Blazing Hot

Late at night, Zhao Qinyin returned home after finishing her work.

Her home was in an old residential area in the east of the city, about a twenty-minute drive from Chu Yu's place. Thanks to Chu Yu's incredible speed at drawing manga, she usually went to his place after school and left around ten at night. Coupled with the time on weekends, a chapter of manga per week was generally completed with both quality and quantity thanks to their joint efforts. She usually got home around eleven every night.

Her life might seem boring and monotonous to ordinary people: classes during the day, working as a manga assistant at night, and then resting.

However, from Zhao Qinyin's perspective, apart from the initial few days after meeting Chu Yu when she felt a bit unaccustomed, she found that after some time together, she surprisingly got along very well with Chu Yu.

Moreover, the manga they completed together was actually being serialized in a magazine like Man Ying. Not long after serialization began, Chu Yu proposed the slogan of wanting to reach the top, and this slogan, in retrospect, didn't seem entirely impossible.

Although she wasn't the author of Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal, she was already very happy that the manga she participated in could achieve such success. The frustration from her past submissions being rejected had also largely disappeared.

She took out her key and opened the door.

It was different from the dark house she had imagined. Usually, her Grandmother would have already gone to bed by this time, but tonight was unusual. Zhao Qinyin entered the house and found her Grandmother watching television listlessly, with a family photo from when her parents and Grandfather were still alive placed beside her.

"Grandmother, you... why aren't you asleep yet?" Zhao Qinyin asked.

"I can't sleep. I was thinking about your Father and your Grandfather." Zhao Qinyin's Grandmother, named Wu Zhen, was over seventy years old, somewhat short, and stooped.

"Sigh, why did your Father have to get into that kind of trouble? If he hadn't insisted on drawing that darn manga, he wouldn't have submitted it to Shanghai, and someone wouldn't have called him to go to Shanghai. He and your Mother wouldn't have had an accident on the road, and your Grandfather wouldn't have been so angry, and..."

"Sigh, forget it, let's not talk about it anymore. It's been so many years."

"Oh, right, how did your tutoring session go today?"

"It... it was okay. Everything went smoothly." Zhao Qinyin tilted her head slightly.

"You're already in your third year of high school!" Wu Zhen sighed.

"That kind of thing, tutoring students from other schools who are falling behind, maybe you should stop doing it. You're in a critical period of your third year of high school. How can you have time to worry about others?"

"Although our family isn't wealthy, we're not lacking that little bit of money from tutoring. Your main priority is to get into a good university. You come home so late every day; you probably don't even get enough sleep!"

"No, it's... it's okay, Grandmother. Tutoring... tutoring others is also a form of review. It's even more effective than studying by myself. Look, even though I've been doing this part-time job for so long, my grades haven't slipped. In school exams... I've never dropped below second place!"

"Tutoring others actually helps with studying? Really?" Wu Zhen asked with some doubt.

"Let me tell you, you need to hold onto your grades. You can't be like your Father. He, well, his grades were poor back then, and he became obsessed with manga in high school. So, after graduating from high school, he found a master and studied that stuff for many years."

"After he became skilled, he drew those things at home for three years with no income. Later, a manga company finally agreed to publish his work. After he started earning money, he met your Mother. Speaking of which, your Mother was also invited to our home by your Father to be his... manga assistant. They spent a lot of time together, developed feelings, and then you were born..."

"Your parents spent half their lives dedicated to manga. Your Father even said he wanted to become a manga artist in Shanghai or even Japan in the future."

"And look at what happened. He never made it to Shanghai, and he was gone on the road..." Wu Zhen's voice became emotional as she spoke.

"All in all, if your Father hadn't gotten into that manga stuff when he was in school, and just studied hard, he wouldn't have dropped out of high school and would still be here now."

"Fortunately, you're not like your Father. You're much smarter than him, and your grades are good. All I want is to see you get into a good university, choose a good major, and marry into a good family. Then, I can consider myself to have done right by your Father, your Mother, and your Grandfather."

These words had been spoken by Wu Zhen to Zhao Qinyin countless times.

She also knew very well how much Wu Zhen detested the manga industry. Wu Zhen had always believed that her Father's death was related to his wrong career choice.

While her Father was still alive, she blamed his misfortunes on manga. After his death, she believed that choosing the wrong profession had led to the tragedy.

It was difficult to persuade someone who was stuck in a rut. Over the years, Zhao Qinyin had been unable to make Wu Zhen let go of her prejudice against manga.

Because of this, whether it was manga creation or being an assistant to other manga artists, Zhao Qinyin had always kept it a secret from Wu Zhen. Fortunately, her grades had consistently been in first place, and her income was decent, so Wu Zhen agreed to her "tutoring" period.

But how long could this situation be concealed?

Her entire life?

Zhao Qinyin felt lost...

The two chatted for a while. It was getting late, and they both went to sleep.

Back in her room, Zhao Qinyin looked at the snowflakes falling outside the glass window.

Thinking of the deception she had been perpetrating against her Grandmother all this time, a sigh escaped her lips.

In the end, she was still her Father's daughter. Although their personalities might differ, their interests and hobbies were surprisingly similar.

In Luo Province in December, the temperature plummeted. The snow that had started falling had basically not stopped.

But unlike the cold weather, the reaction of Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal in the Luo Province manga market was different.

After the first chapter ranked only eleventh on Man Ying, the second chapter leaped to fourth place, with a voting support of 14,000 votes.

Since then, although there were as many as twenty serialized manga on Man Ying, most works could only be described as lukewarm. In fact, the entire Ink Fish Manga Company was watching the four manga on Man Ying.

Ink Fish Manga Company's veteran author Shen Xin's Magic Realm, and Wang He's Tian Shu.

Dong Yun's Secret Girl, a top manga artist from Yuan Feng Yu who had switched to Ink Fish.

And the newcomer manga artist Shui Xin, who had never appeared before anyone and whose only contact was through her editor, Su Ruo.

The fame of Shui Xin and her work Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal was growing in the entire Luo Province manga scene. In the third chapter of Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal, a new arc, Lost Cat, began.

After their stunning encounter in the second chapter, the third chapter shifted scenes. The woman who met Kenshin in the rain fainted and was taken by Kenshin to his residence.

Kenshin also learned the woman's name.

Xuedai Ba!

The subsequent plot seemed to become somewhat bland, merely depicting the daily lives and memories of the characters Gui, Kenshin, and Xuedai Ba. Compared to the previous chapter's fight scene between Kenshin and his enemies on a rainy night and the stunning encounter with Xuedai Ba at the end, the excitement undoubtedly decreased significantly.

Many readers, who had been anticipating it for a whole week, seemed somewhat disappointed. They wrote letters and left comments on the website, urging the author to put in more effort and draw more fight scenes.

But even so, the voting support for the third chapter still surged, increasing from over 14,000 votes in the previous issue to over 19,000 votes in this issue.

This greatly surprised some within Moyu who believed the second chapter's success was just a fleeting moment.

By now, basically, most of the manga industry in Luo Province had come to understand.

Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal was truly a dark horse.

It had stormed into the Luo Province manga market with lightning speed this cold winter. With just three serialized chapters, it had leaped to become a top-tier manga among Luo Province's three major manga periodicals.

Moreover, although its current voting support ranked only fourth, anyone with discerning eyes could see that the manga's popularity was on an upward trend. At the very least, Wang He, the author of Tian Shu, who had already dropped to third place in the rankings, was feeling the chill...