.

Zhou Yuwen's grades had originally been among the best in the whole school. Back in elementary school, the top fifty students in each grade had their names read out at school assemblies.

Unfortunately, Zhou Yuwen's glory days ended with elementary school.

In middle school, he was even fortunate enough to be assigned a seat in one of the back two rows. Every day, he listened to lessons as he pleased and played cards.

Sometimes he slept, too.

Back then, his deskmate liked to slip an MP4 player between the pages of a book and stare at it for an entire lesson.

Seeing her so engrossed, Zhou Yuwen asked what she was watching.

She said she was reading a novel?

"What novel?" Zhou Yuwen asked.

"Very Pure and Ambiguous. It's so good!"

She said she absolutely loved a woman in it named Lan Ling. She was especially cute!

"How good is it?" Zhou Yuwen asked.

And so Zhou Yuwen became addicted to reading novels. From then on, there was no stopping him.

Only now did Zhou Yuwen remember that, throughout middle school, he had held that MP4 player bought for three hundred yuan every day, curling up in his room to read novels as soon as school let out.

He read from five in the afternoon until ten at night, then until two in the morning.

Then he would think, Just one more chapter? After finishing one, Just one more!

And so he would keep reading until four or five in the morning.

Until the distant sky turned fish-belly white.

Zhou Yuwen had really been full of energy back then. He slept only two hours a day, going to bed at four or five and getting up at seven to go to school.

He read a great many novels back then, like How a Bad Guy Was Made.

The Ultimate Prince.

Three Kingdoms: I Rule Shu Han.

Three Kingdoms: The Tale of Yuan Shang.

Power and Wealth.

The Winding Official Road.

And so on.

Zhou Yuwen didn't read much fantasy. At the time, he mainly read historical novels, which gave him some comfort.

He thought that at least he wasn't neglecting his proper business; he was learning history, at the very least.

From the moment he started reading novels, studying had become a very distant word for Zhou Yuwen. One could even say his grades had little to do with him. As long as he muddled through without landing in the bottom five, he was satisfied.

As for high school, Zhou Yuwen couldn't even dream of getting into one of the city's key high schools. He could only find an ordinary high school to attend.

Then, in the first lesson of the school year, his homeroom teacher Hu Jie-that short woman-said expressionlessly, "Since you've all ended up here, I don't need to tell you what level you're at."

"If you want to study, study. If you don't, don't disturb anyone else."

The class burst into laughter.

At the time, Zhou Yuwen thought his life was over!

Zhou Yuwen's high school was far too stifling. Everyone around him drilled one idea into him: those with good grades had a bright future ahead of them.

Those with bad grades were wasting food by staying alive.

Even if they died, they would be wasting land.

During the most agonizing year, Zhou Yuwen really did think he might as well die.

But what could he do? When it came to actually dying, he couldn't bear to do it.

So he muddled through one day at a time.

In middle school, he had read historical novels and comforted himself with the claim that he was learning history.

Although it was only a comfort, he had to admit that the authors of historical novels knew a thing or two, and Zhou Yuwen really had learned some writing techniques from them.

After entering high school, Zhou Yuwen found a fatty who shared his interests.

The two of them huddled together and read novels.

The fatty thought the novels Zhou Yuwen read were too depressing. In How a Bad Guy Was Forged, for instance, one of the male lead's women was taken away by the bad guys and broken in the very first volume.

The fatty thought that was just plain disgusting.

If you were going to read novels, you had to go to Cuiwei and Furnace. Little sites like those were where the really explosive stuff was!

So he recommended Conan XX Chronicles to Zhou Yuwen.

"Love Apartment: Transmigrating as Zeng Xiaoxian and Conquering My Stepmom!"

This once again opened the doors of a new world for Zhou Yuwen.

Zhou Yuwen had never imagined novels could be written like this?

He condemned them as an affront to decency even as he happily turned page after page.

After finishing, he still had to say, "What kind of trash novel is this? There's no writing skill to it at all! If someone like that can write a novel, then I can too!"

"Then write one!"

The fatty curled his lip, unconvinced. He said that if Zhou Yuwen really could write a novel and get it signed, he would call him Dad.

And so Zhou Yuwen really did start writing a novel.

Zhou Yuwen still remembered that his first novel had been One Piece fanfiction. It could be said to require no skill whatsoever.

All he did was follow the plot.

Then, whenever he met a woman, the moaning and groaning began.

From the East Blue all the way to the Grand Line, it was moans and groans.

Come to think of it, novels had really been easy to write in those days. Zhou Yuwen had never been in love, much less known the taste of a woman, yet even so, he could stretch a kiss into twenty thousand characters.

It got to the point where an editor from a small website sought Zhou Yuwen out specifically, hoping he would write for them.

Supposedly, they were supplying an overseas website and paid in US dollars.

Zhou Yuwen didn't agree, though, mainly because the whole thing seemed too unreliable.

At the time, Zhou Yuwen was writing on Furnace. He wrote only two thousand characters a day and could make four or five thousand yuan a month.