Chapter 31: Your Family Owns Coal

Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation

The illustrations for ‘There’s a Spirit Underground’, Meng Fan had drawn very well with a high level of skill and execution, making them better than the illustrations he had done for ‘Rampage and Repair the world’.

To the netizens that came for Mr.Sleepy, Meng Fan had satisfied their expectations, even drawing one that had exceeded their expectations.

When it came to adapting novels, regardless of manga adaptation or video, these kinds of content will always stir up controversy and attract disses from the viewers. Comparably, manga adaptations were treated a bit better, as video adaptations usually got downvoted into oblivion.

Even so, the expectations for a manga adaptation were very hard to reach, because once the texts provided too much space for imagination, the visualizations will always turn out different. Meng Fan’s illustrations didn’t count as manga adaptations of course, but it was very close. From a certain point of view, it was more difficult than regular adaptations as he didn’t have the coherence of the plot to base off.

When Meng Fan completed his first five illustrations, fans of the book immediately took screenshots and began sending them to their friend groups, rushing to tell and share.

Mr.Sleepy, who was not proactively updating his chapters but proactive in other activities, was extraordinarily proactive when it came to this matter. He sent a WeChat message to Meng Fan after his stream had ended, asking for Meng Fan to send him the five manuscripts he’d done on stream, immediately selecting two and posting them to his public profile. Additionally, he sent a hehe and made another post telling his fans to look at the images on his public handle.

Even this was not enough, as he then posted the images to his WeChat moments and WeiBo, and considered for a minute before showing them off on the network writers’ association ‘LongKong forum’. He couldn’t forget the writers’ chat rooms either.

“MotherF**ker you have this much time why can’t you update another chapter?”

“You have enough time to watch a stream but not enough to write some words!”

“You said your eyes were hurting! They hurt from looking at words but not at images, is that it?”

After chuckling, he accepted the wave of complaints. Mr.Sleepy opened the Word doc and entered:”Chapter xxx” before getting up to make a cup of coffee. He then sat down without looking at his keyboard and uncontrollably opened WeiBo. He scrolled and scrolled until he reached a link to an old zombie film by Lin Zheng Ying, then uncontrollably clicked into it and attentively began to watch.

At the end of the joyful movie, the clock was nearing midnight. Mr.Sleepy sighed regretfully and clicked the close button to the left of his word doc. He’d finally corrected his work schedule and couldn’t ruin it now. Guess writing will have to wait until tomorrow; a ‘healthy body was key to revolution,’ after all.

He’d just laid down when his WeChat began to buzz nonstop. He had been pulled into a new WeChat group by his night owl author friends.

“Sleepyhead, what’s the deal with your illustrations?”

“Where did you find your artist?”

“After looking at the illustrations you posted then back at my own, I want to die!”

“How much are you paying? It’s got to be at least five hundred for one drawing right?

“Five hundred minimum right? I found a guy for three hundred per drawing and he often delays his submissions; his update rate is even worse than you!”

“I’ve seen Mr.Sleepy’s books, the illustrations that you sent are completely recognizable to your name! As for the artists I found… Hehe, if you didn’t say what book their art was from you’d never guess, but if you did say it was from a novel it’d be right because they’re way too ordinary!”

Mr.Sleepy looked at the barrage of messages, letting out a chuckle, and sat up.

…

Meng Fan had painted twelve illustrations for ‘There’s a Spirit Underground’, as it was good to give some discounts during their first time doing business. Of course, it was also because Meng Fan could illustrate it with ease, incorporating a lot of small details and quirks into his scenes, and even adding some easter eggs in small corners. It wasn’t that he was hardworking but way too familiar with the work.

There weren’t any classes in the afternoon, so before 10 am, Meng Fan had sent the remaining seven drafts to Mr.Sleepy. Around one in the afternoon, Mr. S had just woken up. Once he received the message, he immediately responded to Meng Fan. “Bro, your art is too much! Thank you, thank you!

“By the way, a few of my colleagues were asking me about illustrations yesterday, they want you to draw for them. Do you still have time? As for the price, they have suggested themselves, as long as the quality doesn’t go down, they are willing to increase it.

“FlatHeadBro told me already, you’re worried the books are too long and you can’t read them in time, so I spent a long while last night selecting some suitable ones for you. They’re all fairly short, and the authors pay a lot.” As he spoke he sent a few novels over.

“Take a look, if you’re interested in any of them let me know, I’ll send you the author’s WeChat contact info to you.”

Yup, Mr.S was very proactive towards these things too.

“Okay, thank you.”

Meng Fan was itching to ask why the hell he didn’t update his novel and went to do this sort of thing last night, but then stopped himself. It was better to diss him on his QiDian APP account.

Mr.S sent over three books, all of which had character counts between 500,000 and 800,000. They were all fantasy types, two of which the authors Meng Fan was familiar with, and one Meng Fan had not heard of but was also a god-tier author.

It made sense; if they weren’t god-level or near god-level authors, one, they wouldn’t have the number of public followers, two is they wouldn’t have the thought to consider illustrators, and three… They wouldn’t have the money; at least, the kind of money to freely spend 1500 a month on illustrations alone.

After adding all three books to his bookshelf, Meng Fan did not read them immediately, for the same reason as before: He had time to draw, but not enough to read as well.

Out of these three, Meng Fan could only take on one at most, in the next few days at least. Perhaps once he finished the novels on hand, he could consider accepting another job.

Doing business for web novel illustrations, Meng Fan was confident he could do it. High income aside, the key was the high amount of followers coming to his stream, and it was a fixed flow of traffic too.

This would be a crucial boost for completing [Famous Streamer].

Thinking of this, a person appeared in his mind. If he could find her, he could bring an unimaginable flow of viewers to his channel in just a short time, but… Nevermind, it’s probably best to not bother her, who knew what conditions would await him.

He swept the devilish woman out of his thoughts and continued to read ‘The Supreme Sword’.

“F**k, how come reading books doesn’t trigger a task?”

Half an hour later, Meng Fan stretched his neck, which after the last few days of running had emerged from being covered by his chin and the fat around it. From the task that had been triggered, he’d thought there would be at least one achievement that was related to reading books, but the system refused to unlock it for him. He’d been reading e-books as well as physical books. Could it be his posture was wrong?

Buzz.

His phone showed a notification from WeChat. He clicked into it, and his mouth jerked a bit.

He’d just been thinking about her when she decided to message him herself.

“Fan Fan, I’m in Hang city, I want to see you.”

“I don’t.”

Meng Fan recalled their last unpleasant meeting and decisively refused. He didn’t mind that they had to sneakily meet, nor did he mind that it took him an hour of commute to meet up for 15 minutes, but when she had put wasabi in the food he loved the most, that was the bottom line!

“You are so unwilling to see me, maybe you’ll want to see…”

She sent a photo message.

“I asked my friends to bring them from Nippon, they’re all souvenirs from the Shonen Jump fifteen-year anniversary event; two big boxes.”

“Gimme your address, I’ll be there soon.”

Meng Fan saw the photo and immediately changed his attitude. At this point, it was impossible to move his giant mass and escape the teacher’s prying eyes. He could only fake an expression of pain, clutching his stomach and scurrying away.

Two and a half hours later, Meng Fan’s taxi arrived downstairs of the dormitory. Zhang Zhou Wei who had come down after receiving his call was waiting for him to help carry the two heavy boxes into their room. Once they opened it, their screams rang through the first floor.

Zhang Zhou Wei calmed his emotions and stared at Meng Fan. “Fatty, your family got some coal or what?”

“My family not only has minerals…. mineral water, potato chips, jerky and spicy dough sticks!” Meng Fan said as he sorted out the figures, special periodicals, out-of-print cards, posters, illustrations, single books, cups, T-shirts, signatures, and three original manuscripts and organized them around himself. He was in a great mood, even if he had been exploited by that woman.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep