Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 390: The Pigeon Spirit Walks Right into the Trap
Cui Geng skimmed through the agreement. It mainly laid out the rights and obligations for this training program.
From the website's side, they were required to provide authors with a base salary, social insurance and housing fund, a working environment, accommodation, meals, and other conveniences. Not only were the amounts for the base salary and social insurance clearly specified, but the standards for accommodation and meals were also spelled out in detail.
In addition, there would be around 10 hours every week—about two afternoons—set aside for organizing group activities.
As for the authors, the only clause they had to comply with was to fully obey the website's daily workflow arrangements. Otherwise, the website could unconditionally terminate the contract and take back all previously promised benefits.
Below that was the detailed schedule for the training program.
One point that Cui Geng paid special attention to was the stipulated daily routine: all authors had fixed working hours and were required to be at their workstations from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, with a one-hour lunch and break in between.
Cui Geng was satisfied with everything else, but he hesitated a bit about the working hours.
As a "pigeon spirit" whose effective working time was only two or three hours a day, being required to stay at a workstation for eight hours a day sounded pretty tough.
He was worried that if he failed to meet the work targets, the website might cancel all his benefits, which would be super awkward.
Cui Geng voiced his concern:
"Mr. Ma, does this clause mean I just have to work eight hours a day? Are there any other requirements, like having to write 4,000 words a day?"
Ma Yiqun shook his head.
"There's no word-count requirement."
"Writing is a creative activity. Every author runs into writer's block or times when they can't write, so we won't impose any hard word-count targets."
Cui Geng let out a long breath of relief.
No word-count requirement? That made things much easier!
He could just surf the web, slack off a bit, do whatever—eight hours would pass in no time.
Food and lodging were covered here, and they would even organize local sightseeing trips in Jingzhou from time to time so everyone could relax. He could also drink, joke around, and mess about with other authors. The price he paid was basically just changing the place where he went online.
Who knows, maybe the computers provided here were even better than the one at home.
All in all, it was a great deal.
Cui Geng flipped through the agreement again and didn't find any obvious traps, so he signed his name with peace of mind.
"Alright, I'll have someone take you to your accommodation later," Mr. Ma said.
"To give everyone a quiet, peaceful environment, we've arranged for you to stay at a hotel in the suburbs. The workplace is about a five-minute walk from the hotel."
"Don't worry. Even though it's in the outskirts, the living conditions and everything else will definitely be good."
Ma Yiqun put away the agreement.
Cui Geng nodded. "No problem."
They were all rough-and-tumble guys anyway, not too picky about living conditions. A slightly remote location was fine—most authors were homebodies who didn't like going out much, so it wasn't a big deal.
…
…
Friday, January 14
At 8:30 a.m., the alarm on Cui Geng's phone went off, waking him up.
Out of habit, he hit snooze and kept sleeping.
"Brother Cui, it's about time to get up. You told me to wake you this morning," someone beside him said.
Cui Geng suddenly realized something and shot upright in bed.
He wasn't at home anymore, he was in a hotel!
Yesterday, he and several other authors had already checked into the hotel arranged by the website.
The hotel environment was pretty nice. Although it was in the suburbs, it counted as a decent three-star hotel: spacious rooms, clean and tidy, with all the basic necessities.
They were staying in double rooms. His roommate was a new author more than a year younger than him, who kept calling him "Brother Cui" and treated him with a lot of respect.
"I'll be ready in a second!"
Cui Geng jumped out of bed, brushed his teeth and washed up at lightning speed, and was fully dressed within five minutes.
The two of them had breakfast at the hotel, then went together to the nearby workplace.
By yesterday afternoon and evening, all the authors in the training program had arrived—no one was missing.
They were all authors from Terminal Chinese Web, and most of them had heard of each other before, so they exchanged a few polite greetings.
Zhu Anxing had also arrived and led everyone to the place where they would usually write.
The workplace prepared by the website was in a nearby office building. They had properly rented a fairly spacious room, filled with neat rows of workstations.
Mechanical keyboards, large monitors, and on the roomy desks there were fountain pens and notebooks—probably for authors who liked to organize their thoughts by hand.
Besides that, there was a long conference table in the room, and next to it a snack area. Apart from all kinds of snacks, there was even a capsule coffee machine.
All in all, compared to an average company, these conditions were already extremely generous.
Zhu Anxing watched as everyone found their own seats.
"Alright, it's about time. You can relax at your workstations for a bit, grab a cup of coffee, and start brainstorming."
"My desk is over here by the door. If you run into any questions while writing, you can come straight to me."
"Also, there will be a ten-minute break every hour. A bell will ring then. Everyone should stand up, stretch a bit, and look out the window to rest your eyes."
Cui Geng deliberately picked a seat in the corner, the one farthest from Zhu Anxing.
It formed a perfect blind spot where Zhu Anxing wouldn't be able to see what he was doing.
As long as he slacked off for eight hours and squeezed in two or three hours of actual writing in the middle, he'd be able to muddle through the day.
Cui Geng pressed the power button on the computer and lightly tapped the keyboard, producing crisp, pleasant "clack-clack" sounds.
The monitor was high quality too—high resolution, and it seemed to be set to a blue-light filter mode, which looked soft on the eyes and was less straining than ordinary monitors.
The desk height was standard, and both the chair and monitor height could be adjusted freely.
The ergonomic chair was extremely comfortable. The backrest fit the curve of his spine perfectly, the armrests were about level with the desk, so when his elbows bent at ninety degrees, his forearms could rest naturally on them. His palms rested on the keyboard's wrist rest, making typing feel effortless and comfortable.
As for the mouse, headset, and other peripherals—even though they weren't that relevant for writing—they were all great accessories too, better than what Cui Geng used at home.
He wasn't sure about the computer's specs, but there was a really flashy logo on the case—looked like the letters "ROF."
Since it was a desktop PC, it had to have a decent dedicated graphics card, right? Running big games shouldn't be a problem.
And even if it couldn't run games, watching shows on a big screen would be pretty sweet.
Clack-clack-clack…
Crisp typing sounds had already started echoing around the room.
Soon, the sound spread rapidly, turning into a sea of mechanical-keyboard frenzy.
If there's only one person in a quiet room using a mechanical keyboard—especially a clicky blue-switch one—it's like smoking indoors: no one else can focus on their work.
But if everyone in the room is hammering away on mechanical keyboards at high intensity, it's like a bunch of smokers lighting up together. No one is bothering anyone anymore. Instead, it creates a unique atmosphere that everyone enjoys.
For Cui Geng, who just wanted to slack off, though, this noise was a bit of a nuisance.
"Damn, I've barely sat down for a minute and they already have inspiration? Are these people even human?"
"Whatever, looking on the bright side, with all this keyboard noise as cover, I can slack off without being noticed."
"This is an over-ear headset. The noise isolation should be pretty good."
"Anyway, let me check the computer specs first…"
"Holy crap?!"
The computer's performance was obviously pretty good—it booted up fast.
Cui Geng was sitting in the innermost seat, and he had gone to grab snacks and coffee before turning on the computer, so he started up later than everyone else.
After booting up, he was planning to check the PC specs and internet speed, then decide which game to download—or just binge a show.
But the moment the system finished booting, before he even had time to move the mouse, the writing software automatically opened, went full-screen, and entered locked mode.
Cui Geng: "???"
His brain short-circuited. He instinctively hit Alt + F4. No response.
Then he pressed Ctrl + Alt + Delete. Still nothing!
This kind of writing software had a "little black room" mode. Once it was activated, until you finished a certain word count or the countdown timer ended, this computer couldn't do anything else, it could only be used for writing!
And the settings on this computer were even more ruthless. As soon as it booted up, the writing software would automatically open. Even if you shut it down and restarted, it would still auto-launch. There was no target word count and no time limit either, in other words, unless a technician came over, there was absolutely no way to cancel the "little black room" mode!
Of course, platforms like this would usually leave a Baidu portal open for authors to look up reference materials, but that was strictly limited to research, you couldn't even play videos.
Cui Geng seemed to finally understand why some authors were able to get into the zone so quickly.
If you didn't write, there was literally nothing else you could do!
Cui Geng felt like coughing up blood. Such a huge screen and such a high-spec computer, and in the end it could only be used for typing—what a waste!
After trying a few times, he gave up. He knew that whatever tricks he could think of, the developers of the writing software had definitely already anticipated them and blocked off every possible loophole.
Once the "little black room" was activated, he could forget about any crooked tricks.
All around him was the rapid clatter of mechanical keyboards, but Cui Geng felt like a prisoner who had just been sentenced to life in jail—his heart went cold.
His mind started racing, thinking about his situation.
Suddenly, he came up with a brilliant idea.
"Chief Editor! I've got a scene that requires me to watch a clip from a certain movie! What should I do?"
Cui Geng couldn't help feeling smug. What a perfectly legitimate reason!
As a web novelist, it was totally reasonable to draw inspiration from movies and games.
A lot of content needed to be written while watching the visuals of a film; for some other scenes, you even had to personally play a game to capture the right feel.
But this computer could only be used to search the most basic reference materials. It couldn't possibly meet those needs.
So bringing this up now was totally reasonable, right? You could even say he was thinking on behalf of the other authors too.
He wasn't asking for anything excessive—he just wanted his computer to be able to play videos normally so he could binge a show or watch a movie, and he'd be perfectly satisfied!
Zhu Anxing pushed up his glasses, as if he had long anticipated this. He pointed to an empty computer beside him.
"If you need to gather reference materials, you can use that computer."
Cui Geng: "..."
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