All-rounder Artist

Lin Yuan spent several days studying the mystery market on Blue Star.

Exactly as he had imagined…

Most of the mysteries on Blue Star were orthodox, the currently most popular genre, and also the original form of detective stories.

Therefore, this was universally acknowledged in the mystery genre as the traditional school.

These types of stories primarily use logic-based reasoning to solve mysteries, featuring thrilling and intriguing plots and clever schemes, often involving murders in locked rooms or on deserted islands…

In other words, Blue Star readers prefer pure detective stories.

If it’s pure detective fiction, naturally you would choose the orthodox type of work.

Blue Star also uses the term “orthodox,” although most still call these novels “traditional mystery”.

After all, this was the most familiar pattern.

On Earth, big names like Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle were representatives of this style.

Orthodox detective stories can satisfy readers who enjoy solving puzzles. They usually put the readers and the detective on the same level, providing the same number of clues. Some orthodox works even issue a “challenge to the reader”.

For example, Earth’s famous detective novelist Queen liked to do this.

These novels would explicitly tell readers in the work, “You now have enough clues to solve the mystery.”

This challenges whether the reader can solve the mystery just like detective.

So, an emphasis on fairness and rational logic characterize this genre of detective fiction.

Readers can enjoy guessing while reading.

This genre is definitely the origin of detective fiction. In comparison to fantasies, it would be called Authentic Xuanmen Sect.

It followed the King’s route, a mainstream detective story!

Once he learned about the market and knew the general direction he needed to follow, Lin Yuan could customize his novel.

This time he didn’t have to consider saving money.

Because his recent film ‘The Tuner’ had earned Lin Yuan a fortune!

So much that Lin Yuan had become somewhat inflated.

To be specific, Lin Yuan directly told the system: “I want to customize an Agatha Christie detective novel.”

Well, this name should be familiar to everyone.

Agatha Christie, affectionately known as “Aunt Agatha” by detective fiction fans.

She was an English detective novelist, a playwright, and one of the three masters of detective literary works!

On the European and American side of the Earth, alongside Aunt Agatha in the detective genre, was Conan Doyle, the author of the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series.

The third was Matsumoto Seicho of Neon, who was not discussed in-depth here.

In short, Lin Yuan aimed at the three masters right from the start and decided to start with Aunt Agatha after some comprehensive deliberation.

The system, however, was open to all: “Do you want to accurately customize a certain work?”

“Conditions?”

“You have to pay extra.”

Lin Yuan felt the system’s text came with a voice effect:

“I choose random.”

Lin Yuan of course wanted to directly customize a mature work in Agatha’s style, such as ‘No One Survived’, which had the most influence.

However, the price for Agatha’s representative works must be terrifying.

The more precise the customization, the more expensive.

Random selection was less expensive.

Besides, even if it was a random choice, it wasn’t aimlessly random. It was a relative random with precise orientation. After all, Lin Yuan had already specifically decided on the author.

It was Agatha!

Most of Agatha’s works were of good quality, so Lin Yuan was not worried about getting a bad one.

“Dong ding, congratulations to the host on obtaining the work ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,’ customization price eight million. Would you like to customize?”

“Customize.”

A twinkle appeared in Lin Yuan’s eyes and he chuckled a little then shook his head.

He finally decided to write a mainstream genre, intending to follow the traditional detective path, and he didn’t expect the system to provide him with a relatively unique work under Aunt Agatha’s name.

However, the quality of this work was good.

So, Lin Yuan could totally accept this price.

Yes, among all of Aunt Agatha’s works, ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ might not be universally acknowledged as the best, but it was definitely a can’t-miss work by Aunt Agatha!

The story was a bit unusual.

But this was one of Aunt Agatha’s early works which made her famous!

Especially after reading, and acquiring related memories, Lin Yuan felt more and more that this was a good decision.

Though he felt it would have been better if he could have randomly selected ‘No One Survived’ or ‘Murder on the Orient Express’. Yes, ‘Death on the Nile’ would be nice too.

Nevertheless, he was already highly satisfied!

Even if it wasn’t the best choice, it was still a win.

However, this novel also had a characteristic:

Once the reader knows in advance who the murderer is, then reading this novel loses a lot of its appeal.

So…

No spoilers here.

Just a hint:

If you don’t want to miss out on the fun of reading because of being spoiled by someone, it is strongly recommended that you read the novel as soon as possible.

Once the novel was customized, the next step was to adjust the background.

In the following days.

Lin Yuan got down to business.

As time went by, it finally became March!

March in the Qin Continent was spring.

Even though the air still carried a chill, everything had started to revive.

And for many short-story lovers, March was the day Chu Kuang released his new short-story on Tribe!

Thus, many people logged onto Tribe to find Chu Kuang’s new work—

A short-story called ‘A Bowl of Spring Noodles’!

The correct translation of the original title should be ‘A Bowl of Clear Soup and Buckwheat Noodles’.

Lin Yuan, wanting to make readers more engaged, didn’t use buckwheat noodles, and instead directly chose ‘Spring noodles’.

Some of the Chinese translations from Earth handled it the same way.

What kind of noodles didn’t matter.

What mattered was what the content was like.

Clearly, Shen Jiarui, currently ranking in the twenties, thought the same way.

At this time, on Tribe, the new works to be released in March had all been published.

Without any hesitation, Shen Jiarui directly clicked on the work titled ‘A Bowl of Spring Noodles’.

The story started in a noodle shop.

Very fitting.

The setting was New Year’s Eve.

The narrative style was rather descriptive: [Just as the final customer stepped out of the door and the shop owner was about to close the shop, the door was slowly pulled open. A woman with two children came in. Two boys, about six and ten years old, dressed in brand new sportswear. The woman was wearing an off-season plaid short coat.]

Shen Jiarui raised an eyebrow.

Chu Kuang’s text style for most of his short stories was quite unique.

For instance, in ‘The Necklace,’ his text was always oddly tonal. Shen Jiarui did not realize that this was the style after translation.

But this time, Chu Kuang’s text style was more similar to his early short story ‘Artificial Beauty’.

It wasn’t difficult to read; the tonality was normal, this was the more common style.

Would there be a shocking twist this time?

What Chu Kuang excelled at most were his groundbreaking plot twists at the end of his short stories. These were twists that, though rational, were unexpected, leaving the reader reeling!

Shen Jiarui had been shocked by Chu Kuang several times.

If it was still that style of a twist ending, Shen Jiarui would be a bit scared.

But as Shen Jiarui read, he gradually realized…

This story…there was no twist.

Chu Kuang this time, unexpectedly changed his writing style and wrote a legitimate short story using descriptive text.