Making Money

After leaving the bank, Zhou Yuwen went to the county's electronics mall. He spent 6,999 yuan on the latest iPhone 5, then another 12,999 on a brand-new MacBook.

He inserted his SIM card and turned it on.

He installed a few commonly used apps. The new phone still ran as smoothly as ever.

As soon as he logged into QQ, he heard two notification beeps.

Chen Rongrong, whose profile picture showed a pure-looking beauty with long hair, had sent him a message:

"Thanks for helping me. I'll definitely pay you back next week (playful)."

He read it and didn't reply.

He put his phone away.

With a little time left, Zhou Yuwen went and got a neat haircut, then ducked into a bathhouse and enjoyed a nice soak.

It was 2015, and foot massage parlors were springing up all over the little county town. Their quality really wasn't something later years could compare to.

They truly offered the genuine article. When Zhou Yuwen put on a bathrobe and wristband and went up to the second floor, the attendant's eyes went wide. He hurriedly asked if Zhou Yuwen wanted to go up to the third floor.

Farther on, there was even a group of women in bodycon skirts and black stockings, their skin so tender it seemed ready to drip. They leaned against the wall, staring at Zhou Yuwen without blinking, not passing up a single chance to give him a come-hither look.

This really was the best of times!

It was also the last of times.

Unfortunately, Zhou Yuwen still had some self-control. How could he go playing around like that right after being reborn?

Zhou Yuwen just wanted a quiet place to stay.

He booked a private room.

He opened his laptop.

May 20, 2015.

At this point, the A-share market was a soaring rainbow of red. The notorious monster stock Baofeng Technology had climbed from nine yuan to 270, and Boss Jia had pushed LeTV to 150 yuan through his internet ecosystem.

When Zhou Yuwen opened his securities software, the market was basically red across the board.

The Shanghai Composite Index had already risen to 4,800 points. Investors were crazy at this time, with the swagger of people who thought the Shanghai market could buy the entire United States. Experts on TV also said that, with this market rally, it would take only two months to establish a firm footing at 10,000 points.

No one expected that, in just one month, on June 12...

The market, which had been red across the board, suddenly took a nosedive. The entire A-share market triggered the circuit breakers three times. Every stock fell 10% the instant trading opened and stayed there until trading was halted, three days in a row.

For a time, wails of misery filled the land, and the rooftops of major, well-known residential complexes were full of people flying through the air.

Zhou Yuwen had opened a stock account after his eighteenth birthday. He couldn't help it. After all, he'd made a little money writing novels and thought he was different from everyone else, so he wanted to make his fortune in stocks.

Naturally, the A-share market had given him a harsh education.

He had started buying stocks after graduating from high school. Then, throughout college, basically every month when he got paid, he poured all his writing fees into them. The result was that the more they fell, the more he bought, and the more he bought, the more they fell.

If you said Zhou Yuwen was lucky, he really was lucky, because few people, like him, had already decided what path they wanted to take in high school.

But if you said he was unlucky, that was true too. Other people could at least make a little money playing the stock market.

Zhou Yuwen had stubbornly stuck with one stock for all four years of college, only for it to be delisted when he graduated!

It had been six yuan a share, but after receiving an ST designation, its price fell to 0.2 yuan a share!

Over four whole years, Zhou Yuwen had lost 300,000 yuan!

That was enough to buy a little Audi!

Damn it, if he'd known, he might as well have bought the Audi.

Now that he was reborn, Zhou Yuwen was going to keep at the A-share market. He refused to believe he wouldn't succeed this time.

He moved the mouse, browsing the densely packed sea of red stocks.

At this time, unless you were exceptionally unlucky, you could basically make money buying stocks. The first stock Zhou Yuwen had bought back then had made money too, and he still remembered its name.

It was called Zhongchao Cable.

He had bought and sold it around this same time, when its price was about thirteen yuan.

When it rose to fourteen, Zhou Yuwen couldn't wait any longer and chose to sell.

But he had barely sold it when an announcement came out on the evening of May 27: fifteen bonus shares for every ten shares held, a huge boon!

Then, starting May 28, it hit the daily upper limit again and again, rising from sixteen yuan to 31.2 in a week.

Zhou Yuwen opened Zhongchao Cable's page and took a look. Sure enough, its current price was 16.3 yuan, and its upward trend wasn't obvious.

There was no need to say anything else. Why toil away writing novels when he could make easy money trading stocks?

He went all in with 150,000 yuan!

Zhou Yuwen put every last bit of his money into Zhongchao Cable, then looked at a few other stocks he remembered.

It was still early.

From outside came the familiar sound of high heels.

Then came a knock at the door.

"Come in," Zhou Yuwen said.

A woman with a perfect figure and a pretty face appeared, wearing a short qipao that exposed her thighs. "Hey, handsome, are you bored all by yourself? Want to have some fun?"

Zhou Yuwen shook his head.

The woman took the hint and left.

He felt that making money from stocks was still too slow, and Zhou Yuwen really had no other way to make money. After weighing his options, he ultimately decided that writing novels was still the best way for him to earn money at present.

He opened his author dashboard on Luzi. His writing fees accumulated this month came to 2,354 yuan.

There was nothing he could do about it. After all, the college entrance exam was only a month away, and Zhou Yuwen couldn't maintain a steady update schedule. Lower writing fees were unavoidable.

If he could consistently update with twenty thousand characters a day, he should be able to earn another sixty or seventy thousand yuan over the summer vacation.

Although he had been reborn, he still had to keep updating the novel.

Whether he made money didn't matter, but he couldn't let his readers down.

That was the most basic professional standard Zhou Yuwen had as a writer.

He checked where he had left off. Oh, he had just reached the Water 7 arc. According to the plot, the protagonist and Kalifa from CP9 had been classmates at the naval academy. The protagonist had slept with Kalifa when they were students, and now their old flame had been rekindled.

It was just that the protagonist already had a new woman by this point, so when his new love and old flame met, a jealous rivalry was inevitable.

Kalifa slapped Nami and said, "Do you know that this is where Hubby likes kissing me most?"

Then Nami slapped Kalifa back and said, "You don't know this, but Hubby loves holding me while he sleeps and burying his head right here!"

Looking over the novel he had written before, Zhou Yuwen suddenly realized that what he'd written at eighteen seemed more interesting and more readable than what he'd written at thirty.

Before he knew it, he had actually become engrossed in it.

Alas, he had to admit that, for all the changes, the essence remained the same. After all these years, he was still writing about women tearing into each other.

After finishing what he had written so far, Zhou Yuwen immediately continued the story.

As he'd said, making money was secondary. He couldn't just stop updating the novel he was writing now because he'd been reborn. He couldn't abandon his basic professional standards.

Over the course of the afternoon, Zhou Yuwen wrote twelve thousand characters and posted them all at once.

Zhou Yuwen thought, I've been so hardworking today. Shouldn't you readers be bowing down to worship me?

But when he refreshed the page, he found a new comment:

"What kind of trash is this? Did someone else take over?"

"Why has the writing gotten worse?"

"Did the author hire a ghostwriter?"

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