I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

As in previous years, nearly half of the pairs had already fallen over at the very start. However, such mistakes did not happen to Chen Junqian and Lin Mu's duo. The two of them adjusted their breathing rhythm and pace almost instantly, muttering rhythms and slogans like "one two one two one" under their breath. From the side, it looked like they were walking briskly.

"If there are no problems with the start, then the next step is to see how the acceleration phase goes."

Since it was his good friend participating, Zhong Yu, who had been playing in the audience for almost the entire day, also took on the role of a guest commentator.

In fact, if Lin Mu hadn't interfered, he would have been quite interested in inviting Chen Junqian to participate in the project together, so he had done some research beforehand.

Seeing the puzzled look from his classmate, Zhong Yu quickly explained:

"If you want to win the championship, then the three-legged race will definitely be a process of acceleration. After adapting to each other's rhythm, in order to widen the gap, you must increase your speed. In addition, the influence of the opponents next to you will subconsciously generate the idea of ​​urging and speeding up the pace. If it is a normal race, this idea is definitely not a problem, but the three-legged race is different."

"The two people must be in sync, even if they are speeding up. If one person loses their rhythm, at best they will be forced to stop and readjust their rhythm, and at worst they may fall down."

As Zhong Yu predicted, after the initial starting phase, the leading classes all began to accelerate simultaneously.

"Actually, the biggest problem right now is that Qian'er and his little girl... cough, Lin Mu has a height difference. I don't know how they will solve it."

Zhong Yu, who was about to casually tease his girlfriend, hadn't even said a word when he noticed another classmate surnamed Xu next to him who was giving him death stares every now and then. He quickly swallowed his words and even added, "If you were partnered with Xu Youwei, these problems wouldn't exist."

Even so, Xu Youwei's mood didn't improve much, because the two people on the track had already quickly adjusted their postures.

Chen Junqian first put his left arm around Lin Mu's shoulder. In fact, his hand had been there since the start of the race, but this time the action changed from putting his arm around Lin Mu's shoulder to a tighter hug. Lin Mu also leaned over and wrapped his arms around Chen Junqian's waist.

The next instant, Chen Junqian began to accelerate.

He forcefully seized control of the "foot" that the two were tied together, and with a push of his right arm, he tilted Mu Mu's petite body a little more toward him. This position made the girl's other foot almost dangling in the air, while the tied foot was pulled along by Chen Junqian's strength, and the whole person was almost being carried along by the boy next to her with her feet barely touching the ground.

In this position, it's less like Chen Junqian and Lin Mu are doing a three-legged race and more like Chen Junqian is doing a weighted solo run.

Although it is extremely physically demanding, the effects are obvious.

The audience gasped in surprise, not only at the sudden increase in distance and the speed of the explosion, but also at the relationship between the two. From an outsider's perspective, the girl looked like a koala clinging to the boy, in an extremely ambiguous and alluring pose.

In fact, Lin Mu's face was indeed pressed tightly against the chest of her childhood sweetheart, and she could even hear his heartbeats, one after another, as if they were beating just for her.

Finally, they crossed the finish line together, but Lin Mu, with his eyes closed, still did not let go. Just like Xu Youwei, who did not stop immediately after crossing the finish line in the morning, he pretended to be unaware that the race was over, acting as if he had not realized it was over.

Even long afterward, she would still feel that this was the best sports meet she had ever experienced.

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring my phone with me then, so I couldn't take a picture.

However, it's possible that because cell phones weren't allowed at the time, it has been romanticized in my memory, just like a moment can only be truly measured for its value when it becomes a memory.

The autumn sports meet will end with autumn, and then winter will come. Time always urges children to grow up, whether they like it or not.

2011 has now entered its final countdown.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Invisible Hand of the Internet (Part Two)

In the last two months of 2011, the magazine "Zhiyin Manke" published several new serialized works.

Mi Er, who just finished his debut work "Great Love PROJECT", brings us "Ninety-Nine Eighty-One", a modern fantasy work inspired by the Three Kingdoms. Ren Xiang, who is still working on "Martial Arts Soul", has teamed up with Zhou Hongbin to start a comic adaptation of "Battle Through the Heavens", one of the most well-known online novels in China. The remaining two are "Romantic Legend", a four-panel romance fantasy comic for girls by comic artist HEHE, and "Rampaging Neighbor", a comic creation-themed work by Jile Niao, a webcomic artist.

If Chen Junqian remembers correctly, it was around this time that his good friend Zhong Yu began his life of buying every issue of Zhiyin Comic.

He initially watched it mainly because of the comic adaptation of "Battle Through the Heavens," since Zhong Yu himself was a fan of the original work. However, as he watched, he ended up following the serialization of several new comics that were released around the same time, and he liked them all. Even Chen Junqian, who was his deskmate at the time, started watching them too.

The timeline after his rebirth didn't seem to have any problems here, because Chen Junqian had just walked into the classroom with his schoolbag this morning when he heard the other person's loud complaint:

"Putting aside why Nalan Yanran was drawn with pink hair and pigtails, why is Yao Lao's appearance as a handsome old man with long hair and ancient costume? Where is the old man we were supposed to see? His name is Yao Lao, for crying out loud."

Sure enough, Zhong Yu was looking at the latest issue of "Zhiyin Comic" on the table. This issue simultaneously updated the second chapters of "Rampage Neighbor" and "Battle Through the Heavens", with the latter including the part where Yao Lao appeared.

As soon as Chen Junqian entered, Zhong Yu felt like she had finally found someone to complain to, and immediately grabbed him, pointed at the comic book, and began to grumble:

"Qian'er, look at what you've drawn! You've drawn Yao Lao like this, are you going to pair him up with Xiao Yanzi or something?"

"It's normal for comic adaptations to differ from the original work. The Douluo Continent comic has been serialized for almost a year, and it has been changed quite a bit. All of Oscar's soul skills and even his martial soul have been completely changed. There's nothing we can do about it."

As someone who personally experienced the early days of online novels, Chen Junqian is well aware that most online novels from the early 2000s were no different from Liu Bei's works, even Douluo Continent and Battle Through the Heavens were no exception. Therefore, when adapting them into comics, the comic artists themselves made drastic changes.

Moreover, judging from the results, it's actually not bad. "Douluo Continent" mainly stems from Tang Jia San Shao's own quirky sense of humor. After all, his earlier works like "Mad God" or "Zodiac Guardian" were even more outrageous. It's quite an achievement that Mu Fengchun managed to change Oscar's martial soul and Ma Hongjun's original settings to what they are now.

Battle Through the Heavens is actually not too bad. The main focus is on the adaptation of the characters. As far as Chen Junqian is concerned, apart from the character design of Yao Lao, Ice Emperor Hai Bodong seems to have been drawn as a young boy. Judging from the results of the two works, the adaptation is actually not bad. It's just that it was a bit hard for fans of the original work to accept at the beginning.

Thinking back, he was reading the novels "Battle Through the Heavens" and "Douluo Continent" when he was in elementary school, and the comics when he was in junior high school. More than ten years later, it seems that the next generation of children are still reading these two works, but the subject matter has changed to animation. At least Chen Junqian himself really did give up on this during the Chinese New Year at the request of his relatives' children, and then he was shocked by the extremely high number of views on Tencent Video.

"That's what they say, but the comic updates are so slow! Although Zhiyin Comic says it releases one comic a week, not every week's issue has the comic I want to read. That means it only comes out about once every two weeks. In other words, I've only seen the annulment of the engagement and Yao Lao's appearance in the last two weeks. When will the three-year agreement finally come out...?"

Perhaps feeling it was a waste to spend five dollars on a weekly magazine and only read a few pages of a single comic strip, Zhong Yu said this while starting to browse through the other serialized works.

Compared to "Stealing the Stars in September," which had already reached the final battle (at least at the time), had nearly thirty volumes published, and had sold over fifteen million copies, and "Star Sea Escort," whose story was gradually getting on track and had been serialized for quite some time, Zhong Yu, who was just getting started, would naturally prefer to read the latest works that had just begun serialization. And just like Chen Junqian remembered, he fell into the pit of several other new works.

At the end of 2011, the domestic print comic magazine industry was in its golden age of rapid development. After successfully defeating Manyou (whose representative magazines are Comic Show and Animation World) in the same field, Zhiyin Comic became the undisputed leader in this industry. Compared with Sa Comic, which is more female-oriented, and Comic Party, which is comedy comics, Zhiyin Comic undoubtedly has a wider audience and its sales have been rising all the way.

If Chen Junqian remembers correctly, at its peak in 2013, Zhiyin Comic magazine sold an unprecedented seven million copies per month. However, after the peak, it naturally declined, but that's a story for many years to come.

For readers like Chen Junqian and Zhong Yu, the main appeal of "Zhiyin Comic" in the past two years has come from its pursuit of adapting top-tier online novel IPs. It has successively acquired the comic adaptation rights to well-known works such as "Douluo Continent", "Battle Through the Heavens", "Ya She", and "Dragon Raja", attracting a new audience from outside the circle.

However, it seems inappropriate to simply attribute the success of "Zhiyin Manke" to the popularity of web novel adaptations, because during this period, "Zhiyin Manke" also continuously produced a variety of original comic works of good quality.

However, for a long time, adapting online novels into comics was indeed a good approach. Just like how web dramas and even traditional TV dramas began to target well-known online novels for adaptation more than a decade later, it was indeed able to attract a stable audience from the very beginning.

In Chen Junqian's memory, "Shenman", which will be officially launched and published next year, follows this path. Almost all the comics published in it are adaptations of well-known online novels, including but not limited to "The Throne of Gods", "Martial Universe", "X-Dragon Era", "The Best Housekeeper", "The Kind-hearted Grim Reaper", etc., and it has also achieved good results, with monthly circulation exceeding one million at its peak.

Just like traditional television animation, which is about to be crushed by the emerging online animation, the biggest challenger to print comics is also the booming emerging internet industry, namely online comics.

In fact, U17, which will become the largest original online comic platform in China, has been quietly online and running for more than two years. However, in 2015, when Tencent Comics and Kuaikan Comics were advancing side by side and dividing up the market, Zhiyin Comics, like Guoning's walnuts, belatedly tried to keep up with the times and launched its own online APP. Then it was completely wiped out.

In fact, after becoming an anime expert for two years, Chen Junqian had a clear understanding of the complete industry chain in Japan, from light novels to manga to anime adaptations. However, unlike the well-developed system in Japan, the adaptations in China were quite fragmented.

The print comics industry has seen the adaptation of online novels into comics, but the adaptation of comics into animation has not officially appeared until the last two years. This is the U17 comics platform he just mentioned, which is the biggest difference between it and the former.

To paraphrase a line from Zhuge Liang in the TV series "New Three Kingdoms," which aired over a year ago but remains controversial and will likely be revisited and criticized by various people on Bilibili more than a decade later, it would be: "Instead of adapting an IP, it's better to create one."

In fact, at this time, U17, which has been quietly developing under the shadow of the print comic industry, has already quietly produced excellent works such as "100,000 Cold Jokes", "Chrysanthemum Bee" and "Soul Street", and will officially kick off the era of online comics being adapted into animation in just over a month in 2012.

And judging from the results, the effect was even better than everyone imagined.

Even in his junior high school days, when Chen Junqian no longer watched cartoons much, he would still watch "100,000 Cold Jokes" with Zhong Yu. It was still updated monthly at the time, but it still managed to garner 800 million views across the entire internet. They would play with the jokes in it, such as "King Kong Barbie" and "100% of being caught by a blade barehanded." Together with the rage comics that were popular at the time, it filled their rather abstract junior high school life.

After U17 pioneered this approach, Tencent Comics, which possessed the Sharingan replication technique, naturally wouldn't lag behind. A year later, in 2013, they simultaneously launched their first web animation adapted from a comic, "Corpse Brother" (My Name is Bai Xiaofei), and also acquired a large number of web comic artists to begin subsequent IP development (represented by Xiaoxin's "Fox Spirit Matchmaker"). This pushed the concept of Chinese animation to a new stage.

Of course, all of the above also came from that senior figure in the domestic animation industry whom Chen Junqian had met in his previous life.

To be honest, for someone like Chen Junqian who only watched cartoons and comics as a child but never paid attention to the stories behind them, the familiar names mixed with the changes of the times did give him a sense of disorientation, especially after being reborn and standing at this crucial juncture again.

If the system hadn't made him the male protagonist of some romantic comedy, he might have actually wanted to personally participate in this era of change.

After all, look, he now has Xu Youwei who can draw, Zhu Wenyun who can write stories, and Mu Mu who can be a sugar daddy. With him on the side, it feels like they could star in a light novel with the theme of comic creation and animation adaptation right here and now, don't they?

And there really was such an entry in his list of unlocked achievements:

Of course, there are clubs in this world surrounded by beautiful girls.

In our most orthodox romantic comedy, there certainly won't be any big, muscular guys in the club who are drunk and naked. After all, who doesn't like club activities where all the girls are beautiful and only I am surrounded by them?

Whether it's the sharp-tongued, black-stockinged, famous light novel author senior, the blonde, tsundere, twin-tailed childhood friend illustrator, or the female lead candidate with a weak presence, or the noisy older sister and junior characters, they should be the classic characters and best actors in romantic comedies.

Condition for achievement: Found a club with at least three female protagonists who are suited for romantic comedy.

After watching Zhong Yu's recent issues of "Zhiyin Manke" with him, while he complained, Chen Junqian was surprised to hear about the same thing from Lin Mu again a few days later, after school at noon.

But it's actually quite normal, since Mu Mu has always been someone who reads whatever is popular and goes with the flow. It just so happens that during this period, because of Zhong Yu's big opening, "Zhiyin Manke" was all over the class, so she picked up the comic magazine again and continued to read it.

Has Qianqian visited your new house recently? How's the renovation going?

"The main renovation is almost complete. I've been buying other small pieces of furniture recently. This weekend, my mom and I went to buy bedding. The bed is much bigger than before, and we can't use the old quilts anymore. But since it's a new house, it's definitely better to replace everything to give it a fresh look."

"Oh, I see. When Qianqian goes there this weekend, remember to check out your neighbor's house. Maybe it's some kind of cartoonist's studio, just like in the comics, umm."

"Mumu is talking about the plot of 'The Neighbor's Rampage,' right? But that's just in the comics. How could such a thing happen in real life? My mom told me that the neighbors next door are just an ordinary family. They bought the house in the school district specifically so that their child could attend Ningzhong High School, just like me. That's all."

"Wow!"

"...Wow?"

"It's the female lead's verbal tic, you know. Don't you think these little verbal tics are actually really funny, Qianqian? Hehehe—"

After making those two adorable imitations, Lin Mu shifted the topic back to Xu Youwei:

"Actually, after I finished reading the first two chapters of this comic, I specifically asked Vivi, since she's a really good artist and takes art classes. So I asked her if she wanted to be a comic artist in the future."

"Well, then what?"

"She said she hadn't decided yet, but that's normal, since I haven't decided what I want to do in the future myself. But if Weiwei becomes a cartoonist, I can ask her to create a character for me, just like when I asked Wenyun to write our story. Hehehe."

“Being a cartoonist isn’t easy, and Yuwei isn’t even studying cartoon-related courses right now.”

“It’s okay. I’ll just pay for Weiwei to draw it myself. How about Qianqian joins me too? I heard from Dad that the brand you’re involved with is doing very well now. We’ll just ask Weiwei to do the work and let her be a cartoonist who can make a lot of money with just the two of us as readers.”

"That depends on whether she agrees or not."

After answering Lin Mu with a smile, Chen Junqian's tone also unconsciously lifted slightly.

Unlike the current transformation in the domestic animation and comics industry, he has genuinely seized a certain opportunity amidst the wave of internet development.

It's the end of November 2011. During the recently concluded Tmall Double Eleven promotion, [Sanzhixiongxu], which had only been established for a little over four months, achieved a total transaction amount of over eight million yuan on the day, winning the championship in the nut category. In the subsequent delivery period, it successfully shipped all 100,000 orders, creating a major breakthrough in the history of the domestic online food industry. Its total sales also successfully topped the list of nuts on Taobao and Tmall.

Judging solely from the speed and results, this is undoubtedly a miracle in the history of e-commerce, and it has indeed proven to others that this industry is indeed, as he and Zhang Xinghuo said, one of the next big opportunities of the era.

Considering the subsequent development of the three fierce creatures, it is no exaggeration to say that Chen Junqian only needs to sit here and do nothing to achieve one of his life's goals.

in other words.

He can now finally focus all his efforts on becoming the male lead in a romantic comedy.

Chapter 40: The Sixth Female Lead (Two Chapters Combined)

When Chen Junqian and Zhu Wenyun were discussing Yang Hongying's Mischievous Ma Xiaotiao series, they had a conversation about the naming of the characters.

In fact, when a writer creates a character, he always puts some extra thought into the character's name, and in this respect, Yang Hongying seems to particularly like homophones in English.

For example, the kind and innocent Angel is directly translated as the English word Angel, while Xia Linguo, who is elegant, beautiful, proud and sensitive and ranked first on Ma Xiaotiao's list of most desirable deskmates, is translated as Shiny girl.

However, this conclusion is clearly invalid for another girl with the same name as this character, who would squat half a floor below the entrance to the building where the two of them were located at a fixed time after class, eavesdropping on their conversation.

Gu Linguo was well aware of the origin of her name. It had nothing to do with any homonym of English words, nor did it reflect any clever idea from her parents. It was simply because her father's surname was Gu and her mother's surname was Lin, with one character added at random.

If he really had to find an English word to use for a homophone, Gu Linguo found Grim after flipping through the Oxford English-Chinese dictionary in his hand.

Grim girl.

Of course, this modifier can also be used to describe her mother's face right now, that always serious face, as if all the suffering had befallen her, staring right at her.

Although she had specially invited a good friend from her class to her home today, and her mother had also cooked a large pot of hot pot to entertain her, there was still a strange atmosphere in the house, which even Chen Xi, who was visiting her friend's house for the first time, could feel.