On Friday, after realizing that the Big Boss really wasn’t going to personally step in for a slice of the allocation, Han Lie simply handed out the last 100 million of backup quota.

He asked Pan Dajun first. Pan actually had money on hand, but he needed to go to the provincial capital to grab land and move the company, so in the end he squeezed out 30 million to put into Supernova One.

Endless thanks go without saying—by now the quota of Supernova One in Dream City was no longer just about how much you could make, it was a symbol of status.

By the way, Pan Dajun also asked Han Lie to look after Pan Shaohang for him—this guy didn’t go back to Dream City and somehow fell in with Liu Yingjun and that bunch, currently playing so hard he’d forgotten his own surname.

Like I have time to mind some cheap nephew—if nothing blows up, don’t come to me.

The remaining 70 million, Chu Liang + Guan Tao + Chen Lin scraped together 20 million.

The bulk was obviously Chu Liang’s. Chen Lin emptied out his family down to the last cent and still couldn’t scrape together 1 million; what can you say, today’s Byte and the future mega-conglomerate are just not on the same level.

Guan Tao was in slightly better shape—his wife’s a local in the Shenzhen market, the couple coughing up 2 million wasn’t that painful.

Then Chu Liang dipped into his own pocket to help Chen Lin and Guan Tao top up to a neat 3 million each, counted as a loan, so the final picture became: Chu Liang alone holding 14 million, while Chen and Guan each had 3 million.

This whole thing perfectly illustrates the fact that some people’s starting line is other people’s lifetime finish line.

It also very clearly shows how important it is to study hard.

If he hadn’t gotten into Peking University, with Chen Lin’s small-town single-income family background, even coming up with 200,000 would’ve been a struggle—pawn off every piece of himself and he still couldn’t borrow that much, let alone get a chance like this.

Now he’ll have to grit his teeth for a while, but in a year and a half he’ll be able to buy a brand-new apartment on the Fourth Ring in the Imperial Capital—that’s the upside of the platform.

The last 50 million all went to Little Fatty.

She dared to bet, and she only asked for a standard profit-sharing contract, so it was meant to be hers.

She turned up late to the party and ended up eating the most.

A person’s fate really is tightly tied to their personality. People who dare to gamble always win more, but people who keep gambling forever will someday lose the whole pot.

Oh, and Little Fatty isn’t fat. Once she’s off camera, she’s actually one of those real-world top-tier curvy physiques; a solid 95 points, easy.

They played another "friendly match" on Friday night, and the next day she ran off clutching her butt.

Beast!

—Farewell, via WeChat.

...

Supernova One hit the 2.5 billion mark, books closed, filing submitted.

On February 27, both of Zhongmei’s funds finished fundraising and started running the approval process.

A certain committee member from the Fund Industry Association specially called Han Lie: "Seven working days at most, President Han, rest easy."

When Han Lie got the news, he didn’t even know whose connection that guy was, or whose favor he ought to be remembering.

Seriously, in this day and age, there are just too many nice people...

By the time the company’s various affairs had mostly settled down, winter break finally ended. With the new term starting, the School of Humanities got lively again.

But Han Lie didn’t even bother to apply for leave; he just straight-up "ditched class by imperial decree."

Old Zhang’s stance was: you do your thing—come if you feel like it, if you don’t, just show up for the finals, stick around another year and we’ll issue your diploma early and guarantee you a spot in our own grad program.

"Our own campus" of course meant Shanghai International Studies University, but SISU’s competitiveness was so-so, because Fudan was also actively trying to recruit Han Lie.

Old Jin himself was a school-tyrant-level big shot from Fudan. It’s rare to run into such a good seedling, so he naturally wanted to make arrangements early for his own academic faction.

That said, the waves Han Lie had stirred up so far weren’t all that huge yet, the range of people alarmed wasn’t very wide, so Fudan, Jiaotong, and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics weren’t in a rush.

Give it another year or so, and it definitely won’t be the same picture.

However, none of them should even dream about coaxing Han Lie back to campus...

As for campus life, this old hand had nothing much to be sentimental about; aside from the Harem Department being worth a bit of lingering thought, everything else was mind-numbingly boring.

Flexing in front of students no longer brought any joy; Brother Lie needed a bigger stage.

The only thing he sort of missed was Xi Luting.

After a whole break, how was her outline coming along?

More importantly, now that the chicken-blood hype had worn off a bit, how would she look at her engagement to Pan Ge?

Han Lie quietly logged into his QQ alt, turning once more into Teacher Ham.

There were a few messages in QQ.

They were basically all about asking plot questions and character setting; the last one was from three days ago—"I’ve finished my outline, Master. Do you have time to help me correct it?"

Han Lie received the offline document, opened it, and... good grief! You aiming for the heavens?

At its core the new novel was still a romance draped in an immortal-cultivation skin, still going down the sweet-then-angsty route.

But the impressive part was that she’d added a clear leveling system and leveling motivation to the main plot; the core narrative was no longer entirely centered on the intimate relationship.

The outline could be simply summed up as—male lead betrays his childhood sweetheart female lead and clings to the Immortal Realm princess Pan Ge, builds his foundation in ten days, rises to fame across the land, blah blah blah.

Then the female lead, with the mindset of "I’m going to beat him fair and square in front of everyone, then ask him, ’Do you regret it?’" starts working hard at cultivation, blah blah blah.

Only to discover he has hidden hardships, that he’s the destined savior, while Princess Pan Ge sits lofty above, meddling and stirring up all sorts of misunderstandings, blah blah blah.

Then it’s sweet for a bit, then angsty for a bit, sweet again, angst again, looping like that.

In the end, the male lead sacrifices his life, the female lead takes their child and retreats to the mountains, and the vicious second female lead ends up sitting alone for life on the throne as ruler of the Immortal Realm.

One of the classic scenes and lines is when the female lead casually solves some huge mess, slants a glance at Princess Pan Ge, and snorts in disdain: "Little noob."