After recording the entire Three Years of Sakura story into a complete script, Su Yu barely had time to breathe—
When that crazily flashing red exclamation mark popped up on his retina again.
The bold system notification was like one of those blaring loudspeakers at a night market clearance sale.
[Congratulations to the host for discovering the secret to wealth! A viable route has been generated!]
[Congratulations on unlocking the get-rich manual! Yuri + horror + tragic BE aesthetics = guaranteed traffic! Don't hesitate—serve up the Three Years of Sakura manga first and let these peaceful-era lambs learn what it means to be an "ally of love and justice"!]
[Friendly reminder: manga, PV, visual novel—anything that hammers the "Honkai" nail into these naïve peace-time brains counts as quest progress! Begin your magnificent career as a plagiarist—ah, no—cultural disseminator!]
"So…" Su Yu rubbed his brow and sighed silently. "You want me to feed the audience a bowl of glass-shard rice first, and then tell them if they want to save people, they should come play the game?"
"What an evil capitalist face you've got."
[This is called user emotion management! Suppress first, then uplift. Do you understand?]
Yeah, screw you too.
If someone told him this system wasn't an old, traumatized Mihoyo veteran, he wouldn't believe it even if you beat him with a bat.
A huge glowing "✓" popped up on the light screen, like it was mocking his moral bottom line.
Su Yu flicked his hand, dispersing the visual pollution, then turned to look at Kiana not far away.
Kiana sat at the other end of the sofa, knees drawn up, holding half an apple.
She took a bite. Her gaze settled on some nonexistent point outside the window, chewing slowly—like she was mechanically completing a task.
When there was no work, she often sat like this, spacing out.
No phone. No TV. Just sitting there, blank.
Su Yu had tried to find her some entertainment, something to take her mind off things. But Kiana had said she wasn't in the mood.
Maybe the only time she showed her "idiot grasshopper" face was when she ate.
He understood. She had too much—too many emotions and memories—to digest.
Time was medicine… but medicine also needed time.
"Kiana."
The white-haired girl's shoulders twitched slightly. She looked over.
"…Yeah?" Her tone was still flat, but at least she wasn't completely gone.
"We can publish Three Years of Sakura as a manga first," Su Yu said. "Yuri, mystery, horror, school bullying, Honkai disaster… honestly, it fits modern people's appetite for the weird and intense."
Kiana's expression stiffened for a moment.
That story had come from her own mouth.
Asakura Miyuki. Twisted love. Bullying. Honkai rampage—
And the girl Kiana ended with her own hands.
"Will people… really want to read something like that?" Her voice was dry.
"Way too many," Su Yu replied without hesitation. "People live too comfortably these days. They need a little mental stimulation. Trust me—once the manga goes out, the comments will be full of people crying and screaming, 'This is so ship-worthy!' and 'Stab me harder!'"
Then he delivered his verdict on modern netizens:
"Because humans, by nature, are repeaters and masochists."
"…Your world's people all have something wrong with their heads," Kiana muttered, taking another bite of apple.
"That's called emotional masochism," Su Yu shrugged. "But a story alone isn't enough. We need an artist."
His gaze drifted toward the direction of Golden Courtyard outside the window.
"And I already have a perfect candidate."
"Kiana—for the sake of our manga empire… want to go stake out Griseo?"
Kiana blinked in confusion. "Who?"
"That little girl who lives in Golden Courtyard, always carrying a drawing board." Su Yu scrolled on his phone a bit. "About… this tall."
"A kid?" Kiana stared at him. "You want a kid to draw a manga?"
"Don't underestimate her." Su Yu's tone turned conspiratorial. "Her pen name is Huishi. Online, she's a big shot."
"Delicate style, strong emotions, hundreds of thousands of followers."
He paused, then added meaningfully:
"And she's especially good at… certain special genres."
Su Yu unlocked his phone, opened a profile called Huishi, and held it out in front of Kiana.
Three seconds later—
"Pff—cough, cough—!"
A chunk of apple lodged in Kiana's throat. She exploded into coughing, face turning bright red, nearly flinging the phone away.
On the screen were two beautifully composed, finely lined… illustrations.
No explicit nudity, but the entangled bodies, the hazy eyes, the tension of "refusing yet inviting"—it was somehow more stimulating than outright pornography.
"What—what is this hellish thing?!" Kiana yelped.
This felt more terrifying than seeing a Honkai beast.
"T-two men?! And that pose… this is what you call art?!"
"Calm down." Su Yu snatched the phone back with lightning reflexes and swiped away the image with a perfectly straight face. "This is '**'—a contemporary internet cultural… uh… treasure."
"Teacher Huishi may be young, but in that circle she's basically a grandmaster. Especially when it comes to… delicate emotional entanglements. That's her specialty."
Kiana's expression looked like she'd swallowed an entire lemon.
"A ten-year-old drawing this… what is wrong with your world?"
She felt her worldview collapsing in real time.
"Don't ask. The answer is: genius." Su Yu put his phone away and clapped his hands once. "Bottom line: we need her skills to present Three Years of Sakura. But getting Teacher Huishi to accept a commission isn't easy. If we go through normal channels, she'll never admit she's Huishi."
"Then what are you planning?" Kiana asked.
A sly light flashed in Su Yu's eyes.
"So—Kiana. For the sake of our manga empire… let's go stake out Griseo."
Kiana looked at him, face complicated.
"…Stake out?"
"Tomorrow afternoon," Su Yu said. "We wait at the gate of Sky Elementary and pick her up after school."
Silence hung for a few seconds.
"You're serious?" Kiana's voice rose in disbelief. "Two adults wandering around a primary school gate—how is that not pervert behavior?!"
"Correction," Su Yu said calmly. "You're not an adult yet, Miss Kaslana."
"I—I am an adult! No—stop changing the subject!"
"Relax. I already arranged it." Su Yu waved his hand. "Kosma picks her up every day, but tomorrow he's getting a ticket to a mecha expo. He'll be so excited he'll want to camp out overnight in line. So the job of picking up Griseo will—perfectly naturally—fall to me."
Kiana stared at him for a long moment.
"…So it's legal pickup?" she asked at last.
"Of course."
"Then what did you mean earlier by 'stake out'?"
"Atmosphere building," Su Yu said with a straight face.
Kiana's eyelid twitched.
She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but in the end she just sighed, kept chewing her apple, and muttered:
"You… can you stop talking like you're about to drop a bomb every sentence?"
It was the longest evaluation she'd given Su Yu in days.
....
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