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When Shang Tao saw the shocked expression on Vice President Zhao's face, he finally understood.

This issue's storyboard was settled!

The Manga Award and the website launch date! Neither needed to be changed!

So he immediately broke into a grin.

"Stop grinning like that. I'm asking you! What exactly is that AORI line about?"

But Zhao Fang Sheng did not smile. Instead, he set down the storyboard and asked very seriously,

"Editor Tang wrote it."

Shang Tao slightly suppressed his inner delight and replied.

Zhao Fang Sheng confirmed again, "She really wrote it? It wasn't Ou Congquan? Are you sure?"

Hearing this, Shang Tao became intermittently unsure of himself. He grew a little more serious, secretly glanced at Zhao Fang Sheng, and asked, "What exactly happened? Vice President Zhao, is there something wrong with the storyboard?"

"..."

Zhao Fang Sheng lowered his head and glanced silently at the storyboard in his hands. He did not answer, instead saying something completely unrelated, "Girl, Boy, and Sword is one of the most important works in the company. From the moment I became vice president... or rather, even before I joined the company, I had been following this work.

"I believe that as long as they work in the industry, most editors wouldn't overlook the flagship works that several major magazines rely on to achieve good results. Whether they liked them, or wanted to learn from and reference their successful experience, they would pay some attention to them and take a look. Ding Yilong's case was actually the minority."

Shang Tao said nothing. He knew the vice president had not finished, so he waited with great tact.

"I'm one of those people too. I would read the excellent works in the major magazines. After joining the Literature Magazine, because it was our own magazine, I paid even more attention. No matter how busy I was, I would read most of the works, including occasionally flipping through the shoujo manga. And this flagship work of the Literature Magazine..."

Zhao Fang Sheng lightly raised the storyboard in his hands and continued, "I can say that I know it inside and out. I have a general understanding of Ou Congquan's drawing skills, ideas, and methods of advancing the plot.

"To a certain extent, he's a pure person. Put another way... he really doesn't have many ideas. As long as you've followed him for long enough and read enough of his work, you can practically guess how he'll draw what comes next just by looking at the opening.

"Moreover, he rarely pays attention to certain details. The reason the interaction between the second male lead and the heroine caused such a huge controversy this time was actually related to his long-standing habits. He was the kind of manga artist who simply never cared about the sense of distance between characters.

"Perhaps he thought that sense of distance was unimportant, but readers didn't think so."

Zhao Fang Sheng took a deep breath and continued, "But in this issue's storyboard, he had started paying attention to that sense of distance.

"And even his method of advancing the plot had changed. It didn't resemble him at all."

Shang Tao hesitated. "Isn't that a good thing?"

"It is a good thing, but..."

Zhao Fang Sheng furrowed his brows, his face filled with confusion. Slowly, he said, "You don't know how shocking this is to people who understand him... Ou Congquan developed the plot entirely according to that AORI line from the previous issue. He introduced the concept of a malicious collective and attributed all that pile of shit from the previous issue to hallucinations.

"Moreover, after a brief transition, he shifted into the heroine's hallucination. He was clever enough to make it so that there was only the male lead in her hallucination. Even after being influenced by the 'malicious collective,' no second man appeared. All she could see was the male lead's back, and what she feared most deep down was the male lead's death.

"As for the second male lead from the previous issue, who readers felt had cuckolded the protagonist, his hallucination did not involve the heroine at all. She did not appear in it whatsoever. Instead, his dead mother appeared. That even filled in the character's earlier backstory—the previous serialization had mentioned that he was haunted by his mother's death, but afterward, it seemed as if he had forgotten that setting.

"This was incredibly clever. You could say that after the development in the previous issue, he had taken it to the extreme. Not only did he avoid the minefields, he also did his best to eliminate the impact of the previous issue's development, telling readers that it had merely been the male lead being suspicious... It even left behind a hook, a hook to lay the groundwork for what comes next. I'm already starting to look forward to how the male lead will resolve his inner demons after the hallucination ends, and how he'll face the heroine and the second male lead."

"Uh..."

Shang Tao understood. After all, he read manga too. He asked quietly, "Isn't that still a good thing?"

"But this doesn't resemble Ou Congquan's usual style."

Zhao Fang Sheng was silent for a moment before replying, "It doesn't resemble him in the slightest. Even if he introduced the concept of a malicious collective, even if it was a hallucination, I felt that he still wouldn't have drawn it this way. I know him... But he had gone and drawn it exactly this way. His style was completely different from before. Moreover, after reading it, I immediately felt that the pile of shit in the previous issue had been intentional.

"It was as if he had deliberately drawn that kind of plot, only to reverse it in this issue."

"..."

Shang Tao faintly sensed what he meant. "Vice President Zhao, are you saying..."

"Yes. There are two possibilities. One is that Ou Congquan is seeking change. He's actively changing his way of thinking and his method of advancing the plot, which is why he buried such a huge landmine in the previous issue and reversed it in this one."

Zhao Fang Sheng nodded. "He deliberately fed readers shit, with a plan and preparations. That AORI line had also been prepared in advance, all for the sake of this issue's change."

"So that's why you asked whether that AORI line had been written by Editor Tang... You mean this entire commotion was a misunderstanding? We were worried for nothing?"

Shang Tao's eyes widened slightly. Then, thinking of Tang Yao's face, he gently shook his head. "No, no, no. I don't think it's very likely that Editor Tang lied."

"So there's another possibility. Either—after Ou Congquan drew a development like that in the previous issue, Editor Tang immediately finalized the AORI line. Then, following that line, she combined Ou Congquan's drawn development with his earlier serialization, added new settings, and, from the perspective of a manga artist, used her own ability to design this issue's plot. Not only did she connect perfectly with the previous issue's development, she also filled in some settings that Ou Congquan had already forgotten.

"And she accomplished all of this without communicating with the manga artist."

Zhao Fang Sheng lowered his head and looked at the storyboard in his hands. "But that's far too absurd... Do you believe it?"

It really was extremely absurd.

Zhao Fang Sheng was not Kang Ming, who would think this was simply an editor's job.

He had worked as an editor too... and was certain that this was fundamentally not an editor's job. Editors were not omnipotent. After all, everyone's ideas were unique, and words were sometimes pale and inadequate. Depending on their communication skills, empathy, and other factors, the information conveyed could easily become distorted.

What was more, quite a few manga artists had terrible communication skills and would deliberately hide certain things they did not want to tell others—private thoughts they were unwilling to share even with their editors.

That meant editors sometimes could not fully understand what manga artists were thinking. They could only offer suggestions based on the artist's requests and their discussions, such as which direction the artist should draw in.

How could there be anything like this... You insisted on drawing a plot as shitty as that, refused to communicate, and then expected the editor to go back through your previous serialization, figure out what you were thinking, combine it with the piece of shit you had drawn in the previous issue, and design the plot for the next issue.

That was practically enough to make her the original creator!

It was far too absurd!

What Vice President Zhao did not know was that this really was absurd to him, but for Tang Yao... it was not like that.

The moment she arrived in this world, she had noticed it. The literary and artistic works of various genres in this parallel world, whether their settings or storylines, were all rather immature. As for the use of various tropes, they were practically at the infant level.

Take a simple example... the trope of showing off and slapping faces. This world was still using the classic template: the snobbish waiter who looked down on people, the arrogant and brainless rich second-generation heir on the street, and the smug, superior jerk at a class reunion.

You could basically guess where the plot was going after watching for a little while.

So, to a certain extent, Tang Yao, an 'outsider,' could basically achieve dimensional suppression when looking at most of the works in this parallel world.

"...That really is impressive."

Shang Tao had completely understood. He was similarly shocked. "I never thought it could be done this way..."

"...You believe it?"

"I believe it."

"..."

Hearing Shang Tao's decisive reply, Zhao Fang Sheng did not respond. He only stared at the storyboard in his hands, looking conflicted.

Although he wanted to believe it too.

But his common sense told him... This fucking couldn't be possible!