I’m Really a Superstar

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After returning from the landlady’s house in the morning, Zhang Ye crashed back into bed. There was nothing he could do about it. Rao Aimin’s throw had caused him to go into a daze. He had still not recovered from it. Of course, the landlady was not easily taken advantage of. He had been taught a lesson, a bloody lesson!

Beep, beep. A short message was received.

Zhang Ye twisted his arm while feeling the pain and tapped on the phone. However, the next moment, he could not be calm. His waist did not ache, and his legs were no longer painful!

It was a notification from the bank!

He had received the copyright fees! There was more than five million Yuan!

Excluding taxes, this was the amount Zhang Ye received for selling “Ghost Blows Out the Light” and several of his fairy tale stories!

His cellphone vibrated. A call was coming in. It was a call from the man from the Beijing Education Publishing Firm, “Hello, Teacher Little Zhang. Haha, did you received the royalty fees? Congratulations! The sales for ‘Ghost Blows Out the Light’ yesterday was a huge success. No, I should say it was an unprecedented success! In all these years, our publishing firm had never, besides non-commercial publications, had a first day sales record of 90,000 copies!” He was very excited, “To be working with you, it is our honour. All along the way, you have been a man of miracles!”

Zhang Ye laughed, “You are generous with your praises, I’m not that great. It’s great due to your sales promotions.”

“But this sales figure is certain to decline; it won’t be able to hold at such high numbers going forward. Our most conservative estimates say that we will hit at least 700,000 copies per series this year. The next year estimates will likely increase very little, but we will still reprint. I think that with time, to break through a million copies sales per series should not be a problem at all.” said the middle-aged man excitedly.

This sales figure was also within Zhang Ye’s own estimates. It wasn’t too much of a surprise to him, “How about the fairy tale stories?”

The middle aged man reported happily, “We have already started on the promotions. When some of the bookstores and web stores knew that we were going to publish a compilation of “Snow White”, “The Wizard of Oz” and other fairy tales, many of them approached us to make pre-orders. The pre-order figures are already over 30,000. We have also put a priority on this publication. The firm’s Leader has already decided to speed up the publication of your fairy tales for release in a short time!”

They hung up.

Zhang Ye was still a little worried, so he went online to check his bank account. There was indeed 5 million more in his account. This large amount of money made Zhang Ye dizzy. When had he ever seen so much money?

I’m rich!

Time to buy a house and car!

Zhang Ye first thoughts were to buy a 3 bedroom apartment within the 2nd Ring Road of Beijing City. Then what next? Then what’s left to buy? Cough, cough… All you can buy is a fart, because you still have to pay it in installments after that! 5 million and you want to buy a 3 bedroom apartment within the 2nd Ring Road of Beijing City? That is something that would only happen in the New York Times and the Washington Post!

At once, Zhang Ye opened up Weibo to interact with his followers. This was an activity that he liked doing very much recently because his followers had increased to around 89,000 odd people. He had found out that he could increase his Reputation this way, too. As long as he posted something interesting or something that left them in admiration, he would gain a certain amount of Reputation. Afterall, this was also a form of social media, not unlike that of a radio or TV station.

After posting: Received the royalty fees, but after doing some calculations, I’m still far from buying a house. Forget it; I won’t be buying one after all.

Unsure if ZhangYeNumber1Fan had been on standby for Zhang Ye the whole day, immediately after it was posted, the first to forward and comment on it was him, “That can’t be? Teacher Zhang also cannot afford a house?”

“How much is the royalty fee? Requesting for insider news!”

“Definitely on the level of a million. ‘Ghost Blows Out the Light’ is too hot!”

“How can it be just a million? It has to be a least a few millions to do justice to a work like this!”

“Haha, Teacher Zhang is deliberately playing dumb again. But honestly, property prices are getting expensive. I doubt I will ever be able to afford one in my lifetime. I can only afford to rent.”

Everyone was busy discussing.

Suddenly, a nasty comment appeared, “Is this Zhang Ye retarded? How are property prices expensive? It’s cheap enough. If you can’t afford it, it’s because you are useless. Don’t complain. Even though I can’t afford one myself, the people around me have all bought one and have paid in full. And they’re even in the top-tier cities!”

This poster was nicknamed “I’mTheBest”.

Someone below replied, “Are you for real? Paid in full? Top-tier city?”

“I’mTheBest” replied “Of course. Those are even houses in the city. It’s not difficult!”

“Laughable.” Someone retorted, “Do you even know how much property prices are right now? Don’t you watch the news?”

ZhangYeNumber1Fan was speechless, “This person watches the news, but I bet it’s News Simulcast*!”

After following Zhang Ye’s Weibo, many of these followers were “fighters”. This challenge had provoked a war. Everyone was now arguing!

All of these comments were posted under Zhang Ye’s Weibo post, so, of course, he felt helpless and irritated. Scolding me? Even saying property prices are cheap? So he followed up with a post “Everyone, don’t argue. Actually, ‘I’mTheBest’ has a point there. I also know a friend who paid in full for a house in a top-tier city, too. It’s not impossible. You can still work for others and be able to afford a so-called luxury home. This is not an impossible dream.”

“An employee can afford a luxury home?”

“How’s that possible!”

“Eh? Why is Teacher Zhang talking for that guy?”

“There’s can’t be any logic in this? Even a fool knows how high property prices are!”

“Teacher Zhang’s gone crazy today, right?”

The masses were now questioning Zhang Ye. Some of their comments were very nasty.

Zhang Ye replied, seemingly unaffected “Listen to my friend’s story first.” He had randomly remembered a very popular story from his old world.

“Tell us!”

“How is this not bullshit!”

“I would like to see how you explain yourself out of this!”

A lot of people began to talk down to him.

Zhang Ye posted “Five years ago, my friend Xiaoke ran into walls when he was seeking employment. In the end, he found a job as a small-time programmer in a small IT company in Beijing. After half a year, Xiaoke felt that he could not continue on like this anymore and came up with a plan to buy a house within five years. Every step was carefully planned and followed! ‘At first, it was really difficult. I could not do any social or entertainment activities.’ Xiaoke related. ‘From the start, I used any free time from work to study financial planning and programming courses to increase my knowledge.’ Just like that, Xiaoke took all sorts of IT certification exams and got his company to give him yearly raises in increments of 3%. ‘I even applied for management courses and got to know many outstanding industry people.’ Using such networking, Xiaoke slowly built up his contacts. Finally, with the five years of accumulated savings of 50,000, adding on the 7.95 million that his parents gave to him, Xiaoke managed to buy his first ever house. It’s even a house in Beijing City’s 2nd Ring Road area. ‘Having a dream that can be turned into reality is the most beautiful.’ said Xiaoke with determination in his eyes.”

At first, everyone was still seriously reading, trying to understand Xiaoke’s miraculous plan to buy a house and learn from it. But when the story ended, everyone passed out!

“Pu!”

“Hahaha!”

“That was a godly reversal!”

“This is definitely Teacher Zhang’s style!”

“Teacher Zhang is too cute! That was such a tease!”

“This is what a master is. A short story can be written with such sarcasm and depth!”

“Turns out to be ironic! I had thought that Teacher Zhang went crazy! I quickly apologize! I’m ashamed to have treated Teacher Zhang wrongly! I will definitely support you in the future!”

“This story has written out our voices and frustrations!”

“This is what a writer should be, at least to me. Look at Teacher Zhang; he can write modern poetry, ancient melody poetry, novels, fairy tales and even such thought provoking and humorous short stories. The Beijing Writers’ Association must be blind. Are you sure that you won’t be admitting Teacher Zhang Ye into the association?”

This story had actually been so overused back in Zhang Ye’s old world. If you surf the internet often enough, you’d have heard of this story before. But it has never appeared in this world before, so everyone’s curiosity was piqued and they laughed so hard at it. Then came the forwarding and dissemination of the story!

A simple short story like that had now been voted to rank 9 of the main page!

An explosive viral effect had been achieved within such a short time!

This also made Zhang Ye secretly shocked. The power of the masses was indeed great. The number of Weibo fans and his Reputation points were both increasing! It seemed like he had to do such things more often in the future. He could not give up any opportunity to be famous. His goal was to be the world’s number one superstar, so naturally, he had to grab every opportunity. No matter how small a mosquito was, it was still flesh. If he could go onto the front page of Weibo or make the headlines, it would greatly increase his popularity. And the poems, novels, passages and essays in Zhang Ye’s mind were what he relied on greatly. He was not lacking in knowledge!

*News Simulcast (Xinwen Lianbo) is considered to be a government inclined news outlet.