My Extraordinary Achievements

Chapter 71: Digging Your Own Grave

Translator: Dragon Boat Translation  Editor: Dragon Boat Translation

It’s true, Xing Ta Ge was lazy, particularly when it came to academics. Compared to the pre-reincarnated Meng Fan, he was about three points lazier. At least, the pre-rebirthed Meng Fan had begun to delve into relevant knowledge pertaining to several fields, while Xing Ta Ge was still staring at the philosophical teachings between men and women.

Of course, it appears that his focus for research has come in handy for the current task. In addition to Xing Ta Ge becoming a script writer in order to save energy, he was indeed highly talented. As long as he put in a little effort, he could rival those who had stayed up for nights churning out a project.

Everything else aside, based solely on the storyboard. Xing Ta Ge’s manga was very fascinating.

Everyone says shoujo mangas were sweet, and Xing Ta Ge’s manga was even sweeter. But it was spicily sweet and quite exciting.

Meng Fan thought about it and suddenly remembered.

Before he was reincarnated; around this time before the October 1st holiday, Xing Ta Ge had mentioned he wanted to create a manga. Only at that time, Meng Fan was not much more diligent than him so he did not ask him for help to become the main artist. As for later, at least the following two months before Meng Fan reincarnated. He never mentioned again, probably because the laziness hit, or because he couldn’t find a suitable artist.

“Fatty, do you think you can do it?” Xing Ta Ge looked at Meng Fan with pleading eyes.

Meng Fan thought about it and asked, “Are you in a hurry?”

“Why would I be in a hurry.” Xing Ta Ge shook his head and said, “As long as you can draw it before we graduate. If we can successfully engage in the animation industry in the future, then this manga will be a brick to knock on their door, for entering the profession. If we don’t go into this industry, then we can count it as a commemoration to ourselves. So I wanted to find someone who was good at drawing young ladies a bit more delicately if I might add.”

“You don’t have to wait that long.” Meng Fan responded. “I just took a job today to prepare a copious amount of sample manuscripts for someone. Send me the storyboard in a bit, I’ll take a look when I have time. It’ll probably have to wait a few days before I can start drawing. Otherwise, I recently also wanted to create a manga, but I’m still wavering between a theme and it’s content. The storyboard you’ve provided is perfect so I won’t have to think about that. I’ll take yours as practice. Of course, there are some parts of your script that I will not be following…”

Initially, he was already hovering between what to draw. Now that Xing Ta Ge had delivered a script to his doorstep, Meng Fan’s thoughts were completely disrupted.

It was indisputable that Xing Ta Ge was better than him when it came to script writing. The content had been about romance too, which made Meng Fan even more useless. But it just happened that Meng Fan excelled at drawing female characters.

Xing Ta Ge’s delivered script was very suitable for practicing. Aside from being the manga artist, Meng Fan could also partake in writing the script.

One, it was because they both lived in the same room so it was easy to discuss anything or negotiate. Two, some of Xing Ta Ge’s contents were not merely just slight connotations, but obvious scenarios that hit you in the face. If he really drew them, their chances of publishing on a public platform would be ERROR 404.

Meng Fan thought about it for a moment. It was indeed very fitting.

As for this kind of collaboration and whether the system would count it as experience, Meng Fan would deal with that later.

Meng Fan couldn’t let his life be dictated by this system. If he could take the job of an unknown senior Qin Jiao had introduced, there was no reason for him to reject Xing Ta Ge.

Besides, from Xing Ta Ge’s original intentions, it certainly won’t be a long story. As long as it’s a short story, with Meng Fan’s current speed, it would be very easy to finish the novel in a short time.

After the decision, Meng Fan forgot about memos in his mind temporarily, locking them up for later. Once he finished the [Manga Artist] task and collected the rewards, he would go back to pondering down that rabbit hole. Otherwise, it didn’t matter how well his drawings were if he couldn’t place the story into his art.

The next morning, he ran his ten kilometers. He used 1 hour, 09 minutes and 42 seconds. He was still improving.

After breakfast, he left early for the studio and took out the key he had asked the administrator for. After entering, he opened the windows to ventilate the room and found his old spot before sitting down.

His morning class was at 9:30, and Meng Fan had arrived early. He had about two hours. Meng Fan did not let himself be idle, sorting through the reference stock photos of costumes he had accumulated over the last few years. He picked out a few to give to his senior classmate, and sorted through them again, also sorting out the missing photos.

With this kind of organizing, Meng Fan had created a big grave for himself. Cataloging everything from the jewelry category into accessories then into dynasties, there were hundreds of other classifications he’d have to go through!

Some of the classifications, Meng Fan was able to categorize and fill it in directly, but to correctly fill out the rest would take a lot of time. Besides, Meng Fan knew that the more he filled out, the more graves he’d dig for himself.

It was good nonetheless. He could fill it out slowly and build himself a historical costume gallery.

Meng Fan did not pay much attention during the morning class, nor did he draw much. He was still sorting out the categories for his image gallery and adding the general descriptions for the styles that still needed to be filled in.

After the class when everyone had left, Meng Fan remained in the classroom and continued to sort his material until he was too hungry to stay.

“Does Meng Fan seem like a different person to you?”

Wang Ya Nan said to Zhang Zhou Wei as they were eating lunch. She couldn’t help but ask, “It seems like he’s become a completely different person after those confession messages. He spends so much time in the studio everyday drawing away, so hardworking! And he runs, ten kilometers at that. He must be running frequently. And it seems, he’s gotten more handsome.”

“Handsome? Really?”

Zhang Zhou Wei and the other members of the dormitory naturally didn’t notice much as they saw Meng Fan everyday. He didn’t even seem to have lost any weight, let alone become handsome.

“I didn’t notice either, but I just heard it from Dot.” Wang Ya Nan said.

Zhang Zhou Wei grew interested. “Do you think Dot is into my Meng Fatty?”

“Before she was just interested, but now… I’m not sure if she actually developed a liking for him.”

“Based on my observations, Meng Fan seems to be interested in the Traditional Chinese painting department’s goddess. I think Dot’s gonna have it rough.”

“I don’t think so. If Dot really wanted to chase Meng Fan, then her chances of getting him must be much higher than Meng fan’s chances of getting Wu Tong, right?”

“That… is probably true. But the melon that is forcibly plucked is usually not very sweet…”

“Screw that, you think Meng Fan going after Wu Tong isn’t forcing a melon? Besides, when you went after me, wasn’t I also a difficult melon to pluck? Are we sweet? You know deep down!”

“Was it sweet? I kind of forgot. Let me have a taste to try.”

In university, whether its 211 or 985 colleges, love was always a topic that cannot be avoided. Who likes who, who’s going after who had always been a hot topic.

Meng Fan naturally didn’t know that he had become the focus of one of these topics of gossip, and not just amongst the chatter of Zhang Zhou Wei and Wang Ya Nan. These last few days, many people were speaking of the relationship between him and Wu Tong, from the mini-marathon to their frequent morning runs. Several people knew of it, although nobody thought the two were compatible with each other. The more people who thought this, the more interested they were in discussing it.

Even then, these discussions had happened in the proximity of Wu Tong, even in front of her.

“Wu Tong, does that iron hero really like you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then, do you like him?”

Although they knew this was a pointless question, Wu Tong’s roommates still couldn’t help but ask.

“Of course I do! He’s cute, perseverant, kind, and very interesting, why wouldn’t I like him?”

“I’m asking if you like him, like a boy and a girl like each other.”

“Are you not girls and is he not a guy?”

…

He grabbed some food to eat and headed for the studio to continue digging his own grave.

He had Qin Jiao’s class in the afternoon. Meng Fan had been entangled in his grave digging, so he called in to take the day off. It took him until four in the afternoon to finally stop digging.

He turned around again and felt the impulse to kill himself. The seven big categories of clothing, crowns, capes, shoes, socks, jewelry, accessories, hairstyles and makeup had been divided further into thirteen smaller categories of tops, trousers, underwear, belts, etc. While under each subcategory was the further subdivision of men, women, dynasties, and Chinese, minorities (which had their own category). Combined, there were over 1300 individual items!

If it weren’t for the prior knowledge he had on these subjects, he’d be digging his grave for the next few days!

As for filling the hole… Heh, he’ll deal with that later!

Of course, at this point, it was clear what Meng Fan wanted to provide his senior. From there, he picked a hundred or so samples that were suitable for a system. Some of which could be directly replaced by images from the internet, while some were directly copied from his image gallery, reducing the amount he would have to draw on his own.

And this could count as an image library for his future creations.

From four o’clock to five o’clock; in one and a half hours, Meng Fan finished filling out the samples and packaged the file before sending it to his senior alumni.

After finishing his business, Meng Fan returned to the dorm and changed into his exercise clothes before leaving the campus. He then turned on his stream at the same time.

“Tonight, I won’t be drawing. I’ll take you on a night tour of XiZi lake.”