(A/N: I actually had yesterday's chapters finished by, well, yesterday but I completely forgot to post them 🙈 Sorry about that! Here they are now!)
-----------
The originally black hair instantly lost all of its color, changing into a snowy-white. In combination with the handsome young face, it didn't make him look old but instead gave him a mysterious aura.
Su Yan's lips quirked up. This was exactly how an expert should look like! Now, about the eyes ...
Su Yan wasn't as sure about this as he had been about the hair. If he didn't want to have to explain that his cultivator's ancestors weren't all human, then he couldn't choose anything too outrageous. So ... he could probably only take something that ranged somewhere between a light brown and black? That wasn't creative at all!
He pursed his lips. He didn't want anything ordinary but he also didn't want to have anything strange in regards to the male lead's familial background. After all, this story was supposed to focus on the romance and the fights, wasn't it? He didn't want anything complicated like a non-human relative to pop up.
"Mn ..."
Su Yan tried to imagine his male lead with the whole range of eye colors. The darker ones seemed better with the rest of his appearance but it still lacked that kind of special feeling the white hair evoked.
"Argh! I want a special male lead! He has to be handsome and mysterious and just totally godly! I can't settle with this!"
Su Yan squatted down in front of his male lead and cradled his head. Maybe he should have taken Nie Chang along so that they could talk about his ideas? Ah, but he couldn't always rely on him ...
"Maybe I should do the rest first? There's still his personality, after all." Su Yan froze. Wait. Not only that! He hadn't even thought about his name yet!
Su Yan looked up at the male lead and pursed his lips again. His name ... It should also seem mysterious or at least a bit rare. So, maybe a surname with two characters would be a good idea?
Dongfang? Moqi? Zhuansun? Ziju?
Eh? Ziju didn't seem bad ... So, how about his first name then? If his family name already had two characters, then his first name should only consist of one character. And naturally, the meaning should be something deep.
Ru maybe? Or Shi? Xun would fit the color of his hair but that might be a bit platitudinous. It would be better to have something that fit the atmosphere he was supposed to give the readers.
"Mn ... he's supposed to be a mysterious master. So he wouldn't be a person to talk much. Most of the time, he would be a quiet presence at the protagonist's side that gives him a feeling of security and stability."
He pondered and considered some names that had a meaning like that. In combination with the last name he had chosen ... An might be a good name?
"Ziju An ..." Su Yan slowly nodded. "Doesn't sound bad at all. Alright, that's his name then!"
He smiled and leaped to his feet again. Never mind the eye color he still hadn't determined yet, at least he had the general appearance, part of the personality and a name. That was quite good already. For now, he might as well work on the protagonist and ask Nie Chang for his opinion after that.
Su Yan turned to the other platform where the figure of Yun Bei Fen was still displayed. He had still derived his new male lead from Nie Chang's appearance but he felt like he didn't need to use his own appearance for the protagonist again. He had already written so many xianxia stories, he was completely capable of crafting his protagonist from scratch without any other help!
He narrowed his eyes at the figure and imagined a youth in a traditional gown. His face lacked the cuteness of Yun Bei Fen and he wasn't as handsome as the new male lead Ziju An. In fact, the teenager looked a bit ordinary. If seen next to Ziju An, he might even be considered slightly ugly.
Su Yan smirked. This was supposed to be a story where people would talk about the couple behind their backs. The other cultivators wanted to point their fingers? Then he should give them some more incentive to do just that!
Furthermore, in which xianxia story would the protagonist get everything presented on a silver platter right at the beginning? He would only get some kind of cheat and then have to work hard and even harder to finally reach the peak! Since the readers also wanted him to include more fights then he shouldn't disappoint them.
"Eh, right, speaking of that I should probably also make sure that the sword arts are noted down as a trait of the characters." He frowned. "Well, I hope everything is actually working. I don't really understand how the Special Dimension works." He sighed and shook his head. Wasn't it all the fault of this unreliable system? Why couldn't it at least give him some hints when he asked something?
"Whatever. System, note this down: Both the male lead and the protagonist should be talented with the sword!" He pursed his lips. "Well, Ziju An should be really talented. It's alright if the protagonist is only a bit talented. After all, that's what his master is for. And they need something that forces them to spend time together, right? Training sword arts is exactly the right reason for that!"
He grinned and couldn't help but feel a little bit smug. This was even better than he had thought. Crafting the characters was actually even helping him plan the story.
His protagonist still needed a name though. "How about ... Dou Fang Hai?"
Su Yan nodded enthusiastically and skipped back in front of his male lead. He had found names for the two of them and even thought of something he could use in the story. It couldn't be that he would actually fail at finding a suitable eye color for his male lead!
"Damn this! Let's take ... take ..." He looked at the narrow phoenix eyes of Ziju An and frowned.
He couldn't take something normal. He definitely couldn't. This kind of Daoist master definitely wasn't suited to something ordinary. His gaze should be deep and penetrating. The kind of gaze where people would stop whatever they were doing as soon as they were glanced at.
Su Yan examined the dark gray robe with the golden ornaments and paused. This ... Wasn't this a suitable color?
He looked up at those eyes and they slowly turned golden with some specks of gray. It should have seemed strange but ... in that kind of face those eyes seemed like they were a matter of course. It seemed he had finally managed to completely craft his incredibly handsome male lead.
Ah, he really wanted to start writing right now!