After settling the fee, Gu Xiao pinched the mere 176 yuan he had left and felt unprecedented financial pressure.
He spent another 4 yuan on a cup of instant noodles and a sausage, hastily filled his stomach, then immediately threw himself into formatting and proofreading the forty-six-page manuscript.
“Is this really okay?”
Inside Private Room No. 4, Gu Xiao looked at Qiu Yuanyuan and asked curiously, “This is a private room. Even if it hasn’t been cleaned, it’s still way better than the rows of computers in the main hall.”
“Quit nagging. If I tell you to use it, then use it.”
Qiu Yuanyuan shot him an impatient glare, ignoring her brother’s expression as if he’d eaten shit, and stroked Xiao Jiu, the little squirrel in her arms.
The little thing lay against her chest, eyes half-closed, looking utterly blissful.
Gu Xiao shook his head inwardly, unable to understand how a squirrel could be so lecherous.
He gathered his thoughts, looked at the screen, and focused.
Heat welled up behind his eyes.
Spirit Vision, activate!
The world melted before his eyes, and a 270-degree ultra-wide-angle field of view instantly unfolded.
His visual capture ability was pushed to the extreme.
As his fingers scrolled, the characters on the screen surged into his mind like a tide. His consciousness became a high-speed scanner, rapidly comparing the electronic draft with the handwritten manuscript.
The incorrect words and formatting issues automatically lit up red in his mind like system bugs.
Time passed. When the scroll bar reached the final page, Gu Xiao shut off Spirit Vision and closed his eyes to ease the intense fatigue.
After training, his limit had already risen to ninety-five seconds, but processing such a massive amount of information still took an astonishing toll on his mind.
“Is it too much?”
Seeing his exhausted face, Qiu Yuanyuan could not help asking, “Do you need help?”
Gu Xiao rubbed the space between his brows. “No, I can handle it.”
Qiu Yuanyuan curled her lips slightly. “Would it kill you not to force yourself?”
Seeing his younger sister like this, Qiu Xu felt uncomfortable all over and turned to leave the private room.
He was afraid that if he stayed any longer, he would be unable to stop himself from hitting someone.
After Gu Xiao finished resting, he officially began proofreading.
His fingers rolled the mouse wheel at an even pace while his left hand flew across the keyboard, making corrections.
Spelling mistakes, missing letters, formatting issues… Amid the dense clatter of the keyboard, the manuscript was proofread at high speed.
Qiu Yuanyuan’s hand slowed as she stroked Xiao Jiu. Her mouth parted slightly as she stared in astonishment at Gu Xiao’s back.
Only the crisp tapping of the keyboard remained in the room.
The mouse cursor precisely selected errors and omissions. The keyboard clattered, wrong words were corrected, and messy paragraphs were aligned in an instant.
The manuscript on the screen became orderly at an astonishing speed under Gu Xiao’s hands.
Qiu Yuanyuan cried out inwardly: This guy isn’t human!
Two hours later, Gu Xiao stopped, twisted his stiff neck, and let out a breath of turbid air.
Luo Rui and the other two had made even more mistakes than he had expected, and the handwritten draft from before also contained quite a few repetitions and omissions.
Fortunately, his golden finger was reliable and had clearly marked out every problem. Otherwise, if he had proofread it through normal means, he would never have finished without two or three days.
“It’s done already?” Qiu Yuanyuan could not help asking.
While rubbing his swollen temples, Gu Xiao saved the file and said,
“More or less. Next, I still need to design the cover, insert page numbers, and add shading and borders.”
In 2002, the public’s awareness of copyright was still rather weak.
Although he did not expect to get rich off this English guide, he also did not want the results of his hard work to be easily pirated or plagiarized.
Some details had to be taken care of in advance.
“Do you think anyone will buy your guide?” Qiu Yuanyuan asked.
Gu Xiao said, “To be honest, I’m not sure.”
The room fell silent. Qiu Yuanyuan’s expression turned sullen, clearly very dissatisfied.
Gu Xiao glanced at her and said, “I’m not brushing you off. I really don’t know.”
Across both his lives, he had never started a business before. His understanding of commerce remained purely theoretical.
Qiu Yuanyuan frowned. “You’re spending money to start a business when you’re not confident?”
Gu Xiao said, “There’s no such thing as a sure-thing startup. If it were really certain, it wouldn’t be my turn.”
Qiu Yuanyuan fell into thought.
She said, “I’ll go with you.”
“Skipping class isn’t good,” Gu Xiao advised.
“Tomorrow is Sunday!”
“Learning is valuable because of persistence.”
Qiu Yuanyuan treated it as if someone was farting.
Gu Xiao, however, grew curious. “Why do you want to go?”
Qiu Yuanyuan was silent for a moment, then chose her words and said, “I want to see how business is done.”
Gu Xiao waited for a while. Seeing that there was nothing more, he did not ask again.
……
……
Early the next morning, the two met in front of a print shop.
Gu Xiao wore a white stand-collar sweater with a black jacket over it, paired with non-prescription black-rimmed glasses. An intellectual air seemed to wash over him.
Qiu Yuanyuan arrived on time, dressed in loose sportswear, her long black hair casually draped over her shoulders.
She looked Gu Xiao up and down for a while, then frowned. “Where’s Xiao Jiu?”
“Sleeping in,” Gu Xiao said concisely.
The anticipation in Qiu Yuanyuan’s eyes instantly faded, and her whole demeanor became gloomy.
Sensing this subtle change, Gu Xiao immediately pushed open the glass door of the print shop, avoiding all possible conversation.
“Boss, printing.”
Gu Xiao walked straight to the counter and handed over the floppy disk that carried all his hopes.
The print shop owner was a balding middle-aged man. His greasy fingertips tapped twice on the keyboard. He took the floppy disk, inserted it into the drive, and asked without looking up,
“How many copies? What paper?”
“Use 120-gram coated paper for the cover, and regular copy paper for the rest.” Gu Xiao’s tone was smooth, clearly having rehearsed it countless times in his mind.
At that moment, the floppy disk finished loading.
The boss scrolled the mouse wheel, roughly skimmed the document that was over forty pages long, then picked up the oil-stained calculator beside him. His fingers clattered over the keys.
“Forty-six inner pages, one yuan per page. Cover is two yuan. Add a two-yuan handling fee. Fifty total.”
With a pained heart, Gu Xiao counted out the corresponding bills and handed them to the boss.
If this attempt failed, he might become the first transmigrator to die of a heart attack caused by financial collapse.
The boss took the money, counted and checked it repeatedly, and after confirming they were all real bills, turned toward the laser printer.
After a series of flashy operations, the machine began to warm up, letting out a low rumble.
Sheets of paper were quickly spat out one after another, carrying a faint scent of toner.
Gu Xiao stood beside the machine, his eyes fixed on every finished page to make sure there were no paper jams or printing errors.
Qiu Yuanyuan leaned against the counter in boredom, her gaze drifting between Gu Xiao’s focused profile and the steadily piling sheets of paper.
She could not help asking, “Hey, what if you really can’t sell them?”
Without turning his head, Gu Xiao said, “Then I’ll set up a stall under the overpass, or go back to school and look for teachers.”
Parents might not recognize its value, but teachers who specialized in education would definitely be willing to spend the money.
Even if he only earned one yuan per copy, he could quickly recover his costs.
Qiu Yuanyuan frowned slightly, clearly not satisfied with this answer.
Half an hour later, Gu Xiao walked out of the print shop holding the still-warm master copy and went to a copy shop facing the street.
Another hour passed, and ten brand-new copies of College Entrance Exam Sprint: Core English Vocabulary were fresh off the press.
The price was that Gu Xiao’s assets had shrunk to 42 yuan.
“What price are you planning to set?” Qiu Yuanyuan asked.
Gu Xiao thought for a moment, then said, “Twenty-five yuan.”
Qiu Yuanyuan’s eyes widened. “Are you insane?”
Photocopying and binding only cost 8 yuan, yet he was actually selling it for three times that. What kind of black-hearted capitalist was this?!