Chapter 286: Where Did All These New Readers Come From?
Chapter 286: Where Did All These New Readers Come From?
At the end of the video, a wave of identical bullet comments swept across the screen: “Amazing video!”
But that wasn’t the end of it. As the video wrapped up, Qiao Liang announced the teaser for his next program—and the barrage of comments instantly exploded once again!
“That’s all for this episode of Masterpiece Showcase. I truly hope every player can experience for themselves the depth and richness of this game.”
“After all, no matter how much you watch others play, it’s nothing but scratching an itch through your shoes. Nothing compares to trying it yourself.”
“And don’t worry if you’ve got clumsy hands and think you can’t clear it. I’ll be releasing a detailed series of walkthrough videos next, to help every ‘clumsy player’ like me finish the game through their own effort!”
“That’s it for today’s episode. The full Turn Back Before It’s Too Late walkthrough will continue to be updated, so please stay tuned, dear viewers!”
“If you enjoyed this episode, please support me! See you next time in Masterpiece Showcase!“
Instantly, the screen filled with bullet comments like “Can’t wait!”, “Old Qiao, you worked hard!”, “Can’t wait to see the next one!”, “See you next year, I guess!”, and more.
Pei Qian fell silent once more.
It’s over. That Qiao Liang is actually planning to release a whole new video series! A series explaining the gameplay in detail!
Pei Qian had somewhat expected this.
If Masterpiece Showcase, Episode 2 hadn’t been released, such a series wouldn’t have made much of a splash.
But now that Masterpiece Showcase, Episode 2 was out there, the situation had completely changed!
In the comments section, players were enthusiastically leaving messages, clearly fired up.
“A once-in-a-lifetime sequel! Finally, episode two of Masterpiece Showcase!”
“Never thought the second episode would be about another Tengda game!”
“As expected of my favorite creator—every time, he’s on another level! Totally crushing the other gaming channels!”
“Beautifully said. This game’s philosophical depth just went up three notches! Honestly, the meaning behind it is so profound. Most people are blinded by the game’s difficulty—only a professional like Teacher Qiao can truly explain its essence!”
“All hail Teacher Qiao!”
“He’s been honing this for a week, and it shows! This isn’t just Tengda’s masterpiece—it’s his masterpiece too!”
“After watching this video, I feel ashamed. I also got the Turn Back Before It’s Too Late ending and refunded the game because of my poor skills. I’m buying it back right now!”
“Thanks to Old Qiao for curing my urge to skip levels with the Pudu mode. I’ll beat this game on my own power!”
“I didn’t expect such a short game to have so much story content. That’s true craftsmanship.”
“When every other domestic game treats story as decoration, Tengda actually built a detailed world and lore—even planting clues about hidden weapons, and only using part of the novel’s plot for the game! Truly conscientious work!”
“I’m going to read the novel right now!”
“I feel like there’s still so much more to uncover in the story. I even noticed details Old Qiao missed. I’ll make a video later to share them with everyone!”
…
After scrolling through all the top comments, Pei Qian felt utterly defeated.
You’ve all been deceived!
That’s not the truth at all!
The “Turn Back Before It’s Too Late” ending was the one I personally approved! Would it kill you people to just give up honestly?!
Who told you people to imagine that the characters in the game would be forever trapped in their sea of suffering? It’s just a damn game! It’s fake! Can you all please stop getting so emotionally invested?!
Among all those comments, the only one that gave Pei Qian a faint sense of comfort was from that player who said they’d just “watch a playthrough instead.”
If only everyone could just happily watch instead of play! Wouldn’t that be perfect?
But clearly, that was nothing more than President Pei’s wishful thinking.
After watching this video, many players who were planning to quit because they weren’t good at games decided to buy it after all; those who had refunded the game bought it again; and those who were about to give up halfway suddenly found their motivation reignited.
Most crucially—the entire “difficulty” discussion had been completely deconstructed!
Before, the trolls and paid commenters had all been harping on that one word—“difficulty.” By repeatedly emphasizing and demonizing it, they could scare off those hesitant, unconfident players.
But once Qiao Liang’s video came out, he immediately reframed the discussion from a higher dimension, making “difficulty” no longer something worth arguing about.
Yes, the game is hard.
But its difficulty is part of the immersion, part of its emotional and thematic depth.
It’s precisely because of the difficulty that the experience feels complete; because of it, players can feel true catharsis and emotional resonance!
What was once seen as a minus… had now become a positive!
And with that shift in perspective, Qiao Liang was instantly unassailable.
Once his detailed strategy videos were released, even those who feared they couldn’t finish the game would no longer worry—they’d just follow the guide step by step.
And just like that, another wave of players would dive right in!
Pei Qian was sinking into melancholy.
This was bad. Very bad.
He had completely underestimated Qiao Liang’s destructive power!
It was Thursday now. On Monday, the revenue from Turn Back Before It’s Too Late would be credited to the company’s account. With three full days for the word-of-mouth hype to spread, the game’s sales were bound to skyrocket.
This is a disaster!
At that thought, Pei Qian quickly called up Lu Mingliang.
He ordered him to go all out—open dozens more Against the Wind Logistics stations, keep expanding nonstop until the next accounting period—every unexpected cent of profit must be spent!
But even after hanging up, Pei Qian still wasn’t at ease.
No, he had to go in person!
He had to personally supervise the operation!
He was afraid Lu Mingliang wouldn’t grasp how serious the situation was, so he decided to go straight to the Against the Wind Logistics headquarters himself and fire everyone up to maximum intensity!
With that, Pei Qian didn’t dare waste even a single minute. He arranged for the driver and hurried out of the office.
Before leaving, he gave Li Yada a quick instruction: “I’m heading out to deal with some Against the Wind Logistics matters. If there’s nothing urgent, just let everyone get off work early.”
Inside the office, Tengda’s employees watched their president rush off in a hurry, all feeling quietly moved.
Huh? Didn’t our game just blow up again as expected?
Shouldn’t President Pei be relaxing or celebrating at least a little? And yet, he’s going off to handle logistics work instead?
What dedication!
Their boss was working overtime while letting his employees go home early—what kind of spirit was that!
…
Upstairs at Tengda Headquarters, in the Terminal Chinese Web department.
Ma Yiqun had been busy with the TPDb website for a while, but now that the site was finally running smoothly, his workload had lightened considerably.
Of course, for Ma Yiqun, managing both Terminal Chinese Web and the TPDb project was no trouble at all.
Now that Terminal Chinese Web was on track, there wasn’t much left that required his direct involvement—it could practically run itself.
After so much time spent on training, the team under him could each handle their own responsibilities now. Whether it was choosing manuscripts, arranging front-page recommendations, or giving authors editorial advice, editors like Zhu Anxing had all become more than capable.
In fact, during their downtime, Zhu Anxing and the other editors even had enough free time to write the official novel of Turn Back Before It’s Too Late.
Granted, that novel had been absolutely roasted by readers—but no one really minded. It was just for fun, after all.
Ma Yiqun often sighed in admiration. These were indeed top students from Handong University. Though every single one of them seemed a bit socially anxious and introverted, their comprehension was sharp.
After Ma Yiqun had given them a detailed crash course on the rules and conventions of online fiction, they all seemed to grasp it surprisingly well.
Honestly, they were pretty well-suited for the web novel business.
Overall, the direction of Terminal Chinese Web was looking good.
Although at the beginning few had faith in the site—no readers, no authors—that situation had gradually improved.
Recently, President Pei had approved another round of funding, which meant they could now offer additional subsidies to authors who produced quality work.
Ma Yiqun made sure that every novel he considered to have real potential received full-rate payments according to word count. This decision had greatly boosted Terminal Chinese Web’s reputation within the online writing community.
When the ceiling gets higher, more talented authors are drawn in.
The only problem that remained was the readers.
Without readers, this constant money burn was ultimately unsustainable.
But Ma Yiqun wasn’t too worried. As long as the subsidies lasted for a while, good authors would continue to appear—and eventually, some breakout hit would emerge.
Once that happened, wouldn’t readers come naturally?
Ma Yiqun opened the backend dashboard to review the site’s detailed data.
He was managing a sizable pool of subsidies, so deciding exactly which authors to support required caution.
After all, the process wasn’t fully transparent, and it could easily cause controversy. If a few authors didn’t get subsidies and grew jealous, they might stir up drama online and hurt Terminal Chinese Web’s reputation.
And thus, fairness was essential.
Of course, there was no way Ma Yiqun could personally read every single novel on the site—that would kill him.
Instead, he used a mix of data and manual review to decide each month’s subsidy amounts.
First, he’d do a preliminary filter through the backend data: how many favorites the book had, how many active readers, how many recommendation votes. Then he’d skim the opening chapters, check the middle plot points, and see if the number of comments per chapter dropped sharply—or showed suspicious spikes that suggested bot activity.
This way, he could roughly estimate a book’s real-time popularity.
If a novel started strong but fell apart midway, the data would reflect that—and he’d lower the subsidy accordingly.
After all, this was President Pei’s money. Ma Yiqun felt obligated to handle it responsibly—even with plenty of funds, every cent had to be spent where it truly counted.
But as his gaze swept over the top-ranking novels’ backend data, Ma Yiqun suddenly froze.
Why were all of these books’ numbers surging so quickly?
The most exaggerated example was the official novel of Turn Back Before It’s Too Late. To call it “rapid growth” was an understatement—it was a full-blown explosion!
And the site’s registration count was skyrocketing as well!
Ma Yiqun was thrilled—but also deeply puzzled.
What was going on? Where were all these new users coming from?
Could it be that President Pei had secretly run an advertising campaign for Terminal Chinese Web somewhere else?
But… President Pei hadn’t told him anything about that!
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