Urban Sims

In the twenty-first year of Tiansheng, it is December.

As the Chinese New Year approached, most of the 30 or so students living in Bastion, except for a few who were too far away from home, had to go home for the Chinese New Year.

Before these students went home, Zhou Ming gathered them together and held a seminar.

Seminar on the "Zihua Bookstore" project.

Participants in the seminar were the four dormitory brothers (Lu Wencai, Tang Junming, Sima Zhi, and Yao Qingxiao), as well as the "cartoon master" Lu Zhao, "guitar master" Yang Lin, and "novelist" Luo Qianqiu whom he cultivated. "Pop singer" Zhang Lu and others... young talents gathered together.

In fact, these classmates of Zhou Ming are all in their 20s, very young, and all of them have a good background. In other words, most of them are from aristocratic families and have a distinguished status.

For example, my roommate Lu Wencai, although he looks unpleasant, with a pointed mouth and monkey cheeks, and a wretched face, he is actually a direct descendant of the Lu family in Beihai (county). Among the descendants of the Lu family, he ranks among the top five most important, and the Lu family of Beihai, It is one of the eight great families in Qingzhou. It is a giant family with a thousand years of history, millions of acres of fertile land and tens of thousands of clan members. It is ten times more prosperous than Zhou Ming's Haipingtian family.

Tang Junming was from the "Donglai Tang Family", one of the eight great families. However, he was not a direct descendant of the Tang family. He belonged to a nearby branch. The importance of the family ranked in the top thirty or so.

Sima Zhi is indeed the one with the lowest background among all his roommates. Although his father Sima Yuan is now the governor of a county, this Sima family is just a small landowner family with only a few hundred acres of fertile land. Once his father retires and becomes an official , even a small county magistrate's son can overwhelm him.

The young talent Yao Qingxiao came from a business family. Logically speaking, in this era of devaluing businessmen, his status should be relatively low, even lower than Sima Zhi. However, the "Scholarly Yao Family" known as the "Scholarly Scholar for Thousand Years" has controlled Qingzhou's recent history. Fifty percent of the printing bookstores and a large number of bookstores, although they are businessmen, are from a family of scholars and culture! Far from being comparable to an ordinary wealthy businessman.

In addition to these four roommates, all of whom were not from humble backgrounds, and some distinguished classmates who also came from wealthy families, landlords, and officials, there were also several children from poor families. Zhou Ming was quite moved. There is a saying that goes well: fierce generals It must be issued in the army, the prime minister must be taken from the state and county, and most of the outstanding people come from poor families!

Those who are truly capable, talented, and hard-working are mostly those from poor families.

For example, the "cartoon master" Lu Zhao's family is not well-off. His family only has a hundred acres of fertile land. The tuition fees of Wenyuan Academy, which is thousands of dollars a year, have overwhelmed this rich peasant family. After three years of schooling, his family He sold all the fertile land, and in the fourth year, if he hadn't received Zhou Ming's generous support, he might have dropped out of school.

Moreover, this dear friend has no extraordinary talent in the imperial examination, but his painting skills are indeed superb, and his level of landscape painting has reached the state of great success... But no matter how high the painting skills are, there is no money, such as famous paintings by famous teachers Things are about qualifications. Your paintings may be sold for hundreds of millions in a thousand years. But when this painter is only a young man in his twenties, how many people will appreciate it and who will? Pay a high price for his paintings?

So this brother Lu, after getting funding from Zhou Ming, found that he was weak in imperial examinations and not well-known in Danqing landscape, and after seeing that drawing comics was profitable, Lu Zhao decisively chose to transform. With his outstanding talent, he has now become The main artist of "108 Legends of Heroes", with a monthly income of more than 100 yuan, he was named "Cartoon Master" by Zhou Ming.

"Guitar master" Yang Lin, and "novelist" Luo Qianqiu are both in a similar situation. They are both poor talents discovered by Zhou Ming in Wenyuan Academy. As long as they are cultivated a little bit, they will definitely become masters in their respective fields in the future. Emperor Superstar.

It should be mentioned here that the "pop singer" and "little fresh meat" Zhang Lu was not from a poor family, but the son of a servant girl of a big family. Destiny, but through several concerts, he was recognized by countless people, and after finding the confidence he had never experienced before, he decided to give up the imperial examination (examination) and become a singer (singer), intending to become a "superstar" admired by everyone. Becoming someone like "Michael Jackson" (this is naturally the result of Zhou Ming's deception).

Seeing that under his banner, there are so many rich and powerful children with profound backgrounds, as well as talents from humble backgrounds. As for the "Zihua Bookstore Project", Zhou Ming will naturally use these advantages to vigorously promote this plan.

He said to Lu Wencai and the others: "Brother Wencai, brother Junming (calling more than a dozen names)... After you go back, I hope that you can use your respective abilities and channels to strive for 150 people in Qingzhou within two or three months. More than one counties and counties, in every city, opened a Zihua bookstore, and decorated it according to the design drawing I gave, the sooner it is completed, the better! As for the various expenses, I have prepared a thousand coins for each of you to start. If the funds are not enough, you can write to me.”

In this world, the purchasing power of a copper coin is roughly equivalent to 800-1,000 yuan, and a thousand coins is equivalent to 1 million.

With so much money, Zhou Ming asked these dozen students to each be responsible for opening ten "Zihua Bookstores", with an average cost of 100,000 per family, so there must be no big problem.

"Boss, I don't need the money. I'm still short of this little money? Besides, I have shares in Zihua Bookstore, so how can I accept your money? Just give me the decoration design drawings, and nothing else is needed." Lu Wencai road.

"Yes, Boss, in our place, on the busiest street next to the county government, the rent for a shop is only ten guan a year. One thousand guan is too much."

"No need, Brother Zihua, it's just a few hundred dollars, I think I can still afford it."

Everyone refused.

Zhou Ming coughed twice, and said in a tone that could not be refused: "Take it all, you follow me to do some business, naturally it is not easy to ask your parents and elders to take money, spend their money, it will be profitable at that time, equity It will also be entangled...Zihua Bookstore must be completely complete and belong to our property! Therefore, you should spend the thousand start-up funds carefully and try to get things done well. If you don't have enough money, come to me again want."

"All right……"

Everyone nodded and nodded, feeling quite touched. At the same time, their hearts aroused a sense of pride and ambition to do something big.

"Brother Qingxiao——"

Zhou Ming looked at the second person on the right and said: "Your task is the most arduous. Except for Zihua Bookstore, the construction and recruitment of the largest engraving and printing factory in Qingzhou will bother you. I don't know if this task will be completed within three months. Can you finish it?"

The printing factory supporting the Zihua Bookstore plan is an important part of determining the success or failure of this plan. If Zhou Ming is asked to complete this plan by himself, only those skilled engraving craftsmen (this kind of craftsmen have more than ten years of experience) work experience cannot be cultivated in a short period of time), he does not know that it will take several years, and, for books like comics with rich pictures and texts, engraving one page requires more than ten times the energy of the craftsman than pure text engraving. And I don’t know if we can find 100 such craftsmen in Qingzhou.

Therefore, the "Scholarly Yao Family", which owns half of the bookstores in Qingzhou, has become Zhou Ming's most important support.

Therefore, he gave Yao Qingxiao a huge sum of 500,000 guan, signed an agreement with 50% of the shares, and planned to build a large printing factory covering an area of ​​tens of acres, equipped with the most advanced engraving technology, and thousands of engraving craftsmen. .

The name is: Zihua Printing Factory.

In fact, Zhou Ming is not completely ignorant of woodblock printing technology. In the previous copy of "Lords' Clash", among the countless workshops he founded, there was a printing workshop. The technology used was extremely advanced and a large number of [ Industrial machine tools] and hydraulic drive devices, and later [steam engines] were used. With some unique technologies, the printing efficiency was many times ahead of the world.

Zhou Ming discussed these technologies in private with Yao Qingxiao while he was studying at Wenyuan Academy. After Yao Qingxiao got the design drawings and improvement suggestions from him, he asked his family to try them out based on these drawings and suggestions. For two years, Less than a year later, the printing efficiency of Yaojia Bookstore has increased three times, and the unit printing cost has been reduced by 50%! And the printing quality is excellent, which greatly increases the market share.

So... all of these are interlocking and complementary to each other, and the cooperation between Zhou Ming and Yao Family Bookstore is also inevitable.

Yao Qing smiled and nodded and said: "Brother Zihua, don't worry. I have sent the letter home a long time ago. The new factory has already started construction. The equipment and craftsmen are all ready. Within three months, Zihua Printing Factory will be ready." , will definitely be put into use! Opening dozens of Zihua Bookstores is just a matter of words, and I will wait for you to create more wonderful works in these three months."

"good."

Zhou Ming nodded. Yao Qingxiao was worthy of his reputation as a talented man. He knew people well and was always one step ahead in doing things. He never procrastinated. Zhou Ming had a hunch that this roommate would definitely be the one who built his own entertainment empire. , become your most effective assistant.

Don’t worry too much about hardware issues. Then, the core software issue—how many of Zihua Bookstore’s content products can be produced in a short period of time?

This problem, under Zhou Ming's personal control, is naturally not a big problem.

For example, "Story Club", Zhou Ming now has more than 300 novels of various kinds, and hundreds of jokes, jokes, etc. (all of which he came up with after searching for time). If published in a semi-monthly format, it can be published continuously. half a year.

There are thousands of poems, songs, and excellent articles that have been selected into the "Collected Works of Zihua". Most of them were written by Zhou Ming and his classmates while they were studying at Wenyuan Academy. There are dross and essence. In addition, Zhou Ming With the "Complete Collection of Tang Poems and Song Ci" and "Complete Classical Classical Prose" in my mind, I randomly plagiarized some works and published the "Collected Works of Zihua" in a semi-monthly format. I could publish a hundred issues in a row.

The most important thing about "Comics" is that Zhou Ming, who has no works to plagiarize, can only create his own while cultivating apprentices and assistants. As long as he brings these apprentices and assistants up, his task will be much easier in the future. As long as he puts forward With an outline and settings, someone will create the comics he wants to read based on these outlines.

As for the comic works he has completed, such as "The Legend of the 108 Stars and Heroes of the Three Kingdoms", which has been drawn to the fifteenth volume with the help of "manga master" Lu Zhao; "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" written by Zhou Ming himself ", has drawn the forty-fifth chapter... The two comic works have a combined content of thousands of pages. If published in a semi-monthly format, the "Comics" magazine can be published for twelve consecutive issues.

However, there are still too few comic works, and the length of "The Legend of 108 Stars and Heroes of the Three Kingdoms" is also too short, which is not enough to sustain the publication of six issues (the content and "Journey to the West: Conquering Demons" are each half). In other words, the existing The comic can be published for up to three months if the manuscript is submitted.

After thinking about it, Zhou Ming said to Lu Zhao and the other two comic apprentices: "Brother Lu, Brother Wan, and Brother Jin, please work a little harder during this period and try to draw 30 volumes of "Three Kingdoms 108" within three months. "The Legend of Stars and Heroes" comes out, the task is quite heavy, but don't worry, I will help you complete part of the work... Believe in yourself, when this comic is finished, I will have more good stories for you, these stories, you You will definitely like it very much..."

Such as "Tian Shu Qi Tan", "Lotus Lantern", "Legend of Nezha", "Gourd Baby"...they can't finish painting in their lifetime.

Lu Zhao and others nodded. The speed at which they draw comics is indeed relatively slow now. They are not yet proficient in many techniques and techniques, and it is very difficult to draw. But if Brother Zihua is there to guide them, their speed in getting started will be greatly improved. Speed ​​up. If they can be like Brother Zihua, who can draw up to a hundred pages of comics in a day, and draw quickly and well, then they will all become masters of comics and draw countless stories in their hearts... Thinking about it, it’s a very exciting thing.

I feel like I am about to cry. I am very grateful to the alliance leader "Miracle Xiaojian" for the reward. I am the first alliance leader since I wrote the book. I never imagined that there would be such a moment. Thank you, thank you very much!