Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
“Coming!”
Ms. Chen Fu, the administrator beamed as she saw Meng Fan and began talking to herself, “Why didn’t you come yesterday? Resting for a day is good though, it’s important to balance work and rest.”
Meng Fan chuckled and took out his phone, asking for permission before taking a selfie with the administrator. He smiled. “My mom is a big fan of yours, I have to send her a picture.”
Ms. Chen Fu notices this and smiled. “What a coincidence, I’m also a fan of your mom.”
Meng Fan froze for a moment. It didn’t sound like a joke. After careful consideration, there really was the possibility that they knew each other. “You don’t really know my mom, do you?”
“I’ve been to your house before, but you were small at that time, and not this fat. I didn’t recognize it until I saw those videos. The more I watched, the more familiar you looked, so I asked your mom to confirm. If I hadn’t asked, your mom probably wouldn’t have told me until you graduated.” Said Ms. Chen Fu.
Meng Fan smiled foolishly, thinking to himself. No wonder this hidden master was so friendly, it turns out she knew whose son he had been.
Before, he had thought it was because of his increased metaphysical attributes in the charm department.
He’d went overboard with that thought.
However, Meng Fan didn’t know Chen Fu only recognized him later on.
Meng Fan didn’t know what to say when coincidentally, a figure entered the door. It was the petite cute girl with freckles.
“Let’s take a selfie together.”
Meng Fan jumped at the opportunity to take a photo with Freckles. He then turned to Ms. Cheng Fu and smiled before sitting down in his regular spot.
Seeing them, Ms. Chen Fu once again revealed the sly smile of a nosy aunty.
This time, aunty wasn’t just a method of description.
With the addition of his picture with Freckles, the task progress for [Group Photo Guru] had reached 80.
This task could be done quickly, under the premise that it wasn’t very tiring either. He also didn’t need to go into a frenzy, dragging people to take selfies with him to get this number.
As long as he went to Song Cheng tomorrow, he’d finish the task for sure. The task reward wasn’t that attractive either, so Meng Fan wasn’t in a hurry.
Otherwise, he could have finished the task way sooner if he just squatted below the studio and shamelessly asked people for selfies.
“Senior classmate, I saw you were streaming at Song Cheng yesterday, you’re incredible with so many people lining up for your drawing.” Freckles seemed happy to see Meng Fan upon arriving at the studio, walking towards his direction and sitting down next to him. She spoke softly of animations and manga related topics.
Meng Fan conversed with her as he set up his station. Seeing Meng Fan prepare to stream, Freckles stopped talking and continued to work in silence.
During tonight’s stream, Meng Fan continued working the five drawings of historical architecture from before. Evidently, drawing buildings was harder than figures for Meng Fan, as they were more detailed and required more time to execute.
Historical architecture was Meng Fan’s most familiar field of expertise to draw after historical costumes and ancient mythical creatures. He did not particularly like ancient architecture, not in the way he ‘liked’ historical costumes and mythical creatures anyways, always taking the initiative to research them. This was more of a passive acceptance, as his knowledge regarding this exceeded the other two in terms of professionalism and depth of understanding because he had a father at home who was intoxicated by architecture.
Other children’s fathers would buy them toys and models like transformers, but Meng Fan’s dad would toss him models of ancient pavilions and pagodas. The simpler ones consisted of mountain tip roofs, pagodas, archiways, flying buttresses, while the more difficult ones had been to scale replicas of the Temple of heaven and other similar establishments.
The ones mentioned weren’t even the most terrible. The most horrifying was that every time he had almost finished building a model, a random sister, older or younger would stumble over, face full of joy and worship, babbling words similar to, ‘wow it’s amazing you can build this you’re so great, can this go here?’ then… Clank. The model would collapse, shattering all over the ground.
Imagine tens of thousands of dominos almost about to complete a pattern, then suddenly all of them collapse after being stepped on… This was the level of disparity that Meng Fan felt.
Of course, aside from harvesting despair, he had gained profound knowledge regarding the structural composure and exterior appearance of ancient buildings, and it was not shallow either. Together with the artifacts of historical architecture that accumulated throughout his household, he had no choice but to like it. Professionally speaking, he had a firmer grasp on historical architecture than he’d ever had with historical costumes and mythical creatures.
On his professional foundation, Meng Fan’s imagination and exaggerated whimsical penmanship were solid, not only giving the impression that his buildings were aesthetically pleasing, but pragmatic as well. He demonstrated evidence of its existence as well as the building’s roots, but mostly, it was undoubtedly structurally sound.
After all, could a building done on paper collapse?
Of course. They can collapse in the frail hearts of some readers.
Animation should be exaggerated, and Meng Fan believed these exaggerations shouldn’t stem from anything. Even supernatural abilities had a traceable origin, let alone physical infrastructures.
In the next five, Meng Fan drew illustrations for ‘The Supreme Sword’. Following the buildings, Meng Fan drew one of the most famous architectural establishments from the novel, the watchtower. In front of the building; he added the main character in combat alongside the tower’s head, a woman, who had been one of the main characters in the book.
Heh. The male protagonist in the book had seized the sword and sealed it in the pavilion, leading the lady of the tower to strangely name herself as his ‘sword slave’. It was poison to Meng Fan.
To inexplicably acknowledge a master with no explanation was fine, but what kind of a f*cking thoughtless name was ‘sword slave’.* Even ‘Sword servant’ would have been better.
*The Chinese characters for ‘sword slave’ sounds sort of like ‘cheap slut’*
Hold it in. He was the one paying you.
After the lady of the tower found her master, Meng Fan refused to draw anymore.
Because the architectural establishments he had drawn previously had taken much time, he stopped after three illustrations for the novel.
During his stream, Meng Fan noticed several live comments asking when he was going to go back to drawing pretty girls in Song Cheng, so he responded before he logged off by updating the next day’s announcement—Tomorrow at 2:00 pm, drawing pretty girls in Song Cheng.
“Are you psychotic? What do you mean streaming pretty girls? Hahaha! What about pretty boys?”
“Tomorrow is my day off, I’m gonna go visit Song Cheng and pretend to ‘encounter’ the host!”
“The one above me, take me along. I’m near He Fang Street, are you on the way?”
“Please don’t go! I don’t want to see a hoard of manly nose pickers on the stream tomorrow!”
Today’s stream wouldn’t have as many viewers as the other day at Song Cheng, but he still had 37,000 viewers, with 270,000 total views on all of his streams.
When he left the studio, Ms. Chen Fu, the administrator was intently focused on her drawing. Meng Fan didn’t want to bother her, so he watched her for a while from afar and left the studio.
“Senior classmate.”
Suddenly, Freckles appeared at the door as well, speeding up her footsteps to match Meng Fan. “Senior classmate, is it okay to come to you about any future questions regarding the profession?”
Meng Fan nodded, taking out his phone. “Let’s add each other on WeChat, it’s more convenient. You scan me or I scan you?”
Naturally, Meng Fan had no objections, taking out his phone and opening WeChat. Just as he was about to scan her, a call came in. The contact’s name was Meng Cai Wei.
This close, Freckles had seen everything. Meng Fan calmly hung up the phone and said, “10086.”
Freckles paused for a moment and smiled. “You also like to nickname the 10086 number to an idol you like? Me too, mine is Peng Yu Yan!”
When he heard that Freckles was into wholesome buff guys like Peng Yu Yan, Meng Fan let out a sigh of relief. Happily, he continued to scan… Meng Cai Wei called again. He hung up again and quickly added the QR code.
After he added her, Meng Cai Wei called once again.
“Probably trying to sell a phone or something.”
This time, Meng Fan didn’t hang up, curtly pressing mute and shoving it in his pocket.
They walked for a distance before separating. As he watched Freckles leave, Meng Fan picked up his phone, which was still ringing. “What do you want?”
An angry clamor came from the other end of the phone. “Meng fan you dare to hang up my call! You don’t want concert tickets to Qing Cen anymore?!”
Meng Fan froze. Finally, something that didn’t change from before he was reincarnated.
Qing Cen surnamed Su, otherwise known as Shan Jin Brother—was a currently famous singer.
October 5th was the first stop in her concert tour, at the Shanghai Stadium.
Meng Cai Wei was the one who had given him the floor tickets.
Before the concert began, Meng Fan had gone backstage to take a photo with Shan Jin Bro.
The second day after the concert, Meng Cai Wei had taken Meng Fan out for lunch.
As for the concert setlist…
Pieces of information began to emerge in Meng Fan’s mind. It was surreal and vivid, but otherworldly at the same time.