The First Original Painting Revealed!

Xu Meng's frustration was far from baseless.

Just like his decision to pivot the "Frost Snow Project" toward a bold, sexy style wasn't made on a whim.

If the general climate in Xia still held as before, he wouldn't have done it.

Back then, censorship was tight across the board—entertainment, gaming... everything was restrained. Step even slightly out of line, and you'd risk hitting the review red line and getting hammered.

But as economic growth slowed, that invisible red line quietly retreated.

—And it pulled back by a significant margin.

The creative boundaries for entertainment quickly loosened up.

As a sign of the times, back in the day, live streams could get warnings—or even temporary bans—for showing a hint of cleavage or tight shorts outlining a butt. But now...

Hey, from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern, from the Eastern to the Western—show whatever side you like.

As long as nothing's fully exposed, the reviewers just look the other way.

Different platforms might have slightly different specifics, but without exception, they'd all loosened up considerably.

P Station (Bilibili) was no different.

This original art of He Yin, even compared to illustrations users posted themselves on the site, wasn't all that revealing.

Over on the cosplay side, half a bare ass wouldn't get anyone in trouble—he'd done his homework on the operating environment while scrolling on his phone before bed.

So Xu Meng absolutely couldn't understand why his post got stuck in review.

He was using the official "Frost Snow Project" account—wasn't that at least a partnership level?

Getting a picture stuck in review was a laughingstock!

"Meng Ling! Meng Ling!" Xu Meng started calling for his Little Assistant. "Get Song Zhicheng over here!"

As the big boss of Dream Builder, he wasn't about to file a customer service complaint himself—for something like this, he'd have his people go straight to the contact in their game agency department.

Get it sorted directly, so they wouldn't run into the same problem again.

—There'd be plenty more similar, even racier, images to come.

After a few minutes sending Song Zhicheng off to handle it, Xu Meng turned his attention back to the screen and switched to Weiguang's homepage.

He was satisfied to see the image had already caused a small stir.

After all, "Frost Snow Project" had made it all the way to open beta. A dying camel is still bigger than a horse—even at its lowest, it had a million followers on Weiguang and two million on P Station.

Add to that the fact it was already in the spotlight, and it wasn't short on buzz.

The moment the original art dropped, it drew a flood of netizens to gawk.

At first, most people saw "Frost Snow Project" making a move and came ready to flame.

But the instant they opened the full image, all those curses got stuck in their throats.

Faced with a sexy, sharp-looking curly-haired beauty, the pure bystanders immediately switched sides.

Professional hired trolls reported to their team leads, asking for new copy.

As for the real "Frost Snow Project" players, seeing a familiar character reappear in a highly stylized new form hit them far harder than any passerby who didn't know He Yin.

They were the ones who truly lost it—

"My fuck! That's He Yin? The one who calls me 'big bro' in the game?!"

"Little sis grew up!"

"No way, sis, how can you go out dressed like that! Just wear it for me at home!"

"This is way too hot! /nosebleed"

"I don't give a damn anymore! You're the one today!"

"Did Dream Builder change their artist? The effect is instant! This is insane!"

"So this is the power of a pro artist who went legit? What's the name? I want to see their old work!"

"This is actually a regular pool character? Damn! I'm gonna whale on the Regular Pool right now to pull her!"

"You crazy, bro? She's not even in the game yet!"

"Not bad, not bad." Xu Meng couldn't help but feel happy for Ding Nian.

Before this, she'd drawn original art and character portraits for several characters, but no player had ever bothered to ask who drew them.

It just goes to show—drawing a bunch of mediocre characters doesn't compare to creating one standout, stylized design that people remember at a glance.

At least this time, with this He Yin, Ding Nian would be remembered by a lot of players.

The day her name got revealed, her follower count would explode! Scrolling down, comments from random netizens started popping up: "Is she going commando??!"

"Wait, 'Frost Snow Project' is actually this spicy?"

"Well, now I have to play it!"

"Dream Builder's boss has vision! The future's bright!"

"Future's bright? He's practically opening up a whole new scale for ACG games. A saint, I tell you."

"I've got a feeling Game Observer might be eating their words this time."

"Getting ahead of yourselves. There's a world of difference between concept art and the real machine. Who knows what the final model will look like."

"Just hope it doesn't end up as concept art fraud."

Xu Meng nodded as he read.

The random netizens' reactions satisfied him.

Though there were doubts about Dream Builder's modeling and programming capabilities, the intent was to not see this concept art wasted.

Clearly, they really liked He Yin's new look and approved of the path Frost Snow Project was taking.

For Dream Builder's employees, this was undoubtedly great news.

Xu Meng's confidence was further bolstered.

This move was the right one!

Frost Snow Project's momentum carried on, with some negative traffic converting into beneficial traffic.

Those insults weren't suffered in vain.

Even better, netizens had indeed slapped the "opening a new scale for ACG games" crown onto Dream Builder's head.

Though it wasn't praise like "opening a new frontier"—"new scale" was at best a neutral term, its connotation depending on context—it was still useful.

Especially when competitors planned to make similar games.

Leaving everything else aside, they'd be unbeatable in a war of words from the start.

When the time came, their players could rightfully blast the opposition: "Can't even catch up to a fresh pile of crap!"

"Konjac Games' boss must be in a terrible mood right now!"

Before the paid shills could scale up their new copy, Xu Meng quickly closed the page to avoid them souring his mood, then threw himself back into the fiery rhythm of coding.

Just as Xu Meng guessed.

Konjac Games' boss was indeed in a terrible mood.

But not because they'd lost the initiative in future flame wars—rather, due to more practical issues.

Before him were two images: one was Dream Builder's newly released Vacuum Cheongsam He Yin, the other was a cheongsam-clad character from his own new game.

—That character had a bun hairstyle, her cheongsam cut out in multiple places, revealing skin and an undershirt beneath.

Also a cute young girl.

Compared to similar ACG game characters in the industry, she was quite daring.

But next to Dream Builder's character, she was far too conservative.

And there was a slight mismatch between her clothing style, her body language, and her expression.

—The artist was used to drawing cute, lively characters. When suddenly asked to draw something "sexier," they subconsciously added bold clothing to a cute character base.

But the character's cuteness and the clothing's boldness remained separate, never blending well.

After all, Konjac Games was a long-established company with healthy operations. When testing new themes—even ones more risqué than before—they had to consider the company's reputation and not drag down their existing games.

In other words, they had to play it safe.

They couldn't just say, like Xu Meng, "Draw me a sexy character, the sexier the better!"

Their starting points were fundamentally different.

One was "add more sexy elements to the character," the other was "get a sexy character past censorship."

This difference in philosophy, reflected in the final product, created a massive gap.

Without comparison, it might not have been obvious.

But with both images side by side, the disparity was brutal!

Konjac Games' concept art was completely crushed in appeal.

"Falling behind on one concept art isn't a big deal," Konjac Games' boss Fei Zhiyuan said to his subordinates before him.

"But falling behind on one gacha pool character is a major problem."

"If five characters all fall behind like this, the overall game revenue will be like heaven and earth!"

"We've been preparing for over half a year. How long did they take?"

"One day? Or two?"

"Can anyone explain to me—"

"What the hell have you been doing for these past six months?!"