Dangerous Signal

On his way to find Ding Nian, Xu Meng passed by the animation and modeling departments.

Figuring he was already there, he went in and took a stroll.

He rarely came to these two departments.

That was because whether it was animation or modeling, he had nothing useful to direct.

What these people needed wasn't guidance, but liver-protecting medicine—or a larger workforce to burn their health together with them.

Every single character had to be remodeled from scratch, and for every model, the chest and hips had to be rendered with tens of thousands of polygons.

The most extreme case by far was the red-haired big sister Tong Que.

Because Ding Nian had added several cup sizes to her, her figure ended up explosively voluptuous, and the redesigned clothing further emphasized that physique. The ultimate result was—

They forcefully pushed the model's polygon count to a grueling 130,000!

This directly set a new record for ACG Game characters.

Of course, these efforts would not go to waste, and the final visual effect presented was explosive! Every single person who saw the real machine footage—regardless of gender—stared with wide, unblinking eyes.

An indescribable urge welled up in the hearts of the animators and modelers.

Then, they burned themselves out even harder! For every character assigned to them, the rendering precision far surpassed the task objective by a huge margin.

The three main characters—Tong Que, He Yin, and Xiao Ningxi—all exceeded 100,000 polygons.

The other characters also ranged between 50,000 and 70,000 polygons.

These were numbers that could make many ACG Game peers drop their jaws, easily twice the industry standard and then some! Not to mention those ACG Games where characters only consisted of a few dynamic illustrations and lacked physical models entirely.

They were simply not in the same league.

Right now, they were the group of people across the entire company with the most confidence in the Frost Snow Project.

After offering a few words of comfort, Xu Meng found that he was somewhat redundant.

These people had already entered a self-driven, highly confident state of burnout, needing no comfort from him at all.

They even felt that the boss coming here to talk nonsense was a waste of time and delayed their work.

Xu Meng thus left in a dejected manner and went off to find Ding Nian instead.

Ding Nian was much more normal and didn't find him a nuisance at all.

The only problem was that she always wanted to drag him into discussions about creative philosophy.

He had already witnessed how intense the art department's discussions on creative philosophy were the last time he came; it had been utterly ravenous.

He really found it hard to chime in.

Yet to foster interpersonal connections and give employees "the warmth of home," he had to bite the bullet and listen to Ding Nian talk about her summarized experiences, nodding and smiling from time to time to show approval.

When he finally left the art department again, Xu Meng felt as though his face was stiff from smiling.

The good news was that Ding Nian had a thoroughly satisfying chat and even sparked some new inspiration—

Xu Meng had asked for battle damage designs, but some characters wore too little clothing, making it hard to reduce any further?

Well, they could be replaced!

For instance, the octopus monster she was just planning to design could use the ink sprayed by the octopus monster to replace the character's original attire! As Xu Meng delved deeper along her train of thought, even before seeing the finished artwork, just thinking about it felt mind-blowingly erotic!

As expected of the admiral under my command.

Girl, you really are a genius at making things lewd!

Ding Nian went back to work with boiling hot blood, and Xu Meng also felt he had resolved a hidden hazard, departing with satisfaction.

Until this very night.

Just as he had turned off the lights, gotten into bed, and closed his eyes intending to sleep, Xu Meng suddenly bolted upright—

"No!"

He suddenly realized that he had overlooked a very important matter.

Konjac Games's attempt to poach Ding Nian had failed; as the boss of Dream Builder, he shouldn't be breathing a sigh of relief, but instead should be fully on guard! This was an extremely dangerous signal.

Ding Nian had been working smoothly lately, valued by her boss, and was up for a promotion, so of course she was hard to poach.

Yet Konjac Games was clearly no upright gentleman; what if one day they dropped all pretense and brazenly poached Dream Builder's employees with high salaries indiscriminately?

It was impossible for everyone to be as steadfast as Ding Nian.

By then, the company's human resources would continuously drain away, productivity would fail to keep up, and it would immediately plunge back into the brink of bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Konjac Games would not only eliminate a competitor, but also reinforce themselves with a wave of artists trained by Dream Builder who knew how to draw lewd characters.

As for the employees they couldn't use, they could just leave them for a month or two until Dream Builder went under, and then use cold violence to force them to resign.

It was an absolute win-win with zero risk! The boss of Konjac Games might not have done this simply because he hadn't thought of it.

He couldn't gamble on the opponent never doing so.

Realizing this, Xu Meng took action immediately—

He skipped sleep altogether and began withdrawing the 2 million cryptocurrency provided by the system.

—This was much more troublesome than he had imagined; although Xia State had not completely banned cryptocurrencies, it had also erected quite a few obstacles.

He had waited two days just for the overseas wire transfer, and another two days for the withdrawal appointment.

By the time he finally loaded nearly 50 pounds of money boxes into the company, it was already the fifth day.

The box was a full half-meter long and nearly 40 centimeters wide. Xu Meng, a weakling riddled with occupational diseases who still drank nutritional supplements every day, couldn't walk more than a few steps carrying this thing.

Little Assistant Chen Mengling ran over all the way to help.

Yet how much better off could a female college student be? The two of them panted heavily as they carried the box, having to put it down to rest every few dozen steps.

Xu Fang, who was coming in to work, happened to catch this scene.

He walked over quickly, rolling up his shirt sleeves to reveal his muscular arms.

With a grab in both hands, he hoisted the 50-pound large box and effortlessly carried it all the way into the 3rd-floor grand meeting room.

When he set it down, his face wasn't even flushed, his pulse calm, and his breathing completely steady.

Xu Meng gave Xu Fang a thumbs-up on the spot, lavishing praise on his muscles.

Then, right in front of them, he opened the box, revealing a whole case of cash inside alongside a thick stack of empty red envelopes.

"???"

"!!!"

Chen Mengling and Xu Fang stared in wide-eyed shock.

Ordinary people rarely got to see massive amounts of cash piled together in real life—even if they genuinely needed money, it was done via electronic transfer; cash was far too inconvenient.

Thus, catching sight of so much cash all at once delivered a powerful visual impact.

While the two of them were stunned, Xu Meng had already started taking out the money stack by stack, piling them all onto the sturdy solid-wood conference table.

"Boss... what did you bring so much cash here for?" The little assistant couldn't help asking.

"Distributing bonuses," Xu Meng said as he took the money out. "Stop standing there dazed, come help out."

"Oh, right."

Xu Fang and Chen Mengling joined in.

In the end, a full 2 million in cash was piled up into a small mountain on the office desk.

"That's it." Xu Meng wiped the non-existent sweat from his forehead. "Mengling, go call the heads of all departments over to divide the money."

"Oh oh!" The little assistant turned and bolted.

One had to admit, the allure of money was simply powerful; in less than 5 minutes, all department leaders had gathered completely.

Xu Meng didn't mince words and started dividing the money stack by stack right on the spot.

As he divided the money, he also explained, "The company's economic situation is indeed still a bit tight right now."

—This matter was no secret; after being exposed by Game Observer, it was already an open secret.

"But we have already found the right direction; after the Frost Snow Project major update, all problems will be readily solved."

—This statement was half true and half false.

"Thanks to everyone's hard work, the most dangerous times have already passed."

—This sentence was entirely false.

"To thank everyone for your dedication, today we will cash out a portion of the bonuses first to boost everyone's morale."

"Of course, once you go back, you must remember to explain to the employees in your departments—"

"This batch of bonuses is only a small fraction."

"After the game updates, there will be bonuses far exceeding this amount."

Xu Meng was a bit wordy.

Yet at this time, obviously no one would mind.

Even the head of the administrative department—who had the fewest people and workload, resulting in a smaller bonus than the other departments—was beaming with smiles.

After all, it was unexpected money; who wouldn't like it?

These leaders tucked empty red envelopes into their pockets and clutched a stack of large bills to their chests, leaving the office with glowing faces to distribute the money in their own departments.

Xu Meng sat alone in the meeting room, staring blankly at the empty money boxes.

To stabilize the team, he had used up his final reserve funds.

"Even if the company goes bankrupt, I can use this anonymous money to live somewhere else."

This escape route had been cut off by his own hands.

Although it was an escape route he hadn't factored into consideration from the start, having it versus not having it made all the difference, after all.

The urgency of the game update seemed to weigh even more heavily upon him.

This day was May 21st.

There were 10 days left until the Frost Snow Project update.