The Rise of Otaku

Chapter 6 Fishing

The news about Yoshihiro Togashi was kidnapped by a fan, and forced to draw Hunter X Hunter began to spread fast on the internet in China. In terms of the “leaked” original copies, no matter the art style or the storyline were very similar to Yoshihiro Togashi’s. The only difference was the unmatchable speed. One chapter a day, it was truly insane.

The rumor was of course fake. Many people only treated it as a fun topic. No one truly believed that this kind of ridiculous thing would really happen, not to mention that the kidnapper was Chinese.

The only question was the source of this copy.

After continuously releasing 5 chapters, no one questioned the quality of copies anymore. Because even the die-hard fans would no be able to find any traces of intimation, and there was no way that Yoshihiro Togashi, who was infamous for being lazy would have this kind of speed.

Or maybe they were really the chapters that Yoshihiro Togashi had saved, and then they were stolen? If that was the case, then it was going to be a big problem. However, no one had heard anything from Yoshihiro Togashi.

Suppose those were not Yoshihiro Togashi’s original copy, then there was someone that could compete with him in China! And he used his skill to deceive all Chinese Hunter fans!

But this was even more ridiculous than kidnapping Yoshihiro Togashi!

However, what made everyone frustrated was that the original poster – the imprisoned Taoist never replied any other fan’s questions once. Apart from releasing the chapters on time every day early morning, he never said anything else.

The mysterious poster and the mysterious chapters, more and more people began to join the discussion guessing who OP was.

The second time, that the post blew up, was after someone reposted the chapters to the Japanese anime forums. It was first caused a huge stir amongst Japanese anime fans. They almost thought that Yoshihiro Togashi had run to China to draw the new chapters only for Chinese people. However, that was not possible at all. But the quality of those chapters was undoubtedly good. So soon, they began to question whether the chapters were really stolen from the original artist.

They even began to accuse Chinese people of shamelessly stealing the Japanese manga.

It even got to an extent that it alerted the publisher of <Hunter X Hunter>. However, after checking the reposted chapters, even the editor also couldn’t tell if it was fake or not. Only until the editor spoke to Yoshihiro Togashi, was he told that he indeed kept some chapters, but there were only two chapters and half of a chapter.

However, someone already released 10 chapters on the internet.

......

Yoshihiro Togashi had also looked at the chapters that were posted online. Even he himself also found those chapters inexplicable familiar.

Although the details were slightly different, the main storyline was almost the same as he had planned. It was as if there was another him on the internet. It was truly a bizarre feeling. He was curious about who the artist was, and he wondered, that it would definitely be a fun experience if he could work with the person who published those chapters.

The editor eventually had no choice but to post a message on the social media sites, stating that after confirming with Yoshihiro Togashi, the chapters that were released online were only the fanmade contents.

After this information was released on the internet, the original post blew up once again. No one expected that the imprisoned Taoist was really a mischievous person. Clearly, he had the skill of copying others work, but he had to use the clickbait titles to deceive everyone. Because of him, the fans from both countries ended up fighting each other over the internet.

Since the original post blew up once again, the imprisoned Taoist’s fans began to grow rapidly. However, he still didn’t reply to anyone.

........................

In Luhua Village, there was a young man, who was currently fishing on the edge of a small river. He was the imprisoned Taoist, that very Hunter fans on the internet were trying to witch hunt.

The bucket next to him was empty. Meaning that the young man was an amateur. But the fishing rod was very pretty. Its paintwork was elegant, the craftsmanship was quaint. With the dragon carved on it and the phoenix painted on it, the fishing rod was supposed to be the display of a fine craftsmanship, not a tool that amateur used for fishing.

Fan Li’s Maplewood Fishing Rod, Hooked Probability (10%), 15% chance of triggering the passive skill – Stun (Duration: 3 seconds).

The fishing rod was not bad, however, Zhou Yu’s skill was terrible. In order to catch 20 Boing Boing Fish that the carpenter beaver had specifically asked, he had already come to the river, fishing, three days in a row. The bucket was indeed empty, everyone who had come to see what he was doing all shook their heads. But in the Eyes Of ACG World, there were still some strange fish in the bucket.

Star-print fish, Unicornfish, Leopard-print river starfish...

God knows how many fish species existed in this river. The number of fish was also extremely shocking. As long as he threw the hook, he would attract a fish within a minute.

The reason why he didn’t catch many was, that it was very easy to hook a fish, however, it was very difficult to reel in the fish. Once the fish was hooked, a long progress bar would appear before his eyes. Within the progress bar, there was an icon of a fish that was swimming in a random pattern inside, the end of the progress bar was a section that had a red fishing float.

If his left hand grabbed the fishing rod tightly, the fishing float would float towards the left, if his right hand grabbed it tightly, it would then float towards the right. Depending on how hard he grabbed the fishing rod, the moving speed of fishing float would also change. Only when he was able to control the fish within the range of the fishing float, would the progress bar start to move, and only when the progress bar was completed, then the fish would be caught. However, if the fish left the fishing float’s range, the progress bar would move backward, and if the entire progress bar was empty, then the fish would break free.

The rarer the fish was, the shorter the section of the fishing float was and the faster the icon of the fish moved. What the most frustrating part was, that the speed of the progress bar moving backward was a lot faster than the speed of the progress bar moving forward. He often encountered the situation where the progress bar was almost completed, but the fish suddenly started to struggle. Because it happened all of sudden, it made him forget how to balance the fishing float properly, and the progress bar would be emptied within two or three seconds.

It felt like playing the Will controller. However, he still was not happy with his balance control, and he still had not found any tricks that could help him to improve it. The reason why he had some in his bucket was because of the skill – Stun.

With the three seconds stun, and if he could seize the opportunity, the chance of catching one was very high.

In terms of the use of the fish from the ACG World, of course, they were used for exchanging the money.

At the moment, the fish that he was able to catch were all Level-one fish. He could exchange them from the Old Dragon King, and the current price was one Moe Coin for each fish. If he did not want to sell them, they could be processed into Pixel Points, the higher level the fish was, the more Pixel Points they had. However, currently, he did not have any Pixel Factory, so he had to sell them to the Old Dragon King.

He could collect 50 fishing baits each time from the fishing bait Re-spawning point, and the same as the flower fertilizer Re-spawning point, it would be refreshed 3 times a day. But even if he used up the baits, he could only catch about 30 fish. This income was simply even more miserable than writing online s on some sites. (Qidian)

Because he needed to leave his house recently, it was inevitable for him to get to know some people. The youngest grandson of the old village chief Zhou Hao was one of them. It was very hot during the summer, so those naughty kids often like to go swimming. However, without anyone watching them, they were often chased away by adults. Now that there was an adult – Zhou Yu sitting next to the river, they could play with the water without any concerns.

Therefore, whenever Zhou Yu arrived at the riverside, many kids would quickly take off their cloth and jump into the river one by one. Some brave kids also liked to climb up to the branch of the banyan that was next to the river and jumped into the river from the tree branch. It was very noisy!

To those kids, “elder brother Yu” was a very strange person. He was never annoyed by their noisy activities in the river when he was fishing. Clearly, he could not even catch a fish every time. But he was not angry. Moreover, he always sat on the same spot for an hour, never even considered of moving his position. However, he did not seem to have any patience at all. Once in a few minutes time, he would pull up the fishing rod to check the hook. This was not uncle Qing’s fish farm, no a single fish would be that dumb to bite any bait they saw. Besides, it was not going to be that fast as well.

It was truly a waste of having such a pretty fishing rod.

Living by the river, the people here more or less knew about fishing. Those kids also had seen many fishing rods before. However, they had never seen anyone that had a fishing rod that was prettier than elder brother Yu’s fishing rod.

“Time’s up, get out of the river. Little Rat, I am talking about you. Why are you diving down? Are you planning to catch any fish?”

Having used up all his bait today, Zhou Yu was finally able to catch all 20 Boing Boing fish, that the beaver had asked. As he stood up satisfactorily from the ground while patting off the dust from his trousers, he shouted toward those kids that were still playing in the river,

Looking at the empty bucket after being called back, Zhou Hao, whose nickname was Little Rat laughed, “elder brother Yu, you are very bad at fishing, you did not catch anything again. How about let me teach you someday? Not that I want to brag about myself or anything, my fishing skill is the best in our village, no one can compete with me! ”

“Get lost!”