OFR – Chapter 257 This is a person you can never catch up with in your entire life.

At this moment, Mu Bai was naturally unaware of what Li Xiaoqing was thinking.

After the two returned to Xuanwu Zhongshan, he first let Li Xiaoqing familiarize herself with the villa’s environment, and then told her to pick any vacant room on the second floor to stay in.

As for himself, he did what he usually did — sat on the soft sofa in the living room and logged into QQ to check his messages.

Upon logging in, Mu Bai saw that the messages were from the usual people he often chatted with.

He first replied to the casual greetings from Mi Xuan, Xu Jinhuan, and a few others, and then noticed a message from Qian Yiwen.

Message at 07:15:
Qian Yiwen: “!!!”

Message at 07:25:
Qian Yiwen: “Oh my god! Cold Mu, you… tipped me three million??? Three million! I was totally shocked. I sat frozen in front of my computer for a full ten minutes before I could react! Ah! I feel like crying, I’m so emotionally drained. Three million! People like you, a god-tier tycoon, probably have no idea how long I have to work as a coder to earn that much! And half of it gets taken by the platform, plus tons of taxes — it’s heartbreaking. Even though it’s not my money, my heart still aches. You spent so much on me, I really feel uneasy about it.”

Mu Bai looked at her message and couldn’t help but smile a little. He typed back:

“It’s nothing. I told you I’d support your new book — don’t overthink it. Keep going.”

After sending this comforting message, he opened the chat with Mi Xuan, preparing to discuss the future direction of their premium Tianwang store once it goes international.

As they chatted quietly, time passed by slowly.

During this time, after getting familiar with the environment, Li Xiaoqing thoughtfully brewed a cup of hot tea for Mu Bai.

Before they knew it, it was already past 5 p.m.

Around the same time, at Nanjing University, the final professional class of the year had just ended amidst the students’ cheerful laughter.

After the school leaders announced the beginning of winter break, students were all beaming with joy, many planning to go out in groups to celebrate before heading home.

But Qian Yiwen, who walked out from the literature department classroom, politely declined the enthusiastic invitations from her roommates and ran back to her upscale rental apartment with her laptop in her arms.

Indeed, for a web novelist — especially one who does it part-time — there’s no such thing as “personal time.”

Some time is given to school or work, and whatever free time that could have been spent hanging out with friends is instead used for writing novels.

Qian Yiwen was no exception.

Writing had long since made her a full-blown homebody.

But knowing so many people loved her books still made her heart feel warm.

Now back in her room, she placed her laptop on the desk and opened it, intending to check her performance stats before getting back to writing.

However, as soon as she opened the laptop, a QQ notification popped up from the bottom right corner.

Qian Yiwen didn’t have many friends, and she often spent her time cooped up in her apartment writing. She wasn’t in contact with many friends or classmates in real life.

Normally, her QQ could stay logged in for one or two weeks without a single message, so she was quite curious now to see who messaged her.

When she opened it, she saw that it was Cold Mu.

A happy smile immediately lit up her pretty face.

She recalled the scene from that morning, when the comments section of her new book was flooded with striking red messages of support.

Thirty million-tier “floating red” donations — even though nearly a full day and night had passed since then, the heat hadn’t faded at all. In fact, it was still spreading like wildfire in the female web fiction community.

Yes, Yunqi’s female-oriented section on QQ Reading was known for high traffic, but wealthy readers like this were extremely rare.

In the past, a single golden-level alliance donor would be the topic of discussion in countless author chat groups for a long time.

But this time, it wasn’t just a simple golden alliance. It was thirty million-level red banners in a row. This made her new book “Childhood Sweethearts: A Love That Never Sets” skyrocket to the top of the monthly vote chart with over 30,000 votes.

In less than a day — over 30,000 votes.

That might be possible in the male-oriented Qidian section, but in Yunqi’s female section, it was practically legendary!

What’s more, with over 3 million in daily sales — crushing the previous #1 bestseller by more than 150 times — it directly set a new record for the highest single-day sales in the entire web fiction industry!

Such dazzling and impossible-to-downplay results were like a bomb dropped in the entire female-oriented web fiction scene, even reverberating through the entire Yuewen Group and broader web novel world.

At this point, Qian Yiwen didn’t even need to guess — she was sure all the QQ author groups, WeChat groups, forums, Baidu Tieba, even Longkong — were on fire discussing this three-million tip!

Three million?

Yes, that’s an amount even Yuewen’s platinum-tier authors would have to take seriously.

Sure, most platinum authors made the bulk of their money from movie or game rights, but even so — in terms of raw royalties, three million was about half a year’s income for many of them!

So in the web fiction world, this donation deserved the phrase: “terrifyingly powerful.”

But right now, looking at Mu Bai’s message on QQ, Qian Yiwen’s happy expression faltered slightly.

Cold Mu: “It’s nothing. I told you I’d support your new book — don’t overthink it. Keep going.”

She had originally thought that Cold Mu, seeing his online girlfriend being attacked by trolls in the comments section, had gotten angry and impulsively dropped that 3 million.

But now, looking at that calm and casual message, she suddenly felt… maybe she had overthought it.

At the same time, she also clearly sensed that even though it had only been a month since she last saw Cold Mu, he had changed drastically.

A month ago, his online spending maxed out around a few hundred thousand. In real life, he might casually buy a luxury car worth a couple million — that was already impressive.

To be honest, back then…

Qian Yiwen could still see his shadow ahead of her, and she could think of him as a goal worth chasing.

But now, she felt that the harder she chased, the further away he seemed — so far that even the idea of catching up felt laughable.

This thought made her pause for a few seconds before letting out a powerless sigh.

“Sigh… Just what kind of person is he, really?”