Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal!

"Wh-what?"

"Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal?"

Chu Yu often browsed information about works from the Earth Plane in the System Space, so he naturally knew Rurouni Kenshin.

It was a work that had earned a place in the history of Earth's manga. The complete Rurouni Kenshin cost an astronomical number of World Points to redeem in the System Space.

But add the words "Trust and Betrayal" after Rurouni Kenshin, and things were completely different...

In other words, the work Chu Yu had drawn this time wasn't the complete Rurouni Kenshin. It was only... one of its arcs.

"I got my hopes up for nothing... I thought the system had finally grown a heart, but it turns out it was just waiting here to spring a trap on me!"

Chu Yu stepped up to the work Rurouni Kenshin. Sure enough, the chains wrapped around it were only partially damaged. He reached out and touched the title.

The next second, a strange stream of information flowed into Chu Yu's mind.

Deep in his consciousness, Chu Yu could see the plot of Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal...

Before long, he was immersed in the arc's story, reading it in the depths of his mind...

Two hours later.

Chu Yu came back to his senses and returned to the real world.

His eyes held a trace of shock and lingering sorrow.

"So that's what kind of story it is?"

Chu Yu was still caught up in the ending of Trust and Betrayal, in Xuedai Ba's death.

The Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal he'd obtained this time was a tragic arc. After reading it, Chu Yu felt as if he couldn't quite pull himself out of the story.

Chu Yu usually only felt this way after experiencing a truly excellent work.

It took him a long time to calm down.

As someone who'd spent years reading manga, Chu Yu could generally tell whether a work was good or bad.

Putting aside the main Rurouni Kenshin series, he considered Trust and Betrayal, on its own merits, an unquestionable masterpiece.

And since it was a prequel, it was perfectly understandable even without having read the main series.

Chu Yu felt those eighty thousand World Points had been very well spent!

The only problem was...

"Trust and Betrayal only has sixteen chapters!"

"Though that's twice as long as The Garden of Words, it's still a short series."

"It's nowhere near the medium-length series Su Ruo said should run for at least half a year!"

Although the main Rurouni Kenshin series was long, Chu Yu didn't think that publishing Trust and Betrayal alone would earn him enough World Points to redeem the full series.

The Garden of Words was a case in point. It was worth two million World Points, yet even after five chapters had been serialized, it had only earned him a little over eighty thousand. Even adding the points he could earn from the two chapters that hadn't yet been published and the work's long-term returns, Chu Yu felt he was still nowhere near making back the two million.

Of course, its low returns were also related to the platform it was published on and how much effort had gone into promoting it...

"Sigh, I'll worry about that later!" Chu Yu was at a loss and couldn't think of any solution.

"Since things have already come to this, I'll just have to grit my teeth and go for it!"

"Su Ruo only said that short series were unlikely to get serialized in Man Ying, not that it was completely impossible."

Chu Yu shook his head and stopped thinking about it.

Since he'd already drawn this work, his main concern should be bringing it into this world as faithfully as possible.

He took a deep breath and checked the time.

There was still time. Su Ruo had told him to draw three chapters for the new series within two weeks. Honestly, that was a pretty demanding requirement.

Many manga artists had to push themselves to the limit just to finish one chapter a week.

Although Chu Yu already had the original story in his mind and didn't need to spend much time on panel layouts or plotting, simply reproducing the work, inking it, and applying screentone wasn't easy.

And Chu Yu's situation now was different from when he'd drawn The Garden of Words. Back then, he'd been on summer vacation and had plenty of time every day. Now he still had to attend school, so his schedule was genuinely tight.

Still, it wasn't impossible. It just meant he'd have to work himself to the bone.

With that in mind, Chu Yu didn't waste any more time. He went straight to his drawing desk and began working on the first three chapters of Rurouni Kenshin.

"Chu Yu..."

"Chu Yu..."

"Chu Yu!!!"

A stern voice rang in Chu Yu's ears.

Startled awake, Chu Yu jolted like a frightened cat and nearly leaped out of his seat.

Looking at the English teacher's displeased face, Chu Yu felt awkward.

He'd fallen asleep again!

"This is the third time you've fallen asleep in my class this week!"

"Do you really not want to listen to my lessons?"

The English teacher was a woman in her forties. She talked a lot, but she took her students seriously.

"Teacher, it's not that he doesn't want to listen to your class. He's been like this in all his other classes this week too!"

His classmates kept teasing him...

After class, Chu Yu struggled to stay awake, though he was still exhausted.

Ever since he'd promised Su Ruo last Wednesday that he'd try to secure a serialization seat in Man Ying, he hadn't had a good night's sleep in five days.

Every day, he went home after school, picked up his pen, and worked until the middle of the night. This week alone, he'd been caught nodding off in class by his teachers at least ten times.

If Chu Yu could keep drawing at this pace, he should be able to finish the three chapters a day or two before the serialization meeting.

But in his current state, Chu Yu felt that if he kept sleeping only four hours a night, his body would soon give out.

Qin Qianyv, seated in the row in front, turned to look at Chu Yu, who sat slumped in his seat, utterly exhausted. She was curious.

Qin Qianyv hadn't told anyone that she suspected Chu Yu was Shui Xin, a rising manga artist with some renown in Ming City.

After all, she'd only seen the original pages of The Garden of Words in Chu Yu's desk. She hadn't actually seen him draw, so her suspicion hadn't been entirely certain.

But Chu Yu's state this week had all but confirmed it for her.

Although no one around her worked in the manga industry, Qin Qianyv loved manga and knew some of the basics.

A page of manga had at least five or six panels, and a chapter usually had more than twenty pages—that meant over a hundred panels.

Within a week, an artist had to design all those panels and draw the original pages. After completing such a huge workload, they still had to apply screentone, make revisions, go to school as usual, and handle business with the Manga Company.

If Chu Yu really was the author of The Garden of Words, then his current state was perfectly normal. In fact, if he were still laughing and joking all day like an ordinary person, Qin Qianyv would have started doubting her theory.

Qin Qianyv took several manga magazines from her desk. They were issues of Ink Shadow, the manga magazine published by Ink Fish Manga Company.

After suspecting that Chu Yu was the author of The Garden of Words, Qin Qianyv had gone out and bought every issue of Ink Shadow that had serialized it.

Maybe it was just her imagination, or maybe the story really suited her taste, but after catching up on all the chapters of The Garden of Words published so far last week, she'd already reread them more than three times this week.

Now she was eagerly looking forward to the story in the sixth chapter of The Garden of Words, which would be published in Ink Shadow this Wednesday...

She seemed to have become a fan of a manga artist who was in her own class.

The thought struck Qin Qianyv as both absurd and amusing.

She quietly turned her attention away from Chu Yu.

That night, Chu Yu bought three cans of Red Bull and three cans of coffee. Another night of hard work lay ahead.

But it was only eight o'clock when he heard someone knocking on his door.

Who was it?

Chu Yu put down his pen.

He opened the door.

"Ta-da!"

Su Ruo stood outside, looking at Chu Yu with an expression that said, You didn't expect it to be me, did you?

"What are you here for?" Chu Yu asked.

"What do you mean? I'm your editor. Isn't it normal for me to come check on you?"

"Besides, didn't you say last week that you'd enter next week's Man Ying serialization-seat competition? So I came by especially to see how you were progressing!"

(I'm really sorry. I was watching the S9 group-stage matches while writing this chapter, so I was way too slow!)