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Chapter 826: Chapter 718: Crazy Fundraising (Please Subscribe!)
January 8th.
Sunday.
Yunxin finished teaching her last painting class of the year yesterday.
Tang Qing settled her wages and also gave her a bonus of three thousand yuan. Initially, Yunxin insisted on refusing it, since Tang Qing’s salary was already at the level of a senior industry teacher and had basically cured her heart disease.
She didn’t know how to repay him.
But Tang Qing persisted, and with the use of some ’little tricks,’ Yunxin had no choice but to accept. It wasn’t until she left the villa that she began to wonder why she had agreed in the first place. She thought about returning the money to Tang Qing, but that might come across as disrespectful.
There would be other days.
There would be more classes next year, and she could talk about repayment then.
...
The villa is quite lively today.
No, to be more accurate, it has been lively for the past two days.
Because final exams, which will last a week, start next week, Zeng Rou and a few roommates, determined to ’study more efficiently together,’ followed Lin Jiaxue to the villa last Friday afternoon.
They claimed it was to add some ’liveliness’ to the villa.
Meanwhile, they offered to help clean and tidy up the rooms in exchange.
Tang Qing didn’t refuse.
It didn’t hinder his time with Lin Jiaxue. The master bedroom and the second bedroom were a floor apart anyway. He could be a rogue when he needed to be, take advantage when he could, crazily flaunting their affection, since the ’hurt’ wasn’t on me anyway.
As expected.
Just one day.
There were a few more accusatory glances at Tang Qing.
The cold wind howled.
The chill in Shanghai during deep winter was lingering.
The swimming pool in the backyard hadn’t been used in more than a month. The thing about swimming pools, it’s all about novelty. In the summer, you could go for a swim, sunbathe, but in the winter, it’s useless. Most importantly, Tang Qing’s master bedroom has a fairly large bathtub.
With warm water for baths.
Who would go swimming, though the pool has a heating functionality, going to an outdoor pool in winter seems particularly silly. Zeng Rou and the others declared that they must swim to their heart’s content next year.
In the living room.
Four girls are lounging on the soft sofa.
Barefoot, looking at the materials in their hands.
Summarizing is a basic skill for academic achievers. Especially in university exams, where many teachers assign so-called key points, which the group organized together and printed on A4 paper.
If you just memorize these key knowledge points first, there’s basically no problem. The rest of the scores depend on the individual. If you want high scores, you still need to read more.
Lin Jiaxue is sitting next to Tang Qing.
Leaning on his shoulder, she mutters to herself in a low voice, only her lips moving without sound—her habit. Looking up at Tang Qing, who is engrossed... in playing a game, the corners of her mouth lift slightly.
Given Tang Qing’s intelligence.
Lin Jiaxue seriously doubts whether he’s memorized the textbooks.
...
"It’s so unfair, God!!!"
After glancing at Tang Qing,
Zeng Rou starts to moan for no reason.
The others are already used to her antics and don’t even look up. Seeing Tang Qing playing games while she studies next to him makes her feel incredibly dumb instantaneously. She used to rank at the top of her school and considered herself quite capable in her studies.
But when faced with Tang Qing, who’s gaming away, that feeling of superiority is thoroughly crushed from all sides.
Noticing that no one is paying attention to her,
Zeng Rou rolls her eyes and hugs a pillow with a dead fish expression, looking pitifully at Lin Jiaxue: "Jiaxue, what should I do? I’m seriously doubting my intelligence."
"Read more books, and your IQ will rise," replies Lin Jiaxue helplessly. This is the fifth time Zeng Rou has asked such a question, so she can only resort to Tang Qing’s reasoning to fool Zeng Rou.
"Really?"
Zeng Rou pretends to have eager eyes, as if she has attained the ultimate truth.
"Yeah," Lin Jiaxue nods solemnly.
Zeng Rou suddenly puts on a serious face: "Jiaxue, you’ve gone bad."
Lin Jiaxue looks innocent: "..."
...
Tang Qing didn’t join the little girls’ ’fun.’
He kept his head down and played the game in his hands.
"Warfire"
Ever since Zheng Lin started playing this game, he often asked Tang Qing to team up for matches, mainly because Tang Qing’s game skills were so good. Tang Qing just went along with it, because after all, Zheng Lin was rich.
And during this time, Zheng Lin has spent no less than a million RMB in the game, and such a local tyrant is okay to accompany for some gaming; it’s entertaining and profitable too.
And that was after Tang Qing had duped him.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t bother with meaningless matches. Recently, "Warfire" has opened up many expansions and a lot of interesting dungeons, which Tang Qing finds quite fun.
Right now, it’s a multiplayer dungeon.
Eight people.
The map is vast, and their goal is to help the NPC army behind them capture enemy fortresses one by one. The setting is in a future world at war, with no adjustable difficulty levels.
This map is already challenging.
As for how to trick his teammates out of their money, it’s simple: death and resurrection cost money. You can freely resurrect in your city, but you’ll lose equipment. However, if you resurrect on the spot, you won’t lose equipment.
And onsite resurrection is straightforward.
The minimum is ten yuan RMB each time, with no equipment loss.
Fifty yuan for a resurrection, not only without losing equipment but also with full ammunition replenished. 𝖓𝖔𝖛𝔭𝖚𝖇.𝔠𝖔𝔪
A hundred yuan for one resurrection, and on top of getting full ammunition, you also get ten seconds of invincibility.
So.
Without a doubt.
In front of these challenging dungeon maps, the death rate of Zheng Lin and his team is strikingly high. Alongside him are his wealthy friends who Zheng Lin has invited. These guys who don’t consider money as an object always choose the hundred yuan RMB resurrection.
They can’t afford the embarrassment of resurrecting in the city.
Just like that.
From the morning until now, in just two hours,
these people have contributed profits of no less than a hundred thousand yuan to Tang Qing’s account. Right now, Tang Qing is happily counting money, while Zheng Lin and the others are racking their brains planning how to infiltrate the enemy camp, take down the enemy commanders, and complete other various capture missions.
And this map,
no one has been able to figure it out yet.
But even so, many players tirelessly fall into the trap time and again because the variables in this game instance are just too many.
Every entrance is a brand-new experience; the gameplay, the locations where enemy forces appear, the weaponry and equipment—everything changes except for the city locations, rivers, and lakes; there’s simply no experience to speak of.
If there is one piece of experience,
it’s "Play it safe, don’t take risks."
"Little Tang, here comes another special squad of the enemy forces. Be careful, damn it, how many unexpected things are in this game, it’s really thrilling. Watch out, after I respawn, I’ll kill them all,"
Zheng Lin’s voice brimmed with excitement.
He loved that kind of thrill.
Not knowing what would happen the next moment, when the enemy would arrive, or whether the next step would land on a mine, this almost unrestricted, rule-free game made Zheng Lin unable to stop playing.
Tang Qing smiled.
Encountering such a local tyrant.
If the game didn’t have more variables, how could he extract the money they didn’t care about from their pockets?
Not even twenty seconds later,
"Old Ma, why are you hitting me?" Zheng Lin died again.
"Who knows, you were beside their potassium transport vehicle, probably ricocheted," a young voice responded.
"Damn it, such bad luck, lost another hundred bucks, hehe, but I got a good car."
Zheng Lin’s game character boarded the potassium transport vehicle.
He slammed down the throttle and drove off, ready to wreak havoc.
"Boom."
The vehicle exploded on the spot, sending Zheng Lin’s character flying far away; the screen turned grey.
"What happened just now?" Zheng Lin was thoroughly baffled.
"Why would you run over the NPC’s corpse, don’t you know they have mines on them?" someone said helplessly.
"Fuck, my potassium vehicle, my hundred bucks," Zheng Lin bemoaned.
In the game settings, the probability of triggering a mine by running over it was one in five, and clearly, he had been hit. Zheng Lin really wanted to argue with the gaming company, but wasn’t this uncertainty precisely the charm of the game?
"Just a hundred RMB, what is it to you, young master Zheng? You should be like me, cautious and even more cautious. Take one step, look thr... damn it! Who threw that mine?" The screen went black for someone, who was fuming with anger.
"Sorry, I switched weapons too quickly and accidentally threw out the grenade, my bad," a nonchalant voice came over the public channel.
"I... big head, I want to send you a bullet, what should I do, tilt your head over here?"
"That’s not very nice, we are teammates."
"Heh."
"Bang..."
"We’re even with my hundred bucks."
"..."
Everyone was speechless; it was another game setting: Switch weapons too quickly and you risk throwing your weapon accidentally. How far it goes and what gets thrown are all up to "fate"—sometimes it’s an unpinned grenade, sometimes it’s one that’s live.
Everything depends on "fate’s arrangement."
Tang Qing watched the lively scene in front of him with satisfaction.
Another few hundred bucks in his account.
Making money.
Sometimes it was as easy as this.
It was precisely these unknowns and accidents, as well as some "frustrating" settings, that kept the game from becoming monotonous, and instead made it more and more interesting, completely different from generic single-player games with forced tasks and static setups.
Since "Warfire" launched a month and a half ago,
its achievements made Tang Qing realize time and again how games drove people mad.
The speed of making money...
Tsk, tsk...
On December 4, the number of registered users surpassed four million, with the highest online reaching 1.3 million, and after-tax prop revenues of 260 million RMB.
On December 15, the number of registered users surpassed seven million, with the highest online reaching 1.5 million, and after-tax prop revenues of 530 million RMB.
On December 23, the number of registered users surpassed eight million, with the highest online reaching 1.7 million, and after-tax prop revenues of 710 million RMB.
...
On January 8, as of last night at midnight, "Warfire" had a global number of registered users that had surpassed ten million, with the highest online reaching 1.95 million. The total income had broken through 1.5 billion RMB.
That was the performance of "Warfire."
Tang Qing’s eyes sparkled with little stars, such a lot of money, that’s over a hundred million dollars.
This hadn’t even been advertised yet, but the media had already speculated countless times just how much "Warfire" was making, with experts estimating close to eighty million dollars. But no one would have thought that the actual figure would exceed one hundred and thirty million dollars.
And this was all after-tax.
And just from prop sales.
And that was on top of the advertising contract they had just signed worth thirty million dollars.
"Warfire" was practically like robbing a bank.
Once disclosed,
ERV’s market value could immediately top two billion dollars.
But for now,
there was no need to release the financial report yet.
ERV’s main task was to quietly expand its software and hardware territory. Gaming was just the beginning, and Tang Qing had already set his sights on the next target: developing a mobile operating system.
Back in August of this year, the company that developed the Android system had been acquired by Google.
Tang Qing had no intention of buying it off Google; compared to buying Android, why not just create his own mobile operating system, which would be way simpler than one for computers?
He didn’t have much time.
Because it was now 2006, and the era of smartphones had arrived.
His cooperation with Huawei had already borne fruit. Early this year, they would launch a complete commercial 4G solution, actually somewhat premature, as Tang Qing’s mobile company was still non-existent.
But nonetheless,
Tang Qing’s play was all about laying eggs in borrowed nests.
It was similar to what Xiaomi had done at the beginning.
He was in charge of content and design, and as for craftsmanship and technology, that was up to Myanmar Bank Group and Zhiya Research Center. In the early stages, Tang Qing only wanted to sell mobile phones, capture the market, and win the first pot of gold in the era of smartphones.
After that, it would be about "developing" their own technology.
