Chapter 16: The Manga Updated a Lot
[Opening the passage for you... Welcome back to reality.]
...
At midnight, the manga 《Extreme Black and White》 updated with a new chapter.
As the notification bell for followed updates rang, Li Li rubbed her eyes, lifted her head, and fumbled for her phone on the desk.
Just moments ago, she had been nervously fleeing inside Qing Tong.
Now, with a blink, she saw her familiar desk and lamp.
The warm yellow light illuminated this small corner of her world, and Li Li also noticed the sticky-note plans she had posted on the wall.
A very comforting feeling. She thought.
Like last time, she didn’t rush to read the update.
Instead, she reviewed the PPT she needed to prepare for tomorrow’s class, waiting for the comment count to rise before opening the manga.
The manga picked up from where the last conversation ended.
Before going to bed that night, she had instructed Little Corgi to sleep on the floor, openly claiming the bed, while Little Corgi didn’t mind at all and even fully supported it.
[I think Li is just teasing Little Corgi]
[You’re not alone there]
[Li, you’re so subtly flirty hahahahaha]
[That swaying ahoge, pulling pranks with a blank face, too cute hahaha]
[I want to pluck that ahoge—no, I want to be teased by Li, I’m cute too!]
[Woof woof woof!]
[The one before accidentally spilled their heart]
[Woof woof woof! Li, I can be a puppy too! Tease me, tease me!]
This overwhelming wave of goofy energy fully convinced Li Li she was reading a manga.
She reviewed her own actions through the manga’s perspective, nodding while wondering who this handsome guy was.
Then a C-rank ability user took Li away in front of Little Corgi.
The panels showed three large speech bubbles plus inner thoughts, depicting Yiming’s anger and worry.
He even feared he might never see Li again, anxiously pacing in circles in the pitch-black room, his eyes constantly darting to the door, his mind wrestling with whether to just escape.
In contrast to his burning anxiety, the readers were laughing and having a blast.
[Friends, doesn’t this look like a Little Corgi anxiously waiting for its owner to come home?]
[Those pleading Corgi eyes]
[Li, come back quick! This Little Corgi wants to wreck the house!]
Li Li flipped to the next page while reading the comments, and then she saw Yiming, as the barrage had predicted, wrecking the house.
After waiting for a while, Yiming broke Qing Tong’s door, trying to slip out.
Then he ran straight into Qing Yu Chen, who had come to the commodity housing area.
Yiming had mentioned this to Li Li, but she only now learned the details from the manga.
It was roughly around the time she had warned Qing Yu Chen not to pry into her affairs.
In the panels, Qing Yu Chen’s towering height of over 1.8 meters exuded immense pressure.
Half his face was cast in shadow, with faint bloodshot veins in his eyes, and he raised his chin with arrogant disdain.
The moment Yiming saw Qing Yu Chen, for some reason, his feet felt rusted to the ground, unable to move.
‘Is this the control the boss mentioned?!’ It was his first time directly facing Qing Yu Chen’s control; the last time, he had simply lost consciousness.
“How did he get out?” Qing Yu Chen didn’t even spare Yiming a glance, turning to scold the C-rank ability user.
The C-rank ability user lowered his head and said, “I don’t know.”
“Useless.” Qing Yu Chen cursed.
The next second, Yiming’s legs moved on their own, walking toward the room where he was confined.
He would be locked up again, and this trip out was utterly pointless.
At that moment, Yiming gritted his teeth, turned his head, and shouted with all his might: “What did you do to Li? He’s already injured.
If you have to punish someone, come at me. I can take Li’s place!”
He was genuinely worried about Li.
Seeing this part, Li Li started thinking about what she had been doing at that time.
She had gone to eat Jiao Huang’s specialty xiaolongbao, filled with squid and pork.
Thinking about it in the middle of the night made her a bit hungry.
Meanwhile, the barrage was dominated by power-scaling fans arguing.
[Is the villain this strong? It ended without a fight?]
[How do you even play this? Controlled in one glance, can’t do anything.]
[The C-rank beside didn’t even make a move, and the protagonist didn’t get a chance to miss an attack.]
[Protagonist team: Corgi’s D-rank, and according to big shots’ analysis, Li is either D or E. This round’s unplayable.]
[Is the Jiao Huang arc the hardest hell-level dungeon right now?]
[Compared to an A-rank big shot, who’s stronger?]
[Don’t compare across ranks. Obviously, the A-rank big shot. Qing can’t control someone above his rank.]
[A-rank obliterates him.]
[A-rank obliterates him.]
[A-rank obliterates him.]
The front said Li was weak, followed by rows of “A-rank obliterates him.”
Li Li: Thanks for the love.
Is it possible that the A-rank and Li are the same person and still can’t beat Qing Yu Chen?
Non-ability user Li Li was, as always, fretting today about how to gain an ability.
On the next page, after Yiming said that, Qing Yu Chen suddenly let out a cold laugh.
“Li?” His gaze was like he was looking at some ant, arrogantly fixed on Yiming.
“You?”
“You have no idea who ‘Li’ is,” Qing Yu Chen said.
“He doesn’t need your so-called ‘help,’ weak little Corgi.”
Li Li, reading this, gradually grew cold.
So Qing Yu Chen was trying to expose her behind her back when she wasn’t around.
Killing in front of her, probing her three times in total, and now leaking her alias behind her back.
He was still investigating her identity in secret.
This guy was truly just putting on a front.
On the next page, Yiming wasn’t swayed by Qing Yu Chen’s words at all.
The brown-haired boy glared: “I know Li is a good person, and that’s enough!”
He trusted his instincts over others’ words. If he felt Li was good, no one could sway him.
[Who wouldn’t love Little Corgi!]
[This is the bond of sharing a cell!]
[No, it’s father-son vibes (dog face)]
After this plot ended, Yiming was locked up again.
The manga transitioned with three black panels, then showed Qing Yu Chen again.
He was still investigating the source of the leak.
The manga revealed he had learned that Tang’s father had sent a letter before his death.
After receiving this information, Qing Yu Chen sat in his chair, his face dark and silent for a long time.
‘It’s actually...’
The dotted speech bubble contained only those three words before the scene shifted to the next part.
[What’s actually? Who’s what?]
[Playing riddles with me?]
[Report! Big shots on the forum have analyzed it!]
Li Li was curious about what Qing Yu Chen had uncovered.
She felt it might be related to why Qing Yu Chen suddenly left Qing Tong on the last day.
She noted this question and continued reading.
The next plot was Yiming planning to take Li out of Qing Tong, then stopping in the corridor to say to Li, “We can be family.”
Li Li, of course, had family—a single mother.
She had deliberately misled Yiming to misunderstand, but she hadn’t expected Yiming to overthink so much.
She took a deep breath and touched her chest.
Alive, beating.
Good, so she didn’t need a conscience.
In the panels, the overly long corridor held only the two of them.
The shorter boy grabbed the youth’s hand, his eyes earnest, his slightly chubby face showing a hopeful expression.
The black-haired youth’s mouth was slightly open, as if stunned.
Behind him was the corridor, an endless darkness.
Behind the boy was white, dazzling light.
[Say yes, say yes!]
[Little Corgi, you’re so good at this!]
[Li won’t be alone anymore!]
[Don’t know why, but my heart’s racing. Li’s expression is so cute.]
[Make him confused! Make him flustered!]
[Look at those bewildered eyes, that cracked cold face.]
[Dog teasers need to be ready to be won over by the dog!]
After the mangaka’s touch, this scene felt incredibly atmospheric, but it also made Li Li feel it wasn’t quite real.
She touched her face, looked for a bit, then propped her chin: “This wave should boost my popularity a lot.”
After all, she had just been promoted to the protagonist’s big brother.
Free popularity—why not take it? But if it meant fully tying herself to the protagonist team, Li Li wasn’t too keen.
From the start, she hadn’t planned to stick with Yiming through the plot.
There were many reasons, the biggest being she didn’t like being arranged.
“If I can gain an ability in the manga world tomorrow, I’ll slip away. If not, I’ll stick with Yiming and lay low.” Li Li made a simple plan but didn’t hold much hope.
Plans had too many variables.
Many things in the manga world weren’t shown in the manga.
Li Li felt that, in the end, she’d have to adapt on the fly.
Speaking of which, she still needed a highlight moment...
Giving candy wasn’t a highlight in her mind.
She had only done it to fit her character and the situation.
But the manga showed it from Tang’s perspective, and in the little girl’s eyes, her figure seemed toweringly grand.
Especially that ordinary fruit candy from the system shop—it seemed to shimmer like starlight.
【Wall! My new wall! I also want candy!】
【On the surface: Cold. Behind the scenes: Don’t cry, here’s candy.】
【Hallucinating a certain iceberg biting a handkerchief inwardly, heh】
【I’m totally charmed!】
【My hand for writing fanfic is itching to move】
【Pass the pen! I want to read it tonight!】
After skimming through the manga, Li Li couldn’t help but sigh: “This is like a whole month’s worth of content for other manga, isn’t it?”
The manga artist and I were both so diligent.
The artist drew diligently, and I performed diligently.
By the time Li Li finished the manga, it was already past one in the morning.
I set an alarm, planning to check the forum again tomorrow.
...
The next day, after finishing classes and returning to the dorm, Li Li found her roommate there.
When Li Li pushed the door open, her roommate was reading manga on her laptop, taking notes in a notebook.
The setup looked like she was studying something profound and complex.
“Yaoyao, researching manga?” Li Li asked casually.
To her surprise, her roommate nodded seriously: “Yes.”
She picked up her notebook and showed it to Li Li: “I still think you’re too similar to the new character in Extreme Black and White. Even your names are alike—it’s like you could cosplay her without even going to a con. I’m figuring out how you could fool the original if you wore it. A parallel world theory could work. For the ahoge, that tuft on your head should count. The deadpan face should be easy to pull off. As for that sultry yet cute vibe, you’d have to go by feel…”
Li Li reached up to touch the top of her head, indeed feeling a tuft of hair that had been ruffled by the breeze when she opened the door.
She fell silent for a moment, then covered half her face, flattening her lips into a forty-five-degree angle as she looked up at her roommate with a bullied expression, saying: “Babe, is this the vibe you mean?”
Her roommate waved excitedly: “Yes, yes, yes! That’s exactly it! Add some bloodstains, and you’re literally Ahoge Li!”
Li Li: “The one you know is probably Fanfic Ahoge Li.”
Don’t think I didn’t know what a ton of fanfic meant!