Chapter 10: Under Currents

Ri Zhao, the head moderator of Huanjian, had recently caught a whiff of something amiss.

A group of rising popular authors on Huanjian had simultaneously slowed down their update schedules, with some even halting them entirely. Take Blood Cloud, a sensation as of late, who hadn't posted a new chapter in nearly ten days, claiming he needed to slow down due to personal matters at home.

Among the founders of Huanjian, Ri Zhao was responsible for the site’s daily operations. His primary role involved direct interaction with readers and authors. Although he held the smallest stake in the company, he was the one who truly understood the web novel industry and held the most confidence in its potential.

A wildly popular writer suddenly stopping updates could be explained by laziness following their success, but for an entire group of emerging writers to do the same defied logic.

Whether considering the nature of web novels or the psychology of authors, a writer who had long been obscure and finally achieved a breakthrough should be at their most passionate and proactive. How could such widespread stagnation occur?

*Zhu Xian* had only released one thousand words in half a month... *Startling by Each Step* had only managed two chapters in a month... More than a dozen recently popular novels were following this exact trend.

Including Blood Cloud’s *Rascal* series, these stalled works accounted for nearly half of Huanjian’s foundation, commanding a massive readership. This "half the foundation" was calculated based on total traffic; if one looked at the composition of new readers, over seventy or eighty percent were drawn specifically by these books.

Readers were already up in arms, posting complaints across every forum. The sheer volume of these posts far eclipsed the recent verbal battles between veteran authors like Zhuang Buzhou and the newcomers. Multiple sections of the site were flooded with reader feedback.

Beyond the issue of stalled updates, Huanjian’s servers were also highly unstable. Setting aside the erratic connection speeds, there were frequent login failures. In the most extreme case, the page remained inaccessible for a full three hours. Readers were deeply dissatisfied.

Ri Zhao knew the reason for the server instability. Huanjian was attacking Qidian’s servers, and Qidian, naturally, was not sitting idly by. Both sides were locked in a mutual offensive, and life was becoming difficult for everyone.

With authors leaving, flagship books stalling, reader sentiment souring, and servers crumbling—if this continued, a disaster was imminent!

Technical matters were handled by Brother Ting, and funding was managed by Mr. Kong. Frustrated as he was, Ri Zhao had no way to intervene in those areas; he could only focus on his own domain. After much deliberation, he made a phone call to Blood Cloud.

"Blood Cloud, what exactly is going on?" Ri Zhao chose his words carefully. "Is it because of the arguments with Zhuang Buzhou and the others that your mood has been affected?"

"Not at all. I forgot about that petty nonsense long ago; there’s no need to let them affect me," Yu Zhe replied from the other end of the line.

"Then... are you having any second thoughts? You’ve risen very quickly lately." He paused before adding, "I’ve heard that quite a few authors on the site are planning to jump ship to Qidian."

"Don't worry, I will never jump ship to Qidian!" Yu Zhe sensed the implication behind his words and laughed.

"I’m just worrying unnecessarily, don't overthink it. The Huanjian platform is much larger than Qidian's..."

Yu Zhe chuckled, cutting Ri Zhao off. After a moment of thought, he spoke candidly, "Moderator Ri Zhao, you were the one who gave me my big break. Honestly, out of all the moderators at Huanjian, I think you’re a decent person. Rest assured, no matter where I write, I won't forget the favor you’ve shown me."

Hearing this, Ri Zhao’s heart sank. He felt a vague, ominous sense that things were taking a turn for the worse.

After hanging up, he hesitated repeatedly before finally seeking out the primary investor, Kong Decheng.

"Mr. Kong, we discussed financial incentives last time. I know full coverage isn't possible, but could we select a portion of excellent works to reward, or perhaps simply buy out their various copyrights at a rate of twenty yuan per thousand words?"

Currently, it wasn't that all web novel writers lacked income; a very small elite group could earn money. Twenty yuan per thousand words was an extremely high rate in the industry, usually reserved for those at or slightly below Blood Cloud’s level.

The problem was, how many writers on Huanjian were on par with Blood Cloud? As things stood, Blood Cloud had single-handedly driven the heat of the entire industry. Within Huanjian, there was no one who could compete with him; the combined readership of all other popular authors didn't even equal his alone.

Twenty yuan per thousand words didn't sound like much, but for a book of several hundred thousand words, that meant thousands or tens of thousands of yuan. Ten books would cost tens of thousands... What were Huanjian’s total annual operating expenses? Less than one hundred thousand yuan.

Ri Zhao continued to persuade him, "We don't need many, just selectively choose a few high-end authors. This would stabilize the core talent and, at the same time, allow the vast number of novice and mid-tier authors to see the hope of earning money, attracting more people to write for Huanjian."

"Ri Zhao, have you considered one thing?" Kong Decheng waved his hand. "We certainly have the financial strength to buy out a few books. But what about later? Once we open the floodgates of spending, we can only scale up and increase prices; we cannot retreat. If we spend tens of thousands now to buy out a few books, what happens next? Do we raise prices? Do we buy out new authors' books? Until we find a new source of profit, we cannot afford to make buying out novels a routine expense for the site."

"A source of profit..." Ri Zhao frowned.

"How about this: you first contact the publishers in Hong Kong and Taiwan and provide them with our book list. If they are willing to publish them, we will buy out the books that are eligible for publication. They can offer up to 60 yuan per thousand words. One published book would be enough to fund the buyouts of three books here," Kong Decheng said.

Publishing mainland web novels in Hong Kong and Taiwan was still in its infancy; to date, such publications were rare. But this was indeed a viable path. Ri Zhao nodded, "Understood, I will handle it immediately."

After seeing Ri Zhao out, Kong Decheng sought out Brother Ting, who was in charge of network technology.

"How is the offensive against Qidian going?"

"Overall, we have the upper hand," Brother Ting hesitated. "However, several advertising clients have called to ask why Huanjian's servers have been unstable lately. They hope we can resolve it as soon as possible."

"Increase the intensity of the attack!" Kong Decheng waved his hand firmly. "Don't worry about the advertisers for now. Our servers may be unstable, but Qidian’s are even worse."

"Brother Kong, why must we engage in such mutual destruction?" Brother Ting asked. "It would be better to let each side do its own thing. Our scale is larger, our technology is stronger, and our readers and authors far exceed theirs. Our advantages are clear; if we focus our energy on improving our own competitiveness, we can just as easily leave Qidian in the dust."

Kong Decheng understood the logic in Brother Ting’s words; it was beneficial for the long-term development of Huanjian.

However, Kong Decheng’s own positioning for Huanjian was different from that of Brother Ting or Ri Zhao. His goal was not to build a world-class novel reading site or to pioneer a career in web literature.

At the beginning of the year, several capital firms had approached him, interested in acquiring Huanjian or injecting funds. But after Qidian appeared and began its rapid ascent, those firms collectively adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Therefore, what Kong Decheng needed to do right now was not to strengthen Huanjian, but to destroy Qidian as quickly as possible.

Just as Huanjian and Qidian were locked in their bitter struggle, the uniquely poised Zeyue Chinese Network finally went live.