Chapter 199: "There Is Spirit Underground" Tankobon

Chapter 199: The Collected Volume of Spirits Underground

The undisputed highlight of the Double Eleven Gala was the international superstar who closed the show. While the English star who opened the evening was certainly talented, he had already saturated the Chinese market, leaving little room for novelty. But this debut performance in China? No one could steal his thunder.

Beyond that, there were other notable moments, with the "Elves" performance and the long-distance basketball shot standing out. Meng Fan, the common denominator between these two, naturally became the evening’s greatest surprise. Many viewers were sent scrambling to search engines, curious about who this man was and what kind of person he might be.

#WhoIsMengFan trended on Weibo for a long time. In the midst of such a frantic shopping atmosphere, the fact that people still found time to push Meng Fan to the top of the charts showed just how stunning the sand art and that long-range shot had been. Combined, they created an explosion of curiosity.

The search trends quieted during the day, as everyone had stayed up late shopping, but once evening arrived and news spread that Meng Fan was live-streaming, the interest surged again.

So many people flooded into Meng Fan’s stream via Weibo that even the B-station servers grew strained, forcing them to open a secondary line for his broadcast.

"New here—is this the sand art magician's stream?"

"Are you the legendary shooter?"

"Weibo sightseeing group +1."

"Checking in from the trending list!"

"Heard this streamer is pretty badass!"

"They say the streamer can sing, too."

"His voice is so soothing!"

"What is this stream even for? How did I end up here?"

"Does the streamer eat fan-girls?"

"Hahahaha, our streamer Meng only eats stir-fried rice noodles!"

"Damn, why are there so many people? Fatty Meng can't hide anymore!"

"All here because of the Double Eleven Gala, right?"

Meng Fan hadn't anticipated such lingering influence from the gala. To be fair, he hadn't even expected the chance to shoot a basketball on stage; without that moment, the curiosity of these viewers would have been at least halved.

The sand art performance and the long-range shot—two completely unrelated things—only created a chemical reaction when placed side by side.

"I know many of you are here because of last night's gala, and you're surely here to see the sand art, right? My regular viewers haven't seen me do sand art in a while, so I'll stream that for an hour, then switch to manga," Meng Fan said with a smile. "Because of the gala rehearsals, I haven't drawn in days. If I don't get back to it, I won't be able to update."

Meng Fan didn't change his content just because of the surge in viewers; he stuck to his routine.

His new sand art table came with a full set of equipment connected to a streaming assistant, which automatically calibrated the best angles. If he wished, he could use the assistant to add special effects, making the stream as polished as the gala, or let the AI director switch to the best camera angles.

The newcomers were driven by curiosity, and their numbers were staggering; within half an hour of going live, the viewer count hit over 700,000.

They came out of curiosity, but whether they would stay depended on Meng Fan’s talent.

Would they all stay?

That was impossible; not everyone was accustomed to watching live streams.

If a quarter of them stayed to become regular viewers, that would be a massive success for Meng Fan.

An hour later, the sand art performance ended, and Meng Fan began drawing his manga. The numbers began to dip, falling from a peak of nearly 900,000 to just over 700,000.

As the stream continued, the count kept dropping, eventually stabilizing between 400,000 and 500,000.

Whether they would return was anyone's guess.

After the three-hour stream ended, Meng Fan checked the total views and was quite satisfied: over 2.3 million!

His usual streams drew about 300,000, with rare exceptions like the "Spirits Underground" launch event that featured a giveaway.

2.3 million was seven times his usual traffic.

Of course, Meng Fan knew this was fueled by curiosity and novelty, and the numbers wouldn't stay this high. Still, if he could stabilize his viewership at a million per stream, he would be more than content.

After going offline, Meng Fan kept drawing.

He had indeed neglected his work for the past few days, and both manga projects needed to be finished.

Having completed the "Million Views" achievement, he had gained three points each in drawing, screenwriting, and world-building. The effect had been clear during his sand art performance, and it proved just as potent for his manga creation.

As his skills grew, so did his familiarity with the craft, and the creative urge burning within him had been swelling lately.

He wanted to create something original!

While working on "Spirits Underground" and "A Guide for Campus Romance," Meng Fan often had flashes of inspiration. Some applied to these projects, but others belonged to stories in his own mind. Every time one appeared, he jotted it down in a small notebook for later.

As time passed, those stories became clearer, and he had already managed to outline at least 30,000 words.

The conditions for an original work were ripe!

However, Meng Fan decided to hold back a little longer.

At least until "A Guide for Campus Romance" was finished, which would free up some time.

Furthermore, he really wanted to wait until he completed the "Professional Manga Artist" achievement, which would grant him five points each in drawing, screenwriting, and world-building before he started his own project.

The "Professional Manga Artist" task required serializing a long-form manga or three shorter ones, releasing ten collected volumes, and reaching a total of 100,000 in sales.

The first condition was met; "Spirits Underground" was a long-form series.

The third condition wasn't hard; 100,000 in sales wasn't a small number, but Meng Fan could always throw money at it.

If the system didn't count his own purchases, he could hire others to buy them—surely that would count.

It was the second condition that was tricky. Even if he produced one volume every 8-10 chapters, "A Guide for Campus Romance" would only yield three volumes by its conclusion. The remaining volumes would have to come from "Spirits Underground," which needed to reach about 50 chapters—and it was only at 11.

Besides, whether it could be published and how fast was not entirely up to him...

After calling Kun-ye and exchanging a few words, Meng Fan slapped his forehead and laughed. Right, he’d almost forgotten that Kun-ye was a guy with deep pockets, and his passion for manga was no less than his own.

"I was just about to call you! I've already contacted the publisher and finalized everything. Now I'm just waiting for you to decide how many chapters per volume. For the first printing, I'm planning on 50,000 copies."

"50,000?"

Meng Fan knew a bit about the physical manga market, and that was a massive first printing.

After a moment, he asked cautiously, "You aren't planning on buying all 50,000 yourself, are you?"

He was genuinely worried that Kun-ye might be too generous. If Kun-ye bought them all, he wasn't sure if the system would grant him the experience points, so he had to stop him if that was the case.

"Am I an idiot?"

Kun-ye didn't understand why Meng Fan asked, but replied, "My fan group alone will buy at least one copy each, which is already over 10,000. Plus, there's a pre-sale survey from the anime website that shows tens of thousands more. My 50,000 estimate is conservative... What, do you still not realize how popular our manga is?"

Well, Meng Fan had been thinking about Kun-ye's wealth and had forgotten that he also had a massive following!

He had also forgotten just how popular "Spirits Underground" had become!