Chapter 259-The Manga Pariah's Guide to Self-Salvation
[Is Roy really royalty? This time it's for real—welcome the Prince back to the palace!]
[That blond tsundere just screamed "secret noble lineage" from the start, haha.]
[Percy is truly gentle—quietly waiting for the other to come clean on his own…]
[This is the gold standard of your beloved old-married-couple ship.]
[Bros don't drag things out. Just lay it all on the table and move on. If this were a female-targeted genre, they'd agonize over it for ten chapters, lol.]
In the latest chapter, the main cast's mentor is imprisoned for attempting to assassinate the Pope. The Pope sentences him to Excommunication, and the Bai family plummets almost overnight. Sensing Ye Zheng's threat, Percy breaks Bai Yi out of prison—partly out of gratitude, partly to stop Ye Zheng—and together they set out to find the buried Dragon Bone.
Bai Yi reveals that the Divine Sword is the key to destroying the Dragon Bone. Roy comes clean about his identity, resolving the tension and truly becoming a friend Percy can rely on.
The anime's progress happened to coincide with Roy's mini highlight arc, so word of Roy's princely identity spread instantly among anime fans. His solo popularity and ship rankings both surged.
Forum.
[#1: So this is what "slow burn pays off" looks like? The popular blond niche got filled this fast?]
[#2: Roy's been an original member of the main cast and a pretty tsundere—his popularity was never low, okay?]
[#3: Nobody dared say it, but Roy was shackled to Lucy in a bland het ship early on, which kept his popularity lukewarm…]
[#4: Creator, open your eyes—selling BL is the only path to salvation for a male-targeted manga.]
[#5: The manga's been this bad, and NOW they remember to bait the fujoshi audience to save it.]
[#6: This ship has truly risen… fake feelings concealing real ones is the premium stuff. Percy, just spoil him!]
[#7: This ship was the juggernaut before Sykes showed up. Too bad childhood friends can't beat the fated newcomer, and old married couples lose to destined rivals. (Disclaimer! "Old married couple" is just a vibe—please spare me, woman-loving sis.)]
[#8: I feel for the poster above. Hard to imagine how many times you've been called out to grovel this much…]
[#9: …Even dead, Sykes isn't someone you get to drag down to prop up your fave. No-name ships, don't clout-chase.]
[#10: Help, can the Sykes stans only pick on niche fandoms because they can't beat Zheng stans?]
[#11: Sounds like the other side is upset that Sykes is no longer the manga's one and only noble prince. It's all delusional stans fighting—don't project onto the characters.]
[#12: What do you mean? Even with Sykes dead, our Roy still has to bow to him as a lesser-born son?]
…
[#63: Shouldn't the popular blond title go to Sierra? She's the one whose popularity skyrocketed the most.]
[#64: Support Sierra dethroning Ye Zheng as the manga's top female character.]
[#65: Enough with "top female character"—our Zheng is already the manga's #1 overall.]
[#66: @Sierra, someone's coming for us mother and daughter!]
[#67: Zheng-mama, please understand—we Bige-mama fans harbor absolutely no disloyalty. Sierra stans' actions do not represent us!]
[#68: Dying laughing. Sierra stans and Zheng stans don't fall for divide-and-conquer tactics. If you're this bored, go order Sykes some takeout.]
[#69: I still maintain Sykes is the manga's #1 blond. He's the only character with a posthumous title—that's authority right there.]
[#70: While you're all fighting over who's the one true prince, has anyone remembered there's an actual Princess in the Royal Family? Stop treating female characters like they don't exist…]
[#71: Male characters have the freedom to be called "wifey" and "princess," but the real princess gets zero attention…]
[#72: I can't. Are the woman-loving sisters jealous that other fandoms actually have content? If your baby girl's popularity is low, don't guilt-trip male character stans.]
[#73: Lol, funny how when a high-popularity baby girl crushes your baby boy, suddenly you're not having it.]
[#74: I thought this ship was so popular, but the tag activity is barely a fraction of the Ye Zheng tag? Bundle them together at a discount and still no takers.]
[#75: This forum has exactly two rankings: manga's #1 overall and manga's top male. Please conduct your "top male" disputes quietly on the sidewalk and stop simping for Zheng stans.]
[#76: The runner-up duo is getting a 2.0 version already? What a crowded lane.]
Tang Mingxi scrolled through the forum and felt her temper had mellowed considerably—perhaps because Ye Zheng's popularity was rock-solid and reassuring. Even when manga screen time was scarce, there was a wealth of fanworks and anime content to fill the gap.
Ye Zheng's sub-twenty-second appearance in the preview had been spliced into clips set to trending DJ tracks, popping up across every major platform. The most popular edit had already racked up 300,000 likes.
Tang Mingxi had mostly wrapped up her schoolwork. She spent an afternoon editing a video as practice and successfully earned 90,000 likes.
After the much-anticipated buildup, Ye Zheng made her official anime debut in Episode 10!
The Cloud-Soaring Squad had distinguished itself in the first phase of the competition. The main cast enjoyed a stretch of leisure in the lower district, gearing up for the second phase.
While the main cast celebrated their first-phase victory, in another corner of the city, a mysterious dark-haired girl stepped out of a car. Under the gazes and admiration of passersby, she walked into a church.
Inside lay and sat numerous wounded. The moment the rumored Saintess appeared, their listless faces lit up with hope.
The Saintess did not disappoint. Wherever her gentle streams of water flowed, gruesome wounds healed as good as new.
Her gentle profile seemed bathed in an angelic glow—the very image most people expected of a Saintess: tender, beautiful, pure, and kind.
The live comments, however, told a different story.
[This woman is putting on a SHOW.]
[Haven't seen the Saintess skin for Zheng in ages—feels like the days before baby-boy stans forced her into villainess mode.]
[Your Holiness, please stop acting, you're scaring me.]
[No spoilers—leave some surprises for the anime-only viewers.]
[Zheng has always been this kind, okay? Those "acting" comments need to stop.]
[Indeed, this woman has always been sincere with others. Said she'd bear the glorious burden for everyone and never once shirked it.]
[And so the great Saintess set forth on her path to domination!]
At the end of Episode 10, Ye Zheng finished her healing duties, a trace of fatigue on her face. Just then, an exceptionally tall female Knight handed her a newspaper.
Ye Zheng unfolded the paper and read for a moment, then suddenly looked up.
The open newspaper hid the lower half of her face, but her dark eyes seemed to glimmer with an enigmatic amusement, making the viewer itch to know what had pleased her so.
With barely five minutes of anime screen time, Ye Zheng's buzz factor once again left everyone else in the dust.
She debuted in the same guise—a gentle, beautiful healer—but the anime and manga audiences reacted in completely opposite ways.
When Ye Zheng first appeared in the manga, readers had reflexively labeled her a "pretty face," "token female lead," "decorative heroine"—and then she slapped those assumptions down at every turn. Even now, some still refused to accept it.
But by the time the anime aired, Ye Zheng already had substantial popularity. After a string of jaw-dropping moves—steamrolling the male lead, one-shotting the villain meant to be the male lead's nemesis—many anime viewers were actually more excited for Ye Zheng's appearance than manga readers had been, watching with curiosity tinged with awe.
The comment section for the new anime episode was packed with excited Zheng stans and curious casual viewers.
The air of mystery Ye Zheng projected in just five minutes also drew in people who had previously shown no interest in the character. They sought out her name on other platforms, briefly pushing it onto the trending search rankings.
Tang Mingxi finished Episode 10 in an inexplicably exhilarated mood. Ye Zheng's screen time was minimal, and nothing in those five minutes could be called a bombshell moment.
Yet Tang Mingxi had a gut feeling—Ye Zheng's popularity was far from peaking.
How could "manga's #1 overall" possibly be the ceiling for Ye Zheng? She deserved at least #1 across all manga!
Tang Mingxi's top-stan syndrome flared up again. She was dying for the anime team to serve up all the Ye Zheng arcs at once and give everyone a proper feast.
She switched to the forum, eager to share the joy with fellow stans.
To her surprise, the forum's vibe was momentarily incomprehensible.
[Why we boycott the female lead? Boycott romance plotlines], [Zhao Mei, Zhao Mei, we love you], [I genuinely feel bad for Sykes], [You people don't actually hate the privileged class]…
Several old threads Tang Mingxi recognized had been dug up and were floating on the forum's front page.
Clicking into the latest comments, she found them filled with Zheng stans posting clown memes in mockery.
Tang Mingxi, ever on the internet's front lines, quickly caught up: someone had used the "brotherhood" Percy and Roy displayed in the latest chapter to drag down and dismiss the "sisterhood" between Ye Zheng and Bai Muqing.
The moderators had swiftly deleted the post, but plenty of people had screenshots.
The gist: Percy is a truly tolerant and kind hero who can embrace a friend's darkness and betrayal—that's why he's the protagonist.
Whereas Bai Muqing once helped Ye Zheng cover up the truth about the Divine Sword, yet Ye Zheng, for her own ends, showed no regard for Bai Muqing's family—reducing her from a lofty noblewoman to a reviled outcast. Therefore Ye Zheng is the villain and could never be the protagonist.
The sheer stupidity of the argument was staggering. The double standards and malice infuriated Zheng stans.
[#7: Oh wow, so did Ye Zheng force Bai Yi to come assassinate her? The person who actually left Bai Muqing with no home to return to is right there in the main cast—shall we drag him out?]
[#8: I get you, bro. See a pet, think of your parents. See a female character, think of bride price. See something between women, think "plastic sisterhood." That's just what being a certain kind of man is like~]
[#9: Good lord, Percy was plenty wary of Roy before this. How fragile and rare is male friendship that THIS is worth bragging about?]
Zheng stans first rebutted and mocked in the thread. Once it was deleted, they bumped certain choice old threads back to the top.
The double standards against Ye Zheng—as if being a female character were her original sin—had never let up for a single moment.
Fortunately, with her current popularity, she was no longer a convenient prop to be dragged down at will.
[Late-joining Zheng stan feeling complicated…] [HOT]
[#1: Late-joining Zheng stan feeling complicated…]
[#2: After reading those old threads—our girl's life is just as hard outside the manga as inside it.]
[#3: People cheered when a female character took down the privileged class. The moment a male character reveals his own hidden privileged background, his popularity soars. Hilarious.]
[#4: The boomerangs just keep coming back until you're numb.]
[#5: They won't admit to misogyny—claim fictional characters have no gender—then the second a male character has two extra millimeters of screen presence, the double standards are THIS blatant.]
[#6: God, I can't imagine what the older sisters went through back then. Truly, thank you for your service!]
[#7: I used to genuinely believe people just liked a character for the qualities they displayed—no connection between 2D and 3D. But after stanning Ye Zheng, I realized how spectacularly wrong I was.]
[#8: As long as "female" still carries the weight of oppression and discrimination, neither women nor female characters (meaning actual women, without certain appendages) can escape this double-standard scrutiny.]
[#9: If you understood what was inside those parentheses, you cried.]
[#10: Ye Zheng isn't the type of character I usually go for, but I keep finding myself speaking up for her. Now I realize—I'm just used to speaking up for women.]
[#11: Ye Zheng's existence rips away certain people's fig leaf of "equality," forcing them to confront the ugly truth of their male-worship. No wonder they lose it.]
[#12: Ahhh, simping for men is just this embarrassing.]
[#13: Once you start liking Ye Zheng, you're set for life! You'll never be able to like men again.]
[#14: Careful—someone will point at their baby boy and insist he's actually a little girl.]
[#15: These types default to assuming everyone's stan is a eunuch. Once you're stanning eunuchs, what more is there to say?]
…
[#172: Now that Ye Zheng's popular, the haters don't even dare drag her in the open. Baby-boy stans can only use other female characters as tools.]
[#173: My girl is ground zero for this… They used the male character's bullying of my girl to build his "cold tsundere" persona, then turned around and dragged my girl for being flat and underdeveloped. Now they've gone full ingrate—blaming my girl for dragging down their precious boy's popularity. How can people be this shameless?]
[#174: Instantly decoded.]
[#175: Without Ye Zheng and Zheng stans, where would I find a fandom this friendly to baby-girl fans?]
[#176: Everyone go check the new hot thread—someone compiled all the "plastic brotherhood" details between Percy and Roy!]
[#177: I'm laughing all the way to the bank. This manga's fandom has its own school of male-idol studies.]
*
Comments
Post a Comment