This time, when Zhao Youyue entered the Dimensional Gate, she carried the weight of her previous mistake like a cautionary tale. She didn't rush to set up her character or attempt to transform herself into some invincible existence. Instead, she planned to first figure out exactly what kind of situation she was in, moving with a newfound sense of calculated patience.
Through the Dimensional Gate, the only information she could obtain was the title of the work, a rough synopsis, and the names and settings of the female characters. Just from how detailed those settings were, it was easy to tell which female characters were main heroines or important supporting roles, and which ones were merely background characters. The lead characters had paragraphs of personality traits and backstories, while the others were mere footnotes.
The title of this work was Pure Love. It sounded innocent enough, but in reality, it was a typical school harem manga. The general premise was simple. The male lead, Yang Ming, began his high school life while living with a beautiful younger sister who wasn't related to him by blood. She took care of his daily life and was capable at all household chores, her presence a constant in the house.
Their parents had gone traveling around the world, leaving them in a domestic bubble. Naturally, the sister had a strong brother complex. Besides her, the male lead would encounter many beautiful girls with different personality traits in high school. They all revolved around him, competing openly and secretly, creating constant yet restrained harem chaos.
Put simply, it was a cliché school harem manga. The male lead's setup was also textbook standard. He was gentle, kind, dense, and essentially impotent. From the beginning to the end, he would probably remain a virgin. Yet he would frequently enjoy accidental face-planting into soft chests, or mistakenly enter girls' bathrooms and changing rooms, catching glimpses of naked bodies. Creators of this type of manga were very skilled at using these routines to sell fan service to their audience.
After understanding the general outline of the work, Zhao Youyue ruled out the option of directly playing the role of the younger sister or other harem members. It wasn't that she couldn't accept becoming part of someone else's harem. This was just a two-dimensional world derived from a manga, and she would be using the body of a female character from the work. If the plot demanded it, she would even dare to push things in reverse. As long as she could turn her character into a classic and then obtain that character's abilities in reality, she would stir up any amount of trouble.
If she could enter worlds like Fate, A Certain Magical Index, or even Battle Through the Heavens, then choosing to play Saber, Misaka Mikoto, or Xiao Xun'er would be an instant win. Those unforgettable classic female characters didn't even need her to set them up personally. Following the original story would be stable and safe.
Unfortunately, the odds of hitting that kind of jackpot were extremely low.
She felt that the harem members in Pure Love had no highlights at all. They were nothing but decorative vases, like the faceless group of women in generic stallion harem novels. Readers would never remember them once the book was closed. That was why she wouldn't choose to play them.
In fact, she felt that trying to create a classic female character that all readers would remember in such a bland work was far too difficult. She decided to use a new approach, one that focused on internal growth rather than external flashy powers.
She chose to play a background character who appeared only two or three times in the manga. Her name was Xu Jing. She was the best friend of the male lead's younger sister, Yang Xixi. She had a simple single ponytail and delicate features, often seen only in the corner of a panel.
Only at this point did Zhao Youyue suddenly realize the real highlight of this work. The artist's style and technical skill were genuinely good. All the harem girls were stunning, and even a background character like Xu Jing, who only appeared a handful of times, was a beautiful girl. No wonder people said that ninety-nine percent of the two-dimensional world was filled with beauties. So many otaku were completely obsessed with it and indifferent to reality.
Zhao Youyue added only one setting to Xu Jing. She was obsessed with studying and was an extremely hardworking girl. She wasn't an intelligence-max, all-round genius type. Otherwise, once reflected back into reality, the manga author would definitely feel something was off. If she had such a setup, why was she still a background character? Then the author would think something had gone wrong and revise away her unreasonable setting, making all her effort pointless.
The Dimensional Gate wasn't something she could enter whenever she wanted. The aftereffects of her previous reckless actions were already very clear. She had originally started from a fantasy world with low-level supernatural abilities. Now, however, she had entered a purely everyday world with no abilities at all. The energy level had clearly dropped. If she wanted to enter higher energy worlds in the future, she would have to create classic characters, gather the power of belief from many readers, and use that to pass through the Dimensional Gate into higher-level worlds.
After making such a simple setting, Zhao Youyue felt that the manga creator would definitely not notice anything wrong. A background character obsessed with studying and striving upward was far too common.
The moment she became the Xu Jing she had set up, she felt an intense desire to study surge through her body. It was a physical sensation, a tightening of focus that pushed everything else aside. Countless meme-like status captions seemed to load onto her all at once in her mind.
"I love studying. Studying makes me happy.jpg"
"There is only one thing in my heart, and that is studying.jpg"
"If I don't study for one second, my whole body feels uncomfortable.jpg"
"If you don't let me study, you might as well let me die.jpg"
"Even if you like me, it's useless. I like studying.jpg"
"Obsessed with studying, growing thinner by the day.jpg"
At the same time, she deeply felt the power of the trait called diligence. In reality, she couldn't really be called lazy, but she definitely wasn't the type of girl who worked especially hard. That wasn't her fault; she had benefited from her comfortable background. People said that poverty crushed ambition, but in reality, many people rose from nothing. Meanwhile, children from wealthy families often lacked drive. For anyone, diligence was an excellent quality.
Zhao Youyue completely forgot everything else and began studying hard in this world using Xu Jing's body. Xu Jing was in her final year of middle school, preparing for the high school entrance exam. Originally, her grasp of middle school knowledge had been very shaky. Through Xu Jing, however, she relearned and mastered it perfectly, the ink of her pen flying across the paper as she worked through endless exercises.
Her new idea was this. If she couldn't confidently create a classic character that all readers would remember and then inherit that character's abilities, then could she use that character to acquire knowledge through the Dimensional Gate? Could she inherit that knowledge instead?
The next day, after she woke up, she took her placement test math paper out of her bag with a sense of anticipation. Then she helplessly discovered that she still couldn't solve those difficult problems. Her mind felt sharper, but the specific high school formulas weren't there yet.
Could it be that knowledge gained through studying couldn't be inherited?
No, that wasn't right. She clearly remembered all the middle school material she had covered. It was vivid in her mind.
She quickly understood.
Even with the traits of loving study and striving upward, how much could she really gain in just one night? Learning was a long process. Only by persisting would the results become more and more obvious.
Sure enough, knowledge obtained through her own effort could be inherited. On the other hand, if she had directly set Xu Jing as a super genius or top scholar, that kind of hollow setup would only give her a moment of satisfaction in the manga world. Once she returned to reality, nothing would truly change.
Zhao Youyue felt she was already qualified to say this famous line.
"There are no geniuses in this world. I just use the time others spend sleeping to study."