Although the academic exchange conference had ended a full week earlier, Zhang Mingge had never once forgotten the doubts he harbored toward that woman surnamed Chu.
During a break, he had deliberately taken the initiative to seek out Miss Chu, of course, this “chance encounter” had been carefully planned by him. He tried to strike up a conversation with her.
However, Miss Chu merely cast him a brief glance, then quickly revealed an expression as though she had seen some kind of flood beast or savage monster. She yawned lazily and returned straight to the conference hall.
Zhang Mingge followed after her. “Miss Chu, may I ask if I’ve met you somewhere before?”
Miss Chu replied curtly, “No.”
She walked away in a fluster, as if afraid that Zhang Mingge might catch up to her. Zhang Mingge remained standing where he was, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and frowned.
While Zhang Mingge sank into serious contemplation, Chu Tianyu slipped into the lounge. She glanced at the clock on the wall, opened Taobao on her phone and successfully snagged a signed album by the independent musician Xia Ye that went on sale precisely at 19:00.
This small interlude did not cause Zhang Mingge to dwell on his failure. For him, there were simply too many things demanding his attention, the inheritance of the Zhang family, the study of spells and techniques and, beyond his vast ambitions, the driving force that pushed him ever upward,
That game.
He quickly cast the matter of Miss Chu to the back of his mind and continued living his ambitious, relentlessly upward climbing life. He was not born into one of the great cultivation clans as a favored noble, someone who could rely on lineage alone. The only things he could depend on were his own talent and his hard work.
As he watched the family head’s health deteriorate day by day, his confidence only grew stronger. He believed that he had been born to rule and that he would inevitably ascend to the peak of glory. Whether inside the game or in the real world, he would become the undisputed strongest king.
That afternoon, as usual, he found a secluded place and logged into the game.
However, at the moment when someone turned him over and he awoke from unconsciousness, he saw a familiar face.
And at that very instant, the memories sealed away by the game within his real world consciousness surged back, like mountains calling and seas roaring, crashing over him in an overwhelming tide.
Chu Tianshu!
In that instant, everything he had witnessed before formed a complete logical chain in his mind. He knew that many young and attractive female players, in order to avoid becoming targets of desperadoes in the game, would often disguise themselves as men when entering it.
Similar facial features, similar names, the other party’s visibly “guilty” demeanor when they encountered each other in reality and that person’s strange reaction when facing Lin Huai in the “Jiang Village” instance…
And the Chu family’s consistently unconventional style when dealing with ghostly entities…
He quickly concluded that Chu Tianshu was none other than the cross dressed male persona of that arrogant young miss who looked down on everyone and resentment surged within him as he recalled,
The scene in “Jiang Village” where this person ruined his plan and electrocuted him into unconsciousness…
He, Zhang Mingge, had spent his entire life plotting and calculating and never once had he fallen at the hands of a woman!
This was true… infuriating beyond measure!
When Chu Tianshu heard the phrase “that damned woman” he froze in place for a moment. He carefully felt his body, then let out a long breath of relief, thank goodness, thank goodness. Everything that was supposed to be there was still there and nothing that shouldn’t be there had appeared.
Zhang Mingge’s frenzied reaction didn’t trouble him much. Chu Tianshu had always been kind to others; in both conduct and character, he lived up to his sharp edged benevolence.
Now that Zhang Mingge was so enraged, it was only because his heart was not yet strong enough. Thus, with a friendly demeanor, Chu Tianshu held a wrench in his left hand and patted the other man on the shoulder. “Bro, I think you’ve definitely got the wrong person…”
“I wouldn’t forget your face even if I turned to ashes,” Zhang Mingge said coldly. “In Jiang Village, it was because of you… Chu Tianshu, what are you going to use to repay what you owe me here?”
Chu Tianshu was taken aback, then replied, “Then does the Bodhisattva know how miserable you are?”
Zhang Mingge: …
While the two of them were still making a commotion, the remaining players also opened their eyes and climbed up from the ground.
In this instance, aside from Chu Tianshu and Zhang Mingge, there were four men and two women.
Among them, the first to awaken was a man dressed in a suit. He had a pair of long, narrow phoenix eyes and his expression was as cold as a frozen wasteland under endless drifting snow.
The second to wake was a young man with wine red hair. A bandage was stuck to his handsome face, making him look as though he had just gotten into a fight. His entire body radiated arrogance and impatience. Upon seeing that there were two female players among them, he frowned and muttered, “What a hassle.”
The taciturn big man and the quirky, clever looking girl woke up at the same time, ranking third. After them came the girl carrying a longbow and the bald man with kind, benevolent features.
If Lin Huai had been here, he would certainly have recognized the girl carrying the longbow. She was none other than Qiu Ran, whom he had met in Minghua High School, the one who had been bewitched by the beauty of the unscrupulous merchant Xia Xingye and who had ultimately learned from that very merchant the truth that “admiration is the emotion farthest from understanding.”
After leaving the “Minghua High School” instance, just as she had stubbornly believed in Xia Xingye within the instance, she continued to stubbornly cling to her longbow, searching the world for Xia Xingye’s whereabouts, attempting to reclaim the bow that belonged to her. Relying on this debt collecting obsession, she passed the intermediate field’s assessment and became a member of this game instance.
Unfortunately, her pursuit of that debt still seemed a long way from bearing fruit…
Qiu Ran, the second to last to open her eyes, surveyed her surroundings and happened to lock eyes with Chu Tianshu, who was being forced step by step into a corner by Zhang Mingge.
Qiu Ran: “?”
…Was it really this intense right from the start? As she was thinking this, Chu Tianshu, wearing a shirt, suddenly tore off his outer coat in her line of sight and began unbuttoning his shirt one button at a time. “…Since you insist on putting it that way, there’s nothing I can do…”
“Y… you! you!” Next came Zhang Mingge’s voice, furious with embarrassment. He spun around at once and shouted angrily, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Chu Tianshu said, “Men and women shouldn’t touch improperly. Stay away from me in the future or I’ll take my clothes off.”
Qiu Ran: “?”
She completely failed to understand what these two teammates of hers were doing but that didn’t stop her from sensing a familiar aura emanating from the teammate who was stripping.
Seeing that everyone had already woken up, Zhang Mingge fully set aside his personal grudges. Chu Tianshu, meanwhile buttoned his shirt back up, thinking to himself that he had truly found the fastest way to resolve all problems.
…It was just that he didn’t know where Lin Huai was now. Thinking of this, he felt a faint restlessness stir within him.
“…Eight people,” Zhang Mingge said after counting all the players. “In this instance, we’re each other’s teammates. Let’s introduce ourselves first.”
“My name is Ye Xiangxiang.” The quirky girl raised her hand first and smiled playfully. “I’m currently an intermediate field player… though, of course, everyone here is an intermediate field player. Please take good care of me!”
“Bufa Master,” said the kindly looking bald man. “Amitabha.”
“Bufa? What does ‘Bufa’ mean?” the wine red haired youth muttered.
“All things in the world must operate in accordance with the law. Though this humble monk has renounced the secular world, I have taken the Dharma name ‘Bufa,’ meaning ‘not forgetting the constraints of the rule of law upon oneself’…” the bald man explained.
Qiu Ran: …
“My name is Ji Fengjian,” the wine red haired youth introduced himself. Standing beside Ye Xiangxiang, he seemed somewhat irritated, his body constantly edging closer toward the big man.
“My name is… is.. Qu Mei,” the big man said with a slight stutter. He buried his head in his scarf, appearing both silent and gloomy.
As the introductions went around, it came to the man with the icy demeanor. He cast a glance over everyone, his voice colder than ice itself.
“Call me Gu Beichen.”
After everyone had finished introducing themselves, it was Chu Tianshu’s turn.
He stood beside a tree, glanced at Zhang Mingge and said, “My name is Chu Tianyu. Nice to meet you, please take care of me.”
Zhang Mingge: “……”
He was just about to say something when the scene before his eyes suddenly changed.
The originally vivid, three dimensional, colorful world abruptly turned into one of pure black and white. All the trees looked as though they had been drawn with ink brushes and even the sound of wind rustling through the leaves transformed into the soft whooshing noise of pages flipping in a comic book.
“This is…”
When they lowered their heads to look at themselves, they discovered that their bodies had also turned into flat, paper like figures formed from simple lines. Ji Fengjian, the wine red haired youth, couldn’t help but blurt out, “Holy shit… this is dimensionality reduction…”
At that very moment, several weak, feeble coughing sounds came from above their heads. When they looked up again, they were startled out of their wits by the face that suddenly appeared before them.
Floating in the sky was a waxy yellow, bluish black face, wearing black rimmed glasses, looking exhausted and aged yet unmistakably three dimensional… the face of a young man!
The young man looked as though he was suffering immensely. As he coughed, he wielded an enormous ink pen, rapidly sketching within the world where the players stood. Every cough he let out brought with it a violent gust of wind that sent everyone stumbling in all directions. Wherever his pen landed, buildings of various functions sprang up from the ground one after another.
“…Run San, the above are the currently popular golden ranking comic elements of recent years.” Faintly, they could hear voices coming from the world where the man was located. “Harem, romance, suspense, combat, systems, pregnancy, running away with the child, wealthy families, ABO, youth and adolescence…”
“Cough, cough… cough, cough… but I really just want to draw the most traditional kind of horror comics…”
“Run San, are you even listening to me?” The woman raised her voice sharply. “I’ve already told you! Times have changed! What used to be popular is no longer popular now! As the saying goes, blue haired characters are destined to lose, childhood friends can never beat the one who shows up later. Works like yours have absolutely no competitive edge!”
“But!”
“There is no ‘but’!” the woman interrupted decisively. “I don’t care how you do it, you must add hot elements for me!” She slammed a thick stack of papers onto the desk. “A rich and interesting main character team, an intense stacking of popular elements. The main cast must have clear divisions of labor: someone to sell bromance, someone to sell flesh, someone to handle love triangles. Within fanservice, it should be subdivided into selling breasts, selling legs, selling butts. Everyone needs their own tragic past and miserable character arc… Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“But…”
“There is no ‘but’!” the woman said firmly. “This outline is already outdated! Hot elements, hot elements, don’t you understand? If you don’t, then go merge tropes, go plagiarize! Turn other works into your own, borrow their storylines!”
“……”
The woman sighed, then switched to a gently coaxing tone. “Run San, you have to understand, getting the chance to serialize on JUMP is an opportunity I worked very hard to secure for you, as your childhood friend. Just this once, don’t let me down, okay?”
“I’ll give you one more month. This is the maximum I can negotiate for you,” the woman said softly. “Revise the outline properly. Don’t disappoint me again.”
“…Mm.” After a long while, the young man finally spoke. “I understand. Are you… still going to visit seniors today?”
“Yes! I really don’t know what to do with that proud and arrogant guy!” The woman’s voice turned irritated. “He really makes me furious!”
Everyone: “……”
They exchanged looks with one another, feeling as though they had wandered into the wrong genre altogether.
“Th.. this.. ” Ji Fengjian stared wide eyed. “What kind of dog blood NTR plot is this…?”
After listening to the woman complain at length, half openly, half covertly, about her dissatisfaction with the sudden transfer senior, the sound of a door closing followed. As the door shut, they watched helplessly as the sallow faced young man in the sky slumped over his desk like a defeated dog.
“Wuwu…” they heard him sob. “So… are childhood friend types really all destined to lose…?”
Everyone: “……”
“Well then, since it’s our first meeting, let me introduce myself…” The young man finally lifted his head from the desk and looked at them with lifeless eyes. “I am the examiner for this game, Runsan. Although I may look like a pitiful, defeated manga artist who dropped out of university, keeps getting rejected everywhere and even had his childhood sweetheart stolen by a blond haired senior… in fact, I am someone who is extremely skilled at horror style works and currently suffering from a cold…”
“A defeated manga artist.”
After saying that, he sneezed again, sending several of the players stumbling.
“Cough, cough… let’s not talk anymore for now.” The examiner weakly raised his pen again. “I still need to… draw the background first.”
Everyone: “……”
It seemed that in the design of this instance, they were characters inside a manga and the chief examiner was the author of that manga.
Although every examiner had their own unique temperament, this examiner’s character setup was, even in the well traveled eyes of Chu Tianshu, truly one of a kind. He scribbled away for a long time. Only after quite a while did he finally stop and his dull, black eyes once again turned toward the people on the ground.
…Being stared at by such enormous, murky eyes was indeed a terrifying experience. Qiu Ran felt every hair on her body stand on end. Then, the man’s voice once more descended from the sky.
“In short, the setup of this game is as follows. As a defeated manga artist, I need to create an interesting manga outline, submit it to my childhood friend editor, secure a chance at serialization while also winning her heart and finally break free from a life of eating instant Master Kong noodles every day and you all…” he continued, “are the main character team of this manga.”
The tip of his pen pointed at each person in turn. “Your fixed character archetypes are… ”
“Ye Xiangxiang, the tsundere twin tailed young miss; Qiu Ran, the gentle and healing type girl; Gu Beichen, the cold and decisive male second lead; Ji Fengjian, the hot blooded, short tempered straight guy; Qu Mei, the mysterious background, gap moe character; Master Bufa, the saintly tool man; Zhang Mingge, the bespectacled snark role that appears in every work; and…” He paused slightly. “One extra, someone who looks like a frivolous, roguish handsome guy…”
For a moment, no one knew where to even begin complaining.
Chu Tianshu simply shrugged and casually greeted the examiner. “Yo.”
His posture was so natural and practiced that it made one can’t help but wonder just how he had become this familiar with such situations.
_________
Author’s Note: I feel like this instance is going to be really fun… from an author who suddenly threw away the outline and ran off at full speed.
Isn’t it fun to turn a classic shōnen manga into an unorthodox one?
*Various explanations:
Weekly Shōnen JUMP: A famous Japanese manga magazine that has serialized major works such as Naruto, Bleach and Gintama. The key themes are “Love! Courage! Friendship!”
Tomie: Tomie is a mysterious girl whose origins no one can clearly explain. She possesses a beauty that drives all men mad. Most uniquely, she has a special constitution that allows her cells to reproduce endlessly. Everyone who loves her ends up loving her so much that they want to kill her. As long as Tomie leaves behind even a single cell, it can split into a new Tomie. These Tomies hate one another and all want to kill each other.
✦ ✧ ✦
Cresvynia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧ you know what to do
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 111 · Although the author really didn’t want to writeChapter 112 · An explanation of the main storylineChapter 113 · Lin Huai’s QuestionChapter 114 · Hello classmateChapter 115 · Let me introduce the protagonist’s family backgroundChapter 116 · The innocent and naive Lin XiaohuaiChapter 117 · The Trisolarans ArriveChapter 118 · He Isn’t Fighting AloneChapter 119 · Why Here?Chapter 120 · A World Where Everyone Is Sculpted in ClayChapter 121 · How Could It Be YouChapter 122 · I want to sell my carChapter 123 · The Mysterious Transfer StudentsChapter 124 · Gu BeichenChapter 125 · The Male Lead of This StoryChapter 126 · A Voice Never Heard BeforeChapter 127 · You’re Tomie, aren’t you?Chapter 128 · I’ll give youChapter 129 · I just want to be with youChapter 130 · The Principal’s OfficeChapter 131 · Chu: I Disbanded Your Hate GroupsChapter 132 · Speak ProperlyChapter 133 · A Trisolaran Enters the Grand View GardenChapter 134 · Ji FengjianChapter 135 · About Me and YouChapter 136 · Kayako Likes ItChapter 137 · YouChapter 138 · I’ll Beat MyselfChapter 139 · I Want to See MyselfChapter 140 · The Trisolarans’ First Experience of Love and SexChapter 141 · The Trisolarans Try Romance Once MoreChapter 142 · The Trisolarans Try Romance for the Third TimeChapter 143 · It’s All This Buff’s FaultChapter 144 · The Way You Straight Men TalkChapter 145 · Why are you taking it so seriously?Chapter 146 · Chu Tianshu Shows Off His MusclesChapter 147 · Enter the DreamChapter 148 · Leave a little secretChapter 149 · Shadow StreamerChapter 150 · Don’t Look at MeChapter 151 · The Trisolarans betrayed StalinChapter 152 · Then I WillChapter 153 · The Trisolarans rewrite the Book of Life and DeathChapter 154 · What Career Could Be More Important Than Your Wife?Chapter 155 · Aren’t We Already Together?Chapter 156 · MVP of the Entire FieldChapter 157 · Meeting the FamilyChapter 158 · A Phone Call Across Time and SpaceChapter 159 · Lu Jin, You’re So MiserableChapter 160 · The Lands Of DaughtersChapter 161 · The So Called Pregnancy StreamChapter 162 · The Street Where Only the Two of Us ExistChapter 163 · No bare faceChapter 164 · Question 1: Do you have hair loss?Chapter 165 · LaxativesChapter 166 · Where Exactly Do You Exist?Chapter 167 · Seven ZeroChapter 168 · The issue of 0 and 1Chapter 169 · Wind ChimeChapter 170 · Visa and Wind ChimesChapter 171 · Continue to persecute Lu JinChapter 172 · Examiner: I’ve fallen in love with himChapter 173 · Lin Huai intimidates scalpersChapter 174 · Night of EvilChapter 175 · Congratulations to the Male Guests on Successfully Finding Their PartnersChapter 176 · Before ThisChapter 177 · The gong says he is terrifiedChapter 178 · The Tasker CampChapter 179 · I’m So ScaredChapter 180 · The Final Transitional ChapterChapter 181 · Four Beauties Among the FlowersChapter 182 · Plum FragranceChapter 183 · Dry Weather and Flammable ThingsChapter 184 · The Heartless Sword ManualChapter 185 · Only MeChapter 186 · The North PoleChapter 187 · Let Brother Lin Learn to Meow Like a CatChapter 188 · Good Night