Lin Feng laughed.
"Ah, it's just that? I thought it was something serious."
Mengqi blinked.
"What?"
"Did you forget?" he said. "I was still running this thing even before the Su Yue revenue split."
He took out his phone.
"You mean..."
His fingers moved across the screen.
A moment later, her phone buzzed.
She looked down.
100,000 yuan.
She stared at the amount.
Hmmm...
He had already spent so much money. Getting a bodyguard. Paying for training. Renting the apartment. Paying her salary.
She had assumed he had some spare funds he was playing around with.
It seemed she had been mistaken.
She looked at him.
No wonder he could make such conditions. He doesn't seem to be lacking in funds at all.
But that was strange.
Wasn't he just a college student?
Was there more to him than met the eye?
"What are you looking at?" he asked, tilting his head. "Have you finally started falling for my charm?"
"You wish."
She tucked her phone away.
"Anyway, this amount should do. With this, we can get to work."
Lin Feng raised an eyebrow.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"What?"
He held up his hands and gestured at himself.
"I'm the CEO. Was I working for free?"
He reached into his bag and retrieved a document.
He handed it to her.
It was a contract. For himself. As the CEO.
"I wanted to run it through you," he said. "So you don't think I'm being too greedy."
Mengqi took the contract and read through it.
Then she sighed.
"Well... fine."
She handed it back.
"With your help, it's over 300,000. You taking 50,000 still leaves more than enough for the MV."
Lin Feng tucked the contract away with a satisfied smile.
"Great."
He turned to leave.
"It's my first real salary. I'm quite excited."
He walked off.
Mengqi watched him go.
Hmmm...
Am I reading too much into it?
…
Lin Feng walked down the hallway, his eyes glued to the system.
[Infinite Money System]
[Total System Balance: ¥87,480.00]
[Available System Balance: ¥87,480.00]
[Personal Balance: ¥36,546]
He smiled.
Finally, all his hard work had paid off.
With just this one salary, he had more than doubled his total system balance. Now he had reached true tycoon status - earning over two million a month and almost thirty million a year.
Still, he couldn't let his guard down just yet.
In fact, he needed to be even more cautious.
With the system, the more money he earned and spent, the deeper he was getting himself into trouble. While he had crafted that story with the chairman, it still had some holes to poke.
He smiled.
But said holes just meant he didn't have enough money. With enough money, he could seal them off completely.
Quite ironic, really.
Spending money was digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole - and he had to spend even more to dig himself out.
He arrived at the door.
He pushed it open gently.
"Ummm..."
Three pairs of eyes turned to look at him.
"Is there something on my face?"
Chen Ming rose from his seat and walked over, wrapping an arm around Lin Feng's shoulder.
"Boss," he said with exaggerated admiration. "I wasn't familiar with your game. How did you and sister-in-law manage to release such a masterpiece?"
"It had over ten million views last time I checked." He tilted his head. "Is this what you meant by 'we couldn't afford her when the time came'?"
Li Jun sighed from the side.
"Indeed. There was no way we could have afforded her." He shook his head. "It seems you pulled some strings."
Lin Feng scratched his cheek.
Then he turned to Zhang Wei.
"How did it go? Did we get any conversion?"
Zhang Wei nodded.
"Quite a lot, actually. We had over ten thousand clicks and about 80% translated to applications"
He glanced at Chen Ming.
"As for the results..."
Lin Feng followed his gaze.
Chen Ming straightened up.
"Well, we received a lot of applications. I'm still going through them, but overall, I think it's all good."
He paused.
"The only problem is... we just wanted to focus on Hangzhou, specifically the areas around campus. But it seems many people from other cities also applied."
He shrugged.
"Though I suppose it isn't a problem. We might need them later."
Lin Feng nodded.
"We should start focusing on the expansion infrastructure."
He looked at Li Jun.
"Li Jun."
"On it," Li Jun said.
"Zhang Wei."
"I'll start working on our backend," Zhang Wei said. "Make sure we don't experience issues while expanding."
"While you're at it," Lin Feng added, "make some promotional events for Singles' Day tomorrow."
Zhang Wei nodded.
Lin Feng then turned to Chen Ming.
"And you..."
"We'll go through the applications together."
…
That evening.
Lin Feng sat in his office, having just finished his teaching job.
He navigated to the Tianji Capital website and logged in.
His balance appeared on screen.
72,500 yuan.
He transferred the remaining 27,500 from his personal account, bringing the total to an even 100,000.
Now the returns should grow a bit.
He glanced at the time.
Su Yue wasn't streaming today. She would be working on the MV all week.
That being said...
He opened up her profile.
There was a new video.
It showed her dancing to her own music. They were taking advantage of the filming resources to produce high-quality content like this on the side. The choreographer they hired had created dances for the songs. Su Yue would perform them and post the videos, then they'd watch as the views rolled in.
Other creators would also recreate the dance using her song, earning their own high view counts - which in turn boosted the song's popularity even further.
A self-sustaining cycle.
He clicked over to the song page.
The title track was now approaching fifteen million views.
It had been almost twenty-four hours since release. Although the growth had decelerated considerably, it was still climbing.
That being said...
While the views were impressive, they didn't translate all that well to cash. Digital music streaming paid pennies. At best, for that amount of views, they'd get around a hundred thousand yuan.
Lin Feng held his chin in thought.
Maybe I should think of another way to monetize.
He stared at the screen.
Then an idea clicked.
That's right.
Physical albums.
They could sell physical albums and include the music video as a bonus. If he estimated correctly, the production cost should be around twenty yuan per copy - assuming they found a good manufacturing partner.
He was thinking they could make about ten thousand copies as the first batch.
Then they could do something similar to the livestream e-commerce model he had mentioned to her before. They could hold a livestream where she sells the physical albums directly to fans.
She could even sign copies for the top gifters.
He began chuckling to himself.
This is the way.
I'm practically losing money by not doing this.