Chapter 24 [Update 2]

Jiang Xi had really forgotten about this.

During those days, she was woken up by Jiang's mother before dawn to move bricks at the brick factory. She did not go to move bricks but went fishing for lobsters. At dawn, she returned to the mountain cottage to roast lobsters and sell them. After selling them, she returned to continue writing because she had to collect more than 700 yuan before school started. Before the royalties came in, she felt uneasy. She did not return to the Jiang family until it was completely dark at night.

Because she was always worried that Jiang's mother would find out that she didn't go to the brick factory, and then there would be another big fight, she was always nervous and forgot that she sent it under a pen name. When she talked to Jiang's grandfather, she was talking about her letter and forgot to mention the pen name "Xing Meng". In fact, Jiang's grandfather might not remember it even if she did. It was just a coincidence.

Jiang Xi and Jiang Bo ate in the cafeteria at night. The dish was a large can of salted fish and snail meat sauce brought by Jiang Xi.

Jiang Bo originally thought that the snail meat sauce was just salted cowpeas, but he didn't expect that when he scooped out a spoonful, it was full of snail meat!

Jiang Bo couldn't stop eating!

Jiang Xi had spent all her money after paying for tuition, books, miscellaneous fees, accommodation, and uniforms.

Apart from the seven kilograms of meal tickets that could guarantee her food for the next week, she urgently needed a new source of income.

Back in the dormitory, she had no intention of socializing with others. She put down her mosquito net and wrote in it.

Her roommate Xu Xiuli's parents had already left, leaving only her and Xu Xiuli.

Seeing that her roommate was so lazy, she did nothing after dinner and just put down her mosquito net to write in it. She thought she was reviewing the contents of a new book, so she was so scared that she quickly picked up the new book and started reviewing.

Apart from the locals of Wucheng, those who can be admitted to No. 1 Middle School are basically the top students of middle schools in various towns under Wucheng, and they have no lack of learning ability and self-awareness.

Jiang Xi wrote this and wrote directly until the lights in the dormitory were turned off.

Xu Xiuli finally breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her bedmate in the next bed finally put down her pen after turning off the lights and prepared to go to the bathroom in the dark to take a shower. She followed with a bottle of water to wash up.

The bathroom is a public bathroom, one on each side of the east and west. Each bathroom has about twenty shower heads, but no hot water.

If you want to take a hot shower, you can only fetch water from the hot pot downstairs, pour it into a basin diluted with cold water, and pour it on yourself.

The place for brushing teeth and washing clothes is also a common area, which is in the inverted U-shaped area between the bathroom and the toilet. The entire inverted U-shaped sink is a place for washing clothes.

There are fewer people at this time, but there are still four or five people. People are chatting in the dormitories next to them.

Maybe it’s the first day here. Everyone is not familiar with each other, but they are all very excited. From time to time, there are voices of classmates who know each other visiting and shouting in the dormitory corridor.

The shouting reached downstairs, and the dormitory auntie downstairs came up and knocked on the iron gate: "It’s ten o'clock! Are you not going to bed yet!"

The girls upstairs shouted: "Wash your clothes and go to bed immediately!"

Hearing the voices of the girls upstairs, some voices came from the freshmen boys downstairs, and the dormitory auntie downstairs immediately shouted: "Wash faster, turn off the lights and go to bed!"

The noise upstairs and downstairs suddenly stopped.

It was pitch black, with only a few dim lights in the corridor. Jiang Xi took advantage of the hot weather to wash the green checkered bedsheets and quilt covers issued by the school, as well as the camouflage uniforms for military training. When Xu Xiuli saw her washing new bedsheets and quilt covers, she hurried to wash her own.

When they were washing the dishes and hanging out the clothes, they realized that there were no hangers. They would have to go downstairs to buy hangers tomorrow.

The clothes were simply hung on the clothes drying pole outside the balcony of the dormitory. Jiang Xi even took a special look down to make sure there were no dry quilts, only some trial clothes that were also washed tonight, before hanging the bedsheets and other items. There were

five poles, Jiang Xi and Xu Xiuli each took up two, and there was one for hanging clothes. When everyone in the dormitory arrived tomorrow, these poles would be even more crowded.

These days Jiang Qing was used to being woken up by her mother before dawn to go to the brick factory. Although she did not go to the brick factory, but went to catch crayfish, her biological clock stayed. She woke up before dawn, washed her face and brushed her teeth, and ran two laps on the playground. The first rays of sunlight just pierced through the dark blue clouds.

At this time, there were still many people running and reading on the playground. Everyone was running and reading by themselves, and some were mumbling to themselves while running. Everyone was quiet and did not disturb each other.

The canteen was not open yet, but the cafeteria was open. The steamed buns were still steaming in the steamer, and the chefs were frying dough sticks, chive boxes, and glutinous rice cakes. The wonton and noodle chefs had also boiled the water for cooking the wontons and noodles.

The hungry boys basically went to buy dough sticks and glutinous rice cakes, one for each of them, and walked to the classroom with books in their hands.

They were all seniors who were about to enter the third year of high school, and they didn't have a vacation for the entire summer vacation.

The second-year students had been in school for a month, and only the freshmen were relatively free.

Jiang Qi had breakfast and filled a pot of hot water. Xu Xiuli had just gotten up.

Jiang Xi put down the kettle and said hello to Xu Xiuli: "I don't know what you like to eat, so I didn't bring you breakfast. The water bottle is here, pour it yourself if you want to drink water."

Xu Xiuli pursed her lips and smiled: "You are here early, I will go to buy a hanger later, do you want to join me?"

Jiang Xi hesitated for a moment, "You go, I want to read a book for a while."

In fact, she was short of money, and she didn't have enough money to buy a hanger.

She planned to write the manuscript first, wait for the bank to open, and go to the bank to check. If she still didn't hear anything after sending it to the two magazines "Story Club" and "Martial Arts", she would resubmit these two manuscripts.

Fortunately, she had kept the draft before.

Around eight o'clock, the school gate was busier than yesterday. Those who did not come to register yesterday all came today. Whether it was the Academic Affairs Building, the Finance Office, or the registration office for each new class teacher, there were long queues. Some students were queuing by themselves, and some were lined up with their parents. The second and third year students upstairs were still attending classes as usual.

Seeing that the time was almost up, Jiang Xi took his latest 45,000-word manuscript and the manuscript he had sent to Story Club to the bank at the school gate.

At this time, there were also many people queuing at the bank window, because many people were withdrawing money from their passbooks to pay tuition.

Jiang Qi waited in line for a long time before it was her turn. She handed over her passbook and asked, "Please help me check if there is any money in the passbook."

The staff took the passbook and saw the balance of 2.00 yuan.

But she still dutifully checked for her and found that there were two remittances. She printed out the two remittances on the passbook, told her the balance and asked her, "There are two remittances. Do you want to withdraw money?"

"Withdraw 100." Jiang Xi hurriedly asked her: "Where did you get the two remittances from?"

The staff quickly processed the withdrawal procedures for her and said: "The same place."

Jiang Xi took the bank passbook and found that the two remittances were twice as much.

She didn't know what was going on, and there was no phone to ask.

She counted the manuscripts she had sent in, several short stories, the longest one was 8,000 words, sent to "Story Club", and nearly 5,000 words was sent to "Knowing Sounds". The royalties for these have been received. There are also two short stories, one for "Reader" and the other for "Youth Digest". They should be the royalties of 40 and 60 received in the passbook.

At present, the royalties for the "Knowing Sounds" magazine are the highest.

No matter how she calculated, the two royalties were not right. She could only guess that they were the royalties from the only novel she had ever sent out, "My Years as a Constable in the Song Dynasty". As for why the two royalties were so different, she didn't know.

Since this manuscript was accepted, she sent the 45,000 words she had written together. She thought that the other party had sent two royalties and she didn't have many manuscripts left, so she sent them by express delivery.

The address she left for the letter this time was her school address. It was inconvenient to leave the school phone number, so she went to an Internet cafe to apply for a Yahoo email account and put it at the bottom of the letter. She also asked about the two different royalties and sent the short story she wrote to "Zhiyin" at the same time. There

was no way, the royalties from "Zhiyin" were high.

I just didn't expect that Story Club would have such a hard time accepting my manuscript. So Jiang Xi decided to slightly modify the story, give it a name that fits the Zhiyin style, and send it to Zhiyin to try.

There's no rush for this. With the two payments from Wuxia, Jiang Xi's financial situation is not so tight anymore.

The two payments are 400 yuan each and 800 yuan each, adding up to 1200 yuan.

Jiang Xi then planned to go to the small commodity market to buy some daily necessities. It

costs one yuan to take a tricycle from the station, but only 50 cents to take a tricycle from the school gate to the small commodity market.

This time she didn't skimp on the fifty cents and took a bus directly there, bought two locks, a lockable canvas box, clothes hangers, soap, slippers, towels, toilet paper and other personal items all at once, and bought a small desk lamp for the convenience of writing in bed.

On the way back, she saw an Avon store on the side of the road, so she went in to buy sunscreen, face cream and facial cleanser.

She was about to start military training, so she went to get a haircut. Before, it was like a bald man's head, but now she has flattened it all and made it a buzz cut.

Walking on the road on the campus, people would think she was a boy.

Their military training lasted for a week. When Jiang Xi returned to the dormitory, she found that several other girls in the dormitory had arrived. They were surprised to see her. Her parents and younger brother, who had sent them to the dormitory, stared at Jiang Xi's hair and face, trying to determine whether she was a boy or a girl, until they saw her curled up in the mosquito net and continued to write without paying attention to what was happening outside.

Her grandfather died suddenly after a fall eight years later. She didn't know how his health was now. She had to continue to make money, make money quickly, and then take her grandfather over for a physical examination.

In Guangzhou, seeing that this issue of "Wuxia" was about to be published, they couldn't contact Jiang Xi, and they were anxious to find Jiang Xi in person.

It's not that they didn't want to go to Jiang Xi in person, it's just that their magazine has had too many staff changes recently, many editors have been transferred to other departments of the publishing house, now "Wu Xia" magazine has only a few cats besides the founder and editor-in-chief, and there are not enough staff.

Their Guangzhou magazine branch is facing the risk of being cancelled. Once it is cancelled, editor-in-chief Bao will also have to be transferred to other departments, and the founder Li Ang is really busy.

Editor-in-Chief Bao, who had witnessed the glory of "Wu Xia" with the founder, naturally did not want to leave. They had invested more than ten years of hard work in this magazine from its founding to the present. They watched it grow from a monthly print run of one million to a peak of more than three million, and then to its current decline. Now that the monthly sales of this magazine have risen again, how could they not seize this opportunity?

Editor-in-Chief Bao carried his cloth bag and said, "If it is really not possible, I will go there in person!"

Director Li said, "You have to urge the other manuscripts. The final layout will be determined the day after tomorrow. It is too late for you to leave now..."

From Guangzhou to Wucheng, the round trip on the train took more than two days, not to mention going to find someone.

The address that Meng Meng filled in was far from them, and it was a remote mountain village. As a female comrade, Director Li did not dare to let her go to the mountain valley alone.

"Then I'll go with Wang Yong."

"Wang Yong won't work either." Li Ang said, "The magazine can't do without you.

The new members of the magazine are simply unable to independently take charge of the magazine's editing work.

Bao Huixin had no choice but to sigh and said, "Let me take a look at the latest submission box to see if there are any other excellent manuscripts. I'll fill it in first. "

Both Bao Huixin and Li Ang felt very sorry, because they finally got a manuscript that boosted the sales of the magazine.

As for why they were sure that the popularity was brought by "The Years I Was a Constable in the Song Dynasty", it was because the novels currently serialized in "Wuxia" have all been serialized for a long time, and only this one is a new work in these two issues, and most of the letters of feedback from readers are also about this work.

Bao Huixin put down the cloth bag in her hand: "I should have gone directly to find it after the first week of publication." It would still be in time to look for it then.

Director Li said: "I should have gone. "

Unfortunately, he has been running around for the branch office closure during this period and has no time to spare.

Until the last moment before the editing and typesetting, Li Ang and Editor-in-Chief Bao were still looking for suitable new works.

Bao Huixin suddenly found a thick envelope among the letters. Although the address on it was different from the last time, it was sent from the same province and city, and the envelope was the same as last time. She was surprised and said, "Director, look at this letter, could it be from Xi Meng?"

"Open it and have a look! "Li Ang was also somewhat surprised, but he was not quite sure.

It was true that their magazine was quite large and had a huge readership, and many people sent manuscripts to their magazine every day.

But writing this kind of thing really requires some talent and understanding. Some authors just wrote and sent their articles out of passion, but in fact they had no logic or skills, and were not suitable for the "Wuxia" magazine. The editors had to read a large number of manuscripts every day, trying to pan for gold in the sand.

Among them, there were countless manuscripts sent from the same province and city.

Before opening it, Bao Huixin looked at the notes on the envelope and said, "The handwriting is similar."

Li Ang was impatient and rushed over to tear open the envelope.