The topic post was simple and clear, striking and eye-catching. In the short time that it’d appeared, it attracted a group of book friends with the use of ellipses.
And the original poster lived up to expectations, making a series of attacks on the post.
OP: “The day has finally come. Eunuch has bent.”
#1: “So a serious question. Is Sister Qian the male or female lead, and is Cunxing the female or male lead.”
#2: “Why does it have to be a female lead and a male lead? Can’t this story be #stories of me and my overbearing pet#?”
#3: “The one above is sharp. Same question. Who’s the owner and who’s the cute pet [doge]”
#4: “You guys are so boring. Now nine out of ten authors at Terminal are gay, and the remaining one male becomes female [despise][despise]. What’s so strange about Eunuch’s bending, it’s just going with the crowd, not worth mentioning. Be like me, I just care about how handsome Cunxing is today.”
#5: “And what creature Cunxing is.”
#6: “And whether Eunuch will update extra today.”
The posts were crooked all the way. Although the male readers smelled the smell of gay, they didn’t care. On the contrary, they took it as a joke and bantered about it. The bantering didn’t end there. They even began to play with the character column.
In addition to tags, character relationships could also be edited in the character column.
Su Mingqian’s character relationships had been added.
<ol>Lovers</ol>
Su Mingqian Ă— Cunxing
<ol>Master and Servant</ol>
Su Mingqian Ă— Cunxing
<ol>Besties</ol>
Su Mingqian Ă— Cunxing
Not coicidentally, Cunxing’s character relationships had also been added, and there were many similarities with Su Mingqian’s added relationships.
<ol>Husband and Wife</ol>
Cunxing Ă— Su Mingqian
<ol>Pet</ol>
Cunxing Ă— Su Mingqian
<ol>Unrequited Love</ol>
Cunxing Ă— Su Mingqian
Three relationships, two orderings, every word seemingly full of indescribable deep meaning.
Li Shuoxing was watching the novel page. In fact, when he just finished writing the chapter for today’s update, he felt something wrong. Nothing else was too strange, mainly the line “you’re mine” was a little strange.
But considering that the cub was really his own, he still kept the line and waited for the readers’ reactions.
If the readers’ reactions were too strong…
Li Shuoxing hadn’t yet thought about what to do if the reactions were too strong. He just decided to take it one step at a time.
With this look, he saw them bringing up all kinds of relationships for the two protagonists.
Forget the pet, master and servant, and besties in front. What’s the meaning of the unrequited love, lovers, and husband and wife behind?
Li Shuoxing: “…”
Are these readers a little strong?
In all honesty, I really didn’t mean that!
Li Shuoxing kind of wanted to delete these relationships. He thought that these things might cause discomfort to a group of readers. However, out of caution, he went to the book review forum for a visit before deleting them.
Then he found that no one was uncomfortable.
The book friend who added the relationships burst with complacency.
Other book friends were replying to this book friend’s topic post, and they did so extremely happily.
He clicked in one by one.
He found that the original poster was a man. And the ones replying were also men.
In the nearly one hundred gay-spirited replies, there were a mere two or three female readers. The ones playing were all male.
Li Shuoxing: “…”
He conceded defeat.
I lost. These readers are really strong. The strongest ones are you animals!
The animals were indeed strong.
But the female readers of Nine Crossings weren’t as calm as Li Shuoxing thought.
They were just not based in the discussion forum.
On Weibo, which Li Shuoxing didn’t pay attention to, Moonlight Happiness’s Nine Crossings fanart had nearly a hundred forwards and comments in the several hours after it was posted.
Among the comments, there was a hot comment that overtook the crowd with overwhelming likes.
“Today, not only did the official do foul play, but the discussion forum too… I almost died laughing at them. Do male authors really know what they’re writing these days? Do male readers really know what they’re talking about these days? What magical changes have they undergone!”
Further down from the hot comment was a friend of Moonlight Happiness, Sunny, who was also an artist expert.
Sunny: “Is Nine Crossings a novel from the male channel? Why did you suddenly draw a picture from the male channel?”
Moonlight Happiness: “This book’s really good. Let’s read it together!”
Sunny: “I don’t read from the male channel…”
Moonlight Happiness: “Read it, read it, it’s really super pokey. If it’s not good, I’ll cut my head off and vomit blood on QQ. That’s how confident I am!”
Then…
This Weibo post was forwarded to the home page of Deer Over Fragrant Grass’s alt.
Deer Over Fragrant Grass had just finished reading the latest chapter, and her heart was filled with ellipses. After she consumed it more visually with this exquisitely drawn fanart, the ellipses in her heart turned into tildes.
Eunuch.
I’m sorry.
It’s just everyone for themself.
The devil takes the hindmost.
And I just want to eat some food.
She confessed to Li Shuoxing in her heart for three seconds.
Three seconds later, she went down to call upon a fanfiction writer she played with well and hooked her.
“I don’t know what novel this is, but this master’s drawing is really super good-looking! Want to get to know it [heart] @Deep Deep Deep Forest”
***
Today was the last day of November.
In the game, the little person’s favourability points had accumulated to 930.
Li Shuoxing got on the game at the regular time and planned to sprint today to break through 1000 favourability points before December arrived. However, before that, he sent screenshots of the novel to the little person as usual.
The little person was really unexpectedly dedicated to looking at the novel data.
He not only looked at it every day, but also took notes every day, analysing it very attentively from lists to words, from bar charts to pie charts.
Li Shuoxing saw it once by chance and couldn’t help respecting him. Although he didn’t know how the little person analysed so many things, he had since remembered the task of sending screenshots to the little person every day.
But today’s screenshots seemed to have a lot to process.
Li Shuoxing was speechless as he looked at all the obscenities in the discussion forum.
He first screenshotted the first half of the chapter and the data for the little person, and then began sifting through the discussions below.
But there were a lot of discussions and a lot of obscenities.
Li Shuoxing carefully sifted for five minutes and was tired.
He didn’t spend much attention on the rest. Anyway, there was nothing too explicit.
The screenshots were sent to the light screen, and then from the light screen into the little person’s hands.
As usual, Su Mingqian skimmed over the comments. As he looked at them, he suddenly noticed something wrong.
In today’s discussion forum, why were many people saying that his relationship with Cunxing was as close as lovers?
Wasn’t the character Cunxing male?
Su Mingqian thought about it carefully and realised that he really didn’t know whether Cunxing was male or female.
The reason for the impression that “Cunxing is male” was only based on some comments about Cunxing being “awesome” and “bad”.
But who said women couldn’t be awesome and bad?
In fact, in Ximu’s mainstream novels, the relationship of lovers would only appear between a man and a woman.
Having learned his lesson from the last time he mistook Ximu as a female, this time, Su Mingqian promptly corrected his wrong thinking and defined Cunxing as a female.
Then he was a little torn.
He didn’t really want to date a female so early in the novel.
Even if he was going to date, he didn’t want it to be a female with a bad personality.
If it was possible, he’d rather… well, date a female with a personality he preferred.
Su Mingqian wanted to give advice to Ximu.
But he also understood that writing was a personal matter, and most authors didn’t like their works being interfered with.
As it happened, his reason for interfering was also full of selfishness.
Su Mingqian decided to be tactful.
He first confirmed. “Ximu, is this Cunxing a very important character?”
Li Shuoxing: “Yeah.”
Su Mingqian: “Will always be with the protagonist?”
Li Shuoxing: “Definitely.”
Su Mingqian got it.
It seemed like this really was the first female lead who would be bound to the male lead until the end.
In that case, if he didn’t ask now, it’d be harder to ask later.
He quickly probed, “Then can I say my thoughts on them?”
Li Shuoxing generously said, “Go ahead, say whatever you want.”
Su Mingqian: “In fact, I prefer those with a gentle personality who will quietly accompany me and always stand by my side to give me support when I need it…”
As he spoke his thoughts, he watched the position where Ximu’s voice came from.
He continued, “Their personality has a bit of a bad taste, but it’s a very cute kind of bad taste that you can’t help but indulge in. They’re also very emotional and need to be taken care of carefully. They’re strong, probably stronger than me for the time being, but I’m still willing… to take good care of them.”
As Su Mingqian said that, he got regretful.
If Ximu is female…
Alas.
Since dreams can’t be fulfilled in reality.
Then let’s look forward to fulfilling dreams in the novel.
After he finished, Su Mingqian asked a little apprehensively, “Is that okay? Would I be asking too much?”
Li Shuoxing was thinking. He didn’t know where to begin making complaints about the cub’s ancient taste.
Li Shuoxing: “Well, it’s a bit much…”
Su Mingqian fought quickly. “But I like it.”
Li Shuoxing’s tone softened. “Really? Then let me think about it…”
Su Mingqian steadily gained ground. He made persistent efforts, softly pleading, “I especially want to spend time with a Cunxing with this personality. Ximu, will you satisfy me?”
Li Shuoxing instantly gave in. “I see. I’ll adjust the personality later.”
Isn’t it just adding a little personality?
Super easy.
It’s a matter of adding a couple strokes.
But the personality the cub talked about is a little too soft.
This is my incarnation after all. I can’t be that soft. I still have to be a bit more alpha…
The moment Li Shuoxing agreed.
Su Mingqian seemed to see the image of himself hugging the soft girl Ximu.
He suddenly felt like his wish had been fulfilled.
A big +100 appeared on his head.
He was extremely happy.
Even his voice was unconsciously filled with laughter.
“Ximu, you’re so good! It’s snowing outside. Let’s build a snowman together when the snow gets thicker.”
The strong emotion from his voice instantly surrounded Li Shuoxing.
Li Shuoxing was infected by the little person and unconsciously looked out the window.
It really was snowing outside.
The first snow drifted down slowly, as light as a feather and pure white, just like the voice ringing in the air at that moment.
Li Shuoxing listened to the voice and looked at the winter landscape, momentarily a little confused between reality and virtual.
Until the system’s prompt sound effects rang out again in the game.
He took a look and saw the following text.
[System: Your favourability with Su Mingqian has exceeded 1000, achieving the system’s hidden task [Holding Hands].]
[System: You receive the following reward: Plane Ticket Ă— 1]
[System: You have achieved one of the conditions of use for [Outward Opening Window]. Please continue to work hard to achieve the remaining conditions of use.]
[System: The game will undergo maintenance tomorrow morning at 03:00–05:00.]
[System: After the maintenance, the system will start a series of Christmas activities.]