Shift! The Side-Character Heroine

Su Li was rushing to meet the deadline for “The Strongest King,” at the moment. After all, it was a manga that was adapted from a web novel. Those web novels are all astonishingly lengthy. It may take years before she completes this line.

Su Li had sacrificed her working hours to illustrate “Chu Luoxun.”

Admittedly, she was a very diligent mangaka, because she was from a poor family. Her parents were farmers, and she had two sisters. She had taken up the role as the family’s breadwinner, ever since she entered university.

After discovering her talent in drawing, she had first used it to draw some H [1] Doujinshi, as it was fast, easy money. After all, she was a far better illustrator than she was as a storyteller. By this, she earned her first pot of gold, and she could not resist it since then. Whichever something became popular, she would draw an H Doujinshi version of it

Perhaps it was because of drawing too much Doujinshi; she had become somewhat frigid in reality, no longer being interested in men —

She could completely satisfy her desire by drawing Doujinshi!

At the same time, she would even be lining up her pockets with gold. So, what’s the point of having a man?

She had grown up poor. Often a time, she had to stifle her ambitions, due to various incidents where her lack of money had tied her hands up. Knowing how fickle a thing money really was, her money-grubbiness was now at inconceivable levels.

However, her “money-grubbiness” was different, compared to those gold-diggers. Most of them merely wanted to satisfy their vanity, or they could not bear the hardship of poverty. Therefore, they satisfied themselves with a sugar daddy.

As for her, the root cause of her grubbiness was the state of her family. She seldom spends the money on herself, and most of the income earned from drawing would be given to her mother. She sincerely hoped that her family could live better lives.

Su Li was indeed keen on bearing the hardship. A lot of drawing had honed her artwork and drawing skill. She was not an innately super talented illustrator either. Such talent would have produced the triple L – Luxurious, Large-scale and Leveled-up artwork, and not Doushins and H-manga, right?

Basically, commercialized products like manga are similar to web articles whereby the more one creates, the more income one gets!

Therefore, Su Li took it as a job, drawing 8 hours every day. Now, her productivity had increased even further, as she did not need to think of the plots anymore. Her brain would be filled with the inharmonious scenes whenever she does. Well, such is the side-effect of drawing too many Doujinshi ero mangas

Both full-time mangakas and web novelists knew that it takes a terrifying amount of willpower, if one seriously takes creative art as a job, and do it for 8 hours a day! That would be a massive amount of updates!

Nevertheless, Su Li persisted. Sometimes, she would even update two chapters of “The Strongest King”!

Her speedy updates only contributed to the huge growth of her fans. This corresponded to a sentence—In the era of the Internet, the speedy updaters are king!

Perhaps her success was coincidental, but her hard work was indeed the main contributor for her success!

Many creators looked down on her bottomless manner of licking tycoon readers’ shoes by not having her own backbone, yet, they could only salute her for her effort and willpower in updating!

After all, her goal has been to wholeheartedly serve readers, since the beginning. If every creator has their own concept of creation, then this would be hers.

Some readers, bolstered by the power of money had their own demands, hoping that “their words are meant to convey ideas.”

For instance, Han Leng, who would like to produce a monumental piece of work one day, believed that the purpose of his novel was to realize his unachievable dreams in reality. He was a self-indulgent creator who never spared the readers a glance. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. After all, someone is bound to like it.

Rosemary, Ye Hai, was another example. He projected his wonderful expectations of the real-life national Esports team. The death of Yu Shengfan was indeed the aftereffect of his hipster-itis in creating an iconic character

If it was up to Su Li, she would not have put her to death, right? After all, Xiao Yu was very popular. It would be a waste not to fully utilize her and cheat others of their cash!

Of course, she placed great effort into drawing Xiao Yu’s death, wonderfully rendering the atmosphere. It completely portrayed the scene in the novel.

This was no fault of hers. This was the self-discipline of an illustrator.

She drew “The Strongest King” with all her soul. It was her long-term meal ticket after all. How could she not be serious about her most profitable work?

Her principles were simple. She will draw whatever work that earns her a lot of money, and the more money it makes, the more refined her drawing will be, giving the paying readers their well-deserved God-like service.

In the case of those pirated readers with no fan points, she would be even crueler to them than other creators. She would delete their post and ban them if they commented on the manga, be it a good or bad comment. Who would want to listen to their bullsh*t?

Some had even said that her artwork was bad. She would take it lying down, if it was a bandwagon load of fans, if it was a valid remark like her own plotlines lacking fan service, but do not ever criticize her artwork. They were asking for trouble. It warranted a lifetime ban from her!

Even Rosemary, Ye Hai, would peacefully discuss matters with pirated readers, trying to convince them to support him

However, Su Li persisted. She boldly and openly looked down on them, treating them like animals, taking their personalities in as black and white, and taking their opinions as barking dogs. What was wrong with it?

This was Su Li. An extreme money-grubber of a creator, whose eyes contained only the paying readers.

She was a lackey of the tycoon readers, especially the Zhao Youyue type of Godly Tycoon. There’s nothing much to say, right? In her eyes, Lady Zhao was a saint!

Su Li had even postponed “The Strongest King” just to make her happy by illustrating a character from her now favorite “Beautiful April,” for free at that, too! A single piece of her illustration, even if not worth a million RMB, should be around thousands of RMB. The original popularity of the character played a huge role too.

This is just like a web writer taking a pause from his main work and voluntarily writing an Uraban for a Godly Tycoon reader for free

Therefore, Su Li had been played a fool by the Gods too. She was a mangaka who valued the paid reader, but she had been misunderstood as a cheater!

As manga painted a clearer image in the mind, many readers who were too lazy to read long texts had joined the manga release as she drew the death of Yu Shengfan. All blamed her death on Su Li. Moreover, the tactful Ye Hai had been busy throwing the pan, hence, Su Li took all the diverted fire.

Xiao Yu’s fans launched their tirade on her Weibo. Some even said that she was a black stigma. Well, the bento scene in the finale of her first work was indeed mind-boggling!

Therefore, you, Su Li the Cheater, must be thrilled with her death, right?

Su Li felt she had been wrongly accused. She had clarified on her Weibo, that she was not the original author, merely an illustrator. She could not diverge from the intentions of the original author by not drawing Xiao Yu’s death, right?

Yet, everyone blatantly ignored the statement, muttering along as they did. Some even blamed her for not preventing Rosemary from inserting that depressive element. It must be a tax evasion (pleasure)

This time, she was lying flat on her back, taking a break, when the pan fell from the sky. After seeing her crowded Weibo during rest hours, her female assistant quickly informed her, “Teacher Su Li, your Weibo; it is exploding, quickly, it’s getting out of hand! You are being scolded again…Err, why did I say “again”?”

Su Li put her drawing pen down and shook her aching wrists. She was dumbfounded. “What? What the hell? Why would it explode? “Pure Romance” animation has not yet come to the finale, right? Or is Rosemary, that old thief making me look bad againIs he throwing the pan again? I shouldn’t have collaborated with him in the first place! Horrible!”

Translation Note:

[1] H is the initial of the word, Huang in mandarin. It could mean yellow color or erotic element. Here, it means erotic element.(ED: Or you could simply call it ‘Hentai’.)