RPDH Chapter 3

[mfn]Lily is a homonym nickname for Li Li[/mfn]The young man’s dark, bottomless eyes peered over his sunglasses on the next page.

A rampant madness.

A signal of impending death before an apex predator.

Death incarnate raised its sickle high.

There was nothing reflected in those eyes, only an all-consuming darkness.

…

Just like that, a single question mark punctuated the end of the update.

Jiang Lan stared at the final page in a daze for some time.

A shiver ran down her spine.

“Sigh…” She let out the breath she had been subconsciously holding all this time. When she touched her forehead, she realized she had worked up a sweat.

It was like she had become one with the boss, the overwhelming fear and tension making her forget to even breathe.

“How terrifying. Are all Rank A ability users like this?” She murmured, “The boss could barely put up a fight!”

“He’s not going to get axed just like that, right?” She fretted.

Of course she was worried as one of his facecon fans.

However, she couldn’t help but recall the features of the new character…

“He’s, he’s so handsome, ah…” Jiang Lan couldn’t help but say those traitorous words.

‘B&W’ always explored tension to its fullest, and the new character’s every move dripped with attitude.

No one dared to confront him after he strolled in arrogantly.

That wanton display of power was beautiful in its own way.

Jiang Lan couldn’t help but text one of her friends about it.

“What? What do you mean it’s late? It’s only midnight! I just wanted to tell you something about the latest manhua update. A super handsome new character’s appeared and he’s just your type! …You don’t believe me? Fine! Bubble tea’s on me tomorrow if you don’t like him!”

…

[The current time is 6am.]

[Beginning popularity calculation.]

Scattered rays of light peered through the closed canopy. The sun was already up by this time, yet Li Li remained as stiff as a corpse in her bed, awaiting the final result.

Li Li was so calm that she even had the presence of mind to wonder when her roommate would get up and ask Li Li if she wanted her to buy her breakfast too.

[Retrieving relevant new comments.]

[Retrieval complete.]

[Retrieving relevant new forum posts.]

[Retrieval complete.]

[Retrieving overall new discussion rate.]

[Retrieval complete.]

…

[Processing collected popularity data.]

[Processing data…]

Shuffling sounds came from the neighbouring bed. Her roommate’s voice, muddled with sleep, could be heard.

“Wu…”

Her roommate was awake.

[Total popularity value: 397.]

[Redemption rate from popularity value to survival points is 100:1. The system has automatically redeemed one survival point for you.]

[May you enjoy your resurrection.]

A warm current spread out from Li Li’s heart. Her ice-cold fingertips suddenly twitched as the numbness receded. She was able to vaguely feel her body again.

Rustling sounds could be heard as her roommate reluctantly sat up from bed to get ready for her morning classes.

Blood started circulating in her veins once more. Air travelled in and out of her lungs and nose as Li Li took another gentle breath.

“Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump.”

That was her slow but steady heartbeat.

Her roommate got up and climbed down from the top bunk.

Li Li’s mouth opened silently as air rushed into her trachea.

Her roommate paused for a moment. After getting her bearings, she slowly approached Li Li’s bed and mumbled, “Want breakfast, Lily[footnote]Homonym nickname[/footnote]?”

Li Li’s husky voice was both quiet and muted.

“Yeah.”

“Okay…” The roommate drawled as she headed to the bathroom in her slippers.

Closing the door behind her.

Li Li finally peeled open her heavy eyelids.

She saw the light shining down on the back of her hand through the gap in the canopy, the desaturated illumination of early morning, the microscopic dust particles floating about the air.

A tender fingertip lifted slightly to touch the slightly cool air.

Her jaw muscles were still slow to respond, but she couldn’t help but quirk her lips up into a smile.

See? Her gamble paid off.

…

The first thing Li Li did after coming back to life was sleep like the dead for three hours. She only stirred around the time her roommate came back.

“I put your crunchy egg wrap on your desk, Lily.” The roommate called out relatively quietly. She had just come back from her first class of the day. From where she stood, she couldn’t confirm visually if Li Li was up yet.

In truth, the sound of her opening the door was already enough to rouse Li Li from her shallow sleep.

Li Li rubbed her eyes as the aroma of breakfast hit her. She pulled her phone out from beneath the pillow.

It was currently 9:15am. According to her schedule, she had a practical at 2pm today.

She still wanted to take a nap later. Maybe she was so tired because the time she spent dead didn’t count as sleep.

After all, she did work on her thesis for a record-breaking three nights straight before her death. She was truly exhausted to the bone.

Her roommate stepped out again once she finished washing up.

Li Li and her roommate were in different majors, so their schedules were completely different. They were about halfway through the semester right now. Li Li had some time to breathe after making progress on her thesis, but her roommate was still in midterm hell.

Students were allowed to pick their own roommates at this university. As fellow long-time enjoyers of 2D media, they decided online before school started to stay together.

Li Li still remembered her roommate’s profile picture the first time they met: a super popular, handsome anime guy. Said profile picture changed five times in the first month they knew each other, featuring a different character each time.

Everything else aside, her roommate was a fickle mistress.

Li Li was the opposite. She was the standard dedicated, ride-or-die stan. Her favourite characters were all from series considered old these days, and she still gushed over the same character she did as a child. Even if the manhua author keeping the character the same age to this day meant she was older than him now.

Looking at it like this, the author behind ‘Beyond Black and White’ must be quite diligent to update once every three days.

Li Li made herself a cup of coffee before quietly taking a seat at her desk. With her steaming hot egg wrap in one hand, she booted up her laptop and headed to a manhua website.

One manhua cover in particular dominated the front page of this blue-themed website.

Half of a brown-haired teen’s face was shown. He was around 16 or 17 and wore a faded denim jacket. His expression was resolute and determined. There was a vague dark shadow reflected in his normally gentle blue eyes.

Four large words could be seen next to him: Beyond Black and White.

This was the manhua Li Li had transmigrated into, and the teen featured on the cover was its protagonist. Due to his young age and the colour of his eyes and hair, he was jokingly referred to by readers as ‘Little Corgi’.

Despite its peculiarities, ‘Beyond Black and White’ was actually very popular in the manhua community. At the university anime club’s last cosplay event, there were people cosplaying as B&W’s protagonist.

Li Li chomped down on her wrap as she confirmed even she couldn’t make out the figure reflected in the protagonist’s pupils. With that, she clicked on the latest update without bothering to navigate to the novel page.

The conjecture she proposed to the system at midnight was that her first time in the manhua world would be her only guaranteed appearance, and that the system would assign her a number of panels based on her performance. However, that was all just speculation at this point. The system never bothered to  give her a direct answer.

She briefly scanned the pages, assessing the total amount of panels she obtained for her debut.

The results were gratifying. Excluding the opening scene with the protagonist, Li Li’s debut accounted for 33% of the update.

Li Li’s gamble paid off. Her analysis was completely spot-on.

Then she went back to take a closer look at the new chapter. She scrutinized every detail, repeatedly going over the protagonist’s course of action and taking notes on the boss’ impression of her.

“Acting like everything was fine even though he was scared to death…” She huffed in amusement. “Scared me half to death too.”

She never would have guessed the boss was as panicked as her due to his calm appearance. Funny how both people in that dark room were trembling in their trousers.

After reading the chapter, she went to check the forums. New threads had appeared speculating about her strength and motives.

[Hey Li Tao, how strong do you think the new dude is? Do you think the boss can last a full minute against him?]

[Spoiler: sketch of a new character in the manhua]

[I’m certain this new character is going to be the next BOSS! If he’s not, I’ll eat my keyboard on the spot!]

As a new character who appeared at the end of an update, Li Li received tremendous attention from the readers.

Powerful, mysterious…either trait was attractive enough to stand on their own. Meanwhile, she possessed both.

Yet attention wouldn’t translate directly into popularity. Turning the readers’ attention into admiration was on her future to-do list.

However, she had succeeded in leaving a good first impression with her performance this time. Not only did she pull the wool over the eyes of a mid-rank ability user, she piggybacked off the boss’ existing popularity as well.

Li Li casually scrolled through the forums. She couldn’t help but take a look at the fanart post.

“It’s beautiful…” Li Li murmured.

The background was split between light and darkness. The dark-haired young man’s face was tilted a fraction. A slender finger pressed on the bridge of his sunglasses as his razor-sharp eyes peered over them.

The comment section was flooded with praise as well as some more explicit, unhinged remarks.

Li Li brought a mirror over to appraise herself. Sure enough, there was a gap between the 2D and 3D world.

In truth, she was sporting her own face at the time with a touch of makeup for contrast.

Li Li’s features were about average, albeit with a bold edge. She was surprisingly handsome when pretending to be a man. She concluded after some thought that the manhua medium should be able to display the bishounen angle she was after, which was why she changed into men’s clothing.

The sunglasses were in case her microexpressions betrayed her during her first time pretending to be a bigshot.

In hindsight, they seemed to become a statement piece that made her look even more badass.

However, Li Li was open to changing her appearance when necessary. She knew that looks were an important factor when it came to popularity. Just as a character that barely made any appearances like the boss could gain a lot of fans thanks to his looks alone, she had to do a face reveal eventually.

She’s thought about changing her face into that of a peerless beauty, but the system didn’t provide a free facial alteration service. Instead, facial alteration was an item that cost 10 survival points called [Plastic Surgery (one-time use)].

That was way outside her budget.

She didn’t even have enough survival points to rest for a few days, let alone buy unnecessary, expensive items.

This only made Li Li more determined to save up her initial popularity value.

She didn’t want to be forced to hurry over if possible. Li Li propped her chin on one hand and stared fixedly at the naively smiling protagonist on the cover.

The popularity of manhua characters was related to their number of appearances. The character with the most number of appearances would definitely be the protagonist. Therefore, the deeper their connection to the protagonist, the more characters related to him would appear.

Li Li sought out the boss to establish a common ground with the protagonist, ‘Tang’.

The protagonist wanted to take ‘Tang’ away from that nefarious ability organization. After Li Li’s performance, it appeared like the new character was after the same thing.

Now, Li Li could follow the line she had cast and go to the protagonist.

Yet the protagonist was currently in danger. Going to find him straight away during her second transmigration would inevitably be more risky than seeking him out after the situation was resolved.

Li Li glanced at her popularity value. That gave her all the motivation she needed to reread the manhua from the beginning for any useful clues.

Although a wait and see approach would be the logical course of action, she would die again if she didn’t continue to appear in the manhua.

…

The system reappeared at midnight.

[Updating data. Total popularity value: 682]

[Preparing for transmigration.]

[Channel established. May you become a popular character who breathes new life into the manhua.]

It was still night in the city of Desolate Dragon. Angry waves in the distance dashed against the shoreline.

A dark shadow beneath the moonlight removed her hat, revealing a pair of keen eyes.