Chapter 356: Chapter 280: ‘The Cheng Zhu Series’ is completed Chapter 356: Chapter 280: ‘The Cheng Zhu Series’ is completed Shanghai, Hu Yan had just sent a comic drawing of two characters to her younger apprentice sister, Wang Wei, and was sitting at her computer desk, ready to start working for the boss.

She was sitting on the chair in a crouching position.

Hu Yan liked to turn up the heating very high during the winter and then sit in the toasty room wearing just a short sleeve shirt and shorts.

At this moment, she was wearing grey cotton shorts that were akin to hot pants.

Because she was crouching, and her figure was naturally plump and voluptuous, her slightly chubby legs were spread out to the sides, giving her a squishy soft appearance.

Not to mention her signature big chubby buttocks, which were even more pronounced due to the squatting posture.

The cotton shorts were stretched tight because of how she was sitting.

When Cheng Zhu first met her at Youu Come to Play, he kind of had a thing for recognizing people by their butts.

Hu Yan was a person who didn’t maintain much of a posture, especially when deep in thought.

However, the WeChat message from Yue Lingjing interrupted all her thoughts.

“The character I drew looks like the boss?” Hu Yan was shocked.

“What nonsense are you talking about, apprentice sister!”

“I draw lewd pictures of the boss every day, what kind of person would that make me?!”

Just as she was about to type a rebuttal, her gaze was captured by the comic of the two characters she had just sent out.

She zoomed in for a closer look.

Silently, she deleted all the text she had just typed out.

“Damn it! Damn, damn!” Hu Yan grabbed her hair, feeling a tingly sensation on her scalp.

It couldn’t be said that the drawing was an exact likeness, yet it definitely captured the essence!

Hu Yan was not one to handle crowded places well, just like how she blushed furiously and shrunk into herself when Cheng Zhu patted her shoulder and asked her to get into the car.

It made him immediately think, “What would happen if someone held her hand or hugged her in public?”

“If she was secretly photographed outside, would she faint right away?”

But if she was alone at home or with someone close like Yue Lingjing, Hu Yan could let loose and would radiate her own vibe, emitting the aura of a lewd master through and through.

However, she was now truly flushing red.

Not just her face, but her entire body began to redden quickly in a short span of time.

Her slightly plump and voluptuous body seemed to be rendered in a layer of red by a brush.

She was broken, she felt she was broken.

She felt she had completely died a social death in front of her apprentice sister!

And the fact that she had unintentionally drawn the character to resemble Cheng Zhu meant… it was her subconscious meddling!

That was the scariest part!

The things people do subconsciously can, to a certain extent, reveal something about them.

“So what does this psychology mean?” Hu Yan couldn’t figure it out.

“Could it be… I’m ‘craving’ him?”

She was crouching on the chair, her knees together, her thighs tightly closed, yet inexplicably began to feel a tad unstable.

“How am I supposed to argue with my apprentice sister about this!”

“No, how am I supposed to explain this to my apprentice sister!”

She began to open the chat history and repeatedly looked through every drawing she had sent to her apprentice sister since returning from Hang City to Shanghai.

Certainly, each drawing resembled him more than the last.

Especially the last three, which did so even more!

“You know, I’ve got to say, my drawings are quite vivid; they capture the essence of the boss’s spirit brilliantly, I’m pretty impressive!”

As her mind raced thinking about how to argue her point, a thought suddenly flashed through her head.

“Did my apprentice sister just notice this?”

“Or had she felt this way before?”

She might be too close to the situation to see it clearly, but surely her apprentice sister could see it more objectively?

But it seemed she had been enjoying the drawings quite a bit!

“Apprentice sister, if you hadn’t mentioned it, I wouldn’t have realized it at all!!!!!” She sent a long string of exclamation marks to convey her genuine shock.

“I know, otherwise you wouldn’t have sent them for me to see,” Yue Lingjing, a kind-hearted girl, empathized and felt that her senior sister couldn’t be lying.

Look, she even thoughtfully offered an excuse for her.

Little did she know that after Hu Yan had her excuse, her curiosity was piqued: “Apprentice sister, did you only just realize it too?”

Yue Lingjing, who had been hiding in her dorm room bed engrossed in the drawings, also suddenly blushed a tranquil pink.

With a guilty face, she typed, “Yes, just now.”

Please, senior sister, no more questions, I’m begging you!

She was starting to feel stuffy under the covers, hardly able to catch her breath.

“Mm-hmm, I’ll pay more attention from now on!” Hu Yan immediately replied.

This let Yue Lingjing, still in bed, breathe a sigh of relief.

This long-followed “Cheng Zhu Series” should be considered… concluded, right?

Meanwhile, Cheng Zhu, at home, was unaware of the blushing and flustered situation he had indirectly caused between two women.

He was just wondering, “Why has Hu Yan suddenly become less talkative?”

“Usually, after I send her the main images for the product showcase, she tends to share her creative thoughts with me, and it’s always full of suggestive excitement.”

“Today is a bit unusual,” Cheng Zhu thought to himself.

A whole half hour passed before Hu Yan initiated contact with Cheng Zhu, with no clue what she had been up to during that time.

“Boss, can I draw a gift box and have the character assume the same pose as in the model picture, just encased in a big gift box?” Hu Yan asked.

“What happened, you went to brainstorm this in the past half hour?” he inquired.

“Um…” Hu Yan lied.

“Okay, go ahead and draw according to your idea,” Cheng Zhu felt the idea was also acceptable.

I mean, it’s Christmas, and gifts definitely go hand-in-hand.

It wasn’t exactly a novel concept; many people have posed themselves in gift boxes for photos.

And there are women who take cat girl photos; they enjoy putting themselves into boxes, too.

After chatting with Hu Yan for a few more sentences, Cheng Zhu put down his phone and went into the bathroom to wash up.

He planned to go to bed early today.

Starting tomorrow, he would begin preheating the countdown for the milk tea shop’s grand opening.

So much so that when Hu Yan sent him the first finished drawing, he was already asleep and only saw it when he woke up.

“The second drawing was sent at 4 am; she’s really capable of pulling an all-nighter,” Cheng Zhu chuckled as he checked Weibo after waking up.

He had quite a few tasks to handle today, and they were all pretty fragmented.

One was to go to Star City and stick the countdown on the paper wall.

It would show that there were 7 days left until the opening, and just like tearing off a calendar page, this number would be removed each day.

He didn’t need to do this every day, as Wang Wei and the others were already training in the store.

The game studio had also inserted advertisements for the milk tea shop into the game.

As mentioned before, Hang City was their home base, and the share of Hang City players was substantial.

Of course, they definitely needed to promote it in Technology University as well.

“Man, I used to be quite the notable figure in the school, right?” Cheng Zhu mused.

His actions always commanded high attention within the school.

So, taking Technology University as the core, it was possible to radiate through the entire University City.

Of course, the precondition was that the shop needed to be buzz-worthy and become a topic of conversation for everyone.

Could Youu Tea lack buzz?

Its initial investment was several times that of a regular milk tea shop, whether in terms of rent or design and decoration, Cheng Zhu was willing to invest heavily.

Additionally, the high-end Internet-famous milk tea’s pricing was enough to spark discussions.

Lastly, don’t forget that it was located right across from Starbucks; Cheng Zhu was determined to make Starbucks his adamant foe!

Intentionally provoking rivalry!

Even if Starbucks currently had no clue what the hell Youu Tea was!

Besides, Cheng Zhu recalled another matter these past few days.

“I had been so fixated on Weibo ruling the present and the short video era coming in a few years that I missed something.”

“In these years, there is another Internet trend… public accounts!”

“Stuff like horoscope forecasts, food tourism, peddling anxiety… successful public accounts can bring in frightening revenue each year.”

Just like in his previous life when he started a business in Wu City, even a native promotional public account in that county-level city would charge three or four thousand for a general popularity ad, and around 8,000 for a highly popular one.

And these public accounts would have ad deals nearly every day!

In the span of two or three years, public accounts could get ad deals to the point of being overwhelmed.

And in a nationally prominent major city like Hang City, there’s no shortage of such native public accounts, with many of them doing well.

Then, a couple of days before the shop’s opening, he could find a couple of appropriate public accounts to push for some promotion.

For this, he wasn’t planning any fancy schemes; just straightforward advertising would do.

Because public accounts… aren’t the best platform for bickering.

For controversies, Weibo is definitely the platform of choice.

There isn’t a day on Weibo without a fight, without drama.

After all, it’s also the hub of fan circles, and that’s always been the culture there.

So these days, Cheng Zhu planned to seek out Zhu Youwei to recommend a few Hang City local marketing accounts suited for native ads.

Definitely not those flattering and hyping soft articles; indeed, such boasting soft ads can have promotional effects, but we’re in 2014 now, and the effectiveness isn’t what it used to be; the schemes are all too familiar.

When people realize halfway through reading that it’s an ad, their first reaction is rejection or even irritation.

After all, they’ve been reading with interest only to be served an ad in the end?

So, Cheng Zhu planned to pay these marketing accounts to criticize his own store!

Yes, I’ll give you money; you come to deride me!

“Question me! Question me fiercely!”

“How dare they open right across from Starbucks and charge similar prices!”

“What gives them the right!”

“How dare they!”

“In short, be as sarcastically snide as possible!”

…

(ps: Second update, currently fifth on the monthly ticket leaderboard, asking for monthly tickets!)