The Rise of Otaku

Chapter 198 Painting

Edited by: Minititanz and Xelot

The High Imitation Sacred Cauldron was blown up, but luckily it was in the residential area, which was now forbidding all the visitors from coming in. So the cauldron’s lid that was blown away, did not hurt anyone, except for the roof of a nearby villa that got a hole all of a sudden.

Later on, the culprit, Zhou Yu, was seriously reprimanded by Zhou Fu.

He was such a big adult, but yet acting like a child and playing with firecrackers. Even if he wanted to play, could he not choose some smaller firecrackers? Looking at the hole on the roof of the nearby villa, it made Zhou Fu wonder how big of the firecracker was able to cause this kind of damage? Fortunately, no one was injured.

Unable to explain, Zhou Yu could only lower his head and listen to Zhou Fu’s reprimand, after all, it was part of his fault as well.

Despite being scolded, there was still some gain. From the raw materials that was enough for 10 Ruyi Brushes, he actually made 5 of them. The success rate was 50 percent. For a newbie, this was already a very good result. However, the sad thing was that the quality was a bit bad. Of the five brushes, three were low-quality Ruyi brushes, one was ordinary, and one was excellent with an ascetic effect.

The Excellent Ascetic Ruyi Magic Brush provides an additional ascetic effect, which will cleanse one’s heart and limit one’s desires, making one concentrate more on drawing or writing.

Although it was not the best quality, Zhou Yu was very satisfied, at least, he could complete the quest now.

Now that he had the brush, the next step was painting. The request of the female ghost was to draw a maid-level Chinese painting, but what was the meaning of this maid-level painting? Unable to understand it, Zhou Yu sought help from the manga artist the ‘fast-handed Wang’.

And the fast-handed Wang’s answer was, “This is a very old way of grading paintings. The maid-level is probably the same as the G-level nowadays. It’s pretty low. Anyone can do it.”

Oh well, since anyone can do it, it saved Zhou Yu a lot of times. After all, Zhou Yu had learned Chinese calligraphy before, and he had also learned a little about Chinese painting, although he had forgotten almost all of it. But since it was a maid-level, he thought that he might be able to do it himself.

“Daddy, will you draw one for me?”

Little Muli volunteered to become a model and asked her dad to draw her a painting. This gave Zhou Yu a lot of pressure because he knew what kind of level he was. Originally, he just planned to draw some flowers or birds, but he did not expect Little Muli was so confident about her dad’s ability, she would even ask him to draw her.

Zhou Yu wanted to refuse, but little Muli insisted. Helplessly, Zhou Yu could only do it.

Holding the Ruyi Brush, immediately, Zhou Yu could feel a cool feeling from the handle of the brush, all of sudden, the summer heat and pressure all disappeared, in his eyes, there was only the model, little Muli, and the paper left.

To be able to bring ordinary people into this concentrated state of a professional painter, for any painter, this brush was probably priceless. Unfortunately, it was only effective for Zhou Yu, even if other people picked it up, it would just be an ordinary brush for them.

Zhou Yu felt that the brush had unleashed all his drawing potentials, but when he finished drawing, he saw Firefly laughing while rolling left and right on the paper.

“Hahaha… I can’t stop laughing. Old man, You’re so funny! hahaha…. little Muli, come and take a look!”

As Zhou Yu took a look at what he drew, immediately the effect of calm mind vanished into the thin air. No wonder Firefly was laughing like that. What he drew was not a beautiful and peerless idol instead it was clearly an ugly woman.

This is so god damn embarrassing. Clearly, he felt like he was doing it very well. But why was the result like this?

Little Muli came over curiously. But after she saw the painting, she instantly pouted out her lips as tears appeared in her eyes. She was on the verge of crying.

It really was not intentional. It was just that he had forgotten all the drawing skills he had previously learned.

The fast-handed Wang looked at him and shook his head, “You are the Guardian of this land, can you at least improve your drawing skill a little? If you can spend more time to increase my friendliness level, I will become your master, and teach you painting skills.”

The people of the ACG world all liked to be someone’s masters. Perhaps this was the reason why Zhou Miao could draw so well. And after hearing what he said, Zhou Yu thought to himself that learning painting sounds quite good. It sounded much more elegant than a martial arts master, and more importantly, his ass would not be kicked by Bubu every day.

However, Zhou Yu did not want to master painting skills. He just wanted to reach a level that he could draw a beautiful Muli. Because he had promised little Muli that later, he would draw a very beautiful painting of her to make up for today’s fault.

Although the painting was very bad, it was indeed a maid-level, so after painting, they brought it to the female ghost.

Seeing the painting, the female ghost instantly broke into tears. Of course, it wasn’t because it was too ugly that it made her cry. Because they have not even opened the painting. It was just that when she once again experienced the familiar feeling of the painting that contained both the real world’s attributes and the ACG world attributes, she could not help but recall the good times in the past, and that was what made her broke into tears.

“The fated person, you have already proved your identity, this is the crystal key card for  older brother Miao’s treasure, you can take it.”

The female ghost handed over a crystal card the size of a poker card and then disappeared into countless sparkles. No one knew whether she went to heaven or return to Starlight city to continue her next female ghost career.

Oh well, whichever it was, it was not Zhou Yu’s business.

Zhou Yu took the crystal card, but he still did not know how to use it. It seemed like he got a new puzzle to solve.

However, unexpectedly, the puzzle was solved very soon. The crystal card actually needed to be inserted into the south-pointing chariot made by the carpenter beaver and the stonemason monkey. When the information hidden in the crystal card reached the south-pointing chariot, it would always point in the direction of the place of the hidden treasure.

Now everything was connected.

In the past, the adventurer, who asked the carpenter beaver and the stonemason monkey to make a south-pointing chariot, knew how to use it. However, because that adventurer could not pass the test of the female ghost, so it did not get Zhou Miao’s treasure.

The question now was, whether the treasure was buried too far or not, and whether it was buried too deep or not. This was something that no one knew. If it was far away or buried very deep, it would still be difficult to find, and what if the treasure was already dug up by someone and brought far far away, then how was he going to find it.

Zhou Yu looked at the south-pointing chariot, and looked at the King of Thieves next to him, he suddenly thought of an idea, “King of Thieves, Bubu, can you gather all your apprentices and ask them to carry this chariot. Please help me check whether the treasure is far away or not.”

One flying mount might not be able to carry this chariot, but it would definitely be easier if there were more than twenty of them. Tying up the ropes, and then asking the flying mounts to hold the end of the ropes with their beaks.

The checking distance also should not be too far, or else the flying mounts would become exhausted, and if it was really far away, then he would need to prepare for a long journey again.

After the flying bird knights left with the chariot, Zhou Yu was thinking that if he needed to leave the village, should he bring that female secretary again? Although he still preferred to leave the village alone, if uncle Fu insisted, he would still need to bring someone with him, and since that female secretary had seen everything last time, she might be used to it.

However, soon the flying bird knight’s regiment all returned to the village.

“Boss, the treasure is buried inside the ruined temple of Luhua Village!”

Damn it, wasting all this time to plan for a long journey, it was actually not far at all.