The scenes in which Zhao Youyue appeared within the work world were highly discontinuous. One moment, Xu Jing might be having dinner with her mother. The next, she was already sitting quietly in a classroom, studying. No one knew how many days had passed in between, yet in reality, that time had indeed gone by.
For Zhao Youyue, these jumps barely mattered. Her learning itself was continuous anyway. The author only ever drew her studying and never bothered to show exactly what she was studying. All of that was left up to her.
She could even memorize vocabulary while doing housework. If she ever had to handle yuan transactions, she could probably bring study guides along and work through exercises while getting pounded.
Or if she got into a car accident and broke her leg, she could calmly take out her homework, finish her assignments, and wait for the traffic police to deal with the situation.
In short, not even the end of the world could stop Xu Jing from loving to study.
That said, Xu Jing was still not a main character. She was only a supporting role. With what she herself described as a "kind heart," Su Li dug deeply into Xu Jing's background and opened up a side storyline for her. Some readers might not understand why Xu Jing was made to suffer so much, but in essence, this was all groundwork for the male lead, Yang Ming, to eventually take down Xu Jing.
The male lead of Pure Love, Yang Ming, was an extremely gentle and indiscriminately kind nice guy. He could not refuse any request made by a pretty girl.
The three girls closest to him were as follows.
First was his sister, Yang Qianqian, who was not related to him by blood. Her personality revolved heavily around her older brother, to an almost obsessive degree.
Second was his lively but scheming childhood friend, Li Xiaotong. She might not truly love the male lead, but she was used to controlling him and treating him as her possession.
Third was Liu Sha, a rich girl who fell from the sky. With an IQ of 250, an arrogant personality, and countless talents, she nevertheless had zero life skills. After running away from home, she ended up being taken in by the male lead due to a series of coincidences. As he took care of her, she gradually fell for him. However, being extremely awkward by nature, she refused to say it out loud. Her body, on the other hand, was very honest. She decisively transferred from a certain elite private school to the male lead's school, gaining the additional attribute of being a transfer student.
Aside from these three female leads with the most screen time, there were also several female supporting characters with their own side stories. For example, the male lead had a senior who was a literary and artsy girl. Because he was her loyal reader and noticed the loneliness hidden in her writing, he went to comfort her and treated her gently. From then on, her heart became completely tied to him.
In summary, almost every pretty girl who appeared in the comic either liked the male lead or was on the way to liking him.
The male lead even had a best buddy, a super handsome guy whose sexual orientation was male. This character clearly existed to appeal to fujoshi readers. In the actual comic, there was also a female character with a fujoshi attribute who constantly teased the male lead and his buddy, even using the two of them as material to draw BL doujinshi.
The main plot of the comic revolved around the male lead and the girls' relaxed and cheerful campus life. The girls would often end up being accidentally tripped by the male lead, ****, pressed against his chest, or kissed. Or, while wearing short skirts, their barely covered butts would land directly on the male lead's face. While blushing and feeling their hearts race, they would also slap him. On the surface, the male lead looked helpless, claiming it was the will of the universe. In reality, he enjoyed it immensely.
However, as the number of female characters increased, scenes of jealousy and battlefield like chaos among the girls became more frequent. Still, because the male lead was extremely dense, treated every girl equally, and remained a virgin, the girls fought without anything ever truly breaking down. Following the usual harem manga formula, this tangled relationship would continue until the end.
Otherwise, the story would choose one harem member to pair with him, whitewashing the male lead's scumbag tendencies to show how devoted he was to love. Of course, that required being prepared for endless reader complaints. With so many female characters and so many readers supporting different ones, why should the male lead reject all the other girls for just one woman?
Some readers complained even more bluntly. Why could the male lead not just take them all? There was no harem manga that confidently opened a real harem and pushed through with all the female characters. The author was simply too cowardly.
Now, the reason Su Li made Xu Jing's background so miserable was because she felt that, with Xu Jing's personality, it was basically impossible for her to actively fall for the male lead. What Xu Jing loved most was studying.
Moreover, she was Yang Qianqian's close friend. Knowing about Yang Qianqian's feelings for her older brother that went beyond ordinary family affection, Xu Jing would be even less likely to like the male lead. But as long as the male lead noticed her tragic situation, a nice guy like him definitely would not ignore it. She would owe him a debt of gratitude she could never repay. Then, being slowly conquered by his gentleness would feel perfectly natural, would it not?
In Su Li's recent serialized chapters, she increased Xu Jing's on screen appearances. Just as her assistant Zhang Ziqiang predicted, more and more readers began to find Xu Jing interesting. Quite a few of them were probably the type who insisted the male lead should be "all firsts, all collected." Seeing how pretty Xu Jing was, they demanded that the author let the male lead take her as well.
Some readers genuinely found Xu Jing interesting because of scenes like this.
The male lead once again followed the will of the universe and was about to accidentally use his divine falling technique to attack Xu Jing's chest. In the end, Xu Jing casually dodged it. The male lead fell flat on his face like a dog eating dirt, yet he just happened to glimpse under Xu Jing's skirt. He expected blue and white stripes, strawberry panties, little bear underwear, or maybe even an alluring camel toe. Instead, what he saw were conservative safety shorts, the most hated garment among men. Safety shorts.
Many readers felt as if they had been screwed by a dog when they saw this. This Xu Jing was seriously toxic. Not only did she dodge the male lead's Rito fall, she was even wearing safety shorts. How could a girl like this exist in a harem manga?
Complaints aside, the readers immediately remembered her. She was the most conservative, the most studious, and the most student like character in the entire comic. Her existence completely overturned every harem manga trope.
Assistant Zhang Ziqiang praised Su Li's handling of the plot endlessly. He believed she had elevated Xu Jing from merely "kind of interesting" to "quite interesting." The more conservative a girl was, the more male readers wanted to see her other side.
Hearing his praise, Su Li crossed her arms over her chest and said faintly, "You might not believe this, but she dodged the divine falling technique on her own. The safety shorts were her own choice too. I personally wanted to draw blue and white stripes."
"Teacher Su Li, are you messing with me?" Zhang Ziqiang asked, completely dumbfounded.
"Maybe it was just a moment of inspiration," Su Li said with a forced smile. "I thought this kind of anti trope would be more interesting, so I drew it that way."
As Xu Jing attracted more and more attention, Su Li finally decided to give her that tragic background. Once the number of readers supporting Xu Jing kept rising, she would draw the storyline where Xu Jing was conquered.
Yet when she made that decision, she did not know why she suddenly felt uneasy, as if another accident was already waiting just ahead.