Are You Just a Genius?

Ding Nian woke from her state of deep concentration, using lightning-fast reflexes to press Win+D and hide her computer desktop.

Then she pulled out a tissue and handed it over, "Boss, you should wipe up first..."

Xu Meng took it and wiped the water stains off his chin.

During the wipe, Ding Nian had already adjusted her mindset and said with an expressionless face, "Boss, this is my creative habit."

"Creative habit?" A question mark slowly popped up over Xu Meng's head.

There was this kind of creative habit?

"Yeah, draw the body first, then add clothes depending on the situation. Makes total sense, right?"

?

Are you bullying me for not majoring in fine arts?

Shouldn't you draw line art and bone structure first, then enrich the details?

What kind of heretical drawing method was it to draw the naked body first and then put clothes on? This equaled drawing it twice, right?

"Will this really not increase the workload?" Xu Meng was unsure.

He used to make games alone, and although he did some art-staff work, he was working behind closed doors and didn't know how other art staff did it.

"There will be a bit, but this is completely necessary!" Ding Nian said very firmly.

"How so?" Xu Meng was curious.

"Boss, you must have heard a saying, right? If she is already completely naked, but you still feel the exposure isn't high enough, then you can put socks on her."

Xu Meng blinked, "It seems... I really have heard of that."

"So, draw the body first, then try adding different clothes to it, adding them a little bit at a time, trying them one kind after another. Try a few more times, and you'll definitely find clothes that are sexier than wearing nothing!"

By this point, Ding Nian was brimming with righteous confidence.

Xu Meng was speechless.

He even felt it made a lot of sense.

"Fine, you've convinced me." Xu Meng gave her a thumbs-up, "Genius!"

Ding Nian smiled smugly.

"Then do you have a mature train of thought?"

"I have one!" Ding Nian picked up the mouse and operated it for a bit, showing Xu Meng a new character portrait.

This time it was the female character with the second-most screen time: He Yin.

A green-curly-haired young woman, with some Chinese-style embellishments in her background settings.

But the previous portrait had a light sci-fi style—meaning it looked sci-fi at first glance, but actually wasn't scientific at all.

Except for her head, her entire body was wrapped in a white uniform, with only a green jade gourd hanging at her waist to barely fit the theme.

But now, in the concept art shown by Ding Nian, this character had undergone earth-shattering changes—

The white elements completely disappeared, replaced by a short qipao with an extremely high slit—going all the way up to her waist.

The texture of this qipao was very peculiar, having both the light and fluttering feel of silk and the tight gloss of leather.

The character's small, perky breasts, which could be spanned with a single grasp, were outlined by the super-form-fitting clothes to look lifted and moving.

Her smooth little belly and shallow navel were clearly visible beneath the light, glowing silk.

Moving further down was a pair of straight, long legs.

--He Yin had a young-girl body type, her height a full two heads shorter than mature women like Tong Que, but because the slit of this qipao was so high, coupled with Ding Nian's exquisite motion design, a part of her hips and even her waist became a visual extension of her thighs, producing an exaggerated visual effect.

The most wondrous thing of all was that you couldn't find any trace of underwear in this artwork.

Not on top, nor below.

The original Chinese-style elements had turned into a thin red string around the young woman's ankle.

"You really have ideas!" Xu Meng couldn't help praising.

This artwork did indeed share similarities with her mentioned "creative concept"—the upper body of this portrait looked as if she had first drawn a body without clothes, and then carefully applied a layer of color on top of the body as clothes.

Having won the boss's approval, Ding Nian was extremely happy.

"Why didn't I realize you were this awesome before?" Xu Meng couldn't help asking.

Although this portrait was still concept art and not fully refined, it was enough for anyone to feel the surging talent at a single glance.

"I wasn't allowed to draw in this style before." Ding Nian complained.

She glanced left and right, and whispered a complaint, "Before, Sister Yang simply wouldn't let me expose the body, and she rejected all concept drafts with prominent styles, and even criticized me in public several times."

"Later on, I just drew according to her requests."

Xu Meng was stunned.

Damn it, these pests! "From now on, you can let loose and give it your all. I believe in you!"

"Yeah!" Ding Nian was full of drive.

Originally, a while ago, she had even started secretly sending out resumes to find her next employer.

Not because she was worried the company would go out of business, but because her supervisor, Yang Hui, was making her more and more unbearable.

After constantly being nitpicked, picked on, and criticized, even drawing had become painful.

She had already started feeling like she would fall into depression if she didn't resign soon.

But yesterday, without any warning, Yang Hui was fired.

After that middle-aged resentful woman stopped weighing her down and nitpicking, she felt an entire weight lift off her whole being.

Coupled with the boss setting a new portrait style that completely hit her niche, it instantly ignited her drawing soul.

Her pain vanished into thin air, and the inspiration that had been suppressed in the past kept bubbling up.

The more she drew, the more excited she got, and she worked overtime with ferocious enthusiasm! Watching the "fired-up" Ding Nian, Xu Meng nodded, took a sip of wolfberry tea, and left her workstation.

--He arrived at the side of the other vice director, Xu Fang.

"Pfft—cough, cough, cough!!!"

Another mouthful of wolfberry tea was spat out.

"What is this! What is this! What on earth is this?!" Xu Meng asked, pointing in shock at the character on Xu Fang's screen.

"A gender-swapped version of City Guard Captain Yun Fei—Fei Yun." Xu Fang replied.

"You—you..."

Xu Meng's language system was somewhat scrambled.

Because the character Xu Fang was currently drawing was truly a bit wrong.

Yun Fei's original character design was a man with quite a bit of a scholar's temperament, and his brows were already somewhat delicate.

After Xu Fang removed his cape and armor, replacing them with light, comfortable sleeveless short shirts and lace-trimmed lantern shorts, it became even harder to tell male from female.

If one added the majestic mountain peaks beneath the short shirt and the slender waist between the shirt and the lantern shorts, the character's female identity was beyond a doubt.

Unless one didn't look at her crotch.

Xu Meng pointed at the bulging lump right in the middle of the lantern shorts, his voice trembling slightly as he asked, "What on earth is this?"

"Incomplete gender swap, did you only do half the surgery??"

"Is this special character a female or a futa?!"

"Uh... well..." Xu Fang said with some a guilty conscience, "Weren't traps very popular online recently? I was thinking, should we take this opportunity to make one and test the waters?"

Without waiting for Xu Meng to speak, he quickly added, "I have a feeling it's going to trend on the hot searches!"

Trend your horse! It would indeed trend on hot searches, but it would be me getting cursed onto the hot searches!

When that time came, besides the players, Frost Snow Project would have female characters everywhere, and then, hidden right in the middle of them would be a trap...

"How is this any different from hiding an uncastrated fake eunuch in the emperor's harem?"

"Won't the players spit us to death!"

"Large trucks will drive to the company's front doors by the same day!"

"Not just the company!"

"When the players take a look and go, 'Oh, the concept artist is called Xu Fang,' and then track down your Weiguang account, you can just wait to be doxxed!"

Xu Fang's face turned pale at Xu Meng's barrage of predictions.

Clearly, he hadn't expected the consequences to be so severe, and without another word, he confessed, "I'm sorry! I was wrong!"

Then he grabbed his mouse and keyboard, clacked away with rapid-fire operations, and deleted a few layers.

The suspicious bulge instantly vanished.

Now the "surgery" was complete, and Fei Yun had turned into a complete girl.

Obviously, Xu Fang also knew it was unlikely to pass, and had already prepared a normal version.

Xu Meng breathed a sigh of relief.

But the previous image still lingered in his mind like a mental pollutant, making it truly impossible for him to rationally appreciate this gender-swapped character.

"If you like traps, go find them in real life; don't ruin our game."

The still-shaken Xu Fang subconsciously nodded in agreement.

Employees around them who had been concentrating on work due to the boss's appearance all looked up, glancing sideways one after another.

Xu Fang snapped to his senses and hastily shook his head, "No! I don't like traps, not at all."

"Good, I believe you." Xu Meng unscrewed his thermos and took a sip of tea.

This time it finally went down steadily into his stomach.