11: Chapter 11: Collection Surge

After leaving the post office, Chen Fan went straight back to the small house he was renting.

By the time he returned to the small house, it was already past 10:00 AM. At this point, Chen Fan could no longer hold on and collapsed onto the bed.

When he woke up again, Chen Fan checked the time; it was already past 6:00 PM.

Having not eaten all day, Chen Fan's stomach was now growling with hunger.

He gave his teeth a quick brush and washed his face, looking much more refreshed. After nearly eight hours of restorative sleep, Chen Fan felt his energy had completely returned.

He had to admit, a young body was indeed resilient.

He went to a nearby stall selling rice with toppings, ordered a plate of green pepper and pork stir-fry over rice, and began to feast greedily.

After eating and drinking his fill, Chen Fan walked toward Hongshulin Internet Cafe without stopping.

After getting a machine, the first thing he did was send the mailing tracking number to his editor, Xinghe. Just as he sent the message, Xinghe immediately replied with a 'Received.'

This made Chen Fan give a silent thumbs-up to this workhorse, Xinghe.

Logging into the Qidian writer's backend, Chen Fan uploaded three chapters as usual and then began his laborious life of coding words.

Perhaps because he had plenty of energy today, Chen Fan's typing efficiency was very high. His fingers fell on the keyboard and almost never stopped, with word after word popping out.

By the time it was past 3:00 AM, he stretched his somewhat aching neck.

He checked today's word count—50,127.

Since he had completed his goal, Chen Fan didn't want to stay in the internet cafe any longer. After saving the file to his email, he immediately logged off.

Walking out of the internet cafe, the streets at 3:00 AM were very silent. An autumn wind blew, and Chen Fan couldn't help but shiver. He quickly pulled up his jacket zipper and walked toward his rental house.

He remembered a period in his previous life that was just like this—walking out of an internet cafe in the middle of the night, feeling empty inside, as if his life were meaningless.

But in the same environment, he now felt full of hope.

...

The next night

Chen Fan arrived at the internet cafe. After setting up his machine, he opened the Writer Center to check the data for his work.

The moment he entered, he froze.

Collections: 10,831

He rubbed his eyes and looked again.

It was still 10,831.

Eighty thousand words uploaded. Over 10,000 collections.

Chen Fan stared at the screen, his mind going blank for a moment. He had written books in his past life and knew what this data meant—it wasn't just 'decent' or 'having potential,' it was an explosion.

He took a deep breath and looked further down.

Clicks: 83,000

Recommendation Votes: 32,412

The comment section was even more lively. When he looked before, there were only a dozen or so messages, but now—

Over eight hundred.

He clicked open the comment section, and rows of posts scrolled down:

[Saw this on Longkong, came to take a look, added to collection first]

[Does anyone else think the setting of this book is very fresh? I've never seen anything like this]

[Leaving a comment here in case it becomes a hit]

[I've read quite a few Qidian books and finally found one with an innovative setting. It's not like those formulaic novels with all the face-slapping tropes that I really can't stand]

...

He clicked on the Newcomer Rankings.

Category New Book Chart: 3rd Place

Overall New Book Chart: 9th Place

Seeing these results, Chen Fan was extremely happy. This performance exceeded his expectations. Based on these numbers, the first-day subscriptions after going premium would definitely not be low.

It was currently October, and Chen Fan planned to go premium when he reached 300,000 words, which would be around the 10th of next month.

...

In the blink of an eye, the date reached November 5th. After more than ten days of hard work, Chen Fan's total word count had reached 800,000. He had only uploaded 240,000 words of the novel, leaving about 500,000 words in his backlog.

At his current update speed, it was enough to last for over fifty days.

In other words, even if he stopped writing immediately, he could maintain a daily update of 10,000 words for two consecutive months without any repeats.

During this time, Chen Fan's average daily word count was around 40,000, while he uploaded an average of 10,000 words per day, so he still had a lot of backlog.

Accumulating so much backlog, Chen Fan planned to update fifty chapters at once—about 150,000 words—after going premium, and he also planned to change to a daily update of 30,000 words afterward.

The data for his novel was currently excellent.

As of yesterday, the novel's collections had reached 33,000, and recommendation votes were at 75,000. Before reaching 200,000 words, it had already hit first place on the overall Newcomer Chart.

Although it hadn't gone premium yet, Chen Fan's work was already generating revenue. As of yesterday, there had been over a dozen Alliance Master tips and dozens of Sector Lord tips.

At the current rate, it would go premium around the 12th.

Now he just had to wait and see the results after going premium.

However, right now Chen Fan had another important matter: the monthly exams.

To be honest, after being reborn, he had long forgotten that monthly exams were even a thing. He only remembered midterms, finals, and the Gaokao.

It was only after Teacher Zhou mentioned the monthly exams last week that Chen Fan remembered third-year high schoolers had to take them every month.

At this point in his previous life, Chen Fan should still have been able to score around 370 points, but now he really couldn't guarantee it.

Whatever. Chen Fan steeled his heart; he would score whatever he scored, as it didn't have much impact on him. Anyway, his parents no longer held much hope for his grades, so they wouldn't ask about his monthly exam results.

Even if they did ask, Chen Fan could make up a score for them without blinking.

The first exam at noon was Chinese.

Regarding Chinese, Chen Fan was still quite confident.

Mainly because he could still remember some of the poems in Chinese, unlike other subjects which he had completely forgotten.

Furthermore, he was confident he could get high scores on the major point-scoring sections like the essay and reading comprehension.

In his previous life, Chen Fan's essays usually only got twenty or thirty points, but now he estimated that getting forty or fifty wouldn't be a problem. As long as he wrote out the general idea and combined it with a few set phrases, he could always get points. As for the essay, it was even simpler; just write with a bit more flowery language and sublimate the theme at the beginning and end, and the score naturally wouldn't be low.

After the Chinese exam was over, Chen Fan estimated he could get around 90 points.

The second subject was English.

This was even simpler. 80% were multiple-choice questions. Chen Fan finished it in less than 10 minutes. As for how many points he would get, that was in the hands of fate.

With the final Biology exam finished, it was now Friday.

As soon as the exams ended, the students in the classroom were like wild horses off their leashes, and the room instantly erupted. A few top-performing students gathered to compare answers, while others directly packed their things to leave.

Chen Fan was one of the latter. After tidying up the things on his desk, he prepared to leave.

“Chen Fan, how much do you think you’ll score this time?” Jiang Chen looked at Chen Fan and asked.

“Who cares? We’ll know when the results come out. It’ll probably just be dead last anyway,” Chen Fan said nonchalantly.

“You’re something else.” Jiang Chen was stunned for a moment upon hearing this, then gave a thumbs-up.

Jiang Chen actually quite admired Chen Fan's mindset. Unlike himself, even though he knew his grades weren't great, he couldn't help but be nervous every time an exam ended.

“Alright, I’m off. See you Monday.” After packing his things, Chen Fan called out to Jiang Chen and walked out of the classroom without looking back.