Chapter 294: Keep the Money for Yourself, Don’t Transfer It Back to Me!
Chapter 294: Keep the Money for Yourself, Don’t Transfer It Back to Me!
Terminal Chinese Web, the game detail page, and Tengda Games’ official Weibo all updated the announcement almost simultaneously, quickly drawing widespread attention from players.
“Eh? Turn Back Before It’s Too Late is actually doing a collaboration with a website?”
“Isn’t this the same site where the official serialization is posted?”
“These event rewards are crazy good! Not only is there full-site access, but there’s even an in-game reward.”
“Disguise pill? It can change your character model? Holy crap—don’t try to stop me, I need this item!”
“And the accounts are already linked? Nice, saves me the hassle of registering.”
“I’ve been following this site for a while. The early novels were trash, but lately a few new titles are surprisingly decent—not worse than Infinite Chinese Web’s premium stuff. Good for killing time.”
“For the disguise pill—charge!”
Player reactions were fiery.
The core reason was simple: the reward selection was perfect.
In Turn Back Before It’s Too Late, the protagonist was just an ordinary male, and there wasn’t even a character-creation feature. After all, when Pei Qian designed the game, his intention was to use this limitation to scare away appearance-obsessed players.
Which meant that the ability to change the character model became extremely valuable!
Some NPCs in the game had similar body types to the protagonist—especially some female NPCs.
As soon as players heard that they could switch their model to one of those women, they exploded with excitement!
Of course, given the world’s setting, the female NPCs weren’t exactly stunning, and compared to the craftsmanship of adult games, they were leagues apart.
But in this world filled with demons and grotesque creatures, even an average female NPC could trigger a “pig becomes goddess” effect.
Naturally, huge numbers of players rushed to the Terminal Chinese Web to complete tasks, all waiting for their seven-day login streak to grant the disguise pill.
Such a great item, completely free—just log in for seven days? Who wouldn’t grab it?
Meanwhile, a new wave of excellent works began to emerge on Terminal Chinese Web.
Under the editors’ tireless guidance, a few bottom-tier authors suddenly had breakthroughs, producing surprisingly solid power-fantasy novels.
Ma Yiqun spotted these rising talents through data metrics and used President Pei’s subsidies to boost their manuscript fees, ensuring they earned at least as much as authors on major sites—greatly improving their motivation.
During the event, many authors began mass-releasing chapters, further boosting reader engagement.
As a result, the site now had good books and good readers, allowing Terminal Chinese Web to enter a virtuous cycle!
Many players who were originally Infinite Chinese Web readers were happy to bookmark an extra site and read different novels on both.
With readers paying, the site no longer needed subsidies from President Pei. Gradually, it could operate independently.
Watching the surge in reader numbers, Ma Yiqun felt deeply gratified.
“Time to report this good news to President Pei!”
Proud and excited, Ma Yiqun dialed President Pei’s phone number.
“Hello…?”
President Pei’s voice on the other side carried a heavy nasal tone.
Ma Yiqun froze for a moment. “President Pei, did you catch a cold? Sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered you at a time like this.”
Every Tengda employee cared deeply about President Pei’s health—after all, he was their guiding light.
Pei Qian: “…It’s nothing serious. Did the website run into some kind of problem? Tell me quickly.”
Ma Yiqun wasn’t sure whether he’d misheard or if it was just psychological, but he somehow felt that President Pei’s tone carried a tiny bit of anticipation?
Anticipation… for the website to run into trouble?
Impossible. That must be because President Pei sounded different after getting sick, making him imagine things.
Ma Yiqun smiled. “President Pei, actually, I have good news!”
“Starting next month, we won’t need to give as much subsidy to the website’s authors! Before the end of the month, I plan to return part of the funds. And in another three to four months, Terminal Chinese Web might even be fully self-sustaining!”
On the other end of the line, President Pei was silent for a long time before saying, “…Huh?”
Ma Yiqun continued, “President Pei, the traffic you brought in through Turn Back Before It’s Too Late has proven extremely effective!”
“These past weeks, a large number of players have flooded into Terminal Chinese Web, giving the site a big boost in popularity.”
“So I talked it over with Li Yada and we arranged a collaboration event. It’s been working very well!”
“Not only did our registered and active user numbers grow, but the follow-reading statistics of many novels have risen significantly. That means players didn’t just come to peek at the official content and leave—they actually stayed, becoming long-term readers of our site!”
“With these paying readers, our revenue will greatly improve over the coming period, so we simply won’t need so much author subsidy funding.”
“So I was thinking of returning part of the funds to Tengda, so the money can be used on something more meaningful—”
Before Ma Yiqun could finish, President Pei interrupted firmly from the other end of the phone.
“No need!”
Ma Yiqun: “Ah?”
Pei Qian coughed twice, then returned to a calm tone: “This money… really isn’t important.”
“With how well Turn Back Before It’s Too Late is selling, what are you even worrying about? Tengda isn’t short on cash.”
“Terminal Chinese Web is the one that needs the money more!”
“You’re just seeing the first hint of turning a profit. You’re still far, far away from truly developing into a web-novel giant like Infinite Chinese Web!”
“Keep the money. Don’t you dare send it back.”
“This month, no matter what method you use, make sure you spend it all!”
“With the influx of new readers, shouldn’t you give them some benefits?”
“And the authors who’ve been working so hard, basically creating content out of passion alone—shouldn’t they get some compensation?”
“And your employees have been working overtime. Shouldn’t you organize a team-building event to boost morale?”
“Or you could hire more programmers to improve the website and optimize the mobile app. With so many new readers flooding in, is your current server and bandwidth even enough? If not, hurry and buy more.”
“There are so many places to spend money—why are you pinching pennies and saving costs? It’s not even your money. Why be so stingy?”
“Spend it. If you run out, then ask me for more!”
After hearing President Pei’s words, Ma Yiqun felt a little ashamed.
He had completely misunderstood!
Ma Yiqun had been thinking about making the website profitable as soon as possible, to help President Pei save money.
After all, the website had been burning money nonstop—editor salaries, operational costs, author attendance bonuses, subsidies, and so on.
This made Ma Yiqun uneasy, and he had been constantly thinking about how to earn all that money back for President Pei.
But today’s words from President Pei woke him up.
Although profitability is important, what’s more important is the website’s development!
Terminal Chinese Web is part of President Pei’s overall strategic layout, and it’s still at a very small scale. Even if it turns a profit now, it would only be a tiny amount—not even worth comparing to industry giants like Infinite Chinese Web.
From that perspective, Tengda Games is already way ahead, while Terminal Chinese Web is like a little brother trying to follow behind its big brother, step by step.
At this stage, there’s no need to worry about “sharing the burden” with big brother—what matters is growing as fast as possible.
Ma Yiqun was deeply moved—not only because President Pei had already mapped out a bright future for Terminal Chinese Web, but also because President Pei had placed such trust in him!
“Alright, President Pei. I’ll definitely spend this money on improving the website. Don’t worry!”
…
After hanging up, Pei Qian silently turned on his computer to check Terminal Chinese Web’s situation.
Although he couldn’t see the website’s backend data, there were still ways to infer its popularity indirectly.
He casually opened one of the books on the homepage and checked its comment section.
Originally, those comment sections were either dead silent or full of complaints—completely miserable.
But now, when he clicked on the books on the homepage… the comment sections looked normal!
There were people urging updates, people writing proper reviews, and people discussing the plot.
All the site’s metrics—recommendation tickets, bookmarks, and so on—had increased significantly.
And it wasn’t just one or two books; it was all the books featured on the homepage!
Pei Qian knew very well that Terminal Chinese Web did not allow faked data. Any book with suspicious bot activity would have its recommendation spot removed immediately; there was no way something with fake data could be displayed on the homepage so openly.
In other words, all the books on the homepage had real, organic data. Readers were truly increasing!
And that wasn’t even the worst part.
Pei Qian was shocked to discover that compared to before, the books on the homepage had shown huge improvement in terms of genre selection, pacing, and even writing quality!
He had read a few novels on Terminal Chinese Web before, and they were the worst of the worst—utterly incoherent and worthy of being abandoned after one or two chapters.
But now, at least the books on the homepage looked like real web novels.
The titles and descriptions were more attractive, the pacing was noticeably faster, and the “satisfying moments” were handled much better.
In short, they finally had the true flavor of web novels!
It was no wonder those books’ stats had improved.
A large influx of readers was one reason, but the more fundamental reason was that the quality of those books had gone up—only then could readers stay.
Of course, their quality still wasn’t considered high. At best, they might barely reach the “premium” level of Infinite Chinese Web, but at least they were readable now.
“What is going on?”
Pei Qian frowned, finally spotting the problem.
Ma Yiqun wasn’t supposed to understand web novels, right?
He was, after all, an author who flopped book after book—a veteran failure. Clearly someone with a huge misunderstanding of what web novels were supposed to be.
If Ma Yiqun didn’t understand web novels, then the editors he trained definitely didn’t either.
If the whole editorial team didn’t understand web novels…
Then how were these halfway decent novels getting selected for the homepage?
Could it be purely data-driven?
Hmm… that was possible…
At first, Pei Qian had suspected that maybe he had misjudged Ma Yiqun’s true abilities.
But after thinking again, he realized that readers were the best filter. Even if Terminal Chinese Web currently had few readers, the filtering effect wouldn’t change.
Ma Yiqun didn’t actually need to read every book—he just needed to pick the ones with good numbers and keep pushing them forward in recommendations.
“Forget it, forget it. No need to think about this.”
“The monthly settlement is coming soon. As long as Terminal Chinese Web obediently spends all the money, who has time to care about these tiny little details?”
Pei Qian tossed his phone onto the headboard, planning to go into ostrich mode.
Right now, his only wish was that nobody bothered him. Every department should quickly figure out how to burn the extra money they earned, so they wouldn’t create trouble for President Pei.
Just as he was about to take a nap, his phone rang again.
He picked it up—Assistant Xin was calling.
“President Pei, the authorities want to do an official interview with you, to talk about the creative process behind your games.”
Pei Qian was silent for a moment.
“…I’m very busy. Can I not go?”
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