Su Ruo's Shock

Since their last Weixin chat, Su Ruo hadn't bothered Chu Yu again. After all, the concept for the new work could only come from Chu Yu himself. At most, she could offer some suggestions after he'd finalized the concept. Thus, for the past few days, she had remained in stealth mode within Chu Yu's world.

"Isn't that stating the obvious?" Chu Yu said, annoyed.

"If I haven't even figured out the concept for the new work by now, how could I possibly draw three chapters' worth of manuscript for the serialization meeting next Friday!"

"Mhm... Correct. You seem very energetic, so it looks like you haven't been slacking off during this time..." Su Ruo said, nodding.

However, Su Ruo immediately noticed something amiss in Chu Yu's words.

"Manuscript... What manuscript?"

"Huh?" Chu Yu gave her a look as if she were joking.

"What manuscript are you talking about? It's the manuscript for the new work, of course! Didn't you tell me to draw three chapters of the new work before next Friday?"

"Did you specifically come here just to waste my precious drawing time on this kind of question?" Chu Yu said, annoyed.

Su Ruo finally understood completely where the feeling of unease she had sensed was coming from.

"You mean, this past week, you weren't drawing the storyboard for the new work, but you were directly drawing the manuscript for the new work?"

Chu Yu blinked. He seemed to sense something was off too. After a moment's hesitation, he said, "Ewww... Correct!"

"How much have you drawn?" Su Ruo looked at him with a strange expression upon hearing this.

"A little over one chapter! About twenty-five to twenty-six pages of manga," Chu Yu said.

"What?" Su Ruo's eyes widened.

"Twenty-five to twenty-six pages... in one week, by yourself?"

"Are you kidding me!"

"Never mind that for now. Where's the manuscript you drew? Let me see?"

"That stack on the table is it." Chu Yu looked completely baffled. What was wrong with Su Ruo today!

Su Ruo didn't waste any more words with him and rushed over. She carefully picked up the manuscript and began to read.

Her eyes fell upon the large characters: Rurouni Kenshin: Remembrance.

"Already hopelessly ill..."

"The era is like this, and so are people's hearts..."

In the quiet night, a handsome and elegant man sat alone by a stream, gazing at the night sky and sighing.

It was a simple scene, yet an oppressive and desolate atmosphere emanated from the sketch.

This...

Su Ruo's eyes turned serious.

The next scene shifted.

A group of women, with a child, were fleeing for their lives.

Behind them were vicious human traffickers.

Slaughter, a slaughter without any sympathy.

In the expressions and eyes of those human traffickers, there was not the slightest reverence for life.

The women and the child were caught, and none could escape the slaughter.

"Please spare the child..."

The women shielded the child, begging the bandits.

But their only response was swords.

After the last woman's neck was pierced by a sharp blade, she looked at the little boy with her final gaze before dying, saying in a weak voice.

"...Live on!"

Next, just as the little boy was about to be massacred, the handsome man appeared and cleanly killed all the bandits present.

To the man, he had merely saved one person in passing, but what was the use of that?

Such things were happening all the time in this world.

He could only save the person in front of him, but he could not save this already decaying world.

With such thoughts, he left.

But when he passed by here again the next day.

He discovered that the little boy he had saved had already buried everyone at the scene, including the human traffickers who had wanted to kill him...

After a conversation, the boy was taken in as a disciple by the man, who renamed him Kenshin.

The scene shifted again. Kenshin, now grown, indifferently killed a man one night. The man's final sword strike left a scar on his face.

The Man Before Death, a beautiful woman's face flashed in his memory, saying.

"Don't want... to die... Ba!"

This is where Chu Yu's drawing ended.

To be honest, Su Ruo didn't understand what kind of work Chu Yu intended to create.

However, after reading this short chapter of the manga, Su Ruo felt a strong desire to continue reading.

Judging by the plot in Chu Yu's manga, the location should be RB Island, and the time is set in RB over a hundred years ago.

Although in this world, RB has already been incorporated as a province of Dragon Country, would readers in Luo Province accept such an overt setting for the protagonist and the story's location?

Su Ruo didn't know, but seeing the Red Bull and coffee Chu Yu had placed on the table, she didn't want to pick on Chu Yu about this issue.

She believed Chu Yu must have considered this problem, and if he still set it this way after thinking about it, it meant the setting was indispensable.

So, putting these aside and looking at the content of this chapter purely from an editor's perspective, Su Ruo had only one thought.

"You're truly amazing!"

An hour later.

Chu Yu looked at Su Ruo, completely bewildered.

"So, when you said to hand in three chapters of manga before next week, you weren't asking for three chapters of manuscript, but three chapters of storyboard name?"

"Correct!" Su Ruo said.

Manga name, which is equivalent to a draft before manga creation, is something that roughly presents the storyboard and content of the manga.

Generally speaking, editors review manga manuscripts by first looking at the manga name, and only after confirming there are no issues will they ask the author to draw the manuscript.

It was also because Chu Yu didn't play by the rules and directly submitted seven chapters of The Garden of Words manuscript for his first submission.

So, Su Ruo subconsciously didn't treat Chu Yu as a newcomer and didn't explain in detail.

But upon closer thought, Chu Yu truly understood nothing except drawing manga.

Su Ruo would never have imagined that Chu Yu had spent this week drawing not the manga name, but the manga manuscript.

Even more outrageous, he had single-handedly drawn over twenty pages of manuscript in one week.

This had simply shattered her perception.

Her previous authors, even with several assistants, would struggle and complain about drawing twenty pages a week.

Unlike Chu Yu, who was practically a tentacle monster and a model worker in the Ming City manga industry.

He was going solo, preparing to draw three chapters of manga manuscript in two weeks.

And with Chu Yu's drawing speed, it was entirely possible.

"So what now?" Chu Yu was dumbfounded.

"I don't have to draw the manuscript anymore? Just drawing the manga name is enough?"

Thinking about how he didn't need to put so much effort into drawing something as simple as a manga name, and how he had been anxious about not having enough drawing time, even planning to pull an all-nighter with Red Bull and coffee, Chu Yu felt like an idiot.

"No..."

Su Ruo thought for a moment and said.

"Although it was a misunderstanding, it doesn't seem like completely wasted effort..."

"After discussing with you, I still don't fully understand why you switched from a fresh and light manga like The Garden of Words to this kind of work, nor can I judge the final outcome of this work."

"But one thing I understood clearly: is this work only going to end after sixteen chapters for now?"

"To be honest, that's still a bit short of the chapter requirements for serialization on Man Ying, but it's not too far off, and at least it's much better than the length of The Garden of Words."

"So, if you can present three completed chapters of manga, mature and brilliant, at next week's Serialization Meeting, I think... it would be of considerable help in competing for this position."

"But the premise is, are you sure you can finish the manuscript for these three chapters before that day?"