Xixi had been laughing heartily without any sign of sleepiness, so Yang Yi kept playing with her for a long time, until the little one was so drowsy she started nodding off. She didn’t even get to hear a story before falling asleep in her father’s arms.
After settling the little one down, Yang Yi went to the study to start his "work."
By the way, the drafts in today’s author backend draft box were about to run out. Yang Yi glanced at the nearly 200,000 words he had "transported" over the past few days and decided to upload them all to the draft box at once.
However, as soon as Yang Yi logged into the web version of the author backend, a flurry of *beep beep beep* sounds came from the site messages, jumping wildly.
What was it?
Puzzled, Yang Yi clicked to open them. The site message inbox, with a capacity of 100, was nearly bursting! Aside from some system notifications about promotional slots, they were all private messages from an editor named Qiangzi.
"Hello author, I’m your editor, Qiangzi." "Are you there? I’m your editor, Qiangzi." "Please add my SNS: 27960xxxxx for easier contact." (Note: SNS is the chat software in this world, but compared to QQ, it’s more like MSN, and an old version of MSN at that.) "Yang Yi, have you seen my private messages? Please reply..." "No way, bro, you haven’t been online for two days straight?" "I’ve been waiting so long the flowers have withered..." "Bro, please add me on SNS, I have something urgent to discuss with you!" ...
Several pages of private messages, and Yang Yi could feel Qiangzi’s resentment through the screen. He was a bit baffled: "What’s so urgent? Why the rush to find me?"
Yang Yi didn’t finish reading the messages. Calmly, he closed the mailbox, opened the draft box, uploaded the next dozen or so chapters, and set the auto-publish schedule.
After finishing the task, Yang Yi leisurely searched for the SNS software online, downloaded it, and while figuring out how to use it, registered his own account.
"27960..." Yang Yi muttered to himself as he added Qiangzi, writing in the note, "I’m Yang Yi."
It was already nearly ten o’clock. Yang Yi glanced at the time, figuring that no matter how hard this editor worked, he’d already clocked out. So he closed the webpage, ready to log off SNS and do some writing.
But unexpectedly, just a few seconds after he sent the friend request notification, an SNS chat window popped up.
"Yang Yi? Are you really the author of *Soldiers Assault*, Yang Yi?" ...
The scene shifted to the Qiyue Literature Network editorial office. A minute earlier, Qiangzi had gone to the break room again. This time, he poured himself a cup of coffee; the rich aroma was the only thing keeping his drowsiness at bay.
"Why hasn’t he shown up? Could he already be asleep?" Qiangzi sighed, rubbing his temples as he sat down.
To wait for Yang Yi, he’d been glued to the computer. He was supposed to have left at six, but he stayed at the office, waiting until now...
"Should I wait until eleven? No, maybe until twelve? If he’s still not online, I’ll deal with it tomorrow."
But a *beep beep beep* sound snapped Qiangzi back to reality.
"Please, please!" He’d been disappointed countless times. Praying, Qiangzi clicked open the SNS system notification.
A friend request notification, with the message: "I’m Yang Yi"!
Yang Yi?
Overjoyed, Qiangzi quickly clicked to accept, then immediately opened the chat window. With a mix of excitement and nervousness, he typed: "Yang Yi? Are you really the author of *Soldiers Assault*, Yang Yi?"
After a moment that felt like an eternity to Qiangzi, a single word popped up in the chat: "Yeah."
Alright, confirmed!
Qiangzi happily typed: "Is Yang Yi your real name, or just a pen name?"
In this world, the copyright association was very powerful. Except for necessary evidence collection, it fully protected the private information of copyright holders. Even staff at Qiyue Literature Network couldn’t access the real names authors filled in during registration.
"Real name," came the concise reply.
"Your book has shown strong potential and has caught the attention of our entire editorial department. So, as your editor, I’ve been entrusted to discuss some things with you." Qiangzi typed quickly.
"Go ahead," the chat window flashed back.
Qiangzi felt a bit hurt. He thought he was already quite introverted and bad at chatting, but he hadn’t expected someone to be even more sparing with words. Staring at the two-character reply, he almost wanted to spit blood.
"It’s like this: your book is currently in a hot-selling phase, right? We’d like you to slow down your update pace to coordinate with our promotions."
"You don’t need to update tens of thousands of words every day! Many authors on the site manage 4,000 words a day, and readers are already moved to tears." Qiangzi exaggerated a bit—most authors were actually quite diligent.
When he saw this question, Yang Yi was puzzled. He thought editors were supposed to be the ones cracking the whip for more updates. But his own editor was telling him to update less?
Still, Yang Yi didn’t pay it much mind. He casually replied: "I’m only updating two chapters, that’s not much! Should I do one chapter a day? Wouldn’t readers complain?"
Qiangzi quickly explained: "No, if you adjust the chapter breaks to about 2,000 words per chapter and update three to four chapters daily, readers won’t mind."
At Yang Yi’s current update speed, following Qiangzi’s suggestion, he could release over ten chapters a day!
But Yang Yi didn’t care. He replied: "Forget it, too much trouble."
Little did Qiangzi know, Yang Yi was just a simple transporter of this novel. Having to go through the hassle of modifying chapters, adding more sections and titles—that would be way too much work!
"But that would mean you lose a lot of revenue," Qiangzi weakly countered.
Yang Yi, curious after hearing Qiangzi say his book was selling well, reopened the author backend to check. This backend, linked to the copyright organization, provided real-time royalty statistics. Of course, the data was synced, but the money wouldn’t be paid out until next month, after third-party auditing to prevent errors or manipulation.
"132,409.8..." Yang Yi could hardly believe his eyes.
He had only been publishing for less than a week, and he’d already earned 130,000?
Of course, most of that came from reader tips; the subscription data wasn’t particularly eye-catching—Qiangzi had already arranged plenty of promotions for Yang Yi, and *Soldiers Assault* was at the center of a heated controversy, drawing massive attention.
But what Yang Yi didn’t know was that the flood of tips was also thanks to those who slandered him!
The more people criticized Yang Yi, the more readers who loved *Soldiers Assault* desperately tipped him, afraid he’d lose confidence from the attacks...
Seeing that he’d earned over a hundred thousand in just a few days, Yang Yi thought with emotion: "In this world, writing is still pretty lucrative!"
However, Yang Yi didn’t care about Qiangzi’s suggestion. He felt that having more or less money didn’t matter—enough to get by was fine.
Why bother making things harder for himself just to earn more, and risk compromising the original quality of *Soldiers Assault* through modifications?
"Oh, it’s fine. It’s almost finished anyway," Yang Yi’s words shocked Qiangzi.
Almost finished? It had only been a few days since the updates started!