Chapter 1: The Melon Eating System
No. 9 Yongli Street is a tenement building built in the 1950s. It is six stories high and has two shops on the first floor. On the left is Ho Kee Ice House. As it is a time-honored brand, the ice house is already crowded before noon, which shows that it is doing good business. On the right is a barber shop. The boss is a middle-aged man who always smiles when he greets customers. A huge sign
hangs outward in the middle of the second-floor window with the four characters "Dongjiang Newspaper" written on it. The right window is half open, but no sound comes out. It is very quiet.
The third to sixth floors are for ordinary residents. In front of each window, wire ropes are pulled from left to right, and all kinds of clothes are hung on them, fluttering in the wind.
Wen Yue, who was standing across the street, was staring at the newspaper on the second floor.
Before she traveled through time, she had watched a movie called "Time Thieves", which was filmed on Wing Lee Street. So when she learned from the system
that the newspaper was located here, she had a bad feeling. When she first walked into Wing Lee Street and saw the high-rise buildings that were not very similar to those in the movie, Wen Yue felt a little fortunate. She remembered that this was an imaginary world, and thought that the location of the newspaper office might not be as bad as she imagined.
Now, Wen Yue has given up. The newspaper company under her name is just a makeshift team!
Wen Yue sighed and asked in her mind: [Director, please help me check how many newspapers are under this newspaper company under my name and what is the circulation of each newspaper? 】
Soon, the soft and cute voice of the system sounded in her mind: [OK, dear, after checking, the Dongjiang Newspaper under your name only publishes a weekly called "Dongjiang Entertainment News", with a circulation of 2,000 per week, and the sales volume in the past year is... an average of 2,200 per month~]
[With a weekly circulation of 2,000 newspapers, the monthly circulation is 8,000, but the average monthly sales volume in the past year is only 2,200, which means that 6,000 newspapers issued each month cannot be sold? Where did these newspapers go in the end? 】
[You can sell the waste, dear~]
The more Wen Yue listened, the colder her heart felt, but she still held a glimmer of expectation and asked: [Can I ask, what is the retail price of this newspaper under my name? 】
【Three dollars a copy~】
Wen Yue was a mainlander before she traveled through time. Although she received a language gift pack after binding to the system and heard that there was no problem, she did not understand many details and asked: 【What does three dollars mean? 】
【Three dollars means three Hong Kong dollars~】
Wen Yue was born in the 2000s. When she grew up, print media had already declined. She had never bought a newspaper and her impression of newspapers was still one or two yuan per copy.
Although Hong Kong is a city famous for its high wages and high prices, considering that it is the 1990s, three Hong Kong dollars a copy of a newspaper may not be cheap?
Just as the thought flashed through her mind, Wen Yue heard the system say: 【The retail price of newspapers in Hong Kong is usually between five and ten Hong Kong dollars~】
Okay, Wen Yue gave up completely.
If a newspaper cannot be sold because the retail price is higher than the market price, it can still be sold at a lower price to attract citizens to buy it. Even if the sales volume is poor, there is still a chance to save it.
But if the retail price of a newspaper is far lower than the market price, but the sales volume is still only a pitiful few hundred copies... Wen Yue has to wonder if she can still complete the task with the help of this newspaper.
Yes, Wen Yue has a mission after traveling through time.
As for why she has a mission, this matter is a long story, and it has to start with the identity she traveled through.
Wen Yue is not an ordinary time traveler. Strictly speaking, she is a book traveler. The original work is a period novel called "The Richest Man in Hong Kong", and the protagonist is none other than the original body's peasant husband Yi Huai.
To put it bluntly, the original work is the history of Yi Huai's rise to wealth after he came to Hong Kong from the mainland with his parents.
Generally speaking, the husband is the male protagonist, and the original body can at least get a female protagonist to play the role. Although the male-frequency female protagonist is more of a background board, at least her life is safe.
The problem is that the original work is not a male-frequency article at some point. It was published in Jinjiang and belongs to a female-frequency male protagonist article. The story also has no CP, so the original body has the fate of the female protagonist but not the luck of the female protagonist.
So the original body's personality is like this. Because of her romantic nature, she has always looked down on her husband who came from a mud-legged background and has not read many books. After being forced to marry, she has been depressed and finally succeeded in depression to death within three years.
When Wen Yue came through, she only had one month left to live before the third anniversary of her marriage. Because she inherited the life span of the original body, she only had one month to live.
Fortunately, she was tied to the melon-eating system during her crossing. Punching in the melon owner can get a big melon, and successfully eating melon can get life points.
However, she cannot enjoy this melon alone. She has to lead others to eat melon together. The more people eat melon, the more melon-eating points she can get, and the longer the number of days she can redeem for survival.
If Wen Yue had not traveled through time, it would be a piece of cake to lead others to eat melon.
What is the most abundant thing in 2024? The crowds of people eating melons!
Those paparazzi have no evidence at all. They use AI to draw a few pictures and send a preview. In the end, nothing happened, but they can still attract tens of thousands of people to watch.
That's fine. The wolf is coming. This trick has been tried many times and has never failed. Fans in the fan circle have been fooled every time.
If she had real melons in her hands, would she still lack the crowd of melon eaters? She can live a hundred years in a few minutes.
The problem is that she happened to travel through time.
In 1994, PHS had not yet been introduced, and people still used Motorola phones. Not to mention smartphones, computers did not even have entertainment sections, and people's main source of information was print media.
And this was the main reason why Wen Yue came to Wing Lee Street - she owned a newspaper company.
But who would have thought that the weekly magazine published by her newspaper company only sold 2,200 copies per month! With this sales volume, how many melons would she have to publish to live a hundred years?
...
In Hong Kong, where every inch of land is valuable, the office of Dongjiang Newspaper is not small, with an area of 600 feet, which is enough for self-residence. But if you open a company, the place is not enough, even if the company is on the verge of bankruptcy. The
office space of less than 60 square meters is divided into three spaces: the data room, the editor-in-chief's office, and the large office outside.
There are four file cabinets and six desks placed against the wall in the large office. Four of the desks are occupied, and two desks are equipped with telephones, fax machines, printers, etc., as well as mountains of documents or letters.
When Wen Yue came up, there was only a woman in her thirties dozing in the big office. When she heard the noise, she raised her head and saw that it was a stranger with a dark color and asked inexplicably: "Are you here? What are you doing?"
Although the system had opened a language cheat, Wen Yue had just arrived at the beginning of the month and there was no one there. I have had many interactions with people, and I am used to converting Cantonese into Mandarin and going over it in my head, so my reaction is slower than that of ordinary people. It took me a while to say: "My name is Wen Yue, from your newspaper industry..."
After thinking about the wording for a while, he said uncertainly, "Boss?"
"Miss Wen?" The other party obviously knew who the newspaper boss was. She stood up from behind her desk, walked quickly to Wen Yue and asked, "Why are you here?"
"Come and take a look," Wen Yue looked around the office, "Are you alone?"
"No, the editor-in-chief is here too."
As soon as the middle-aged woman finished speaking, a man walked out of the editor-in-chief's office. He looked to be about thirty-five or thirty-six, with a medium build, not fat or thin, and an ordinary appearance. He was wearing a suit that was neither new nor old. You could tell at a glance that he was not well off.
Many times, the clothes worn by employees can also reflect the company's situation.
Just like now, looking at the two listless middle-aged men in front of her, Wen Yue felt that the newspaper company under her name really exuded an atmosphere of "I'm going to go bankrupt" from the inside to the outside.
Just as the middle-aged man walked out, Wen Yue suddenly heard the voice of the system in her mind: [Ding! There's a melon~]
This voice was different from the voice of the system. The latter spoke softly, like a little girl, but this voice sounded very mechanical, which was the sound that people imagined a robot to make.
Wen Yue was about to ask what was going on when she saw a middle-aged man coming out of the editorial office, who came up to her with a look of surprise and said, "Miss Wen, if you want to know about the newspaper industry, just call me directly. There's no need to bother you to come here in person."
Wen Yue didn't give him face and asked indifferently, "Who are you?"
The middle-aged man was stunned, but soon forced a smile and introduced himself, "You haven't been to the newspaper industry, so you may not know me very well. My name is Huang Zhihao, and I'm the editor-in-chief of Dongjiang Newspaper."
Wen Yue nodded in understanding and asked again, "Are there only two of you in the company?"
Huang Zhihao shook his head quickly, "No, in addition to Sister Fang and me, there are four other reporters in the company, and they are all out reporting news."
"Oh."
Wen Yue said, picking up the newspapers piled on the two empty tables, picked up a random one and flipped it open, and said to the two people standing in front of her: "You guys go and do your work first, I'll just take a look."
Huang Zhihao and Fang Jie nodded quickly, but they didn't dare to leave casually, standing stiffly in the same place until Wen Yue asked them to go back to work again.
After they returned to their posts, Wen Yue also pulled a stool and sat down, looking through the old issues of the magazines one by one.
"A coquettish woman meets a man of beauty, XX/XXX have a passionate physical fight"
"Being betrayed by XX's true feelings, xxx builds a nest to meet Miss Hong Kong"
"XXX is suspected of being too old, and is entangled in gossip and aging like a "resenting woman in a deep house""
The more Wen Yue read, the more strange it felt. According to her many years of experience in the Internet, the titles and contents of these newspapers are fine. Some are exaggerated, and some are extremely damaged. Many of the characters can be found in the real world. They are estimated to be big stars in this world.
With the star effect, the news titles are not bad, and the retail price of the newspaper is not high. Logically, it should not be unsalable...
Wen Yue was confused and heard the system say: [Because these news are all copied? ]
[Copied? ] Wen Yue looked puzzled, [Don't newspapers have people running news? 】
【That's the theory, but of the four reporters who went out to report news, only two new assistants were seriously reporting news. One of the regular reporters had been dating during work hours for a long time, and the other was used to going home to look after the children, so the amount of news was always insufficient, so they had to copy outdated news from other entertainment newspapers to make up for it~】
Wen Yue: "..."Okay, no wonder this newspaper is on the verge of bankruptcy.
She simply put down the newspaper and asked in her mind: 【Just now the system prompted that there was a melon, who is the owner of the melon? What kind of melon? 】
【The gossip is about the editor-in-chief Huang Zhihao. Three months later, he will be imprisoned for murder~】
Wen Yue: "..."
The newspaper company under her name has a total of six people. The configuration of two green hands, one love-crazy and one housewife among the four reporters is despair enough. Now she is told that the editor-in-chief who looks like a good guy will become a murderer in the future?
She can't carry it, really can't carry it. Or she should recruit someone else to set up a new newspaper company?