Role Playing the Dark Horse Character

Chapter 21, First Update (Bonus for landmine)

At midnight, Li Li opened her eyes in her dorm.

The ability coursing through her body vanished, and the gap between reality and the manga world became even more stark.

She stared dazedly at her laptop, its screen already dark, reflecting her face.

The dizziness in her mind seemed to fade, and Li Li recalled everything she had done in the manga world.

After a long silence, she clutched half her face, her expression pale: “So I’m a lunatic?”

Her roommate, who happened to be sitting at the desk, turned around: “What? Who’s badmouthing you? Lili’s not a lunatic! Tell me who said that, and I’ll beat them up!”

The familiar roommate and her familiar silliness pulled Li Li’s thoughts back to reality.

She let out a chuckle: “No one said anything, just a random thought.”

The damp air of the manga world vanished from her senses, and the dorm’s stuffy atmosphere took over.

Li Li got up to open the balcony window.

As she pushed the window open, the system sound chimed.

[Auxiliary function ended, shop closed.]

[System updating…]

[System update complete.]

Li Li had no idea what the system had updated.

When she returned to her seat, her roommate leaned over.

“Lili, have you been under a lot of stress lately?” her roommate asked with concern.

Midterms had just passed, and the workload for each subject was piling up. It wasn’t wrong to say there was stress.

Though her stress came from another world.

“A bit,” Li Li said, turning to rest one hand on the chair’s backrest. “But it’s manageable.”

With the shop closed, her remaining popularity points could be converted to survival points, enough to last half a month.

Plus, her recent maneuvers: the earlier a white moonlight dies, the higher the popularity; the worse a villain is, the more they’re loved.

She felt confident she could survive this semester.

Her roommate thought for a moment, then suddenly said: “Why don’t we go have some fun?”

The topic jumped abruptly, and Li Li blinked, slowly asking: “Where?”

“There’s a comic con in the city next Saturday. Tickets are still available. How about we go for a day?” her roommate suggested.

Li Li’s first instinct was to refuse, but after thinking it over, she figured it might be nice.

Getting out was better than being cooped up in the dorm, classroom, or library all the time.

“Fine, but I’m not cosplaying,” Li Li said, planning to wear a mask.

Cosplayers had it the hardest at cons, and she was going to keep it simple with casual clothes and a backpack.

“Deal, just show up, and I’ll handle the rest!” Her roommate happily pulled out her phone to buy tickets, making Li Li suspect she’d been planning to drag her out all along.

Li Li turned back to her desk, sighing softly: “A comic con, huh…”

It wasn’t that she had never been to one, but it felt like it had been ages ago.

Clearing her thoughts for a few seconds, she shook her head and turned off the desk lamp: “I’m going to sleep, babe.”

“Good night!” her roommate replied cheerfully.

The dorm’s main light was turned off.

…

Time quickly approached the eve of the manga’s update.

Jiang Lan was on a call with her best friend, waiting for the update.

“Sorry, sorry, next time I’ll use a side account to post,” Jiang Lan said apologetically.

She was the infamous “One Car Doujin Artist” in the forums.

Her first doujin account got permanently banned by the admins, and when she used her friend’s account to post, it got her friend banned too.

They could still read posts but couldn’t reply, which drove her friend crazy.

“The account’s no big deal,” her friend said generously. “Just keep the content coming.”

“Definitely, definitely,” Jiang Lan promised quickly.

She shipped Li, while her friend shipped the A-rank bigshot.

To satisfy both their tastes, Jiang Lan boldly wrote an extreme rarepair.

After finishing, even she thought it was brilliant.

“When’s the A-rank bigshot gonna show up? It’s been forever since his last appearance,” her friend complained about her favorite’s lack of screentime.

“He’ll show up eventually,” Jiang Lan comforted verbally.

Her favorite appeared constantly, and she was thrilled.

Just then, her phone pinged with a notification. Midnight had arrived.

“Hey, hey, the manga updated!” Jiang Lan said, diving into the chapter immediately.

The color page depicted a hand holding a photo.

In the photo, under bright sunlight, a black-haired youth and a brown-haired boy stood on either side of a short, emerald green-eyed girl.

They were in front of wallpaper with yellow and pink vertical stripes, as if waiting for the camera shutter to click.

The brown-haired boy and emerald green-eyed girl wore happy, blissful smiles, but the black-haired youth’s face was obscured by a white glare, left unpainted.

The hand holding the photo wore a black glove, clearly not belonging to any of the three in the picture.

“A family portrait?” Jiang Lan’s first thought was this.

She giggled, “They’re definitely ripping off the forums. I saw readers joking about ‘one big happy family’ a couple days ago, and now it’s in the manga!”

“Keeping up with the times,” her friend replied casually.

Her friend read the manga much faster than Jiang Lan.

If Jiang Lan needed half an hour to finish Extreme Black and White, her friend only needed ten minutes.

Jiang Lan turned to the second page.

Continuing from the last chapter, the protagonist team was on the run.

Yiming seemed able to hold off the enemies for now, but as Jiang Lan turned the page, the art style shifted dramatically.

Their escape route was blocked, and a new, unfamiliar enemy appeared, looking formidable just from their face.

The manga’s battle scenes were thrilling, with exaggerated perspective angles that made readers shout in excitement.

The black-and-white lines didn’t detract from the artwork’s finesse, and each character’s distinct expressions were vividly portrayed.

Whether it was Yiming’s quick reactions or Tang’s breakthrough at the brink, Jiang Lan found it electrifying.

She muttered, “Thrilling,” and turned the page.

An ice prism about to pierce Yiming’s eyeball vanished instantly.

In the panel, the black-haired youth slightly raised his eyes.

The ice prism aimed at him passed by in the next panel, only the wind lifting a strand of hair by his ear.

In a long panel, he stood with his back to the ice prism, his gaunt side profile cold and indifferent.

“Holy crap!” Jiang Lan shouted, “My male god! My male god! So cool!”

She ignored whatever her friend was saying, quickly turning the page, bypassing others’ reactions to focus on her male god’s panels.

It was a close-up.

The youth who had just turned the tide, saving Yiming, Tang, and himself, had a cold brow tinged with a faint sadness—barely noticeable, almost nonexistent upon closer inspection.

“I’m a born bad kid, a rebellious punk.”

“Little Corgi, you and I were never on the same path.”

Jiang Lan’s hand trembled as she turned the page.

Even with her mind full of her male god’s beauty, she sensed something was wrong.

“No way?” Jiang Lan sought confirmation from her friend. “Why do I feel like this is a death flag?”

But her friend didn’t respond, remaining silent on the other end.

Jiang Lan didn’t notice and kept reading.

She saw the youth, with his gaunt face and icy expression, reject Yiming and Tang, seemingly cutting their bonds with ruthless indifference.

And in the end, he said to Yiming: “You’ll find a family that suits you, but it’s not me.”

Jiang Lan stared at her phone screen, opening her mouth, but her throat seemed to have lost its voice.

After a long while, she said, “My male god looks so sad.”

“…My condolences,” her friend said slowly.

But Jiang Lan felt things weren’t that bad yet.

Watching Yiming carry Tang and run, she said, “It’s not over. Such an obvious flag should be reversible.”

In the manga, Yiming struggled but followed his foster father’s teachings, seeking reinforcements.

When the boss appeared, Jiang Lan only remarked in surprise: “Wow, the boss is still alive?”

She had moved on to newer ships, so the boss’s reappearance didn’t stir much in her.

Her focus was solely on her male god.

The boss rejected Yiming’s request, and in the end, Yiming ran back alone toward where he came from.

“See, I said it’s reversible. The protagonist’s heading back,” Jiang Lan said, growing more optimistic. “With the protagonist there, he definitely won’t die!”

Her friend hummed for a while but didn’t spoil anything.

At that moment, the scene shifted back to Qing Tong’s interior.

The ground was frozen, and the bronze walls seemed insurmountable.

A silhouette stood at the forefront of the panel, only their lower legs and long coat hem visible.

On the steps ahead, the black-robed man was impaled with ice spikes, and the blue-haired enemy, eyes wide with terror, was pierced and frozen by their own ability.

“Damn, what happened?!” Jiang Lan, shocked by this turn of events, sat bolt upright. “Who is this? Where’s my idol? Was he saved?”

The scene moved forward.

The black shadow strolled through the bronze corridor, with music note symbols drawn in a speech bubble nearby.

He was humming a song.

In the long panel below, the silhouette was on the left, walking to the right, while another identical black shadow ran ahead in the corridor.

The right shadow had what seemed like the hem of a coat fluttering, while the left one floated with a greater amplitude.

In the next panel, a small frame showed the trailing silhouette pausing, followed by a full-page close-up of him.

He seemed to open a door, a sliver of light from the gap illuminating a long strip that lit up his right eye and his mouth.

A smirking mouth.

“What kind of villainous big boss vibe is this?” Jiang Lan couldn’t help but murmur.

Her heart pounded wildly.

She didn’t know exactly what was happening, but she could tell the person in the back was chasing the one in front and those two ability users were probably killed by him.

“Who’s he chasing?” she asked, but her best friend still didn’t answer.

A few pages later, she seemed to find out.

She saw the full appearance of the black shadow and, through Yiming’s perspective, saw the youth among the rubble at his feet.

Dark, oppressive clouds hung low above them, as if within reach.

The man wearing a half-mask revealed two-thirds of his face, a face as breathtaking as the glow of a setting sun.

Utterly flamboyant.

“An A-rank bigshot…” Jiang Lan said in disbelief.

She hurriedly flipped through the remaining content, her gaze lingering for a long time on the final panel, where the A-rank bigshot looked down at the fallen Yiming with a sidelong glance.

In the scene, rain poured as if from a tipped basin; in reality, her tears streamed down.

Jiang Lan understood what her friend meant by “my condolences.”

Her idol was truly gone, killed off by her friend’s favorite.

This extreme shipping was truly extreme, the tragic ending hitting her so fast it caught her off guard.

“Are you okay?” her friend asked with concern.

Jiang Lan sniffled and said, “Don’t talk to me right now. I… I want to cry for a bit, waaah.”

What fan content! What content! Goodbye!

She was done writing for her idol today!

“Idol, idol, how could you be gone, waaah…” She hugged a tissue box, wiping her tears. “You were clearly such a gentle person, not a bad kid…”

“That Heige is the bad guy, he is!” she choked out.

Her friend on the phone stayed silent, not daring to admit that after reading the update, she liked Heige even more.

She just thought Heige was super cool.

…

[Ahoge Cool Guy, Li’s True Love Check-in Thread!] hot

[Ahhh, what’s going on with the latest chapter?!]

[I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! That family photo is definitely a Chekhov’s gun! Li can still live!]

[Are my tears worthless? I loved the main trio and the One Big Happy Family, and you stab me like this?!]

[Are you kidding? Isn’t Li the second male lead? Which second male lead gets killed off this early?]

[I’m sending blades!!!!]

New posts flooded the forum.

Li Li skimmed the update as usual and checked the forum.

She wasn’t surprised by the manga artist’s choices.

After all, keeping the two identities separate was better, and leaving suspense to reveal later was more interesting than telling readers upfront that they were the same person.

That’s right, “Li” and “Heige” were the same person.

Li Li noticed how the manga handled Qing Yu Chen’s silhouette.

He wore a magua, which differed from the fluttering hem of a trench coat.

The artist also emphasized the trembling tip of “Heige’s” blade when Yiming said, “We’re not the same.” So, she deduced the artist’s intent aligned with hers: the two personas were ultimately one person.

Her performance in the manga made Li Li feel her acting was spot-on, with detailed expressions completely shedding the stiffness of her first appearance.

These were all Chekhov’s guns!

It would likely take a while for these hints to pay off, Li Li estimated at least another arc.

As she pondered, she browsed the forum and clicked into a [Analysis Post, Heige’s Ability Analysis] thread when a sob suddenly came from behind.

She turned and saw her roommate clutching a half-person-sized black cat plush, face buried in it, crying.

In front of her was the latest update of Extreme Black and White.

Her roommate sobbed and cursed, “Author, you have no heart! You have no heart!”

Li Li blinked, thinking: Right, the manga author has no heart.