Song He: "Dean Xiang will visit Alien Zoo tomorrow at noon to inspect our work. Please arrange the reception."
Zhao Yiyi: "Understood!"
Noon, Alien Zoo.
Veterinary Station warehouse.
The air was thick with the smell of paint. Huge piles of drawing paper and canvases covered the floor, like the exam-paper storeroom of some massive art academy. Paintings of all shapes and sizes were scattered everywhere.
Song He and Xiang Xiaotong sat steadily on little stools, flipping through the orangutans' paintings.
The four vice-directors—Zhao Yiyi, Ding Yangze, Ning Mo, and Zhang Zhilei—were there with them, crouching amid the piles of paper and searching through them. They kept handing paintings to the two leaders according to their instructions, eager to please.
"Look, the paintings from the first few days were awful." Song He rummaged through the papers and showed one to his teacher. "The ones from the past few days are still pretty awful, but there's clearly been progress!"
"That doesn't prove anything, does it?" Xiang Xiaotong said skeptically. "After painting so many, there's bound to be some improvement!"
"Don't you think the improvement came too quickly?" Song He looked up. "Have Mango's paintings been bound together? Bring them over for the dean to see!"
"They're here, they're here!" Ning Mo said, carrying out a huge stack of papers. He hurried to the two leaders and quickly spread the paintings out by date.
Mango mainly painted trees: a lone tree standing on a grassy slope, its branches and leaves lush.
The earliest trees were still crude, with paint smeared about randomly.
But as time passed, more details emerged on the trees!
The colors of the crowns became extraordinarily layered. The shadows cast by different branches in the light were clearly distinguishable. Even the patches of sunlight on the grassy slope and the