Chapter 183: How Did This Number Get So Messed Up?
In front of him was a pitch-black giant screen.
In the distance was Li Shi, who had already left.
Pei Qian had a strange feeling—like he had just been abandoned by the world...
The next part of the story was already painfully obvious.
The flagship store of Moyu Internet Café was definitely going to explode in popularity!
The influence of a hit TV show like this was just too massive—just like how some food shows could make a certain dish go viral, and in no time, restaurants offering it would pop up all over the country.
Of course, things weren't that bad—yet. After all, the business model of an internet café wasn't the same as a restaurant.
A restaurant serves the same food no matter where you go; the experience is largely the same. But Chen Lei's Moyu Internet Café? There was only one of those.
A ton of Chen Lei's fans would definitely flock there, trying to visit the little internet café he used to work at. But as for the other Moyu Internet Café locations—they wouldn't be nearly as appealing.
It's like how The Beatles once performed at a small underground bar, which has now become a tourist hotspot. The other bars on that street? No one cares.
For fans, only the flagship store—where Chen Lei used to be—is worth a "pilgrimage." The other Moyu cafés? No point going there.
So now, Pei Qian was facing a grim reality: the flagship store's revenue was about to skyrocket.
The other branches of Moyu Internet Café weren't in immediate danger—at least not yet.
But even just the flagship store booming was already a disaster for him!
Because this financial cycle wasn't over yet, and Chen Lei was scheduled to return to the flagship store to perform again. Who knew how much money he might rake in from drink tips alone in these remaining three days?
Pei Qian wanted to say no—but he had no legitimate reason to stop it.
Thinking about it made his hands and feet go cold—he felt absolutely awful.
Pei Qian sat there for a long time before finally dragging himself up from the chair.
Li Shi was gone. The surrounding shops wouldn't be doing promotional campaigns to steal Moyu's customers anymore. Not that they even could now.
All the buzz those nearby stores had tried so hard to build with their promotions? Thanks to Chen Lei's sudden popularity, it all got funneled directly to the flagship Moyu store.
All the profit points he had worked so hard to get rid of? They were now back—and stronger than ever!
He was exhausted, miserable, and just wanted to crawl into his warm bed and wrap himself tightly in his blanket to sleep it all away.
As he walked toward the stairwell, he suddenly heard a commotion downstairs.
Ma Yang came bounding up the stairs, visibly excited. "Brother Qian! Brother Qian, you upstairs?"
Pei Qian responded weakly, "What is it?"
"Customers! Tons and tons of customers!" Ma Yang's long face was lit up with joy.
Pei Qian glanced downstairs—and saw a large crowd already gathered outside the internet café. Many people had already flooded into the first-floor lobby, all pulling out their phones and snapping photos like crazy.
Some people couldn't wait and quickly found a seat to claim their spot. Others, finding no available seats, stood on tiptoe trying to snap photos of the singer on stage. And even more, seeing the first floor fill up so quickly, had already started heading upstairs!
Pei Qian and Ma Yang were nearly pushed back by the surging crowd. It took considerable effort for them to squeeze downstairs and slip out the back door of the internet café through the staff exit.
As soon as they stepped outside, they saw even more people heading their way.
A closer look, and it all made sense.
People from nearby bars and quite a few local residents had all come flooding in!
The bars in the area had been running discounted drink promotions, and with the evening crowd peaking, news of Chen Lei and the Moyu Internet Café had spread like wildfire.
With only a street separating them, of course people would come check it out.
As for Moyu's pricey menu...
No one cared anymore. Snapping a picture inside and sending it to their friends was worth far more in clout. Who cares about spending a few dozen yuan on a drink?
From afar, watching the flagship store of Moyu Internet Café boiling over with people, Pei Qian's eyes started to water.
'My beautiful little internet café... it's gone.'
It hurt. It really did.
"Wuwuwu…"
Pei Qian was momentarily confused. Wait, what's going on? I'm not even crying yet.
Turning his head, he saw it was Ma Yang who was crying.
"Brother Qian, I finally understand your true intentions in sending Chen Lei to Shanghai..."
"You always believed he would become a star, didn't you?"
"Brother Qian, I was wrong about you before... wuwuwu…"
Pei Qian had genuinely felt like crying, but seeing Ma Yang's hippo-like sobbing face completely killed the mood.
He just couldn't bring himself to do it anymore.
With a gloomy expression, Pei Qian glanced back toward the café. "Where's Zhang Yuan?"
Ma Yang wiped his tears and replied, "He and the store manager are inside helping greet customers. It's packed. We talked it over just now—we've decided to stay open all night!"
Pei Qian: "...Is that necessary? Your health should come first."
Ma Yang slapped his chest confidently. "Don't worry, Brother Qian! The three of us will take turns resting. Plus, we've already called over a few extra servers from other branches. We're paying them triple overtime—no problem at all!"
"You poured your heart into making this café a success. There's no way we're going to let that go to waste!"
"To be honest, Zhang Yuan and I, as managers, always felt like we weren't doing enough to lighten your burden. We've felt guilty about that for a long time."
"But now, you can relax. Just leave everything to us!!"
Pei Qian's mouth twitched slightly. "...Well, thank you for that."
Ma Yang, still wiping his tears, broke into a wide grin. "No need for thanks, Brother Qian! There's no need for words between us—we both understand."
Pei Qian: "..."
There was really nothing he could do now.
With only three days left in the cycle, whether they ran all night or not didn't make much of a difference anymore.
"All right, then. I'll leave you to it, Brother Qian. You've worked hard enough. Go get some rest!"
Ma Yang returned to the internet café through the staff entrance. As Pei Qian watched his figure disappear, he felt a deep, indescribable loneliness.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The next day.
Monday.
When Pei Qian opened his eyes, it was already noon.
He had wrestled with his thoughts for quite a while, but finally summoned the courage to call up the system panel.
Last night, Moyu Internet Café had likely stayed open all night. Who knew how much alcohol they'd sold? The money earned would all be reflected in the system funds.
And at midnight, the previous week's game revenue should also have been deposited.
Before going to sleep, the system funds were still in the negative—down by over 2.1 million.
Pei Qian had practically used every ounce of strength he had to spend that money.
According to his original plan, Moyu Internet Café wasn't supposed to make money, and the projected game revenue for the week should have been around 1.6 million yuan—at most, absolutely no more than 1.8 million.
Ghost General and Game Producer typically brought in 600–700k per month in net profit. Ocean Fortress was around 3.5 million monthly. Breaking it down weekly, that came to just over 1.2 million.
After the platform adjusted its revenue split and factoring in DLC income, Pei Qian had mentally set the upper limit at 1.8 million.
As for Moyu's revenue last night? At best, maybe a little over 100k. Definitely no more than that.
Sure, some bars can charge tens of thousands for VIP booths, but Moyu didn't have that. At most, people just bought a few drinks and surfed the web.
The real danger lay in the next two days—once Chen Lei showed up, the drink tips would surely skyrocket.
Still, Pei Qian had more employees now, and in an emergency spending spree, burning through a few hundred thousand to generate a loss shouldn't be too hard.
So he figured, if he was lucky, he might still scrape by with a small loss of 300–400k.
That wouldn't be too bad—still within acceptable range.
A light screen appeared before Pei Qian's eyes.
[Wealth Conversion System]
[Host: Pei Qian]
[Profit Conversion Ratio: 100:1 | Loss Conversion Ratio: 1:1]
[Next Settlement Date: 2 days]
[System Funds: 6.27 million yuan (↑1.27 million)]
[Personal Funds: 45,691.4 yuan]
'WHAT THE—!!!'
Pei Qian nearly coughed up blood.
"How the hell is this 1.5 million MORE than my worst-case scenario?!"
"Something's seriously wrong!!"
He felt like he was about to implode. He shot upright from bed like a salted fish on a hot pan and rushed to his computer, pulling up the backend data to check revenue from the various games.
Ghost General and Game Producer had earned slightly more than expected, but still within reason.
But Ocean Fortress? It had earned over a million more than his worst projections!
Based on the data, the game's monthly gross revenue had already surpassed 10 million. Even after applying the 30-70 revenue split and taxes, its weekly earnings alone were over 2 million.
This was where all his estimates went completely off!
Pei Qian's hands and feet went ice-cold.
What the hell was going on?
Hadn't he already confirmed that Ocean Fortress wasn't showing any major spikes?
He had been so focused on the Moyu Internet Café these past few days that he completely overlooked the real killer—Ocean Fortress!
"What the hell happened with Ocean Fortress last week?!"
"Sure, Li Zhengwei did promote it a bit, but there's no way the results could be this insane!"
"Besides, my 500 'Barrett · Destruction' rifles haven't even launched yet! Just from the Fire Qilin skin alone, I sold over 10,000 in one week???"
"How is this possible?! It doesn't make any sense!!"
"What critical information did I miss??"
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