How to make quick money

Hai Zhou Hotel.

Four people sitting together in such a spacious private room made it seemed somewhat empty, adding on that, the table was unusually large. If the four of them sat separately, then they would have to shout to engage in any conversation.

Hence,the four of them might as well sit side by side.

His dad, mum, Li Mu and then Chen Wan.

Chen Wan was extremely happy in her heart. The main point was that she unloaded the psychological burden she had in her heart. After the comprehensive inspection, Li Mu did not have any serious problems. Except for the bruise on his forehead that seemed to affect the original handsome youthful expression of himself.

His parents initially did not want Chen Wan to be the one paying after inviting them, but Chen Wan kept on insisting that she should. Moreover, Li Mu also responded by showing them an expression of 'It's expected of her to do so'. Since his parents could not beat them, they could only unwillingly join them.

It was also thanks to his mom's concerns, while Li Mu and the rest were waiting for the results, she went back home to fetch Li Mu a set of clean clothing.Therefore, Li Mu was able to resemble like a normal human again, sitting beside Chen Wan and engaging with her in a heated discussion.

"Honestly speaking, after being knocked today, I feel like my brain is exceptionally bright. In the past, I only managed to get 90 to 100 points for my English, but today I feel like I might get 120 points and above."

"Really?" Chen Wan's big pearly eyes were almost popping out.

Li Mu nodded, "Really."

"Don't speak without thinking!" His dad scolded while laughing, "If you did not manage to get 120 points, then watch how I'll deal with you."

Li Mu then said in a serious tone, "Dad, if I do manage to get 120 points, then your son won't have any face to enter our family front door."

"Don't say something like that." Li Mu's mother quickly said, "Son, whether your test result is good or bad doesn't matter, Mum only have you as my child"

Li Mu's mother was serious about what she said. Meanwhile, Chen Wan tried to hold back her laughter till her pretty face flushed red. Li Mu sighed, "Even my own mother doesn't believe in me. Fine, wait till they announce the result for the college exam, then I'll prove it to you."

Li Mu's father slapped the table on the spot and said, "Son, if you are able to get 120 points on your English exam, Dad will buy a laptop for you!"

In the current year, any laptop model would cost about $10000, which was close to what his father yearly salary was.

Li Mu knew that his own family's saving did not have that much.

In his previous life, he worked as a programmer for over 10 years, naturally, he wished to own a computer that truly belonged to him, but he could not ask his parents for it.

Actually, Li Mu already made up his mind. Not only the computer, even the fees required for the first year of his university and living expense, he wanted to rely on himself to come up with ways to earn it during the summer vacation.

Hence, Li Mu spoke resolutely, "Dad, I don't need you to buy a laptop for me, I'll work and earn money to buy it during my summer vacation."

As someone who had been reborn, if he did not have the meager ability to earn that little bit of money, then it would really be letting the heavens down.

However, the three people around Li Mu were stumped by his words.

In 2001, a government employee who performed well at work was only paid $1000 as salary. What can a high school graduate rely on to earn $10000 in 2 months?

Facing the distrust and doubtful gaze from the three of them, Li Mu did not have an ounce of playfulness to him as he said, "I'm serious, furthermore, I'm very confident in myself."

Chen Wan could not help but asked, "Student Li Mu, I'm curious. How are you going to earn the money required to buy a laptop in two months? I've bought a laptop at the start of the year, and it seemed to cost about $20000."

Chen Wan was not flaunting her wealth, she was only reminding Li Mu that it is easy to blow one's trumpet, but not to overdo it.

"Regarding that, you don't have to worry. Anyway, I'm confident."

Although he spoke confidently after he calmed down and analyzed it over, Li Mu's heart started to turn bitter.

The development of the Internet in 2001 was still in its infancy stage, nobody knew what the Internet would be developed into, other than Li Mu.

Furthermore, nobody could guess how the Internet and Wi-Fi would progress, other than Li Mu.

This was the reason why Li Mu dared to brag in front of his parents and Chen Wan.

I would appreciate if you guys choose to read the novel on Isohungrytls.com instead of reading it on other site to support the continued release of the novel. Thanks a lot to those who do so~!!!

However, after thinking carefully, Li Mu then realized that in this year and month, trying to earn money using the Internet was not difficult, but the possibility of trying to make some quick bucks was too low.

Hao123, with a valuation of tens of millions in the future, was established as early as 1999. It has been operating for more than two years now. It is quite basic, and even if Baidu wanted to buy it(Hao123), it will take another three years from now. To do a navigation site by himself, the fastest time to catch up with hao123 will be in one or two years; definitely could not make some quick money.

Tencent QQ has millions of users and even if he could develop a better software of the same kind, it would take about half a year to finish writing all the code. After all, if a single person develops a piece of software. The workload of programming is extremely large. After finishing developing the software for half a year, he would have no money to do the promotion for it, after all, Tencent has already begun to take shape, and Ma Hua Teng(Tencent's CEO) was an expert imitator. He definitely couldn't outplay him, thus he couldn't make quick money from this method.

Not only QQ, there are many future software that Li Mu can't do right now. Not to mention that he doesn't even have a computer. Even if someone gives him a top-end computer, the code still has to be typed out character by character, let alone the future advertisement operations. Even if he managed to succeed doing it alone, the time required will have to be calculated in years, it's still not a method where quick money will be earned.

Even if he was to imitate Cai Wen Sheng (an Investor from China) now, registering a bunch of domain names and wait to sell them slowly after 2005, it was still not that simple. First of all, that Cai Wen Sheng guy has already started to register a large number of double characters' domain names using the Xinhua Dictionary. The domain name that hasn't been thought of yet, were only WeChat, Taobao this kind of double characters that were not present in the current trendy vocabulary, so Li Mu still can't make quick money from this.

What he could think of at the moment were all projects that require a few years of preparation, and the deadline he gave himself was only two months.

The confident Li Mu, suddenly, felt depressed as his confidence from before were all washed away.

Li Mu, suddenly, thought if he allows himself to make a list of keywords for the world events in 2001, what could he think of?

Bush took office, the 9/11 incident, accession to the WTO, successful bid for the Olympics, national football qualifying, NetEase suspension, Internet bubble

...

As the time period was too far apart, what Li Mu could think of was only a few sensational events. Most of them were about international politics. It was basically impossible for him to use these to make money.

Next to the three people eating, Li Mu was in a daze and frowning.

He felt that he seemed to neglect something crucial, but he was not able to figure it out within a short period.

At this time, Chen Wan helped Li Mu come up with an excuse, "Actually owning a computer doesn't really help with my studies much, it is not necessary to buy one so early. Owning a computer now is only to surf the web or play online games."

"Games?" Li Mu's eyes light up as if they were light bulbs after hearing that two words.

Damn, How could I forget something important like games!

Li Mu, under a state of excitement, stretched out his right hand and grabbed Chen Wan's left hand, holding her soft, delicate and smooth hand shaking it hard, "Sister Wan, what you said was so right!"

Chapter 6 – Long Term Plans

Games have long become an indispensable part of the Internet community, especially online games. Since 2000, it has already begun to emerge in China, and from then on has only grown more popular.

At this moment, the hottest online game should still be [Stone Age] but nearing the end of this year, Chen Tian Qiao used a third-rate Korean online game system to create one of the hottest online games in all of China within a short period of time and a few years down the line, he became one of the richest man in China.

Speaking of which, the game [Legend] which garnered him millions of riches should currently be in its alpha testing phase.

Li Mu was also a fan of [Legend] in his previous lifetime.

It was after the beginning of the first semester when Li Mu had the opportune chance of coming into contact with [Legend] under the introduction from one of his classmate; and after a short play, he was immediately hooked. While studying at the university, his academic works had not been too overwhelming, so he often played [Legend] with his roommates; he had played by choosing the 'Warrior' class up until his graduation in the year 2005. And thereafter he abandoned the game altogether due to old friends dropping out and also because the in-game cheating had become too shameless and despicable.

But now that he thought about it, [Legend] was a game full of exploits. With his current abilities, searching for bugs and glitches to increase the in-game currency, creating powerful items, and even writing cheats would be as easy as a walk in the park. Furthermore, he thought these things to be very profitable. However, Chen Tian Qiao has yet to release the game. If he remembered correctly, it should be sometime in September when [Legend] will be released to the public and after the two month long free trial period comes to pass, [Legend] will be starting a monthly subscription around late November to early December.

Only Li Mu knew the rise in the popularity of [Legend] will happen near the end of this year; likewise, the first cheat in the system would appear sometime in November of this year.

Within the depths of his memories, that so-called cheat in the system was, in fact, only a glitch regarding the lightings of the settings. Simply put, it automatically brightens the graphics of the game. The player would have no need to buy a set of candles to lighten the environment, but even such low-like glitch in the system had over a 90% positive rating in only a short period of time.

It could be seen that such sort of cheats was a huge demand for [Legend] players.

But only wanting to rely on [Legend] as a source income, Li Mu would need to wait patiently for a couple months; on the other hand, the current online game, [Stone Age], currently dominating the market, is Li Mu's window of opportunity.

Just like [Legend] and [MU Miracle], [Stone Age] is also a game where cheats and hacking have become overly rampant.

Li Mu once read a news article which spoke of a game cheating studio named Abe Studio which relied on the operation of hacking Stone Age and thus creating a business franchise worth well over 10 million yuan within a year or two—though no matter how incredible and wondrous Abe Studio seemed to be, they were after all only the current generation of programmers, while Li Mu had the foresight and techniques of the future. So long as he managed to provide the needs of gamers, then making money seemed to be an easy matter.

Being reminded of this point by Chen Wan, Li Mu hurriedly thought of various approach to make quick cash, and that was to make game cheats.

This approach was practical and feasible; and because he was lost in thought, Li Mu only became conscious that he was holding on to Chen Wan's hands.

At this moment, Chen Wan's cheeks were tinged a rosy red, flustered that she was being held by Li Mu in such a manner. Although she was older than Li Mu by three years, she had inexperience and little to no contact with those of the opposite sex. Against Li Mu whose had several girlfriends prior to his rebirth, those inexperienced men could not possibly compare.

Li Mu was sincerely grateful towards Chen Wan who mentioned the word games and spontaneously entered a state of triumph upon discovering a sort of revelation.

He was wide awake.

Li Mu, a long time Internet user for well over ten years, believed in one and only one concept—there are invariably only two sort of things in the web that could stimulate a man: p*rn and online gaming.

This is an unchanging irrefutable truth!

Taobao's e-commerce concept of selling and exchanging of goods with monetary currency is not a concept at all.

TN: Taobao is a Chinese online shopping website, and is a subsidiary of Alibaba Group; It is one of the world's biggest e-commerce websites, as well as one of the world's top 10 most visited websites according to Alexa.

And because Li Mu believed in such concept, creating and making game cheats was absolutely the best possible method without doubt to make quick cash.

Li Mu's father observed Li Mu's use of such shameless and cheap method to take advantage of another man's daughter and could not help but to cough twice.

Li Mu quickly retracted his hands.

While trying to mask the air of awkwardness, he made typing gestures with his fingers. "A computer can do so much more than surfing the web or playing games."

Chen Wan nodded in agreement. "Indeed, that is so. Computers can do so much but however, we've only learned some of the basic functions of a computer. If you're interested, then you should apply for a computer-related course in a university."

"Mm." Li Mu replied absent-mindedly.

He'd already begun pondering over the currents games in today's market and how to capitalize on it regarding the cheat system. [Stone Age] had already been operating for about six months and commercialized cheats are beginning to make its way in the market.

It seemed impractical from a point of view, but Li Mu was confident in his ability. Relying on [Stone Age] to making quick revenue was not at all impossible.

First' he'll use [Stone Age] as means to accumulate some capital for himself. Only in this way, could he be the first to develop a cheat system for [Legend] by the end of September and commercialize it for revenue. Li Mu believed this gave him an advantage.

Before [Legend] becomes profitable, this would be the opportune chance to garner revenue.

I would appreciate if you guys choose to read the novel on Isohungrytls.com instead of reading it on other site to support the continued release of the novel. Thanks a lot to those who do so~!!!

With a plan in mind, Li Mu became much more relaxed. He chatted with Chen Wan for a while, asking about her life in such a roundabout manner.

He learned that Chen Wan is a third-year major in journalism at Fudan University, Shanghai. Her family does business in Haizhou. She is the only child.

As to whether she is single, Li Mu only used one sentence to find out. "Elder Sister is elegant and beautiful. You must be the school flower of Fudan University, right? And your boyfriend must certainly be the most handsome guy in the university, right?"

"I'm not the school flower and I don't have any boyfriend."

Li Mu blinked and smiled, his face blank and stupefied. He held a somewhat flustered appearance.

Chen Wan only then realized that Li Mu changed his wording to suit his desires to inquire about her relationship status, and she shouted in her heart, this kid is simply too willy!

Only, Li Mu's thoughts were more messed and scattered.

No wonder…

It is only proper Chen Wan would go on to become the host of a provincial TV show years from now. It was because she studied journalism.

As for her family situation—though she did not say in detail, he could vaguely guess the scale of her family's business was not small. In the near future, Chen Wan's father was sentenced for illegal fundraising, the amount involved reaching several billion yuan.

At present, Li Mu had only 63 yuan. He knew he lacked the ability to change Chen Wan's string of fate, but what he did have was time. And that time provided Li Mu a long-term plan.

Once dinner came to an end, Chen Wan insisted on sending a cab to carry Li Mu and his family back home but he refused. He did not wish to bother Chen Wan any further and gave a proper excuse that four would be too crowded. So he flagged for a car, insisting Chen Wan be the first to leave and she could only accept helplessly.

Before leaving, she especially asked Li Mu's phone number, quickly saying that if she had some free time, she would call and ask to hang out. Li Mu gave his number for he'd long intended to ask Chen Wan's number.

He definitely must not lose contact with her.

As Li Mu was about to ask for her number, Chen Wan pulled out a small notebook and a pen, writing a series of numbers down.

"This is my phone number. You can call me for anything. I will be staying in Haizhou for a couple of weeks."

"Okay." Li Mu carefully placed the paper into his pocket.

After Chen Wan left, his dad flagged another cab.

Li Mu and his mom sat on the back row on the way home. Li Mu's mom held his hand and said dreadfully. "When I got a call today, I was so scared… I almost had a heart attack… fortunately, you're okay…"

"Yeah." Li Mu's dad tilted his head sideways, looking back from the front seat. "It could be a blessing in disguise, but be more careful when you go out in the future."

Li Mu nodded repeatedly; his heart filled with warmth.