Chapter Three Conversations
Xia Jing looked at the freshly drawn manga manuscript in his hand, liking it more and more.
Although there was no coloring, no voice actor dubbing, and no background music like an anime.
But the emotional impact brought by the simple black and white lines of a manga, in Xia Jing's opinion, was often stronger than that of an anime.
He had a strong feeling about this when he watched manga and their anime adaptations in his previous life.
He wondered if the audience in Xia Nation, upon seeing this manga version of five centimeters per second manuscript, would feel an even stronger impact than he did when he watched the anime in his previous life.
Thinking of this, Xia Jing couldn't help but curve his lips. The suffering he experienced in his previous life was indeed difficult, but seeing others fall into the same pits he had fallen into was quite enjoyable.
Reincarnating and drawing manga was essentially returning to his old profession from his previous life, to solve his financial crisis, but he truly enjoyed it... A night passed, and in the early morning, Xia Jing woke up early to wash and make breakfast.
The pressure of high school entrance exams in Great Xia was not as immense as in his previous life. The social industrial structure was relatively reasonable, and most people, regardless of whether they could advance their education, could generally find a job that sustained their life. This was also why Xia Jing's school was still a day school, even though they were already in the first year of high school.
Entering the classroom, as usual, students in the front rows with better grades discussed sports and academic topics, while students in the back rows focused on manga, anime, games, and other subjects. Although the school prohibited it, quite a few students still brought manga, novels, and magazines into the classroom to read.
From this, one could see the penetration of the domestic anime and manga industry in Great Xia today.
The two morning math classes quickly finished. Although Xia Jing was a struggling manga artist and illustrator in his previous life, he actually graduated with a science and engineering degree. In his previous life, he was a graduate of a first-tier university. He hadn't touched these courses for several years after graduation, but the foundation was there, so learning these first-year high school subjects was truly effortless.
Furthermore, high school in this world wasn't as competitive, and the average academic level of students wasn't particularly strong.
"If things continue like this, maybe I can also get into a key university in this world?" Xia Jing thought as the bell for class dismissal rang.
But soon, Xia Jing's thoughts were interrupted.
A lively and beautiful girl appeared at the classroom door, drawing the gaze of the boys in the class towards her.
Every school always had one or two girls who were the center of attention among the students.
Undoubtedly, Su Qingxiao was one of them.
Otherwise, Xia Jing wouldn't have been able to recognize her immediately when he saw Su Qingxiao on the rooftop yesterday.
"Xia Jing... Yes, yes, it's me. Come out for a moment."
Su Qingxiao smiled at the classroom door, waving at Xia Jing. Her voice was loud, clear, and pleasant.
But at the same time, the attention of a group of classmates shifted from Su Qingxiao to Xia Jing, who had a weak presence in the class.
Although Xia Jing had a pretty good appearance, his grades in the final exam last semester were average, and his personality wasn't lively enough, so he naturally didn't receive much attention in class.
Xia Jing looked up and saw that it was her. He had a rough idea of what was happening, so he got up and walked towards the classroom door.
"Last night, my sister and I..."
"Hmm, should we talk here?"
Su Qingxiao looked around, only to see pairs of eyes filled with gossip.
"Let's go to the rooftop!" Su Qingxiao chuckled.
Although she was willing to reveal her identity as a manga artist to Xia Jing, it was only because she had met Xia Jing, someone with shared interests.
If she exposed it to random people, who knew when the homeroom teacher would visit her parents with that whole routine, it would be annoying.
As the two figures left, the students in Xia Jing's classroom began to chatter... On the rooftop.
"I spoke with my editor, and she said she could schedule a time to look at your submission, but she won't show any favoritism towards your work because of me," Su Qingxiao got straight to the point without any superfluous words.
"In fact, I can tell you this: precisely because you're someone I introduced, her review standards will be three points stricter than usual. If the quality of your manga manuscript isn't significantly higher than those submitted by mail, she will most likely not accept your submission."
"I have no objections," Xia Jing paused and nodded.
After all, it was five centimeters per second. If it couldn't even pass the review of an unknown editor for a Xia Nation Class 3 manga periodical, then it could only be said that the editor's judgment was flawed, and not cooperating might be the better choice.
Moreover, Xia Jing's purpose in submitting directly through Su Qingxiao's connection was to hope that the other party would take his manga manuscript seriously, not to seek any special treatment.
With over a billion people in Xia Nation and tens of millions in the Demon City, countless aspiring manga artists existed, and countless manga submissions were mailed to these magazine publishers every day.
A responsible editor encountering these mailed manga manuscripts might work diligently to appreciate them, finding the so-called masterpiece from a pile of new artists' mediocre works.
But encountering an irresponsible manga editor who only thought about getting off work... that would be hard to say.
It was all too common for them to casually glance at your manga manuscript, which you spent one or two months creating, and then toss it into a storage room.
Xia Nation did not lack aspiring manga artists; it lacked geniuses.
"So, what's the schedule?" Xia Jing asked.
Manga magazine publishers don't work on weekends, and Xia Jing had school from Monday to Friday. As he said this, he was already prepared to ask his homeroom teacher for a day off to submit his work.
"When will your manga manuscript be finished?" Su Qingxiao looked at Xia Jing.
"It's actually already completed. All the manuscripts are in my schoolbag in the classroom," Xia Jing said.
After unexpectedly entering a state of flow last night, Xia Jing worked at an incredible speed, staying up until two in the morning to finish all the manga manuscripts that were originally expected to take more than two days to complete.
He might still need to take some time to modify some details in the earlier manga for perfection, but its current state was perfectly fine for submission to an editor.
"That fast?" Su Qingxiao said in surprise.
"Well, in that case... let's do it this afternoon."
"Eh? We get out of school at 5:30. The headquarters of Huanmeng Group is in the center of Demon City. It would take us at least until after 7:00 PM to get there by car. Making an editor wait for us until then..." Xia Jing hesitated.
"Of course, we're not going to the Huanmeng Group editorial department!" Su Qingxiao said with a smile.
"To my house."
Xia Jing looked up at Su Qingxiao, who quickly explained with a smile.
"The manga editor I mentioned is actually my older sister. I can't make her give you special treatment in the manga manuscript review, but asking her to work overtime in the evening isn't a big problem."
"Your sister?"
"Yes, that's right... Didn't expect that, did you!" Su Qingxiao chuckled.
"But don't misunderstand. As I said before, my sister is very strict with me. The only reason I can serialize manga under her is purely because my personal ability surpasses other manga artists who submitted at the same time, earning the serialization slot through competition."
...