The Rise of Otaku

Edited by: pnemnn and Esperanza

No one knew who started it. The rumors against Zhou Yu were getting much and much fiercer, but for Zhou Yu, this level of noise could not arouse his interest. He simply did not bother to refute, but decided to live leisurely. Instead, determined to fight the rumor-mongers for the amusement park’s reputation, Zhou Fu was already preparing for a lawsuit.

The storm could be considered as a test for the young public relations team in the park.

But for Tan Xiuran, who accidentally became an internet celebrity, it seemed like it was just the beginning of an endless nightmare. She was constantly approached by the media, at first asking for the details of the incident, but then when the park began to fight back, their direction changed.

In a video circulating online, the fierce kungfu fight between Zhou Yu and Tan Xiuran surprised many people. However, this was not the main focus. The main focus were the things that Zhou Yu said in the video. He said that he would like to invite Tan Xiuran to join his animation team as a music producer.

Everyone knew that Zhou Yu had two animation teams, Beidou and Qin Zhuan. There were so many animators wanting to join these two mysterious groups but people never heard of Zhou Yu recruiting anyone from the outside. Even if someone went to their doorsteps, they would all be rejected.

For such a strict and mysterious organization to offer the position of a music producer to a student who was still studying in school, it was completely nonsensical.

Therefore, Tan Xiuran’s background was checked thoroughly by the people online.

She was a guitarist, a composer, and a lyricist for a school band, completely amateur. Those who were very good at digging information even found out the performance of the band in the school. However, the band did not seem to be particularly amazing. It then made people wonder, why would an amateur be invited to join a top team? Was it really like what other people said on the internet that Zhou Yu harassed the girl, or used his power to take advantage of her?

Endless interviews made Tan Xiuran deeply experience what it felt to become the focus of attention. If it were not for her own strong character, she may have already collapsed. Luckily, she still had some friends to encourage her and her boyfriend also trusted her, so she could still keep going.

And her school band seemed to have become famous along with her.

The lead singer Lin Miao, who was always fond of gossip, stared at Tan Xiuran with her big bright eyes, dragged her to the side and whispered, “Xiuran, tell me the truth, is that Zhou Yu really interested in you?”

Upon hearing this, Tan Xiuran instantly became very angry. She pressed down Lin Miao on her lap and smacked her butt, “why are you being so nosy! I don’t know how many times I have been asked this question outside, and then after I came back, you also came to annoy me!”

Lin Miao was constantly begging for mercy. Only after hearing this did Tan Xiuran finally stop, “actually that Zhou Yu is an otaku, he is so introverted that he doesn’t even know how to talk to strangers. Now that I think about it, I think he really just wanted to invite me to join his team as a music producer. He didn’t have other thoughts.”

“Then why don’t you agree? My god, no matter Beidou or Qin Zhuan, those two are the most famous animation teams in the world. And after joining in perhaps you will also meet with Muli, that Song “sea in the sky” she sang is really ethereal and beautiful. If you can follow that composer and learn something, perhaps, you really can become famous in the future.”

Lin Miao’s words indeed made some sense. Tan Xiuran herself also could not figure it out. Composing songs was always a hobby of hers. But she didn’t expect Zhou Yu, this kind of influential person, would be interested in her. Could it be that she was really talented in this?

Should she try to put a little bit more effort into it?

While the video of the fight between Zhou Yu and Tan Xiuran was being spread online, it made people know that Zhou Yu, in fact, was not a weak otaku at all. In Luhua village, everyone knew what kind of person Zhou Yu was, but even they did not know when this taciturn man had learned Kung Fu.

After all, Luhua village had a long history of military background. Many villagers used to be soldiers. So most of the villagers more or less knew some combat techniques. The old village chief Zhou Xingyi still remembered that the first time Zhou Yu came out of his house was to cut down a tree. At that time, he was extremely weak. Even cutting a small tree would make him exhausted. He was clearly a weak person.

Two years later, however, the child had changed so much. He had even learned some combat skills.

Physical ability was possible to be improved just by oneself, and since people often saw Zhou Yu doing all kinds of strange exercises in the park and in the village, it was understandable that his physical ability had become very good. But how did he learn the lance technique? Moreover, without the guidance of famous teachers, and hard practice, how did he learn it? Especially, since it looked like the move from the movies, it was definitely something that required years of hard work. How did he learn it in such a short period of time?

No one could answer this question because there was no one in the village who was good at the lance.

Even the people from Luhua village didn’t know why, let alone the people from outside. All they could see was that the man nicknamed “emperor” was supposed to be an otaku, and he rarely went outside the amusement park. Even if he left the park, he would return home very soon as if the outside world was very scary.

However, he, despite being this kind of otaku, seemed to be moving forward on the path of becoming a real emperor. The video about the fight he had with the other kungfu girl could be directly cut and edited into a martial arts movie. It was extremely good. It would truly be a shame if he did not become a kungfu movie star. The only drawback, perhaps, was that his appearance was too ordinary, unlike the handsome heroes in other martial arts movies at all.

While other people were parsing him and calling him “Kungfu otaku”, there were also some people who refused to accept it. Just like today, a strange teenager came to the amusement park.

This young man was here to challenge him.

Behind the young man was an old monk, who didn’t look like a good person at all. Instead, he gave people a sneaky feeling. As they stood in front of the amusement park waiting for a reply, they attracted a lot of attention.

Zhou Yu could not help but laugh when he saw the challenge letter they sent in. ‘So there are Chuunibyou people in the community of martial artists as well? what year do they think it is that they still want to have a martial arts competition? Do they want to be invited to the police station as well?’

“Just send them away, be polite, and tell them that I have admitted defeat. If there are any more such challenges, just reject them in the future.”

Zhou Yu waved his hand and carried on, focusing on his fishing. The reason why he wanted to practice martial arts was that occasionally, he would need to leave the village to do some quests. Hence, he needed to learn some to defend himself, not to fight with other people. There wasn’t a competitive gene in his body, so of course, he didn’t want to become a member of the martial arts community.

After a while, however, the guard came running again.

“Little boss, that old monk refused to go, he said that he had walked a long way here, and he had not even eaten for two days. He also said that you must accept the challenge otherwise, he will wait there until you agree.”

What the hell, threatening me?

“Take them to Tung Fook Mansion to have some food first, and then give them some money so they can go home.”

No matter what, Zhou Yu would not accept the challenge just because of this. It was not a wuxia novel after all, and this wasn’t even considered as a modern novel. So fighting this kind of thing, it was better to not get involved. The fight he had before was a lesson to him. Being a law-abiding villager was the most important thing.

However, what he didn’t expect was that he would still need to accept the challenge later on.