Chapter 208: A Small Website, Definitely a Scam!
Thinking it over carefully, this was only natural.
Back when Moyu Internet Café was choosing its locations, every single one was picked in remote areas, basically sweeping through all the worst spots in Jingzhou.
And among them, the Mingyun Villa branch was the one that lost the most money. Naturally, that meant its location was the worst of the worst.
So now that Pei Qian needed to find a place for this high-end restaurant, it wasn't surprising at all that he ended up here.
Thinking about it this way, it actually sounded perfect.
How about going with a "hidden temple deep in the mountains" theme?
There had originally been a few shops near the Mingyun Villa district, but because there were simply too few people around, most of them couldn't survive and had already shut down.
Back then, Pei Qian specifically picked the most remote standalone shop, farthest from the villa district, and turned it into the Mingyun Villa branch of Moyu Internet Café.
Now, those shops could still be reused. Pei Qian planned to pick another one hidden deep inside, preferably a more spacious one, renovate it, and turn it into a high-end restaurant.
By then, he wouldn't even bother registering it on review websites, nor would he advertise. The company's employees could eat there in private. On normal days, it would be empty and desolate, steadily losing money. Perfect.
This time, Pei Qian definitely wouldn't go with a buffet format—those had spending limits, and you couldn't burn through money fast enough.
It had to be an outrageously priced menu. Order only the most expensive dishes—that's how you really burned money.
All the ingredients would be the very best, the freshest. In short, whatever top-quality ingredients could be found in Jingzhou, they would all be used here.
But what if the lack of customers meant the ingredients couldn't be used up and ended up wasted?
The system most likely wouldn't allow such behavior.
Otherwise, Pei Qian could just recklessly buy mountains of ingredients, let them rot, and easily lose tons of money—that would completely go against the system's usual rules.
Pei Qian had already thought of a countermeasure.
Ordinary ingredients could be purchased anytime, and they could also be used for employee meals. Either way, those small things wouldn't create much waste, and the system probably wouldn't care.
As for relatively rare ingredients, like Australian lobster, Kobe beef, diamond white truffles, or blue lobsters, he'd make them "reservation only." Customers would have to book a date in advance, and only then would the restaurant purchase exactly what was needed.
For Pei Qian, that was no problem at all—after all, he always knew in advance when company gatherings would happen, so he could just tell the restaurant beforehand to prepare those luxury ingredients.
But for outside customers, showing up only to be told none of the good ingredients were available, that everything required reservations…
That would have an excellent "discouragement effect."
Two birds with one stone!
Then, by hiring several top-tier chefs at sky-high salaries, whether from the capital, Shanghai, or even abroad, and keeping them on the payroll year-round, just their wages alone would rack up a huge monthly expense.
Losing money while also getting to eat extravagant meals regularly—what could be better?
With this in mind, Pei Qian decided he'd scout around the area in the next couple of days, find a place remote enough yet spacious enough, and settle on a location for the restaurant.
The space had to be big—only then could it fit enough employees.
. . . .
July 19th, Monday.
Ma Yiqun arrived at Terminal Chinese Web, ready to start the day's work.
There weren't many submissions to review. Even adding in the weekend's backlog, it wasn't much, and he finished quickly.
After scribbling out a bit more of Turn Back Before It's Too Late, Ma Yiqun started to feel bored and wanted to slack off a little.
So, he opened up a web novel forum to browse at random.
A glance at the front page of hot posts surprised him—quite a few people were discussing Terminal Chinese Web.
That was only to be expected—after all, Ma Yiqun had previously spread the word about Terminal Chinese Web's launch and called for submissions through a few channels, including posts on forums. Naturally, plenty of authors were going to talk about it.
However, what surprised him was that the site's reputation on the web novel forum didn't seem all that great.
"A new site popped up recently, called Terminal Chinese Web. I heard their full-attendance bonus is decent—update 3,000 words daily and you can get 1,000 yuan. That's even better than Infinite Chinese Web! Should I go? Any veterans got advice?"
"It's a small site, I wouldn't recommend it."
"I heard some people tried. Supposedly the site's early traffic is abysmal, and they haven't done anything like poaching established authors or bringing in readers from elsewhere. So you'd better be prepared for a long stretch where your only income will be that attendance bonus…"
"No way, that bad?"
"It really is that bad. Someone asked their editors—the site apparently has no perks whatsoever beyond attendance pay. If you've got ambition, better try your luck on Infinite Chinese Web and aim for a hit. On a tiny site like this, even if you write something good, no one will subscribe."
"Unless your work is absolute trash and you've already given up on ever making money off subscriptions, then sure, go ahead."
These were comments from forum users, though Ma Yiqun could tell at a glance that a few posts were from rival-site editors or authors.
After all, he'd been lurking on this forum for a while—many IDs were familiar to him.
"Don't go there, it's definitely a trap!"
"The site has no publicity, no channels, so naturally no readers. The library's junk too. Over time that'll just turn into a vicious cycle. At least on Infinite Chinese Web, even if the attendance pay is lower, once you go premium you'll earn some subscription money!"
"Exactly. Is this site money-laundering or do they seriously think just throwing out a little attendance pay will attract good authors? What a joke."
"Yeah, even buying out a few manuscripts at slightly higher prices would help, at least so the homepage books are worth reading."
"So my advice to newbies: don't go. You'll definitely get burned! If you're writing web novels, stick to the big sites. If this one collapses one day, you won't even get your attendance pay. Won't you cry then?"
Ma Yiqun scrolled through the comments and let out a silent sigh.
He wanted to refute them, but… they kind of had a point.
From his own perspective, he had absolute faith in President Pei and firmly believed President Pei had a way to make the site popular.
But from an outsider's point of view, all they could see was Terminal Chinese Web's most unreliable side.
Sure, rival-site editors and authors were adding fuel to the fire with sarcasm and exaggeration, but most of what they said was, unfortunately, true.
No star authors, no buyout contracts, no reader channels—and just a measly attendance bonus? That really wasn't enough to attract quality writers.
Ma Yiqun quietly closed the forum and went back to work.
The site was already up and running. The authors whose manuscripts had previously been approved had started updating, and the recommendation slots across the different categories and on the homepage had all been filled. At the very least, it looked like a functioning platform.
And to be fair, the webpage design was actually quite nice—after all, money had been spent on it.
But the moment you glanced at the books on the homepage, the flaws were glaring.
The writing was downright unbearable!
The titles were all cut from the same cloth: XX Immortal Emperor, XX Mad Son-in-Law, XX War God, and so on. Mixed in were a few female-oriented novels with names like Defiant Wife, Don't Anger the CEO and The Masked CEO's Little Sweetheart.
The titles were already unimpressive, but the contents were even worse—full of tired, cliché plots that had been done to death. On Infinite Chinese Web, these would be complete flops, the kind that wouldn't make even a ripple.
And these were the "better" ones—the ones good enough to be featured on the homepage recommendation slots.
There were even more books that didn't even reach that level.
Ma Yiqun shook his head and sighed.
As expected, President Pei had been right—this wasn't something that could be rushed.
Might as well take his time polishing the plot of Turn Back Before It's Too Late.
With not much going on at the moment, he could instead focus on refining the story.
Quite a few editors were also writing parts of Turn Back Before It's Too Late out of personal interest, and they held regular discussions. Whenever they ran into contradictions in the setting, they would communicate with one another until it was resolved.
The updates were slow, so slow that they often couldn't even meet the requirements for the attendance bonus.
But nobody really cared—after all, President Pei's benefits and salaries were generous enough that no one had to force themselves to grind out words just to chase that bit of bonus pay.
In Ma Yiqun's view, this was a good thing. At least this way, the writing wouldn't be full of filler.
As the saying goes, "slow work makes fine work." Writing slowly didn't necessarily guarantee quality, but writing too fast almost always led to little flaws.
Since Turn Back Before It's Too Late was meant to serve the game, not to inflate word counts, the more carefully it was written, the better.
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