The milk she collected every morning by running to the suburbs. Sometimes, if she was lucky, she could buy some, and other times she could only buy sheep milk. Because it was too strenuous and the price was high, she simply spent ten silver coins to buy a ewe and the milk from this one sheep was enough for her to make cakes every day.

Sheep milk definitely wasn’t as good as cow’s milk, but cow’s milk was hard to find. In this era, cows were considered labor force; not something ordinary people could afford. So even using sheep milk as a substitute didn’t matter much. When she had a lot of milk, she didn’t even bother making soup, she just drank the milk directly, and in just three months, she gained ten jin. Her body also began to develop.

Up until now, Zhang Jie still didn’t know her gender. Ideally, she didn’t want her body to develop, but to be healthy, one had to eat well, and with good food, physical development was inevitable. So when she was at home, she relaxed, but when she went out, she would wrap her chest with cloth to disguise herself as a man, never wearing floral clothes, only gray, black, and blue. Whatever color hid the dirt better was the color of clothes she wore.

Her hair was the same; when it grew long, she went to the barbershop to have it cut short.

Since her face was too striking, when she went out, she would think of ways to put some freckles and draw a scar on her face to make herself look unappealing. Even in a male disguise, it’s safer to be ugly rather than handsome.

She carefully protected herself and quietly earned her hard-earned money. In the blink of an eye, half a year passed, and her novel became a hit. Readers chasing to buy her book made Zhang Jie smile until his eyes narrowed into a line. Although the dividends were not yet seen, Zhang Jie promised her that by the end of the year, she would definitely receive more than ten thousand silver coins.

This figure scared her, but she worried that the other party would think she was inexperienced, so she bit her lip to stay composed. In fact, when she got home, her heart was still racing with excitement.

"Looks like I have to plan well for what I will do with this money after the dividends."

Yet the money hadn’t arrived when, unexpectedly, the period she had long been separated from and even forgotten about, came eagerly to find her.

There was no choice but to quickly sew a period pad, filling it with cotton. This cotton was what she had been accumulating over the past six months. As she reached that age, it would come sooner or later. Whenever she went shopping, she would buy some comfortable cotton fabric and cotton, just in case.

Fortunately, at the moment, things could be bought with money, without any tickets or restrictions, making it very convenient.

Because she had a lot of free space and time, after Zhang Jie published two novels, she had already finished writing her novel.

With her free time, she began conceiving the next one because a year felt too long for her. Maintaining a pen name also took time. So, after delivering the complete manuscript of the first book to Zhang Jie, she also showed him the concept of the second book.

He was very surprised by her speed: "Isn’t this too fast? I was planning for one book a year, but at your pace, two books a year seems possible. What do you think? Want to give it a try? Writing two works a year will better establish your solid foundation, and over time, you’ll have a certain level of popularity."

With the novel’s popularity, the earlier storytelling sessions they’d paid for and the plays they’d hired performers for also began receiving royalties. Of course, in this era, there was no concept of copyright, but if an author didn’t permit you to tell their stories, you couldn’t do it. So it was necessary to pay the publishers, a fact Ma Lu was aware of and had asked Zhang Jie about. He was momentarily stunned, then smiled helplessly.

"You’re really something, kid. It seems that if I want to do anything behind your back in the future, it’ll be tough. You really know your stuff, even knowing about this additional income. It seems you haven’t been slacking off, but I should tell you, the money they pay back basically balances out with what we initially paid them. So, I thought, when you publish new books in the future, allowing them to tell the stories without anyone needing to pay can be considered promotion for you. Do you think it works?"

Ma Lu didn’t find it surprising, "It’s within reason, naturally it works, but we need to find good actors."

"Of course. By and large, after rehearsing once, we can know if the novel will work. They have specific playwriters, and since this is a novel, it can’t be performed directly. It needs to be adapted into their familiar rehearsal and performance method. It’s not really easy, and we depend on each other. Networking grows like that!"