Three days after signing the contract.
Lin Baicheng once again arrived at Star Daily. Hu Zhiwen handed him a copy of the newspaper.
"This is the first issue we're preparing to release. Take a look and see if there are any problems."
Lin Baicheng took it and flipped through. On the main cover page of the novel section were the six bold characters "Wind and Cloud: Conquering the World" ("风云雄霸天下"). Below that were some theme introductions and well-known trending news.
That's right—the novel wasn't called just Wind and Cloud (The Storm Riders) anymore, but Wind and Cloud: Conquering the World.
The first two pages were filled with the story. Newspaper sizes followed a standard—about A3 paper. Normally, with standard font size, one page could serialize around 2,000 characters. But for commercial reasons, quite a lot of space was taken by ads.
Since this was the debut chapter, they crammed in as much word count as possible. Except for advertisements, the next three pages were all novel content—nearly 10,000 characters in total.
After browsing quickly, Lin Baicheng noticed some modifications. The plot itself hadn't been changed, but some simplified characters were replaced with traditional ones, and certain descriptive passages were polished for better flow.
Originally, Lin Baicheng couldn't write in traditional Chinese, but after inheriting his predecessor's memory, he could. Still, when writing, he often unconsciously used simplified characters—it was just habit.
Hu Zhiwen explained:
"Mr. Lin, I made some refinements to the manuscript over the past two days. I hope you don't mind. After all, we both want the novel to take off—it's good for both of us."
"Chief Editor Hu, you did a fine job. Why would I mind?"
Lin Baicheng smiled casually. He wasn't a professional author who insisted on every word being sacred.
Hu Zhiwen let out a breath of relief. Many writers treated their work like their own child—rarely allowing outsiders to make changes. Even if changes were required, authors would insist on revising it themselves.
"If you don't mind, then good. Tomorrow we'll publish it as is."
He nodded, both anxious and hopeful:
"Tomorrow will be the first day of serialization. Hopefully we'll see some good results."
"Let's hope so," Lin Baicheng replied. He couldn't guarantee the story's success. After all, the novel was adapted from the Wind and Cloud TV series of his previous life, with many changes.
Unlike the TV show, which started with Xiongba already establishing the World Society as the strongest sect and asking the Clay Bodhisattva for a prophecy, the novel expanded it greatly—detailing Xiongba's path from killing his master to founding the World Society over tens of thousands of words, portraying him as a fully fleshed-out warlord.
After some thought, Lin Baicheng asked:
"Chief Editor Hu, how are newspapers usually distributed? Just handed directly to newsstands?"
"More or less," Hu replied with a nod. "But not every stand takes our paper. After all, we're a small paper, our reach is limited."
"So after you hand them to the stands, whether they sell or not depends entirely on the stall owners?"
"Of course." Hu nodded again.
Lin Baicheng proposed:
"Then how about this—we negotiate with the newsstand owners. For every copy they sell, we refund them 50% of the wholesale price. In other words, they'd only pay half the cost to stock our papers."
Hu shook his head immediately.
"That won't work. We'd lose too much. We're not even sure the novel can save the paper. If it doesn't work, our paper won't be worth anything."
"Chief Editor Hu, since this is a gamble, why not bet big?"
Lin Baicheng said seriously:
"We're doing this to expand the novel's reach quickly—get more people reading it. And we don't have to do it every day—just three to five days. Even if we take a loss, it won't be too big."
"Frankly speaking, our daily circulation isn't even 2,000 copies right now. Even with stall owners promoting us, it won't rise much. We can't even lose big money if we tried—don't you agree?"
Hu fell silent, clearly wavering. What Lin Baicheng said wasn't without reason.
Seeing this, Lin didn't press further—after all, Hu was the one in charge. If he refused, persuasion would be meaningless.
Finally, Hu clapped his hands and said:
"Alright, we'll do it your way. Let's take the risk."
March 28, 1977.
That day's issue of Star Daily contained little besides a few hot news pieces, ads, and nearly 10,000 words of the first chapter of Wind and Cloud: Conquering the World.
The previous afternoon, Hu had already negotiated with the stall owners: for the next five days, they'd receive a cashback rebate on each paper sold—half the wholesale price. This meant stall owners could earn extra profit simply by recommending Star Daily to customers.
Naturally, they agreed. It didn't break any laws—just required them to promote Star Daily more actively when selling papers.
Thus, that morning, many stall owners enthusiastically pushed Star Daily, telling customers that a brand-new wuxia novel was being serialized. And indeed, quite a few were attracted to buy.
In 1970s Hong Kong, thanks to Jin Yong's influence, people were very used to following serialized martial arts novels in newspapers. So a new novel launch was bound to attract attention.
That morning, Lin Baicheng arrived at Star Daily early, eager to know how sales were going.
In Hu Zhiwen's office, the two of them sat distractedly sipping tea, both preoccupied with the same thought—today's circulation numbers.
It was the novel's first day of serialization, with rebates offered to stall owners. Sales had to be better than usual.
In fact, Star Daily had printed 3,000 copies that day—the minimum break-even circulation (not counting the rebate). If all 3,000 weren't sold out, then the results would be disappointing.