Chapter 68

Shang Shang received the outline and opened it, and it was Yijiu all over: called an outline and running to forty or fifty thousand characters, which made it a detailed treatment. And her control of pace had gone up a level again — forty thousand characters of treatment and Shang Shang couldn't put it down.

As an editor, she could see at a glance that it was as good as ever. As a science-fiction-leaning apocalypse novel, the subject was on the cold side. "The new one's apocalypse? What made you think of that? The 2012 end of the world is still two years off."

"Nothing much. I saw a news item and had an idea." Li Lan typed away. Apocalypse fiction isn't easy to write — a great deal of complicated human behaviour, a great deal of sensitive material — and it took two books behind her before she dared start. And the environment for web fiction was less strict than it would be in a few years, so she'd write it without holding back; if it got locked, that would be years away.

"Fine." Shang Shang had no fight in her where Yijiu was concerned. Updates were all she wanted. "It's an unpopular subject, so the numbers may not match the first two. Be prepared for that."

Two books to her name, and the numbers on both had been excellent; her follower count had stayed in the site's top ten, and the boys' love novel had rarely dropped out of the top five. This subject was too far off centre, and Shang Shang wasn't sure it could reach the same height.

Li Lan typed. "That's all right. This is what I want to write at the moment." She needed the income to build the company, but writing was a hobby, and however short of money she was she couldn't produce a subject she didn't want.

"Do you not want to change the real place names in it?" Shang Shang asked it lightly, having noticed them.

Li Lan considered. "Can they stay?" The novel had a particular significance for her. She'd come here straight out of the weight of 2020; things had improved eventually under state intervention, but the injury and the losses had been enormous.

Since heaven had given her a second life and the shop on top of it, she'd set herself a target the moment she saw what L5 could do: a hundred per cent completion at L5 inside ten years. Whether she could avert the disaster ten years out she didn't know. She'd give it everything she had.

Until then she needed something to keep it in front of her, and writing is the best vessel there is. This wasn't so much a novel as a warning to herself.

"They can." Shang Shang didn't think much about it, assuming she wanted the story to feel real, and with oversight of web fiction still loose she didn't press. Real place names in most novels pull you out of the story; with Yijiu's prose they added a rather unnerving authenticity.

Especially with the date set two years out, in 2012. Knowing perfectly well it was fiction, Shang Shang finished the treatment and couldn't help muttering: a virus, then a hard winter — 2012 isn't actually the end of the world, is it? Catching herself thinking it, she laughed. Yijiu's atmosphere was too good, that was all, and it had got to her.

---

After the conversation, Li Lan logged into the author back end and posted three chapters at once. She'd meant to post five, but this was the book she cared most about and every word of it had been weighed; she'd scrapped nearly a hundred thousand characters of buffer over the summer and was down to two hundred thousand. Thinking about how busy life was going to be, she deleted two chapters and decided to be sparing.

Meanwhile, Ni Xing, pleased with her successful sale, was chatting in a group, and let out a shriek at something the group owner posted. "Yijiu's started a new book!"

The group was one the fans had set up themselves. Yijiu had no Weibo, no Renren, and a bare author page with two books on it, so the readers, with all that affection and nowhere to put it, had built several groups of their own.

Hers was the senior fan group — the sort you could only join by owning a signed physical copy. Which sounds like nothing, except that Yijiu's signed copies were famously scarce and had to be fought for every time; a moment slow and you didn't get so much as a dust jacket. Remembering how fast she'd had to be, Ni Xing was aggrieved all over again. Yijiu. Two characters. How hard would it be to sign another thousand?

Being a senior fan group, somebody looked at the author page every day, and doing her rounds today the owner found to her delight that their author had opened a new book at some point and uploaded three chapters at once.

She posted it to the group without even clicking through, knowing that if she clicked she'd start reading and forget to post, which would be a dereliction of her duties as owner.

Then, thrilled, she opened the book, which was called The Last Days.

---

Today is the Spring Festival of 2012. A week has passed since the state issued the lockdown order. It is the Spring Festival, and the streets are empty; there are none of the cheerful songs there used to be, and the silence is that of a dead city.

Rao Zheng was still turning it over. A single month. How had it got this bad? It started a month ago with people collapsing at a seafood market for no apparent reason…

Deep in it, the group owner clicked to the next page, came up against the comments section without warning and wailed. "That's it?"

At the same moment, from room 504, came Ni Xing's identical sigh. "That's it?"

Absorbed in their physical copies, the other two came out of their books at the shriek. "Xingxing, what's the matter?"

She held up her phone, furious and delighted at once. "Yijiu's started a new book."

"Has she? Shouldn't you be pleased?" Luo Yu was puzzled. Hadn't she been complaining a moment ago that there wasn't one?

"I'm thrilled. But it's ten thousand characters and I've finished it in ten minutes." She read fast; three chapters took her ten minutes and left her nowhere near satisfied.

"Er — you can wait for updates." Xia Yanyan consoled her without much conviction, and then couldn't help asking, "Xingxing, where does this author publish?"

Luo Yu, apparently reading, had an ear up. Ahem. This novel was, in fact, rather good.

Which told Ni Xing that Xia Yanyan had one foot in. Such was the power of her Yijiu. "JJ. Don't search for it, everything you find that way is pirated."

She nodded, got out her phone and found the new book under instruction, and Luo Yu picked up her Apple and quietly searched out the green website Ni Xing had named.

Half an hour later, room 504 produced two more sighs of protest. "That's it?"

Having reread the three chapters, Ni Xing conceded the fact of her author's ten thousand characters, kept to herself her genuine wish to lock the woman in a room until she wrote more, and went to wheedle for updates in the comments — noticing that in barely half an hour there were already thousands of them and still climbing. Her Yijiu. Magnificent.

Neither of the others had read web fiction before, and both asked the veteran, indignantly, "Is that really all there is?" It felt like the opening and then it stopped. And it was so good.

Ni Xing looked like a woman with nothing left to live for. "That's all. From now on it's three to five thousand a day, and going by the length it'll finish in three to five months. Assuming she updates daily." There was such a thing as a burst of extra chapters. Not a thing that happened to Yijiu.

Three chapters in and firmly at the bottom of the pit, the other two finally understood why anybody would want to lock an author up.

Watching them fall in, Ni Xing felt an odd satisfaction, and turned her eye on the last of them. "Lanlan, do you want a novel recommended to you?" It would be nice to have something the whole room followed.

Li Lan's hands stopped. She held down Alt-Tab, switched windows without any change of expression, and said, "Yes, all right. You've all made me curious."

Ni Xing came over, delighted. "I'll show you how to find it. As students of quality, we read the legitimate version."

She'd barely brought the page up before the other two, having worked out registration unaided, came over with their phones. "Xingxing, is there really no way to read more?"

Ni Xing handed Li Lan her phone, regretfully. "None. All you can do is be sweet in the comments and wait. I do wish I knew who Yijiu was — I could nag her daily."

"I'll tell you, that group of mine has discussed every possible way of nagging for updates. There's this one, and then there's—"

Listening to the catalogue, Li Lan resolved to keep her cover firmly on. She'd write outside from now on. Fortunately her family knew only that she wrote novels and not her pen name; as long as she said nothing, nothing would slip.

By the time Ni Xing got back to the group there were hundreds of posts stacked up and more readers arriving.

Yijiu's amazing. The new book's so good. It left me cold — I want to go and stockpile food.

Honestly. I'm starting to wonder whether 2012 really is the end of the world. It's too real. Frightening.

Her writing keeps getting better, and the pace is lovely. I've read it several times.

Just dragged my roommate in. All four of us are Yijiu fans now.