This book is finally finished~
Counting from its release on June 23 last year, and excluding the three days I took off, I spent exactly eight months writing it, for a total of 1.6 million Chinese characters. I'm personally quite satisfied with that number. Two hundred thousand characters a month is a lot for someone who types as slowly as I do.
When I first conceived this book, I only wanted to write a story about an actress. Therefore, the initial outline can be summarized as follows: Isabella would enter the industry by playing Hermione Granger, build a fanbase through the Harry Potter films, and then transition into serious acting by appearing in movies such as The Devil Wears Prada and Black Swan. After winning an Oscar, she would embrace Marvel, DC, and Star Wars. Everyone understands the last three. I already incorporated those ideas into the main story.
However, that outline did not even survive for three days in my Word document, because there were problems with the concept. I can identify at least two major ones.
The first problem was that a story focused purely on acting would lack emotional ups and downs. Anyone familiar with the entertainment industry knows that Harry Potter was an unprecedented opportunity. Had Emma Watson not fallen out with J.K. Rowling and been quietly blacklisted by the Western entertainment industry, there would have been no room for any other actress born in the 1990s. When Beauty and the Beast entered development, Emma Watson ranked far above every other young Hollywood actress! It wasn't merely that the others could not compete with her for resources, they could only film the projects she did not want! That included Star Wars!
Since the real Emma Watson stopped receiving roles because she chose the wrong side, my original actress-only concept would essentially have been Marvel's What If...?: What would have happened if Emma Watson had chosen the correct side. That kind of story creates anticipation, but not enough. Especially since following the real-world timeline would require filming all eight Harry Potter movies. If every meaningful change only occurred after Isabella turned eighteen, the setup would have been far too fucking long. Right?
The second problem was that Hitchcock once said, "All actors are cattle." Acting is not required to make a film, because actors do not need to communicate directly with the audience while performing in a movie. The actors' positions, camera placement, lighting, suspended microphones, post-production sound mixing, and editing—all of these things are determined by the director. When an actor's role in the film industry is merely that of a tool, I personally cannot write an interesting story focused solely on acting.
Especially since Hitchcock was not the only person to claim that actors did not need to act. When Steven Spielberg and George Lucas discussed filmmaking, they said that when audiences found a shot beautiful, it was often simply because the person and scenery were beautiful. It had nothing whatsoever to do with acting. Jack Nicholson also said that the reason Easy Rider earned him an Oscar nomination, and why everyone thought his portrayal of a drug user was so convincing, was simply because he was genuinely getting high while filming! Nicolas Cage has also said that when audiences believe something feels real, it is often merely the charm of filming it for real.
That's right! The extreme opinions about "acting" in this book, including the view that no performance can surpass actually becoming the character, came directly from those major industry figures! When filmmakers themselves no longer treat acting as something sacred, and it is already 2026, if I still obsessed over some breathtaking backward glance and described a character's eyes as containing thirty percent coldness, thirty percent mockery, and forty percent indifference, wouldn't that make me look hopelessly outdated?
Precisely because the acting profession has returned to the normal position it should occupy as the industry has developed, I abandoned the pure-actress story and replaced it with a more comprehensive one. That comprehensive story is the capital-building journey driven by an acting career that you have all just read: Isabella enters the industry as an actress and becomes a capitalist through all kinds of deals and alliances.
So how well did I write that story? Personally, I am both satisfied and dissatisfied.
First, what I am satisfied with: I am extremely grateful to my editor and the content reviewers for showing mercy. This story pushed the boundaries quite far, and I was already happy that so much of it was allowed to be published. When those elements successfully supported the operation of the entire story, I really had nothing to complain about.
Now for what dissatisfied me: although much of this book already pushed the limits considerably, there was still approximately ten to twenty percent of what I wanted to write that never made it into the story. That's right. The original plan was for two million Chinese characters. The finished book contains a little over eighty percent of that. Although those deletions did not significantly affect the main plot, they still influenced the story's development and characterization.
Let's go through them from the beginning.
First, the first thing I deleted was Isabella's family storyline—in other words, the storyline involving her father. I clearly remember that shortly after the book was released, someone criticized me in a review, asking why a middle-aged man working in finance, earning a high income, and supporting a family would choose to restart his life merely because he had gambled away all his available cash. It did not make logical sense.
That criticism was correct. Anyone who has visited Britain, or knows anything about Britain, should understand that the house Isabella's father left behind would have been enough to allow an ordinary financial professional to recover. Or rather, anyone capable of purchasing a house in that location in real life has already reached the threshold of the pinnacle division. Even if they cannot enter the pinnacle division themselves, they are still serving an established family. Not just anyone can purchase property beside Buckingham Palace.
Furthermore, I wrote in the very first chapter that Isabella's father came from Barclays. Everyone who has read this far should understand what that means. The Duke of Devonshire would not pay attention to an ordinary nobody without a reason.
This storyline was originally supposed to unfold when the Weinstein brothers caused trouble. When the Weinstein brothers attacked Isabella, they directly targeted her father. After that, Isabella's mother, Vivian, would reveal the full truth about her father's circumstances. But when I actually began writing, I removed that storyline.
The reason was simple. While designing it, I wanted to explain both Isabella's father's background and J.K. Rowling's circumstances. The material I wanted to write involved the organization connected to the Weinstein brothers. Because that organization could not be written about, I had no choice but to delete the storyline.
That's right. J.K. Rowling also came from that organization. She held a clearly defined position within it. She was not an ordinary person! Because the background I designed for Isabella was hidden inside her family storyline, deleting it left the overall story somewhat top-heavy. In other words, Isabella's background no longer appeared sufficiently powerful.
Second, the next thing I removed was Isabella's business storyline involving land accumulation. I wrote that after Isabella began earning money, her first investment was purchasing land—specifically, agricultural land, because doing so reduced taxes. But that was merely intended as the beginning.
In the pinnacle division, agricultural land can actually be used in two additional ways. The first is to enter finance. You package agricultural land into financial products and generate stable income by leasing it out, much like J.D. Vance did last year. When we stopped buying their soybeans, they were not anxious at all, because Trump wanted to destroy those farmers. Once the farmers could no longer repay their loans and approached bankruptcy, they could acquire the land cheaply. This is essentially killing someone with a borrowed knife. J.D. Vance may have written Hillbilly Elegy, but he has never regarded himself as a redneck.
However, acquiring land, packaging it, and leasing it out is merely the lowest-level strategy in this entire game. The truly advanced approach is to join an American agricultural association with financial licenses, operate your own insurance, accept deposits, issue loans, and divert government subsidies into your own pocket. The major players in this game include Stanford, Yale, and Harvard. Yes. American universities also engage in this kind of shady business.
The second method is to cross industries and enter the biotechnology sector. Large landowners who join agricultural associations and authorize those associations to manage their land collectively receive benefits from the associations. For example, agricultural associations impose leasing conditions on tenants. Every farmer leasing land from an association must use the seeds, fertilizers, and machinery provided by the association, and those products are supplied by companies owned by the large landowners. Why does the Bill Gates Foundation conduct seemingly inexplicable research into recycling livestock and poultry manure? Isn't it because those technologies will eventually be imposed on the tenants? That's right. "Enslavement" is the key reason capital holds land.
I deleted that storyline not because it was unrelated to the main plot, but because it would have involved religion. Those who understand will understand.
The storyline connected to the agricultural plot would also have introduced John Malone of Liberty Media. I do not know how many readers still remember the collapse of News Corporation. I wrote there that John Malone was News Corporation's second-largest shareholder. In real life, before Ted Turner left Warner and began purchasing land, John Malone was the largest individual landowner in the United States. I intended to use the agricultural-industry storyline to bring Isabella and John Malone together, laying a solid foundation for destroying News Corporation. However, religion was too sensitive, and when I began publishing this book, "Prison A" and "Prison Zhen" had not yet become popular, so I removed it.
Next, we come to the fourth deleted storyline: the Royal Island. I deliberately selected that island while designing the outline. I explained the reason in the book: because it contained Iron Age ruins, Isabella could use the protection of those ruins as justification for establishing a private armed force. Every player in the pinnacle division possessed private forces.
That storyline could have been written, and I had already begun it. But I ultimately removed it, because the moment I began writing about purchasing weapons, a serious problem would emerge. That problem concerned the war between Russia and Ukraine, specifically why Ukraine's weapons cost so much more than their market prices. That subject could not be written about. So I forcibly slammed on the brakes.
That storyline was also connected to the Duke of Devonshire. He sells those things. Had none of the previous plots been removed, Isabella would have met the Duke of Devonshire before News Corporation's destruction. But because I deleted them, the situation became what you see now.
Besides those four major plots, I also removed one other large storyline: Isabella's first year as an adult in 2008, in other words, the period after she swallowed Lehman. I wrote that Isabella destroyed both Facebook and Lehman through information warfare. Since I explicitly noted in the chapters that Americans themselves understood how powerful information warfare could be, would the other capitalists really remain silent? Right?
I also wrote that Twitter's founder had connections in Chicago. Furthermore, both its founder and former chairman publicly stated that they were expelled from the company because they refused to allow Twitter to become a weapon. Therefore, once Twitter fell into Isabella's hands, it would inevitably become a weapon. And it would inevitably become connected to Chicago.
Then, two chapters ago, I also wrote that Edgar Bronfman Jr. sabotaged Richard Fuld. That was helpful to Isabella. And Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s father was extremely close to that person associated with both Chicago and the anti-pornography campaign. Therefore, the ending I truly wanted to write involved Isabella taking control during the year she came of age.
Ahem. Of course, I knew from the beginning that the fifth storyline could never be written. So I always intended for it to remain only in the outline. I'm only mentioning it now because the book is finished and I feel like rambling.
Hehe~
All right. That concludes the retrospective on the plot. Next comes the retrospective on the romantic storylines, and regarding that: anyone who has read this far should understand that this book was supposed to contain two romantic storylines. However, my editor told me that because the characters were minors, even one romantic storyline could potentially cause trouble. So, since the book was already pushing the boundaries so far, I could not create even more trouble for my editor, right? That was my problem, and I accept responsibility for it.
Finally, I want to thank everyone for accompanying me during the past eight months. I know that I inserted many of my personal opinions into the story. The fact that everyone was willing to accept and tolerate them truly showed me tremendous respect.
I cannot guarantee that everything I wrote was correct, but I can guarantee that when I published it, the information had been reported by major media outlets themselves. Much of the information I explicitly referenced can be found immediately with a simple Google search. Furthermore, many of these incidents were not isolated cases. Didn't Isaac Perlmutter's madness reappear in America just last month? When the former owner of Victoria's Secret was questioned over the Epstein case, his lawyer threatened him in front of the media, saying that if he dared say the wrong thing, he would be killed. The video can even be found on the simplified-Chinese internet.
That is the true face of capital. When writing a Western story where the protagonist is a capitalist, if your protagonist cannot stand above the law, or does not even possess the desire to do so, then I think that means you are not even brave enough to dream.
Of course, I am not claiming that my writing is particularly good. I admit that what I wrote was fairly ordinary. But I believe I wrote it sincerely. I never intended to deceive readers into purchasing chapters.
And now, let's discuss the next book. I currently have three ideas.
The first occurred to me after seeing so many people go all-in on silver in January. When silver's coefficient is rapidly approaching gold's, going all-in on silver is genuinely inferior to purchasing Brent crude. I briefly mentioned crude oil in the update on February 14. Even buying Brent at that time would not have been too late.
Therefore, perhaps I could write a story about someone being reborn ten years in the past? For example, the protagonist could be a Wall Street investor who is driven into bankruptcy by Old Trump drawing his own candlestick charts. After being reborn, the protagonist would aim to earn one billion in the first year, accumulate ten billion in the second, and tell the Great Golden-Haired One in the third year, "Nobody understands candlestick charts better than I do!" And to avoid crossing any lines, I would write less financial analysis and more insider trading.
The second idea is one I had previously: Hermione Granger travels back one hundred years. She studies ancient magic! And romances the younger sister of the Malfoy family! Ahem, ahem.
The third idea is a super-rich system story, with a super-rich female protagonist. Do not ask why I have such strange ideas. The answer is that this book contained no romantic storyline whatsoever, and I feel somewhat frustrated.
Okay. Every banquet must eventually end. My rambling officially concludes here.
The new book probably will not be released within the next month. I still have not played Resident Evil 9, so I'm starting it tonight. I also consumed some expired Jay Chou and Hebe Tien shipping material at the beginning of the year, which caused me to purchase tickets, so—until we meet again.