After recording the full story of The Three-Year Sakura as a script, Su Yu didn't even have time to catch his breath before the frantically flashing red exclamation mark popped up on his retina again.
The bolded System prompt was like a loudhailer at a night market clearance sale.
[Congratulations, Host, on discovering the wealth code! A feasible path has been generated!]
[Congratulations, Host, on unlocking the scriptures of wealth! Yuri + Horror + Bad Ending Aesthetics = Traffic Password! Don't hesitate, serve up the The Three-Year Sakura manga first, and let these sheep of the peaceful era witness what a 'Warrior of Love' truly is!]
[Friendly Reminder: Whether it's manga, PVs, or visual novels, as long as you can drive the nail known as 'Honkai' into the brains of these peaceful idiots, it all counts towards mission progress! Begin your vigorous career as a literary plagia... ah no, cultural disseminator!]
"So... you mean you want me to feed this bowl of rice mixed with glass shards to the audience first, and then tell them if they want to save people, they have to come play the game?"
Su Yu rubbed the space between his brows and sighed silently.
"Truly the face of a vile capitalist."
[This is called User Emotion Management! Suppress first, raise later, understand?]
Screw you.
If you told him this System wasn't a veteran Captain who had been traumatized by miHoYo, he wouldn't believe it even if you beat him to death.
The light screen popped out a large "√", as if mocking his moral bottom line.
Su Yu casually waved away this lump of light pollution and turned to look at Kiana not far away.
Kiana sat at the other end of the sofa, knees curled up, holding half an apple in her hand. She took a bite, her gaze falling on some non-existent point outside the window, chewing very slowly, as if mechanically completing a task.
When there was no work, she would often zone out like this. She didn't play on her phone, didn't watch TV; she just sat there and stared into space.
Although Su Yu had tried to find some entertainment to relieve her boredom, Kiana said she wasn't in the mood. It was probably only when eating every day that she would reveal an expression like a "stupid Paramecium."
Su Yu knew she had too many things and emotions to digest. Although time was a good medicine, good medicine also needed time.
"Kiana."
The white-haired girl's shoulders trembled slightly, and her gaze turned over.
"...Mn?" Her tone was still flat, but at least it wasn't that completely dissociated state anymore.
"The Three-Year Sakura can be released as a manga first." Su Yu looked at her. "Yuri, suspense, horror, school bullying, Honkai catastrophe... it really suits the current taste for the bizarre."
Kiana's expression stiffened for a moment.
That story was one she had told personally. Asakura Miyuki, twisted love, school bullying, a Honkai berserk event—and finally, the girl she had ended with her own hands.
"Something like this... will people really want to read it?" Her voice was somewhat dry.
"Too many." Su Yu answered with certainty. "In this day and age, people's lives are too comfortable, so they need some mental stimulation. Trust me, once the manga is released, the comment section will definitely be full of people crying and shouting 'This is so shippable' and 'The angst is killing me.'"
Finally, he made a conclusion about contemporary netizens—"Because the essence of humanity is being a repeater and a masochist."
"...Do the people in your world have something wrong with their brains?" Kiana muttered in a low voice and took another bite of her apple.
"That's called spiritual masochism." Su Yu shrugged. "But having a story isn't enough; we need an artist."
His gaze fell in the direction of the Golden Courtyard outside the window.
"And, I already have the perfect candidate."
"Kiana, for the sake of our grand manga enterprise, let's go squat and wait for Griseo, shall we?"
Kiana looked completely bewildered: "Who?"
"That little girl who lives in the Golden Courtyard and holds a drawing board all day long."
Su Yu swiped a few times on his phone.
"About... this tall?"
"A child?" Kiana looked at him. "You want a child to draw manga?"
"Don't underestimate her." Su Yu's tone became mysterious. "That girl's pen name is Teacher Painted World, a resounding big shot on the internet. Her art style is exquisite, full of emotion, and she has hundreds of thousands of fans."
He paused, adding meaningfully.
"And she is particularly good at drawing... certain special subjects."
Su Yu unlocked his phone screen, clicked open a homepage named "Painted World," and handed it to Kiana.
Three seconds later.
"Pfft—Cough, cough, cough!"
A piece of apple got stuck in Kiana's throat; she coughed violently, her face flushing red, and nearly threw the phone away.
On the screen, two beautifully composed, exquisitely lined... BL illustrations were clearly visible. Although there was no exposure of private parts, the entangled limbs, the blurred eyes, and the tension of wanting to refuse yet welcoming it were simply more stimulating than explicit content.
"W-what the hell is this thing!"
Kiana felt this was simply more terrifying than seeing a Honkai Beast.
"T-two men? And this pose... this is the art you were talking about?!"
"Calm down, this is called 'BL', a... uh, treasure of contemporary internet culture."
Su Yu caught the phone with quick eyes and hands, calmly swiping away that image.
"Although this Teacher Painted World isn't very old, she is a grandmaster-level figure in the circle. Especially this kind of... delicate emotional entanglement, it's her specialty."
Kiana's expression looked like she had swallowed a whole lemon: "A ten-year-old child drawing this kind of... what on earth is wrong with this world?"
She felt her worldview collapsing.
"Don't ask, the answer is genius." Su Yu put away his phone and clapped his hands. "Anyway, we need her drawing skills to present The Three-Year Sakura. But it won't be easy to get Teacher Painted World to take the commission; she definitely won't admit her identity through normal channels."
"Then what do you plan to do?"
A cunning light flashed in Su Yu's eyes.
"So—Kiana, for the sake of our grand manga enterprise, let's go squat and wait for Griseo."
Kiana looked at him, her expression complex.
"...Squat and wait?"
"Tomorrow afternoon, we pick her up from school at the gate of Arc City Elementary."
Silence lasted for a few seconds.
"Are you serious?" Kiana's voice carried disbelief. "Two adults loitering at an elementary school gate, isn't that perverted behavior?"
"Correction, you aren't an adult yet, Miss Kaslana."
"I-I'm already an adult! No wait, stop interrupting!"
"Don't worry, I've already arranged it." Su Yu waved his hand. "Kosma picks her up every day, but tomorrow he will receive a ticket to a mecha exhibition, so excited that he'll want to queue up all night. So the task of picking up Griseo will logically fall to me."
Kiana stared at him for a good while.
"...So it's a legal pick-up?"
"Of course."
"Then what did you mean by 'squatting' just now?"
"Setting the mood," Su Yu said solemnly.
The corner of Kiana's eye twitched.
She opened her mouth, seeming to want to say something, but in the end, she just sighed and continued gnawing on the apple in her hand.
"You... can you not speak with such dramatic pauses?"
This was the longest evaluation she had given Su Yu in the past few days.
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