woshigib
We are talking about English language royalties....not the Chinese ones.
Fact is pretty straight forward.
Official English translation = earning royalties for the author
Illegal English translation = earning nothing for the author
You are basically hoping to earn money by choosing a VERY POPULAR novel and translating it and publishing it without permission. Look up copyright infringement and you will see that is exactly what you are doing. You wrote:
"If people wish to support my time spend translating by donating go ahead and in return I'll give them early access to chapters"
which basically mean you hope to profit from it.
p.s. Sooner or later, QI will ask you to stop the translation. If they let you illegally translate a POPULAR Qidian novel and profit from it (Patreon + ad revenue), it would set a very bad precedent for other illegal translators to steal other popular Qidian novels.