My Years as a Copyist in Taiwan

1981, Taiwan, Lane 88, Section 2, Yongfu Road, West Central District, Tainan.

Zhao Wen, who was lying on the desk by the window, slowly opened his eyes, a feeling of extreme frustration lingering in his chest.

He was certain he had passed away.

A girl, tears streaming down her face and seemingly chanting slogans, drove a car that read "My husband ran off with 0," and knocked him into the river...

Even if your husband runs off with someone else, you can't just drive with your eyes closed!

Fortunately, he survived and was given a younger body.

Zhao Wen remained calm. He was familiar with time-travel stories; he had written several books on the subject that had flopped.

Looking at the manuscript soaked with tears and a rejection letter from Golden Crown Publishing House, memories of two Zhao Wens flooded my mind—

The reason I was able to transmigrate and take over this body is because the original owner of this body was so angry that he died.

The beautiful island of Taiwan in 1981 has been placed here for me!

After casually flipping through the manuscript, Zhao Wen thought that in Taiwan in 1981, no matter how eloquent your writing was, it would still flop.

Golden Crown Publishing House's current focus is on the concept of "no romance without madness." The original author's realistic youth novel, which is neither crazy nor melodramatic, could not possibly have caught the eye of Aunt Phoenix.

The rejection letter contained only a dozen or so cold words: the writing style is obscure, lacks a romantic core, and does not meet the requirements for publication.

"Damn it!"

Zhao Wen scoffed. His pen name in his previous life was "Through Thirteen Knives," meaning he had flopped thirteen books in a row. But among the many flops on Qidian, he was a recognized "bottom-tier" author, having read countless genres and had hundreds of millions of readers. What kind of good story and good writing hadn't he seen?

Even a random, poorly written novel with a low rating on Qidian.com could easily outshine Auntie's pretentious and unrealistic writing, right?

Which of her ethereal book titles wasn't plagiarized? Which of her song lyrics wasn't a Chinese-to-Chinese translation? Even Guo Jingming isn't as capable as her, because Guo Jingming is naive; he plagiarizes living people...

Since the original owner was angered to death by the current distorted literary world, from now on, let me try to see if I can smash all of this as a transmigrator!

As the thought arose, Zhao Wen felt a sudden clarity and lucidity in his mind, something he couldn't quite explain, as if he had truly gained a brain...

Previously vague memories, things I had seen and heard, all naturally, word for word, and completely surfaced in my mind. Even the crease on page 15 of my first-grade Chinese textbook was as clear as yesterday.

There was no halo, no extraordinary phenomenon, just simple—I remember everything.

A surge of boundless confidence welled up within Zhao Wen, and he thought, "Damn it..."

In the past, if a good idea suddenly came to mind, he would immediately take out his phone and write it down, regardless of the time or place.

At this moment, he has more than a thousand good ideas in his mind... thousands of finished products!

The original text of "She and Her Cat" is so clear, with its punctuation and paragraph breaks, it's like a brand new book under a lamp. It's a pity it can't be exported...

This is a short story, a phenomenon ten years later, only a little over 3000 words long. It's lonely yet gentle, clean and healing, perfect for a newbie like me to copy as my debut work!

"You Are the Apple of My Eye" is a 12-word novel that has swept the youth genre with its opening chapters—no melodramatic romance, no madness, and no absurd scenes of people disregarding everything for love.

Only the most simple daily life on campus, the purest youthful passion, and the most genuine regrets of youth!

Back then, the sales of this book were more than double the total sales of "Misty Rain" (78 copies) over the years. "Misty Rain" was Aunt Phoenix's best-selling book!

So, even "You Are the Apple of My Eye" had to be copied!

One afternoon, the only sound in the old wooden house was the soft scratching of a pen on paper. Zhao Wen didn't even feel the urge to get up and take a long, long-lost urination...

This is the dedication of the low-income hero: no matter where he is, he never stops updating!

"Clang—!"

"Ouch!"--

Without even looking up, Zhao Wen knew who it was.

My own younger sister, Zhao Wenwen.

Although your name contains two characters for "steady," your life is anything but stable. You can't get through a day without bumps and stumbles.

Sure enough, a small, thin figure fell face-first onto the threshold of the wooden house, schoolbag and all. Her knees were scraped and bruised, and the girl was wincing in pain, still clutching half a piece of uneaten guava in her hand.

Zhao Wen looked closely and saw that even as she cried out in pain, she was still checking if the guava in her hand was dirty. He knew that she was alright and was relieved.

Zhao Wenwen scrambled to her feet, rubbing her knees as she walked to the door. She tossed the soiled guava into the lotus pot, where several small red koi fish surged to the surface, eagerly pecking at it.

These two old-fashioned rough pottery lotus jars were left behind by Zhao Wen's mother. The quiet alley, the old wooden house, the lotus and fish in the still water were simply captivating to Zhao Wen, who had just transmigrated.

Thirteen-year-old Zhao Wenwen is already a second-year junior high school student. As soon as she entered the room, she saw the rejection letter on the table.

"Brother, your manuscript got rejected by Kingcrown again?" Zhao Wenwen asked, unsurprised, her face full of indignation.

"I knew it! They only like the kind of tearful, whiny stuff; they can't understand the good stuff my brother writes at all!"

Zhao Wen felt no sense of unfamiliarity with this younger sister, as if she were his younger sister in two lifetimes.

He casually picked up a handkerchief from the table and gently wiped the girl's sweaty forehead, his gaze resolute: "From now on, I won't side with them."

"This time, I'm writing a big book so that the whole of Taiwan will remember my name. From today onwards, all readers in Taiwan will know what a truly worthwhile story is."

"I'm hungry, bro~"

"Yeah, let's eat out. I didn't cook this afternoon..." Zhao Wen was a little embarrassed; he couldn't cook! The original owner of this body couldn't cook either! He could only fry eggs and make porridge...

On ordinary days, I would just cook some sweet potato porridge and make do with a fried egg with preserved radish. The little girl never complained, but her small body gradually started to get thinner.

In her memory, her parents left her more than 20,000 New Taiwan Dollars. In order to support her younger sister, she dropped out of school after her parents passed away. More than a year later, she still couldn't find a reliable job. She worked temporary jobs several times and lived a very frugal life. Now she still has more than 9000 New Taiwan Dollars left.

Being so poor was Zhao Wen's main motivation for starting to copy books as soon as he landed.

At the old man's stall at the alley entrance, two servings of oyster omelets, a plate of fried rice noodles, and two bowls of hot soup cost a total of 60 yuan. But looking at his sister's happy smile, Zhao Wen felt that the money was well spent.

The old man really liked Zhao Wenwen, and he would always put an extra small oyster in her oyster omelet.

"Wenwen, starting tomorrow, I'll give you fifteen yuan a day for pocket money. Buy more nutritious food and eat less tempura."

Previously, the original owner gave his younger sister very little pocket money, averaging less than five New Taiwan Dollars a day.

"Okay! Brother, you found a new job?" Zhao Wenwen tilted her little face up and let Zhao Wen wipe the soup off her with a handkerchief.

"No. But I have a stable income now!"

The 13-year-old girl didn't grasp the logical fallacy in the statement; she simply nodded knowingly.

The next day, Zhao Wenwen, still wearing the school uniform that had gotten dirty the day before, took small, hesitant steps and ran to the alley entrance to wait for Zhao Wen.

Zhao Wen fastened the padlock on the wooden door, pushed the old-fashioned bicycle left by his father, and went out of the alley.

After driving his sister through the old street market, it took another twenty minutes for Zhao Wen to arrive at the junior high school where his sister studied. He stood downstairs at the two-story building of the Jiuge Magazine office.

The original owner had been to this road once. Back then, he was a naive 15-year-old boy who experienced the cruel blow of having his manuscript rejected.

But Zhao Wen came here not just because he knew the way, but because this magazine publishing house had always been a sworn enemy of Kingcrown Publishing House.

Zhao Wen carried his manuscript up to the second-floor editorial office, where piles of submissions were scattered on several wooden tables. A young woman accepted his manuscript and had just finished registering it when a middle-aged man holding a red pen approached.

"Yi'an, bring me two more manuscripts."

Although Zhao Wen was a complete failure in his previous life, he still put in a lot of effort in calligraphy. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to produce a short story of more than 3000 characters in traditional Chinese characters in just one afternoon and one night.

His regular script is neat and clean; even someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder would find it therapeutic.

The man with the red pen: "This one is it."

"This is Editor Gao," the young lady kindly introduced Zhao Wen.

"Hello, Editor Gao."

Editor Gao didn't respond because he had already quickly scanned several lines of text.