Chapter 26: If You Dare to Use Me, I Dare to Spend

"If you sell retail, you'll be lucky to move ten pounds a day, making maybe seven or eight yuan at most, and you'll have to deal with street thugs. Wholesale, on the other hand, starts at a hundred pounds; find the right person, and you can close the deal in five minutes..."

Li Ye began lecturing Hao Jian on business strategy right there on the spot. Within minutes, Hao Jian's eyes were glowing with excitement.

The various wholesale markets that sprang up in China in the late eighties birthed countless "wealthy families," most notably the setting of the story *Feather Flies to the Sky*. These wholesale markets maintained strong vitality for many years, proving that wholesaling was a relatively accessible path to making money.

The provincial capital was only forty kilometers from Qingshui County. With its large population and a significant demographic of middle-to-high-income earners, it was a goldmine of potential waiting to be tapped. Although malt candy was an inconspicuous snack, it met all the requirements for opening market channels and accumulating initial capital. That was why Li Ye had selected Hao Jian to serve as his scout and test the waters.

Hao Jian was moved, but he did not blindly agree to Li Ye's proposal, choosing instead to voice his own predicament.

"Brother, I won't lie to you. My family really needs money, and I am willing to try my luck in the provincial capital, but I don't have the capital!"

Ordinarily, Hao Jian moved at most one basin of malt candy—twenty pounds at the absolute limit. His costs were five or six yuan, and his turnover was around a dozen. He couldn't possibly come up with the money to run a hundred-pound wholesale operation.

Li Ye thought for a moment and asked, "How much capital do you need?"

Hao Jian gritted his teeth and said, "At least fifty yuan, and I'll need a bicycle."

After stating these requirements, Hao Jian felt anxious. He was terrified that Li Ye might lose his temper and walk away. After all, calculating the cost of over a hundred pounds of malt candy, Hao Jian’s requests essentially meant he was contributing nothing of his own.

But Li Ye simply said, "Then hurry to the provincial capital. If you feel it’s feasible, come find me at the County No. 2 High School."

Hao Jian watched as Li Ye turned and left, stunned and unable to process what had just happened.

*Did he... just agree?*

Hao Jian still found it hard to believe. If an hour ago he had viewed Li Ye as a gullible "kid," he now harbored not a shred of condescension.

Li Ye had first helped Hao Jian retrieve the malt candy, then explained the concept of "wholesale," and then given him five yuan in "operating expenses." The sequence of decisions was so crisp, decisive, and efficient that Hao Jian felt he hadn't been dealing with an eighteen-year-old boy, but rather the village chief, whose word was law.

After a long daze, Hao Jian finally snapped out of it and headed toward the county hospital against the biting wind. He needed to get medicine for his child anyway; since he had money in his pocket, he decided to get a few extra bottles and spend a yuan or two.

Hao Jian was never a pedantic man. Although he still didn't understand why Li Ye trusted him so much, he vaguely guessed that he possessed something Li Ye needed—a value worth exploiting.

*If you dare to use me, I dare to spend. You have many lice, you don't itch; you have many debts, you don't worry. What are you going to do, bite me to death? I’m not losing anything anyway.*

***

While Hao Jian felt he wasn't losing out, Li Ye felt equally satisfied.

Hao Jian only calculated the financial costs, feeling that he had gotten the better end of the deal. Li Ye, however, had calculated the human labor costs and, more importantly, the risk. Running an individual business in this day and age carried risks. He intended to groom Hao Jian as his proxy, keeping himself hidden in the background so that if anything went wrong, he would have room to maneuver.

Li Ye knew Hao Jian was a "crafty merchant," but in this kind of "entrepreneurial" venture, he didn't need an honest, plodding ox; he needed an ambitious, courageous warrior to storm the gates. In these times, it wasn't having ambition that one should fear, but the lack of courage to act. Once you "act," you have taken the most important first step. As for whether Hao Jian could remain under his control in the future, that was a bridge to cross later. To earn one's first pot of gold, one had to take the first step, right?

Returning to the County No. 2 High School, Li Ye headed straight for his dormitory. Once inside, he fished a stack of banknotes from the cotton padding of his pillow. He counted them: one hundred and five yuan in total.

This was all the capital Li Ye could currently mobilize. Most of it was what he had saved over the past few months. After all, with Lu Jingyao around before, he could never keep money in his pocket. Now, his family gave him thirty or forty yuan a month; meals cost only a dozen yuan for two dishes, and a pack of Daqianmen cigarettes every two days cost him six or seven yuan a month. There were no "pay-to-win" games back then; he couldn't spend it all even if he tried.

But if he were to truly start this money-making plan with Hao Jian in the provincial capital, this "massive sum" of a hundred yuan wouldn't go very far. It would cover the small-scale initial costs, but if he wanted to diversify later, or even send Hao Jian south to chase the tide, he wouldn't be able to play the game without ten thousand yuan or more.

*Let it be for now. Earning some pocket money is fine.*

Li Ye thought about it and wasn't too anxious. His basic requirement was to earn enough for a comfortable life before he entered university next year. He had experienced the difference between a wealthy college life and a poor one in his previous life, and he had tasted enough of the latter.

***

That afternoon, as soon as Li Ye entered the classroom, he saw a crowd gathered around Xia Yue. Many were from other classes, all looking excited and envious, which seemed rather odd. Li Ye glanced over a few times but didn't pay much attention. However, after he sat down at his desk, Xia Yue began to make pointed, strange remarks.

"As intellectuals of the new era, we must use our knowledge to create a beautiful life. Ten years of hard study have forged our fighting spirit and given us the power of pride..."

"We must never be like parasites, relying on our parents and our families, enjoying superior material conditions while being unsatisfied, and looking down on our classmates from a position of spiritual superiority..."

Li Ye coldly raised his eyelids, meeting Xia Yue's provocative gaze just in time. He understood immediately that she was scolding the locusts to warn the chickens. Perhaps because Li Ye's gaze was too sharp, or perhaps because Xia Yue had been intimidated by him recently, she only held his gaze for a fraction of a second before looking away.

It was like a little Pomeranian, wearing a leash and barking frantically, suddenly seeing a "steady and honest" Chinese rural dog and feeling instantly suppressed.

However, Xia Yue’s words resonated with many people around her, who chimed in one after another. Li Ye found it somewhat ridiculous. Ten years of hard study was indeed commendable, but one's family background shouldn't be something to be despised. If countless scholars from humble backgrounds could become first-generation self-made millionaires through their own efforts, why shouldn't their next generation feel at ease spending their fathers' money?

One must look at problems rationally and constantly overcome one's own shortcomings to surpass those who came before and leave the previous generation behind. Poverty of spirit, not poverty of wallet, was the true measure of a person.

Li Ye wasn't in the mood to bicker with them. Xia Yue hadn't named names, so why waste energy stepping in that dog mess? But he still wanted to know the origin of the situation, so he asked his desk mate, Wen Leyu, what was going on.

Wen Leyu curled her lips and said, "Lu Jingyao wrote to Xia Yue, showing off that she published a poem and earned five yuan and fifty cents in royalties... She spent your money so much in the past that now that she's earned a bit of money herself, she feels free and noble..."

"Royalties?" Li Ye's eyes brightened.

"Yeah, only five yuan and fifty cents?" Wen Leyu whispered, sounding as if she were trying to comfort him.

But Li Ye's mood was different.

*That's right! I can earn royalties!*

Is the "literary plagiarism" trope tacky? Yes, incredibly. Is the "earning royalties" model stale? Yes, incredibly. But there was no denying that in this era, earning royalties was the most direct, simple, effective, and risk-free way to make money. No running around, no going out, no need to bow and scrape before clients—just a pen and paper, and as long as he had stories in his head, he could trade them for cash.

Li Ye felt it was a solid plan, especially now that the state had just clarified the standards for royalties. In truth, if one were to discuss it seriously, royalties in China had been in decline. Leaving aside the fact that Lu Xun had become a celebrity based on his royalties, even after 1977, authors who lived off their royalties had experienced a very lush spring.

In 1977, the State Publishing Administration issued a "Notice on Trial Implementation of Remuneration and Subsidy Measures for Press and Publication," stipulating that author remuneration would be 2–7 yuan per thousand characters. In 1980, the State Publishing Bureau formulated a new standard, raising it to 3–10 yuan per thousand characters. For the next decade, author remuneration followed a "basic royalty + print-run royalty" model. By 1984, this standard was raised again to 6–20 yuan per thousand characters.

In an era when pork was less than a yuan per pound and rice was just over twenty cents a pound, this royalty standard was extremely high. Think about it: a worker's monthly salary was only thirty or forty yuan, which was equivalent to the royalties for just a few thousand words. How scarce were the "ten-thousand-yuan households" of the eighties? By modern standards, they would surely be considered middle class. Many authors could reach that standard with just two books. Yet, in later generations, "author" was almost synonymous with "poverty," showing just how vast the gap was.

Of course, the number of publications in this era was small, and book registration numbers from publishing houses were limited. It was still difficult for an author to publish articles or novels. But for Li Ye... that difficulty was, at most, "only a little bit."

In his previous life, Li Ye had written web novels in his spare time and earned royalties. His writing techniques and reading accumulation were more than sufficient. In this era where second-rate Hong Kong and Taiwanese martial arts novels could run rampant, wouldn't those high-quality, creatively-plotted web novels from the future be an absolute massacre? Don't look down on web novels; both web novels and martial arts novels were popular literature, and web novels were developed on the basis of martial arts thrillers. Those high-quality web novel authors might not be Jin Yong or Gu Long, but they could certainly hold their own against other martial arts authors. And when *The Legend of the Condor Heroes* first emerged, wasn't martial arts fiction also not recognized by mainstream literature? Yet, hadn't it swept across the country?

*Hmm, how many words was "Battle Through the Heavens"? Is it a bit too advanced? "Chronicles of Search for the Qin"? Also too advanced?*

*How about "Lurk"? Is that enough to match the era's background?*

Li Ye pulled out a stack of stationery and began to list and analyze the works best suited for this era.