CHAPTER 115: CHAPTER 114: FUTURE NOVEL

"You make it up yourselves."

The people in the conference room were worn out by Le Yu’s words.

"But isn’t this fake?" Mu Qingmei couldn’t help but ask.

"What kind of newspaper do you think you’ve joined?" Le Yu retorted.

Everyone was rendered speechless—they suddenly realized that for a newspaper run by the Jing Family, not spreading slander was already commendable; asking them to fabricate responses didn’t seem like a bad thing when they thought about it.

"But how should we make it up?" someone asked. "Do we express our views on the topic and then create a new identity for ourselves?"

"No, no, no." Le Yu waved a finger, saying, "You probably don’t know why you were hired, do you? Some of you write well, some have deep thoughts, but some write plainly and think shallowly..."

"But you all have one thing in common: good imagination."

Le Yu suddenly pointed to a young editor: "For example, you, your current identity is a young man who wants to become a village chief. Your name is Naruto!"

"Oh." The young editor was taken aback.

"You want to become the village chief because your parents died when you were young, and the villagers said you were a jinx and avoided you. But you’re not without friends. The village elder is kind to you, and your teacher often treats you to meals."

"So you hope to become the village chief, hoping that the villagers will love and welcome you, and that you will gain their recognition."

"So, if you were to answer the question ’What are we pursuing all our lives?’ what would the central theme of your answer be?"

The young editor thought for a moment, then said firmly, "Recognition, trust, responsibility, bonds. I would say life is about connecting with more people, gaining more companions, receiving more praise, and leading everyone to a better life, making my life meaningful."

"That’s the spirit!" Le Yu applauded vigorously, and everyone followed suit: "You must immerse yourself in your devised character and write the answer from that perspective—I have to feel their circumstances, lament the incidents, be distinctive; only then is it worth publishing."

"Is it that simple...?" a female editor expressed her uncertainty.

"Trust me, it’s very simple, you might even fall in love with this feeling."

Le Yu looked at the female editor and said:

"Suppose you are a poor young girl, your father is gravely ill, and to pay for the medical officer to treat him, you have to sell your maidenhood at the Red Dream Arena. That night, a young master from a wealthy merchant guild, drunk, took a fancy to you. He gave you a lot of money, which saved your father, and you intended to forget that night. However, when you were applying for a job, you found yourself working at the young master’s guild. He recognized you but, for some reason, decided to keep you around, seemingly to tease you..."

"...Through a series of events, emotions secretly developed between the two of you. But then, the guild president arranged a marriage for him, and you suddenly discovered that you might be pregnant..."

The female editor’s expression changed constantly as Le Yu narrated, alternating between sorrow, happiness, and anger, fully immersing herself in the story.

At this moment, Le Yu slammed the table: "See, do you feel it? Do you feel like you are that unfortunate girl? Do you feel like you have lots of emotions, many words you want to shout out?"

"Yes!" The female editor nodded vigorously.

"See, that’s the magic of character creation." Le Yu spread his hands and said, "As long as you fabricate a bizarre, weathered, seen-it-all character for yourself, you’ll immerse better and write more genuine responses... If someone can’t create a character themselves, come find me. I have plenty of spare ones for you to use freely, like ’a genius who gets rejected in marriage’, ’a mafia princess with immense power’, whatever you need."

Le Yu’s every word and action kept reshaping the room’s understanding of this world—such methods exist?!

"Each page will feature one topic, so pages 2 to 4 require three topics. I have already thought of them: ’If tomorrow were the end of the world, what would you do?’, ’When did you suddenly feel like you’ve grown up?’, and ’What’s the most memorable sentence to you? Why?’ I need ten people to fabricate answers for these topics, tasks will be allocated after the meeting."

As everyone was savoring the essence of these topics, Le Yu had already moved to the next topic: "For pages 5 to 8, I’m planning to set up a ’Bizarre News’ column, which means publishing news that ordinary people have never seen."

"But where can we get such news..." Someone barely asked before suddenly realizing, and fell silent.

Le Yu shot him an approving glance.

Do you think this is some regular newspaper?

Of course you make it up yourselves!

"I’ll give two examples." Le Yu raised two fingers: "The first example, ’The effects of combat technique exercise will be better if you eat these six foods! Make sure to tell your family’."

Then Le Yu paused.

Everyone waited for a moment, and Mu Qingmei couldn’t help but ask, "Editor, what are the six kinds of food?"

Le Yu gave her a kindly look.

"Make them up yourselves."

"Huh?" Mu Qingmei blinked, "But isn’t that deceiving people? Unlike the knowledge discussion section, if we deceive people like this, and they actually go buy them..."

"Then make up something nutritious that not many people like to eat and is cheap." Le Yu sighed, "Like bitter melon, cilantro. As long as it doesn’t kill anyone. As for the effects on combat technique exercise—it’s purely psychological. How do you know your exercise today isn’t better than yesterday?"

"You can’t call something published in a newspaper a deception, can you?"

Despite Mu Qingmei already underestimating Jing Zhengwei’s bottom line, every time Jing Zhengwei spoke, he shocked her anew—how can such a scoundrel exist?

"The second example." Le Yu said, "’Shock! A man hears a strange sound at night, follows it and discovers a commotion from the grave, when he digs it up, he finds...’"

Even with Mu Qingmei’s prior example, someone couldn’t resist asking, "What did he find?"

"Make it up yourselves." Le Yu spread his hands, "In short, make a sensational title to grab attention; as for the content, make up a logically cohesive story yourself."

"In short, ’Bizarre News’ must feature stories that no one has seen, so any story can be published, even if it’s not an ordinary person’s story."

Le Yu paused, "Stories where the lord is not lordly, ministers not ministerial, where rulers are not ruling and servants are not serving, or revenge stories can all be featured..."

Everyone nodded in understanding. Mu Qingmei gave Le Yu a peculiar look, feeling this ’Bizarre News’ column seemed a bit more than just unusual.

"Pages 9, 10, and 11 will feature the ’Inspirational Stories’ column."

Le Yu paused, glancing at everyone.

Everyone immediately understood and nodded, "We’ll make them up ourselves, we’ll make them up ourselves."

"Don’t be afraid, you don’t need to create something out of nothing, I’ll write some topics, and you just follow them."

Le Yu picked up chalk and wrote several titles on the backboard:

"Dug Faster and Better, I Became a Big Mine Owner in Five Years’

"Even a Monkey Servant Can Rise by Warming Grass Shoes for the Master’

"Workers Cried Seeing the Boss’s Daily Efforts’

...

"That’s how it is, I’ll assign tasks shortly, but the requirement is to use a news format. You editors need to conduct interviews from a third perspective in a Q&A style... make it seem like there really are such people."

"Understood, guaranteed to complete the task." The black-hearted journalists, devoid of blood and tears, assured him, as they were quite adept at this.

Mu Qingmei snorted inwardly, thinking ’you finally showed your true colors’.

"As for the final 12th page..."

Le Yu paused, "We need to serialize a novel."

Everyone remained unfazed; Jie Zifu asked, "May I ask about the novel? Who’s the contributor?"

Serializing novels in newspapers was long a regular practice in this world, with even specialized ’novel newspapers’ for serialization, so nobody found it strange.

"The contributor is a friend of mine," Le Yu said, "As for the genre, it’s a science fiction novel."

"Science fiction novel?" Everyone was taken aback.

They haven’t even heard of this genre.

"The story is about three young people, each with their strengths, named Liu Yu, Yin Yin, and Wei Zheng, who find themselves accidentally transported 100 years into the future after dying," Le Yu explained. "In that era, humans have made flying machines, built skyscrapers over a hundred stories tall, food abundance has tamed hunger and cold, everyone gets to eat meat with every meal, all must complete nine years of compulsory education, the entertainment economy thrives, they even built space shuttles, successfully exploring the moon..."

"This sounds like an imaginative fantasy work," Jie Zifu praised.

"Yes, I thought so too," Le Yu said.

Jie Zifu kindly asked, "Isn’t one page perhaps too little? Should we prepare another page for this work?"

Le Yu quickly shook his head, "No, just one page is enough."

At this point, Le Yu was already feeling a bit regretful.

After all, it was a novel he had to write by himself...