Chapter 141: The Episode Most True To The Persona
Qi Yuan and Zhang Lingye step forward!
Yu Wei didn’t expect that even with Qi Yuan’s fans causing an unfollow frenzy, Zhang Lingye still lost, and overnight the votes were reversed back.
Qi Yuan’s fans treated this match as a farewell performance, so they fought extra seriously, holding nothing back and even spending money very generously.
Yu Yuan had no trouble taking on five at once back then, and this time going full power, the octopus was no match at all; as soon as the horn of counterattack sounded, the battle ended.
Terrifying like this…
In this battle, Qi Yuan’s fans fought hearty and satisfying, getting to step on the opponent hard one more time before unfollowing, “dying without regrets.”
Poor Zhang Lingye was ultimately treated as a small soldier and supplemented, becoming the last page in someone else’s battle record screenshot.
The opportunity was right in front of him, and he still couldn’t seize it—truly no way.
With Zhang Lingye entering the quarantine zone, the first round of Top Streamer plot ends, and tomorrow is perfectly scheduled for the revival match.
In the novel, the revival match is thirty-eight into nine, but actually many matches are briefly mentioned natives; the real people written into the novel are just more than ten, perfectly in pairs to continue fighting in the arena.
The follow-up plot of Why Do Stars Care So Much About Ratings? can advance step by step; Yu Wei is now more worried about Qi Luo An’s book.
She drew fire for him…
Ever since the novel was discovered, many netizens thought that book was also written by him and went over to join the fun.
It wouldn’t have been a big deal originally; the novel gaining some popularity is good for him redeeming works, but this time his win over Chen Ping blew up, forcing Qi Luo An’s book review section to become the second battlefield.
There are too many people commenting on Yu Wei’s novel side, not to mention the fans brought by Top Streamer occupying the floor.
Many people send messages with no reply, so they found Qi Luo An’s book: “Yu Wei” this book has few people; just post here, right?
“Not a single comment talks about the book, sigh.”
Qi Luo An says the book is boring to write; put it this way, if she secretly curses readers in the novel, they probably wouldn’t even notice, because no one is reading the book—they’re all coming for Yu Wei.
Teasing aside, she still has to write her book; she started writing to help Yu Wei, with having fun as a bonus—she can’t put the cart before the horse.
“Everyone not chatting about the book, you should secretly rejoice.”
Web novels basically can’t stand close scrutiny; if it attracts a crowd to really read, there would absolutely be problems everywhere.
This is one of Yu Wei’s failure insights: the best comments are definitely complaining and playing with memes; if everyone really discusses plot, that’s very scary…
“Chatting about you is fine, but there are netizens fanning the flames, saying you crushed my grandfather and such, and some people actually believe it, then both sides start arguing—annoying as hell.”
This is undoubtedly one of the situations Qi Luo An fears most: everyone arguing with her ancestor over Yu Wei—who should she help? Waiting online, quite urgent.
Although she has no emotion with Old Deng, he is still an elder after all; without him there would be no her, so she has basic respect.
Don’t let Qi Luo An’s constant “Old Deng” fool you; deep down she still respects her grandfather.
“What grudge what resentment.”
Netizens are like this: chaotic good or even chaotic neutral, or even no stance at all; the starting point for many things is just for fun.
This group that watches the excitement and hates to see it end is sometimes more terrifying than haters…
Yu Wei didn’t dare chat much either; he was still busy rushing drafts. Malice is over ten chapters totaling more than ten thousand words per chapter, with the first chapter over ten thousand words.
The first chapter’s length is almost enough for what he usually writes in three or four days; good thing it’s all in his head, he just needs to type it out, much faster than his usual web novel writing.
He doesn’t plan to write Malice into his own novel; this thing is completely unrelated to his plot, stuffing it in would be very abrupt, and netizens would have trouble finding it too.
Yu Wei plans to open a separate book specifically for plagiarist novels, convenient for everyone to find directly, and separating it out also makes it easier to spread.
The key point: he doesn’t plan to sign…
Signing isn’t just rushing to give the novel platform copyright fees? Completely unnecessary; after seeing the work, anyone truly intending to cooperate will come find him.
He doesn’t want the platform meddling and adapting it into something weird; he didn’t plan to make money off this anyway—just release it for free to give back to readers.
Making them eat his crap every day, he’s too embarrassed; he must let everyone eat something good.
Yu Wei kept busy until two in the afternoon before finishing the first chapter plot; after confirming no errors, he created a new work and published it.
But shortly after the novel went out, the signing popup came; an editor noticed this book and asked him to add as friend to discuss signing.
Probably didn’t even review it; the opposite side saw his pen name and directly pushed to sign. The novel platform gets it too: Yu Wei’s novels get popular because he’s called Yu Wei, not because he’s that good at writing.
If it were another novel with ten thousand words per chapter, they’d probably not even glance; this clearly doesn’t look like web novel.
No signing, no signing, beat me to death and I won’t sign.
The new book is out but temporarily no one is reading it; after all, he never mentioned he was publishing a book, so readers don’t know he’d pull this.
Yu Wei thought about it and simply posted a single chapter, planning to promote it a bit: passersby don’t miss out.
“Opened a new book; those interested can check it out. Any future ideas will be written there, won’t affect this book’s updates.”
Simple paragraph, straightforward, hardly any promotional transition, at most casually mentioned it.
Shortly after the single chapter went out, readers’ comments came; if they remember right, besides the listing speech, this seems to be Yu Wei’s first single chapter.
Back when his novel writing first exploded out, with so many people surging in, he didn’t explain; looks like this 15,000-word new work isn’t simple…
“What thing is this, all mysterious.”
“Probably a diary, My Superstar Memoirs—this isn’t better than entertainment novels?”
“Who writes diaries seriously?”
They didn’t expect Yu Wei to write something new at this critical juncture; the outside world is all about his battle of the century with Chen Ping, and this kid is quietly writing novels?
This really fits the persona; all that entertainment industry music scene stuff was misplaced—Yu Wei truly cares about novels…
Though not skilled, it’s true love; daily updating this entertainment novel is one thing, but he even held back a ten-thousand-word new thing.
In this situation, Yu Wei’s behavior is like “unintentionally vying for spring, letting the flowers envy”; number one person number two person has nothing to do with him.
Being a star is just his work; novels are his life.
Such a maverick artist—they’ve never seen one in their lifetime…
But everyone loves Yu Wei for exactly this: persisting with self amid the entertainment industry’s hustle and bustle name-and-fame field, quietly writing stories.
Even if it’s a pile of new crap, for this attitude they have to go check it out!
The new book’s work name is concise as hell, just called Collection of Works; who knows what works exactly, but it looks kinda legit.
The work’s first volume is called Malice; the few who read Qi Luo An’s novel are stunned—there really is this book, so Yu Wei himself really is that author…
But the vast majority of readers are baffled, not knowing what it means, and can only patiently continue reading.
“The incident occurred on April sixteenth, Tuesday.”
…
What is this?
Shen Yutong saw the update and thought Yu Wei added an extra today; she heard from An An that this kid does daily two chapters except on listing, rain or shine.
Turns out no extra, just a weird single chapter.
If it were something else, Shen Yutong might selectively ignore, but stuff related to the book, she’ll take a look.
“Malice, huh?”
The novel’s first chapter is called Yenoyaguchi Shu’s notes, narrated entirely in first-person journal form; just this opening surprised her a bit.
First-person novels are hard to write as is, with narration entirely from “I”‘s perspective, easily leading to single-track information.
Many authors have strong expressive desires, over-describing and thus reducing role charm and plot tension.
What’s more, this simulates journal form; pure records definitely differ from novel creation, advancing plot only with language and action—not small difficulty.
But Yu Wei’s opening is very seasoned; the journal imitation is very realistic, with time and environment details quite spot-on.
Feels like he must have written a lot of diaries…
Shen Yutong was quickly drawn into this story; this chapter narrates in Yenoyaguchi Shu’s first person, recording his visit to old friend, famous writer Higashi Kunihiko.
Her thoughts involuntarily followed Yenoyaguchi’s perspective, getting an initial sense of the unpleasant Higa, that cold writer who poisoned the neighbor’s cat in the courtyard.
“Something’s off.”
Shen Yutong quickly noticed Yenoyaguchi repeatedly shows surprise and confusion at Higa’s behavior in the narration.
This deliberate emphasis instead seems suspicious, as if working hard to guide readers to agree with his judgment of Higa.
Did Yu Wei write a slip-up, or is this protagonist Yenoyaguchi’s intent?
And that cat mentioned at the start—why does Yenoyaguchi record this seemingly unrelated little thing to the visit in such detail?
Is this just casual filler, or intentional setup?
At that moment, the murder happened; Yenoyaguchi’s account of the murder process is very detailed.
He got a call from Higa inviting him over, but upon arrival found the house pitch black; entering with Higa’s wife Rie, they discovered Higa dead slumped over the desk.
At the first chapter’s end, Yenoyaguchi is locked as suspect by police, but he remains silent on the murder motive.
So this is a suspense novel?
If not for Yu Wei specially posting the single chapter, honestly Shen Yutong wouldn’t dare believe he wrote this; this prose this technique—could a failure write this…
But she hadn’t heard of this story before either, so Yu Wei has been hiding his skill all along—what’s the purpose, deliberately feeding readers crap?
Other readers who finished the novel’s first chapter think the same; they thought Yu Wei wrote some weird thing again, just wanted to skim, who knew the plot was so gripping.
Many readers are veteran suspense enthusiasts, having read plenty of Agatha Christie Conan Doyle, naturally spotting the narrative trickery in Malice’s plot.
This is a standard suspense novel trope: obviously, the culprit is the journal’s recorder Yenoyaguchi Shu himself—who writes diaries seriously?
But why did this kid kill his childhood friend—they couldn’t guess for the moment…
Could it be revenge by a cat lover? That’d be too hasty.
Other suspense novels hunt the culprit; Yu Wei straight-up gives the culprit—this leaves readers a bit confused.
Crucially, even spelling out who the culprit is, the story is still very gripping, luring them to read on.
“There are even quarantine zone viewers for this; how is a bestseller author so bad?”
“Shouldn’t the murderous failure be worse? This diary looks weirder the more you read.”
“Maybe the failure saw his colleague take off and went mad with jealousy, murder out of envy?”
“How possible; feels like neither is a good person, probably some grudge—wait for Yu Wei’s follow-up plot.”
The readers discussed for a while, growing ever more expectant for the follow-up plot—this is something they never dared imagine before…
What, they’re actually craving Yu Wei’s writing?
They originally wanted to urge updates, but saw people still discussing Chen Ping in the comment section—annoying however you look.
“Stop thinking about your entertainment industry stuff; can you let our Yu Wei quietly write novels? We’re still waiting to read!”
The replied netizen was stunned: Yu Wei’s readers’ tastes have been cultivated this uniquely by him?
Truly starved, they’ll eat anything.
Day nine of daily ten thousand, check-in.
Surely everyone sees it: chapter three is later each day, really burning out…
