Chapter 43: The Comic Hits the Shelves

After Mother Huang and her family moved out, the room next door became vacant. Zheng Fei decided it was time for his little sister to move in.

She was no longer a little girl, and sharing a room was becoming increasingly inconvenient. Zheng Fei was a classic night owl, and his painting required bright lighting; sharing a room would inevitably disrupt her sleep schedule. Furthermore, whenever they needed to bathe or use the toilet, they both had to stand guard at the door—a task that was quite a bother in the dead of winter. Besides, his sister was at a crucial age for growth, and he worried the living situation might affect her development.

Upon reflection, Zheng Fei frowned slightly, though this was the one thing he didn't need to worry about.

The room next door had originally belonged to his uncle. After he left Tanzi Bay years ago, he had entrusted it to Old Man Sun to manage. Rent in those days wasn't exactly expensive; the room Mother Huang had occupied was small, yet the rent was four yuan a month. When Zheng Fei told Old Man Sun he wanted to rent his uncle's room, the old man replied, "Your uncle gave me instructions that if you ever needed the room, he wouldn't charge you any rent."

Zheng Fei was taken aback. Truth be told, he had very little memory of this uncle, only that he was a brilliant student who had been admitted to a technical secondary school. After graduation, he became a journalist and did quite well for himself. Due to strained relations with his eldest uncle’s family, he had moved out and lived in the newspaper’s staff dormitory. It seemed he had been transferred to the Imperial Capital a few years back, but Zheng Fei had no idea where he was working now.

As for the eldest uncle’s family, that was a complicated story. When his father had fallen on hard times, that family had done plenty to stir the pot, especially the eldest aunt, Zhang Guifang. Thinking back on it now, his father, Zheng Yuanshan, must have felt truly desperate back then. His mother had divorced him to protect herself, his eldest brother’s family had kicked him while he was down, and it had even dragged his elderly father into the mess.

When chatting with his little sister, she would often say that their father rarely smiled, and even before he fell from his horse, he would sit alone in a daze for hours.

***

When Zheng Fei told her she had to move to the next room, the little girl resisted with all her might, claiming she was afraid of the dark and afraid to sleep alone, insisting on staying in his room.

Zheng Fei didn't coddle her. He moved her quilt to the next room and said sternly, "You get up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, and it’s noisy as hell. From today on, you sleep alone."

After he snapped, his sister’s eyes reddened instantly. Seeing she was about to shed tears, Zheng Fei softened his tone slightly: "You're growing up; you need to sleep by yourself. If you need anything, just come knock on my door or call out to me loudly. That works too."

To his frustration, not long after she moved in, she actually called out to him and came running back clutching her pillow.

"Brother," she said, looking terrified, "there are so many big black bugs that can fly!"

Zheng Fei sighed. He went to the room next door, and as soon as he opened the door, he saw a cockroach scavenging on the floor and another on the ceiling. While cockroaches were found everywhere, they feared the cold. The north was colder than where they were, often seeing heavy snow. Furthermore, nomads mostly lived in yurts and moved frequently, so they rarely saw these large southern cockroaches.

The winter cockroaches were sluggish. Seeing the pests, Zheng Fei stepped on one and threw his flip-flop with great precision at the one on the ceiling. It was likely that because Mother Huang had moved everything out, the cockroaches had nowhere to hide and had all crawled out.

"Done. Not scared anymore, right?"

But Zheng Shuyao, still looking horrified, gripped his sleeve tightly and sobbed pitifully. Seeing her like this, he realized she was just a little girl after all. Zheng Fei decided that when the peddler passed by next time, he would buy a few packets of cockroach poison.

"In a few days, I'll buy some cockroach poison... but I’m telling you now, after the New Year, you must sleep by yourself. Understood?"

Zheng Shuyao nodded like a chick pecking at rice, her face instantly lighting up. She cautiously shook out her quilt to ensure there were no more bugs before daring to pick it up. Back in his room, she curled up in her usual corner and fell asleep with a smile.

Zheng Fei returned to sketching his storyboards. He planned to finish a portion of the second volume’s sketches before the New Year. It could be said that while a manga artist is a freelancer, they are not free at all; in fact, it is a grueling profession. Once a manga begins serialization, the artist becomes a top-tier beast of burden. Taking a break is impossible, and sometimes there isn't even time on weekends. It was the same for web novelists in his previous life—once you start updating, if you skip a day, you risk being cursed at. Skip two days, and you're accused of abandoning the work. If you write poorly, you get cursed at too.

Zheng Fei had a grand ambition: if the first volume was a bestseller, he would produce the second volume in full color. Regardless of anything else, he wanted to maximize the reading experience. As far as China was concerned right now, the one thing it didn't lack was talent and labor. With a genius assistant like Xu San-sui as a precedent, Zheng Fei didn't believe he couldn't find more young people who loved manga. When the time came, he would hire a couple more people with drawing experience to color his work.

It was during this time that the Shanghai Fine Arts Publishing House and the printing factory were working overtime to produce the plates for *Wind and Cloud*.

On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth lunar month, a manga with a color cover appeared on the desk of Editor-in-Chief Chen at the Shanghai Fine Arts Publishing House.

Staring at the manga titled *Wind and Cloud*, Editor-in-Chief Chen fell into a trance. In the thirty years that serial picture books had been popular, many people seemed to have forgotten that their publishing house had a periodical called *Manga* back in the fifties. Back then, Editor-in-Chief Chen, like Xu San-sui, had been nothing more than a manga assistant. But in those days, a manga was truly just a single frame. Each image was independent, not like this book, which used the manga medium to tell an entire story.

Chen opened *Wind and Cloud*. During the initial review, he had been too focused on finding faults to notice that the story was actually quite interesting. Compared to traditional picture books, this manga was more immersive, with richer visuals and a more profound emotional impact on the audience. Even an old man like him enjoyed reading it. Seven thousand copies felt like too few. He was also curious: had this kid, Zheng Fei, ever been to Leshan? How was he so familiar with the Leshan Giant Buddha?

At the provincial publishing house, Mo Changshan received the book and immediately rushed to the nearest Xinhua Bookstore. However, after circling the store, he couldn't find *Wind and Cloud* on the new release shelves. Logically, after printing, it should have entered the Xinhua distribution system, and new books like this should have been on display immediately. Could that fellow surnamed "Jiang" really be so powerful that he could reach into the Xinhua Bookstore system?

What Mo Changshan didn't know was that the bookstore was also worried about *Wind and Cloud* because they didn't know how to categorize it. They weren't sure if it belonged with the picture books or the children's books. After much deliberation, the manager finally said, "Give it its own category. Put it with the new releases for now."

Just after Mo Changshan left, the color-covered manga was placed on the most prominent new release shelf in the store. The cover background featured the Leshan Giant Buddha, with a massive fire-breathing Qilin in the foreground holding a person in its mouth. At the feet of the Buddha were towering waves, with several of the characters who had already appeared in the story caught in the surge, accompanied by the caption: *The Buddha’s Knees Submerged in Water; The Lingyun Grotto Burned by Fire.*

As soon as the manga was displayed, it immediately attracted the attention of many. The first reader to open it had eyes wide with shock, his feet unable to move an inch.