I Am Really A Superstar

In the morning.

After Zhang Ye woke up, he drove over to Old Wu"s parent"s place to bring them the good news.

When he pa.s.sed by a bookstore at the road outside their alley, it was just opening for the day. Immediately, more than 30 youths who were lining up outside rushed in like they were going to attempt to rob the store!

"Fortress Besieged!"

"I want a copy!"

"Do you have any left?"

"What? Why not?"

"I was here since yesterday!"

"Boss, why didn"t you guys bring in more stock!"

"I"m so tired of this. Why is it so hard for me to be able to read a book I want!"

"My dad ordered me to buy a copy home. Hai, how am I going to find a copy for him? Well, whatever, I guess I"ll go elsewhere and ask around."

"The stock should stabilize by tomorrow. Right now, a lot of people are surely looking to buy Fortress Besieged for their book collection since it"s just won an important award. But that"ll slowly die down in several more days."

"Hopefully."

"Then I guess I"ll wait another day or two."

Some of the bookstores were out of stock.

Some others were sold out the moment they opened for business.

On this morning, such events were unfolding throughout the country.

Zhang Ye walked toward the alley happy. Hearing all the praise and discussion by everyone about Fortress Besieged, he was feeling really happy for himse—for Comrade Qian Zhongshu 1 !

At the courtyard house.

Zhang Ye pushed open the door and entered. "Auntie, Uncle."

Li Qinqin had just come out to the courtyard to fetch some water. When she heard Zhang Ye"s voice, she broke into a smile. "Little Ye, you"re here? Go into the house quick, we"re all waiting for you for breakfast. It"s already been made."

Zhang Ye went up to offer his help. "Auntie, let me do it."

Li Qinqin said, "No, no, leave it to me. You"re a famous author now."

"What famous author?" Zhang Ye laughed and said, "No matter what awards I receive, I"ll always be your son."

Li Qinqin smiled. "I love hearing that."

Wu Zeqing also came out of the house. She smiled and said, "You"re here?"

Zhang Ye waved and said, "Hey, Old Wu."

Wu Zeqing said, "Quickly come in, my dad is getting steamed up over you."

In the Beijing dialect, to be steamed up means to be angry.

Zhang Ye was startled. "What"s wrong with Uncle?"

In the house, Wu Changhe grumbled with a copy of Fortress Besieged next to his hand, "What do you think is wrong? My daughter hasn"t even gotten married to you yet and you"re already expressing despair about marriage?" He was wearing his reading gla.s.ses and holding up the book, flipping through the pages. Many of the pages were bookmarked and the contents highlighted, then underlined with red or blue ink. Clearly, he had done a lot of reading and research. "Look at this paragraph here, then this paragraph over here. You rascal, how did you come up with so many flirtatious and scheming plots? You"re not sincere at all! You are totally not sincere at all!"

Zhang Ye nearly fainted. "Uncle, it"s just a novel, none of it is real."

Li Qinqin chuckled and said, "Little Ye, don"t worry about your uncle. He just has nothing better to do than nitpick. He didn"t even put your book down once the entire night."

Wu Changhe harrumphed, "The book is good, but the author is really dishonest!"

Zhang Ye didn"t know whether to laugh or cry.

Old Qian (Zhongshu).

Someone is scolding you.

Wu Zeqing said calmly, "He"s writing satire. You"re a person from the Go world, so don"t go around involving yourself with the literary world. You don"t understand them anyway."

Zhang Ye also explained, "Uncle, don"t you worry. I"m full of hope when it comes to marriage and really don"t have those kinds of thoughts at all. It"s not like I went digging for some emperor"s grave even though I wrote a grave robbing novel, right? It"s only a novel. No matter how real it sounds, it"s still made up."

He finally got past it with this explanation.

Everyone sat down to have breakfast together. After the meal, Zhang Ye quickly helped out with the ch.o.r.es like was.h.i.+ng the dishes and wiping down the table in an attempt to impress his elders. Finally, he even used his future father-in-law"s account to play a few games of Go on his behalf and thrashed several of the 9-dan experts from China Qiyuan. Only then did his future father-in-law start to look happier!

Hai, do you think life is easy for this bro!

Over the next few days.

Zhang Ye treated his friends and colleagues to meals every day. In total, he attended around seven gatherings. Although they said it was to celebrate him, it was actually just a chance for them to get together and catch up over food and drinks.

The sales of Fortress Besieged continued to hold up very well.

Every batch of books from each print run that Eastern Publis.h.i.+ng Firm ran sold out the moment they left the presses. Moreover, the print factories were also putting in overtime every day in order to s.h.i.+p out the goods!

The Eastern Publis.h.i.+ng Firm"s staff were seemingly celebrating the new year every day. Everyone was walking on air and even felt like they would float into the sky if the windows got opened.

"Boss, we still don"t have enough to meet demand!"

"Add another print run!"

"It"s too popular! There"s no sign of the sales slowing!"

"The demand for it hasn"t reached saturation yet! Print more! Print however much more they ask for!"

"Teacher Zhang Ye is amazing!"

"That"s right, add an additional print run for Ghost Blows Out the Light and Legend of Wukong. Use this opportunity where Teacher Zhang has climbed to the summit with that newly gained honor to sell another wave of those books!"

"Alright, I"ll get in touch with the printers right now!"

200,000 copies!

300,000 copies!

400,000 copies!

The sales figures were so explosive that it dumbfounded many book publishers and people in the literary field. Are you people f.u.c.king intending to break the record set by Ghost Blows Out the Light? Ghost Blows Out the Light was a genre fiction novel that was specifically written to appeal to the market. Bu Fortress Besieged? Yes, Zhang Ye was extremely popular, and Fortress Besieged had also won the highest honor of the Chinese literary world. But when you boil it down, this was just a literary novel!

Selling well on the first day? That was normal!

Still selling well on the second day? Acceptable!

But it was still selling like hotcakes on the third and fourth days?

Even with such a large supply of books, it was not enough to satisfy the crazed book buyers? And it was even difficult to get? This was too scary! There was no comparison between genre fiction and literary fiction when it came to artistic merit. Similarly, a literary novel could never compare in terms of sales to genre fiction. However, Fortress Besieged seemed to be the exception. Be it its literary standards, the praise heaped upon it, the award it won, or even its sales figures, all of it was top notch. It had broken many of the known stereotypes in the industry, and many of the a.n.a.lyses and experiences of experts were no longer applicable to Zhang Ye!

Quite a lot of literary figures were getting jealous!

Why?

Based on what?

He could win an award and the book was selling so well too?

Why could he enjoy the best of both worlds!

When the other four literary masters who had also won the Qilu Literature Prize learned about this, they got inspired!

Has literary fiction become popular?

Has spring arrived for literary novels?

On the day itself, the publis.h.i.+ng firms they were working with reprinted and promoted their award-winning books on a large scale. This was standard industry practice as they wanted to bank on the momentum from winning the award to sell another wave of books. The publis.h.i.+ng firms needed to make a living, and so did the authors. Who would ever think they had earned enough money? Seeing how insanely Fortress Besieged was selling, they wanted to get a slice of the pie too!

But when the four literary masters" books got restocked on the shelves, a lot of people were dumbfounded to find out that those winners" books had a completely different experience from Fortress Besieged!

One of the books had 50,000 copies reprinted, but only managed to sell one-third of the copies after two days!

Another one had a print run of 20,000 copies and still did not sell out after three days!

n.o.body knew whether to laugh or cry. So it wasn"t the market that had changed. There was no spring coming for literary novels. It was just Fortress Besieged that was on fire, it was just Zhang Ye who was on fire!

Zhang Ye was indeed on fire again!

Not only in terms of popularity, but also overall statistics!

In the latest updated Chinese Celebrity Rankings Index, on the day after Zhang Ye won the Qilu Literature Prize, he gained another increase to his overall popularity score. It wasn"t just a gain in a single aspect of his popularity but an overall surge. This was the effect of winning the highest honor. It was a percent increase acc.u.mulated and gained toward the overall popularity score. Moreover, the Qilu Literature Prize was different from the other awards. The highest honors in the literary world could only be won once by an author in their lifetime. Thus, the value of such awards were even greater and the percent increase would similarly be greater. It was probably even greater than the combination of the popularity scores gained from the variety shows" highest honor and the doc.u.mentaries" highest honor combined! This was also the reason for so many celebrities to chase after those prestigious awards. If they could acc.u.mulate enough of said gains, it would be a colossal number! Honors, awards, fanbase, number of works, fame, all of those contributed to the total popularity scores of every celebrity! The Chinese Celebrity Rankings Index was also an aggregate chart. If a celebrity wanted to ascend to one of those seven spots in the entertainment industry, it depended on their overall popularity scores!

And so, with the bonus from winning the award, and including the rising sales figures of Fortress Besieged, Zhang Ye"s popularity sprang up by quite a lot again!

He was getting even closer to those seven spots!

The first and second milestones of the "Reach the Summit" plan had been reached!

1.