Forced Me to Regress, Huh?

The operations manager of the Graceful Flagship Store felt like his head was about to explode.

These comic-live-action hybrid images—did they even work? He had no idea!

Because no one had tried it before!

You’re asking me? Who should I ask?

The manager was starting to develop a strong dislike for the operations team at Keep Coming.

You’re really fucking full of tricks! He cursed inwardly. You’re making it look like the rest of us come to work every day without using our brains.

Whether this strategy would succeed was still up in the air.

But to the boss, results were one thing, and effort was another.

What was even more infuriating was that even if this failed, the boss would just shrug it off and say, “At least they put in the effort.”

But if you put in the effort and still failed, the boss would say, “You clearly didn’t try hard enough!”

Li Mantang looked at his operations manager and finally said, “Keep an eye on this store for the next few days.”

“Got it,” he replied with a quick nod.

As soon as he stepped out of the office, he decided to take a closer look at Keep Coming.

After all, he received dividends, so he wasn’t short of motivation.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from scolding Li Mantang for being an idiot in his mind.

* * *

Night, Shanghai.

Zhou Kang, a loyal long-time customer of sexy lingerie, sat in front of his computer, chatting in a QQ group.

This was the fan group of the Graceful Flagship Store.

Many stores set up fan groups, and some even put considerable effort into managing them.

These groups contained devoted regular customers and some overly imaginative young people.

Some young people would join with a single thought: Could there be women here who buy adult products?

Join! Join and start chatting!

And to be fair, these QQ groups often did have female customers. Some were genuine shoppers, while others were discreet working women fishing for clients. Of course, there were also scammers posing as women, not to mention the merchants pretending to be female members to stimulate sales.

In short, these groups were a chaotic mix of all kinds of people.

Zhou Kang loved chatting in this group because its chaos always gave him plenty of laughs.

He had even seen two people… openly engaging in explicit roleplay!

It was truly an eye-opener.

It was imaginable how densely packed with perverts these types of groups were.

At this moment, Zhou Kang opened the group and scrolled up to catch up on the chat history.

As a result, his attention was instantly drawn to an image.

It was a product photo from a store named Keep Coming, and the image featured a blend of real-life pictures and comic-style artwork.

The moment this image was posted, the group descended into a flood of: “Holy shit!”

Zhou Kang thought, This is seriously awesome!

This image had clearly hit a sweet spot for him, and he suddenly felt a strong urge to make a purchase!

He was a veteran customer of this product category. Otherwise, the merchant wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to lure him into the group.

While the group buzzed with playful banter, everyone jokingly claimed, “Already ordered!”

Zhou Kang wasn’t joking. He really went to Keep Coming to buy a design he hadn’t seen in the Graceful Flagship Store and then casually posted a screenshot of his purchase confirmation in the group.

Group admin: “???”

Everyone else is just joking, but you actually fucking bought something?

Should I kick out the idiot who posted the image and the one stirring up trouble?

* * *

After replacing all the store’s main images with ‘human-comic fusion’ pictures, the three male customer service agents of Keep Coming clearly noticed an increase in traffic.

More people started inquiring!

Some even asked if there were more of the comic-style images and if they could get them!

Even more shocking were questions like, “Does your store have a group chat? Will there be additional resources in the group? Preferably with some kind of story too.”

Honestly, if you’ve ever worked in customer service, you would know that people could really be out there.

Do you think we’re serializing comics? And you want a story?

But credit where it was due, Wang Anquan had become a seasoned customer service agent. As the team leader, he quickly typed a reply in front of his two subordinates. “Dear, you can unfold the specific plot in real life after your purchase. You are the main character of the story!

“For this beautiful female dealer outfit you’ve ordered, we’ll include a pair of silk stockings and a deck of cards. We recommend you go with a gambling table storyline.”

Customer service agents Zhao Yong and Wang Haitao exchanged glances and then said in unison, “Amazing!”

By this point, the three of them could clearly tell that Cheng Zhu’s new strategy was having a miraculous effect.

Most importantly, the platform had been continuously driving traffic to Keep Coming because of its excellent performance.

Cheng Zhu had perfectly timed his decision to add the comics.

At this moment, he was on the phone with the factory owner in Guanyun.

“Brother Bin, how’s the stock situation?” Cheng Zhu asked.

“The machines are almost smoking!” Chen Bin replied unhappily.

He wasn’t sure if Chen Bin was joking or just describing the situation. “You know my factory is full of female workers. They’ve been working overtime these past few days, and now, they’re all complaining. You’re going to make their periods irregular.”

Cheng Zhu couldn’t be bothered to entertain the middle-aged man’s outdated joke. It wasn’t like he didn’t know how old the female workers in his factory were. Many of them had probably already gone through menopause.

On the phone, Chen Bin said, “This is the first time I’ve done such large-scale stockpiling. To be honest, this stock pressure should be on you as the retailer, but now it’s at my factory instead.”

“That’s because you know these products will sell well,” Cheng Zhu replied without hesitation and then painted a bright future. “Let’s aim to multiply your factory’s profits several times this year!”

The two chatted for a bit longer before Cheng Zhu hung up.

After all, Keep Coming wasn’t an influencer store, so shipping speed was crucial. Sometimes, they had to stock up and bear the risk of holding inventory.

Being an influencer shop is really the easy life. Fans buy first, and then the goods are rushed out. Many shops only ship after two weeks, and the fans are willing to wait. Cheng Zhu was extremely envious.

The fan economy is really sweet. He was imagining how much money he could make.

Just as he was about to put his phone in his pocket, it buzzed.

Cheng Zhu picked it up. To his surprise, it was a message from Yezi.

“Is this the business secret you wouldn’t tell me last time?”

After a moment, he realized that he had indeed been cryptic the last time, not telling Yezi what the next steps were or mentioning the comics.

Cryptic people were certainly annoying, but it felt really satisfying to be one.

“So, what do you think? Pretty good, right?” Cheng Zhu typed.

“Yeah! I really like it!!!” Yezi replied, adding three exclamation marks.

Cheng Zhu thought, Well, it’s her in the pictures, so her sense of Immersion must be different.

Yezi sent another message. “I saved every single comic image. My mood is much better today. Thanks for this surprise!”

Cheng Zhu: “???”

Fuck, why do I smell the scent of a licking dog hypnotizing herself? How did this turn into a surprise for you?

But after a moment’s thought, he decided to let it go. After all, it wasn’t easy to find a model who worked this hard. So he sent her several unused comic drafts from his phone.

“Don’t leak it, understand?” he warned sternly.

“Mm-hmm!” She was absolutely delighted, completely immersed in the moment.

Holding her phone, Yezi looked at the unused drafts Cheng Zhu had sent her. Each image was exquisite and beautiful, and she could tell a lot of money had been spent to create them. Every detail revealed effort and care.

With one hand holding her phone, she used her other index finger to swipe through the images. After reaching the last one, she swiped back to the first one, repeating this several times, never tiring of it.

Her eyes were practically sparkling.

* * *

The next day, Cheng Zhu went to You’s Family Supermarket to check on the renovation progress of his family’s supermarket.

Not bad. It’s almost done, he thought.

Just then, his phone rang. The ringtone was the popular song Ordinary Road, which was trending this year.

“I’ve crossed mountains and seas, and passed through crowds of people. Everything I once had has now vanished like smoke…”

Cheng Zhu had set this song as his ringtone to remind himself that his wealth and everything he had in his past life had vanished like smoke, so in this life, he had to work hard to make money.

The call was from Team Leader Wang Anquan, who was second only to the boss in the company.

“Brother Zhu! The store has exploded with orders!”