Chapter 3: 2010, The Golden Age of Novel Writing

July, 2010.

　　At the age of eighteen, Zhou Yuwen had just finished his college entrance exams. Holding the two hundred yuan that his mother had just given him, he felt slightly rueful. He could never have imagined that in this life, he would still have to spend his mother’s money.

　　Zhou Yuwen’s parents had been divorced since he was a baby. He grew up with his mother. Although the family conditions were a bit worse, he could not be regarded as impoverished. His mother was an accountant in a public institution and received all her entitled benefits, from the social insurances to a housing fund1. Thus, he never lacked the essentials throughout the years.

　　It’s just that a single mother raising a child could not avoid the pressure of life. So, since Zhou Yuwen was a child, as soon as she had money in her hands, she would buy housing everywhere. When she didn’t have enough money to buy newly built units, she would go to buy in those dilapidated second-hand buildings. If the money still wasn’t enough, she would ask around and borrow a little from others.

　　Housing2 in the ‘00s was cheap, housing in small county towns even more so: the cost of one unit was only in the tens of thousands.

　　Mother Zhou borrowed from all her friends and relatives, and barely managed to buy five units for her family.

　　Later, the houses were demolished3 one after another. After paying back the debts, Zhou’s mother still had a slight surplus, and even retained three houses in her hands.

　　Mother Zhou told Zhou Yuwen that for those three suites, she would not take monetary compensation, but would rather be paid in units, and would save them for when Zhou Yuwen got married.

　　In fact, it was indeed difficult for Mother Zhou to raise Zhou Yuwen to adulthood. Zhou Yuwen’s undeserving father had disappeared since he was two years old, and even now Zhou Yuwen didn’t know his name.

　　P~tui!

　　Scumbag!　

　　In his last life, Zhou Yuwen basically didn’t let his mother worry about him during university. When he was a freshman, he earnt some money writing novels online, and even received more than 100,000 yuan in royalties in his sophomore year.

　　At this time, his mother suggested selling one of the houses in their hometown, to give him enough money to buy a house in Nanjing4.

　　However, Zhou Yuwen said, “Don’t buy some random apartment, we have enough houses in the family, it’s better to buy a car with more than 100,000 yuan.”

　　So, in his sophomore year, Zhou Yuwen bought a damaged second-hand Audi. The subsequent maintenance costs alone were enough to buy a new car.

Zhou Yuwen made a lot of money during university by writing novels.

　　After graduation, he thought it was time to buy a room.

　　Well, the money he had earned wasn’t even enough for the down payment.

　　Later, after the house back in his hometown was demolished, he was only just able to buy an apartment in Nanjing.

　　For the first time in life, he had a regret unrelated to Su Qianqian.

　　It was actually because he didn’t buy housing.

　　Zhou Yuwen was currently sitting in his bedroom, the morning’s vomit had been cleaned up.

　　He wrote his first life goal in his notebook.

　　Buy housing!

　　But he didn’t have any money on hand. He couldn’t ask for his mother’s money. It was rare to be reborn once, spending her money again would be a bit unreasonable. Zhou Yuwen thought about other ways to make money.

　　Buying lottery tickets?

　　Speculating in stocks?

　　It was fundamentally impossible to buy lottery tickets, Zhou Yuwen has never touched those long lists of numbers. However, during the World Cup a few years later, Zhou Yuwen could try to sell a house and all in on Korea5.

　　Zhou Yuwen was actually quite familiar with stocks, but he wouldn’t earn much without sufficient principal, and he couldn’t always buy bull stocks every time.

　　Zhou Yuwen studied programming6 in his previous life. He became successful two years after graduating, and retreated to a management position to be carefree. He more or less forgot how to code. Of course, he could program if really necessary, but now was still the era of Android 2.0., and he reckoned that nobody would use his output anyway.

　　Besides, Zhou Yuwen felt that he was not one of those protagonists who would rebel against the heavens to change his fate.

　　To be honest, Zhou Yuwen was just a rather insignificant person. Even reborn, he was still fated to be only a little better than the average nobody. Surely it was impossible for rebirth to make one rise above mediocrity and ascend into the skies?

　　Thirty-year-old Little Zhou was very open-minded.

　　He didn’t desire billions upon billions, but simply a better life than the previous.

　　He used to tease women everywhere in his past life, so it would be boring to repeat that in this life.

　　Anyway, he had to be worthy of being ‘Reborn’.

　　He would exude his own masculine charm and let women tease himself instead.

　　Zhou Yuwen spent the whole day thinking about how to make money. In the end, after scouring his brains, Zhou Yuwen found that even if he was reborn, there wasn’t any real scheme to get-rich-quick.

　　Sure enough, he was a useless person.

　　In Zhou Yuwen’s mind, the most profitable was still his old business.

　　Novel writing.

　　Ah, 2010, the golden age of novel writing. Zhou Yuwen was also an avid reader in his previous life, and had read quite a lot of novels featuring rebirths; the one he read the most were where the protagonist would copy novels as soon as he appeared. No explanation given, just bang out a Battle Through The Heavens, then Douluo Dalu. The more impressive ones could even copy out world classics.

　　But as a former lackadaisical writer, Zhou Yuwen felt that there was no need to follow their path. Not to mention whether the contents of such large works could be remembered, even if you rewrote them, they may not even end up popular.

　　In his previous life, Zhou Yuwen started writing novels in his freshman year, so it was only half a year later than now. Zhou Yuwen clearly remembered that before 2012, you could essentially write whatever you wanted, but after 2012, you couldn’t write anything lower than the neck7.

　　Hence, this time when novels were written unbridled provided an opportunity to earn a few buckets of money. Zhou Yuwen didn’t even have to think about plot or structure, just directly began writing: the protagonist was reborn.

　　Set within the Three Kingdoms, a trip back to the past, where the generals bow down. First attack Jingzhou, then take Yizhou8! Then sit back and watch the tigers fight, as Cao Cao and Yuan Shao wear each other out.

　　Zhou Yuwen had written novels during all four years of university. To be honest, he didn’t get sick of writing youthful idealism at all, summing up its cardinal message: ‘Only accept women; never give them away’.

　　Your own woman must still be a virgin.

　　Even if she’d been married, write her husband as having a physiological disability9.

　　Then, the protagonist accidentally found out and took charge.

　　Afterwards, the readers would be unhappy, flaming, what kind of novel is this braindead author writing? Do you know how to write?

　　It’s best to just ignore that kind of reader.

　　Novel writing is for fun, and novel reading is also for fun.

　　Why do you want to poison others after poisoning yourself10?

　　For example, a certain sis-con wrote that he took his older sister to a bar and saw her thigh touched by some insert character11.

　　Zhou Yuwen really threw up when he saw it.

　　Whenever Zhou Yuwen wrote novels, if there was a big sister, he would absolutely keep her in the family.

　　Fortunately, Zhou Yuwen didn’t have an older sister in this life, cough cough!12

　　2010, the Golden Age of novel writing. Zhou Yuwen’s past one-million-word novel could now be written to two million without much effort. Write a Romance of the Three Kingdoms, gather military commanders, and use 200,000 words to conquer a city.

　　In the remaining 1.8 million words, Concubine Cai, Lady Zhen, Diao Chan, Lady Sun, the Qiao twins, Madam Bian, Madam Gan, Madam Mi, Empress He, etcetera, go around and it’s almost done.13

　　Oh, yes, you can’t put your novel on big websites. Zhou Yuwen’s line of thought was simple: make money. You could never make money on those big websites; the number of free words was 300,000.14 Would you exchange your life for money?

　　It’s better to find a small website, where you can register and receive subscriptions after only 100,000 words15. Then find an ‘adult’ site, copy and paste, but you can’t paste all of it. You can’t go overboard, just change a little bit, and you can’t really write that?16

　　That would be a crime; you can’t do that.

　　As the saying goes, it’s still all half-hidden by the pipa17, so you crave more after reading.

　　Zhou Yuwen became increasingly energetic as he wrote, and on the first day, he put down 10,000 words.

TLNs:

“Five social insurances and one housing fund”: endowment insurance, medical insurance, unemployment insurance, work-related injury insurance and maternity insurance, and housing provident fund‘Housing’ is used in the sense of ‘residence’. The raw’s classifier generally refers to apartment dwellings.‘Housing demolishment’ is a common practice where old buildings in the general vicinity of public works are removed, and the past stakeholders/residents indemnified for their losses and inconvenience, usually with a very generous monetary sum and/or resettlement. The circumstances presented by the raw suggests that the ‘hometown’ may be in a semi-rural setting, though I am personally unknowledgeable about the specifics.I edited Chapter 1 to use Nanjing instead of ‘Jinling’ if anybody was following. I will ‘un-fictionalize’ the names for geographical clarity. City of Nanjing population in 2010 was 6.16 million (statista.com). I debated adding ‘City’ to the end of ‘Nanjing’ for further clarity but have decided against it for now.Similar to 4, Korea= ‘Goryeo’, the dynasty from 918 to 1392. Though idk what result author is on about for the 2014 WC.Term used is ‘Computers’, which is too vague to narrow down to one of compsci or computing/programming etc., but the latter better fits the context.Allusion to the disappearance of voyeurism/smut novels. Interestingly, according to a comment on Qidian: “The three rounds of censorship: military matters after 2012, supernatural affairs after 2015, and governmental intrigues after 2019.”You and I know nothing about the Three Kingdoms, but basically it’s the pink area first, then the yellow area.I have no words for this kind of misogynistic mentality, but it does seem to be popular in certain groups around the world. However… CG  Pure cynicism, to a toxic level. Very common online nowadays.It is a common practice for authors to include big donators’ names in the story. Happens in English Patreon novels too.You can imagine why the text between notes 10 and 12 was removed later on.Essentially a bonk list of the reputedly most beautiful women of those times.As I wrote in my review on NU, this novel is a rewrite of a lesser version he had posted on a ‘small website’ (faloo) half a year or so prior. Pretty ironic that he moved the novel to Qidian later.Later chapters become ‘locked’ for subscribers/paying readers only. I think it’s like Webnovel’s stone system, could be wrong though.Presumably referring to the pornification of the original novel, obviously vague for censorship purposes.Pipa=instrument, figure of speech about how a half-exposed face is more enticing. Basically teasing.