Chapter 202: Ma Yiqun with Two Roles
After returning from meeting President Pei, Ma Yiqun no longer felt as lost as before.
Back upstairs, he passed through the editorial department and saw the young editors all hard at work, carefully reviewing and editing manuscripts.
These young people truly cherished this job opportunity.
After all, Jingzhou was only a second-tier city, and its high-tech industry wasn't well developed. Internet companies were not many, and most job opportunities still came from traditional industries.
But for most recent graduates, jobs in traditional industries were nothing but torture.
Office politics, rigid hierarchies, dull work—For young people, adapting to those environments was very difficult.
Originally, many of them had been quite lost about their future.
They hadn't been able to secure a guaranteed spot for grad school, nor pass the grad school entrance exams. They also couldn't find a job they really wanted.
Traditional industries didn't want them, and they themselves also looked down on traditional industries—it was mutual disdain.
Watching their classmates find stable paths—some smoothly entering grad school and living carefree lives, others landing high-paying offers and becoming the envy of everyone—
Meanwhile, they themselves had zero offers, failed every interview, and had their resumes vanish into the void… The psychological pressure was enormous.
Some were planning a second attempt at the grad exam, others were thinking about heading back to their hometowns. But unexpectedly, things took a turn!
Just as a new website was being set up, it scooped them all up in one go, offering editorial jobs somewhat related to their majors. What incredible luck!
At first, some people weren't too satisfied with this job and even looked down on online novels. But after talking to their classmates already working elsewhere, they quickly realized—this job was actually amazing!
The salary? In Jingzhou, it absolutely counted as high income.
The work? Sure, reviewing manuscripts could be a bit tedious, but it was far more interesting than the paperwork most office staff had to do.
On top of that, the boss was young and easygoing, and the company atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. Soon, everyone recognized the value of this job and started earnestly shifting from a student mindset to that of an office worker.
When Ma Yiqun arrived, a thin young man stood up.
"Brother Ma, I've finished reviewing today's manuscripts."
Ma Yiqun nodded.
"Good. Keep yourself busy with something else for now, I'll call everyone for a meeting later."
This young man was Zhu Anxing, the most outgoing of the bunch. Unlike the others who were more withdrawn, he was sharp and quick on the uptake. He was one of the few editors Ma Yiqun was quite satisfied with.
Zhu Anxing had been at the bottom of his class. By graduation, he still had three failed courses, so he was "gloriously" delayed in getting his degree.
Considering how easy humanities courses generally were, for him to still be failing three subjects right before graduation… showed just how little he cared about studying.
Because of the delay, he wouldn't be able to receive his diploma until the end of the year. But Ma Yiqun didn't care. In his view, academic performance had little to do with being a good editor anyway.
During university, Zhu Anxing had spent most of his time reading online novels and gaming. His wide range of interests actually helped him get up to speed as an editor fairly quickly.
Ma Yiqun was already thinking that once Zhu Anxing's ability matured enough, he could promote him to chief editor of a popular channel, which would also help share some of his own workload.
After preparing briefly at his desk, Ma Yiqun gathered a few promising candidates who might become chief editors and held a small meeting.
He explained President Pei's intentions: from now on, the standards for approving manuscripts would be lowered further, using the full-attendance bonus to attract writers and first fill up the library.
Then came the issue of underworked staff.
Someone like Zhu Anxing, who had already more or less grasped how to do editing, would quickly finish the small number of submissions they currently had.
Afterwards, with nothing else to do, they could only read popular works on the Infinite Chinese Web for study.
Ma Yiqun looked around the group and said:
"If you feel your workload isn't enough, aside from reading popular web novels to learn, you can also try writing some yourselves."
"Even though all of you are editors, what if one of you ends up writing a webnovel that becomes legendary? You still need to have dreams."
"Besides, right now our site doesn't have many manuscripts, and the quality isn't very high either. Anything you write could easily get a prime recommendation slot. This is the perfect chance to give it a try."
What he said wasn't wrong, but in practice… it didn't mean much.
If the website had no readers, what good was being featured on the front page anyway?
Ma Yiqun paused, then continued:
"If you really don't have anything to do, I'll assign you another task—think about the worldbuilding and plot for Turn Back Before It's Too Late."
The worldbuilding for Turn Back Before It's Too Late was originally supposed to be Ma Yiqun's responsibility as narrative designer.
But fate had other plans—he had inexplicably been promoted.
Technically speaking, he should've handed this task off.
But Lu Mingliang was dumbfounded and told him, "If you don't do this job, then there's literally no one else who can."
The only other person capable was President Pei himself, but President Pei was far too busy to personally write storylines.
When Ma Yiqun thought about it, it was true. Crafting the worldbuilding seemed to be something only he could handle.
So he had no choice but to wear two hats—
On one hand, managing Terminal Chinese Web.
On the other, developing the worldbuilding for Turn Back Before It's Too Late.
That was why he'd been running himself ragged lately.
Now, though, with the website's groundwork completed and President Pei giving him strong support, the pressure on him had eased considerably.
Then Ma Yiqun suddenly realized something: he had comrades now! He wasn't fighting alone anymore. He could enlist the others to help brainstorm the story for Turn Back Before It's Too Late!
There were more than twenty of them, and in their spare time, they could all contribute ideas. Some were even Chinese majors, like Zhu Anxing, who had a solid foundation in classical Chinese.
According to President Pei's requirements, Turn Back Before It's Too Late would include a large amount of classical Chinese puzzle-solving. If Ma Yiqun were to write all of it alone, it wasn't impossible, but the quality would inevitably suffer under the sheer volume.
But now, with so many people sharing the load, it was like he suddenly had an entire narrative team!
Ma Yiqun briefly outlined the worldbuilding of Turn Back Before It's Too Late to everyone.
The early framework was already set: a traditional Huaxia background, incorporating elements of Buddhism, Daoism, and classical mythology—but without overemphasizing any one of them, using them only as embellishments.
Sure, they could've gone with a purely Buddhist setting, even adding Sanskrit into the art assets. But after discussing it with Lu Mingliang, they decided that wasn't appropriate.
A purely Buddhist backdrop would certainly make the worldbuilding more cohesive and stylistically distinct—but it might fail to properly highlight the "Huaxia" aesthetic.
In other words, it risked overshadowing the main theme.
After all, Buddhism was a foreign religion. It wasn't native enough, and wouldn't fully capture the Huaxia spirit.
So, after consideration, they decided to blend Buddhism, Daoism, and mythology together into a unique Huaxia-style setting.
Would so many elements mixed together risk creating stylistic chaos?
No need to worry. The art direction was in the hands of master artist Ruan Guangjian.
With his epic ink-and-oil hybrid style, the visuals for this theme would be nothing short of perfect.
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