097 Impulse Is the Devil

In recent times, one name had been appearing over and over across the American internet: Tarek.

To a country like the United States, which fancied itself the most advanced in the world, every other nation was beneath it. And a place like Tuvalu, drifting on the edge of extinction, was even less likely to merit a glance. Indeed, ninety-nine point nine percent of Americans had never even heard of Tuvalu before.

Only after Tuvalu’s new king, Li Danniu, wrote a novel called The Lord of the Rings, and only after that novel spent four consecutive weeks at the top of the American bestseller list and then kept breaking sales records as it went on global release, did Li Danniu and Tuvalu finally enter the American imagination.

After all, the very first line of the author introduction on The Lord of the Rings identified Li Danniu as the King of Tuvalu.

A king writing novels—what kind of king was that? And what kind of country was Tuvalu?

In the internet age, whenever people grew curious about something, the first thing they did was search for it online.

Li Danniu ought to have thanked Eyebook, because their keyword optimization was excellent. So whether they were American netizens or even users from other countries, when they searched for the author of The Lord of the Rings, the first result was Li Danniu’s Eyebook account, newly registered not long ago.

Once people found it, they would naturally click in. Once they clicked in, some of them would naturally start following. That was the reason Li Danniu’s followers began to grow at first.

Yet such growth was, after all, slow. Eyebook was a place for celebrities and public figures to showcase their lives, and the reason followers paid attention was curiosity about those lives.

Li Danniu’s Eyebook had initially only posted information about Tuvalu. But that information was more detailed on encyclopedia sites, so why bother with Li Danniu’s Eyebook? It was neither fish nor fowl.

Thus, those who followed him at the beginning did so out of affection for the author by way of the book, loving the man because they loved The Lord of the Rings. If Li Danniu’s Eyebook could not keep offering something that attracted fans, those fans would one day drift away.

Fortunately, at that point Li Danniu bought the Auckland Islands and stirred up another wave of news.

Buying an island was no longer news in itself these days, but Li Danniu’s purchase was very different.

First, the Auckland Islands were huge—over six hundred square kilometers, nearly thirty times the land area of Tuvalu. More importantly, Li Danniu had bought sovereignty over the Auckland Islands, unlike others who bought islands but only acquired usage rights while sovereignty remained with someone else. Nothing like this had happened in nearly two centuries; the most recent case had been Russia selling Alaska to the United States.

However, because Tuvalu was soon to be swallowed by the sea due to the greenhouse effect, it counted as a special circumstance. New Zealand’s sale was therefore understandable and even won praise from the international community. Otherwise, where were the people of Tuvalu supposed to go?

Second, Li Danniu had used the royalties from The Lord of the Rings as collateral for a loan to purchase the Auckland Islands. That was an unprecedented method of payment, something never seen before.

It was not that bestsellers were unheard of, nor was it rare for authors to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But never had anyone so vividly used such a vast island chain to prove the value of a novel.

Just the royalty income alone was enough to secure a loan of nearly six hundred million dollars—how astonishing was that? Of course, the contract clause stating that if the royalties were insufficient, the copyright itself would make up the difference, was selectively ignored, simply because the more sensational version drew more attention.

That round of headlines caused Li Danniu’s follower count to rise again.

Then news broke online that Li Danniu was preparing to invest one hundred billion dollars in building a new Tuvalu, and when Li Danniu responded to netizens’ questions, his post was shared so widely and created such a huge stir online that only then did the scale of it truly become apparent.

By now, Li Danniu’s Eyebook follower count had reached the tens of millions, and those tens of millions of followers could spread his posts to everyone they knew.

It was fair to say that Li Danniu had now become a genuine celebrity.

Three days later, the post in which Li Danniu promised a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward had already received six million five hundred thousand replies.

The reason the number of replies had not yet surpassed his follower count was that many people did not trust their own luck. It was like buying lottery tickets: some people bought them every day, while others never did.

Li Danniu noticed that many of the replies asked what would happen if two people guessed the same number and both were closest to the answer—would they split the one hundred thousand dollars, or would each person get one hundred thousand?

Because there were so many replies, some identical guesses had appeared more than a hundred times.

Singer J also seized the opportunity to jump in, saying that Li Danniu definitely intended to let hundreds of people split the one hundred thousand dollars, because if one person could only get a few hundred dollars, what could that possibly do? By saying that, he was clearly trying to provoke Li Danniu. If Li Danniu dared to say that each winner would get one hundred thousand dollars, then he might have to pay out several million dollars at once.

If Li Danniu refused to pay, his reputation would be ruined. If he did pay, he would lose a vast sum of money. How much could one book possibly earn?

Besides, Tuvalu was in desperate need of money for construction, and as king, if Li Danniu were to recklessly throw around tens of millions of dollars in America, public opinion would certainly not be kind.

J gave himself a pat on the back for his cleverness. Doing something that harmed others without benefiting himself at all felt truly satisfying.

When Li Danniu discovered this issue, he could not help cursing under his breath. At the time, he had not expected his post to receive so many replies. In his previous life, he had also browsed social media, and even celebrities with tens of millions of followers usually averaged only a few thousand replies per post, if that.

His own follower count was not even as high as those top stars’—so why were there more than six million replies?

What was more, Li Danniu had never imagined that netizens would guess the exact same number.

Still, that was not strange. With over six million people guessing, and the sales figures being something one could only estimate within a certain range, some overlap was perfectly normal.

It was only one hundred thousand dollars. Didn’t Americans pride themselves on being number one in the world? Didn’t they look down on everyone else? Why would they go so crazy over such a paltry sum?

At that moment, Li Danniu had only one thought: I am truly screwed.

He had always been an ordinary nobody. Although his life after transmigrating had changed dramatically, many of his old ideas had not changed at all.

His earlier rashness had come partly from confidence that he could earn the money back, but it had also been the arrogance of a man suddenly riding high, acting on impulse.

Now he was in real trouble.

But wasn’t there a saying? The road you choose, you must walk to the end, even on your knees.

Li Danniu did not like such fake inspirational nonsense, but at this point he had no choice but to swallow the bitter pill.

“Damn it all—no matter how much I spend, I’ll make it back a hundredfold, a thousandfold from you Americans.”

So Li Danniu posted another update.

“Deadline reached. As for the reward, I need to add one thing. Because some people have judged a gentleman’s motives by a petty man’s heart—yes, that old saying is the best way to describe someone. Let me make this clear: no matter how many people guess correctly, each person will receive one hundred thousand dollars. Please believe me, this is not a lottery, and there is no cap on the prize pool.”

After posting it, Li Danniu felt miserable, because he really might have to pay out several million dollars all at once.

Impulse is a devil. In the future, think three times before acting, Li Danniu sighed toward the heavens.