Building a House

Su Yan's excitement only lasted for a few moments. There was one big question he still needed to find the answer for: How many tasks did he still need to accomplish to fill that last bit of the graph?

He tried clicking the thing but there was no further information to be found. In the end, Su Yan could only purse his lips and return to the front page. For the passive tasks, he could only wait until another one was accomplished but he still had his main task. The main task was much more important than the passive tasks so normally he should also get closer to the next level faster if he did those, right?

Su Yan wasn't sure but it sounded quite logical to him. He had managed to accomplish one before anyway so it was time to have a look at the follow-up. He clicked on the title in the list.

[You've successfully published the first part of your very first story. The first step on your path to becoming a successful author has been taken. Now, it is important to keep going.

As an author, writing a good story is the base but that base is nothing if no house is built on top. This will rely on your skill and is something that can only be done slowly through gaining experience.

However high you want to build your house, it is important to always keep those living in the house in your mind regardless of whether they live in the basement or in the floor you just finished building.]

Su Yan blinked and read again. He had the strange feeling that … this Lovely Writing System liked to use metaphors. And even such weird ones! First, it likened writing to building a relationship, now it switched to building houses. What was this supposed to mean? Had the system missed its calling as a construction engineer?

He shook his head and clicked for the next part. There still hadn't been anything that resembled a task after all.

[As the residents of the author's house, the readers want to be engaged. Exploring the floors already build and watching how new floors are constructed afterward is certainly the most fun thing to do!

With your base established, it's now time for you to build your first floor. Set a schedule and start releasing the remaining chapters of your short story to give your new-found readers an opportunity to explore at least one floor!

Hint: Take some time to plan your release schedule. You shouldn't publish everything at once but since this is a short story and your first project to boot you shouldn't let your readers wait too long for the next part.]

Su Yan didn't think any further. He went to grab his notebook and sat down next to Nie Chang again. He had felt nervous before because this story was his first time writing in another genre but it seemed like the readers like it so he had nothing to fear. Instead, he had gotten back to that happy feeling he had had before whenever he published a new chapter for his readers.

Thanks to that experience it wasn't hard for him to think about a suitable release schedule either. The story only had five scenes. How long could he stretch publishing such a pitiful amount? Especially since they weren't even long.

Well, he could stretch for nearly a week if he only published one scene per day but that would somehow feel shameless. After all, the whole story was already written and the first scene had had only about five hundred words.

No, the best thing to do was probably publishing everything in one day. Looking at how he'd have to get up tomorrow morning and then go to work with Nie Chang where he might not be able to check on the progress depending on how many customers there would be he even felt that publishing everything tonight would be for the best. Thankfully, there was a timer on the website so he could just save them and then have them automatically posted.

The best thing was that when he got up tomorrow morning he could go through all the comments and reviews he had gotten! Ah, just imagining it made him giddy with excitement!

He didn't wait any longer and started pasting the scenes into the website's template. Considering that there were four scenes and that he wanted to read the readers' thoughts to all of them if possible he set the timers to a time with a two-hour difference between them. Like that, in eight hours everything would be posted. Then the readers would still have the opportunity to comment on the last one before he woke up.

Mn, he was such a genius!

Feeling a bit complacent Su Yan wanted to turn to Nie Chang to brag but he stopped at the last moment. Wait! Posting was alright but he still needed to attach some messages! After all, he hadn't announced when the other scenes would be posted.

He opened the second scene again and wrote a short message for the readers:

[Here's the second part of the story already. Since it's a short story I'll be posting the other parts tonight, too! o(*^▽^*)o The next one will be up in two hours!]

He saved the edited version and opened the last scene. With such a short story where not that much happened overall, he didn't need to write something for every part but the last one was definitely something that should get a note from the author. The question was what he should write though.

Su Yan stared at the small space provided by the website. He really would have liked to say he'd be back with another story soon but he had no idea what the system had planned for him next. Maybe it would be something weird? Then again with all the talk about building houses and constructing floors, it should want him to continue writing.

Su Yan furrowed his brows. Wait! Who said that he could only write a story if the system told him so anyway? He'd just write one by himself if the system didn't ask him to! Thus Su Yan just wrote what he thought to be right.

[Thanks for reading everyone! (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ I'll hopefully start to write another story soon. If you don't want to miss out on it, just follow my profile. I'll also send out some information beforehand!]

His hands paused after he had said everything he wanted to. Back when he still wrote xianxia he had always included his username as something like a signature below the post. But he really couldn't bring himself to write 'Lao Gong Says I'm the Best' below this message to his readers! Ah, what had Nie Chang done?!

As if he had heard his boyfriend cursing him inwardly, Nie Chang looked over with a smile. "Finished?"

"Ah?"

"You stopped typing."

Su Yan tried to glare at him which only made it hard for Nie Chang to hold back his smile. Mn, who could fault him? Su Yan was really too cute! He had no idea though how he had managed to ruffle his feathers this time.

Su Yan turned back to the notebook and put his username under the message with slight resentment. Then, he closed everything and latched onto Nie Chang. He deeply felt … that another bout of nervousness was lying ahead of him.