Chapter 8 - Travelling Deity
Chapter 8: Travelling Deity
Meng Fan sent a red pocket to three separate chat rooms. He looked at his progress chart and immediately wanted to cry.
“Only a dumbass would try to complete this mission!”
Meng Fan was very sure he wasn’t going to finish this task, but his mind wavered in the span of a second.
He suddenly became concerned. If he didn’t finish this task, would he be unable to unlock the next one?
If that really was true, then this system’s timely demise would be on him!
Chill, chill. Remain calm.
Meng Fan dispelled the desires to commit suicide that had been floating in his mind. He thought it would be a good idea to wait and see. If it really took ten to fifteen days, or even longer to trigger a new task, then…
Having said that, was beginning a new mission worth a million bucks?
Of course, it was worth it.
Based solely on the last module, the +13 hand speed he had earned as a reward was already worth it to Meng Fan.
Only in this situation…
With a heavy heart, Meng Fan entered the library.
This time, he had already completed the task [A Good Person]. In addition to his sulky mood, he harbored no more intention to observe the girls. Meng Fan immersed himself in his studies. He found a few books and began to paint the costumes of various dynasties.
Yes, it was costuming, not clothes.
With the added 13+ hand speed, Meng Fan’s pen was literally floating. However, the finished work was utterly awful. Meng Fan had to slow down and then gradually speed up his pen. This effect was very good. After about ten minutes, he was comfortably drawing at full speed, completely maintaining his technique in the process.
Also, Meng Fan discovered something new; his hand had actually become steadier.
It must have been an incidental reward.
Scratch scratch scratch.
Another half-hour passed before Meng Fan stopped to take a break.
Despite his steady hands even after the added speed, the energy he required did not decrease. And Meng Fan confirmed that if it wasn’t for his hands being more steady, he would have been burned out after 20 minutes of drawing.
After resting for a minute, he continued.
Continuing back and forth like so, two hours passed by in a flash. Looking at the time, Meng Fan paused his drawing. He counted his work. In the last two hours, he finished a day and a half’s worth of work.
Meng Fan was naturally pleased, even a little proud by what he did.
He cleaned up and headed back to the dorms.
“Meng Fan, you’re famous now. Hahaha.”
He just entered the dorms when Zhang Zhou Wei began causing a commotion. He was waving his phone in front of Meng Fan for him to see. “You not only mass texted to confess today, huh? You even went to the library and confessed to dozens of girls, and each time the trick was different. And even after being rejected you didn’t even budge, or blush or panic; you just turned around and found a new target, damn!”
“What the hell is this?”
Meng Fan’s chest thumped. Recalling the strange ‘society’s margin observer’ guy he met at the library. He grabbed the phone and looked over the contents. He let out a sigh of relief and handed the phone back to Zhang Zhou Wei. “Where the hell does this even mention me?”
This was a post on the BBS forum at HangZhou University talking about Meng Fan’s crazy confession rampage at the library this afternoon. Speaking of that, it was not only the sheer number of confessions that had garnered him so much attention but under the penmanship of Yu Xiao Yu, his activities became action-filled and thrilling. Every confession had been given an exciting story, but the one that stood out the most was the ingeniously written commentary.
He had to admit, this situation had been described in such an interesting manner to the point that it actually had “meaning”, which was also why there were so many replies below.
The only fortunate outcome from this disaster was that Yu Xiao Yu didn’t know Meng Fan’s name. Of course, from his point of view, Yu Xiao Yu also avoided any description of his appearance and features. Even the posted photo was just a silhouette of his back.
Meng Fan remembered Yu Xiao Yu had taken numerous pictures of his face. It seemed Yu Xiao Yu had some conscience for not posting any of them.
“If it’s not you, then who is it?” Zhang Zhou Wei smiled. “Even if you turn to dust, I’d still recognize you, not to mention that you still have this mass text confession thing going on.”
“F**k.”
Meng Fan felt his head expand at the thought of this.
Others might not recognize his back, but if the people in his class had seen this ad—including the ones who knew of the mass text confession—one hundred percent, they would know it was him.
He had really become famous!
Feeling dismayed, Meng Fan flopped into bed.
Zhang Zhou Wei tested the latest EX song from the game BanG-Dream but lost halfway through. He turned to yell at Meng Fan to give it a try too, only to realize the fatty had already fallen asleep.
“My god, you’re sleeping this early? You’re not going to follow the new patch? Not even going to play games anymore?”
To Zhang Zhou Wei, it was unbelievable. He pulled Meng Fan’s blankets up and then closed his phone and sat down at the computer. He put on his headphones and started to ‘Overwatch’ some butts.
Yup, it was just as if there was no trace of him having a girlfriend.
….
“Holy crap, why are you up so early?”
Zhang Zhou Wei had slept late the night before. He groggily heard bits of a voice and then opened his eyes. Discovering that Meng Fan was indeed awake, Zhang Zhou Wei rubbed his eyes and stared for a while. A look of disbelief washed over his face.
Sleeping early and waking up early, was this still Meng Fan?
“I’m going for a run.”
Meng Fan picked up the sports equipment he had bought a year ago but only used once, including a tracksuit, running shoes, an armband, etc. After dressing up, he gave Zhang Zhou Wei the same look he gave him when he woke up and gracefully walked out.
Running to lose weight.
This was what Meng Fan had wanted to do since his first year of high school. but it was just a thought until now. It was usually enough to just think about it once in a while, as even giving it a try and failing hadn’t been in his previous itinerary.
By now, his weight was increasing at the same rate as the number of times he’d said “I want to do it”.
How much did Meng Fan weigh exactly?
Haha, it would always be one hundred and ninety for the outside world. Nobody was going to get him to admit he was over 200 pounds.
This time he was reborn, Meng Fan had already planned to lose weight. After experiencing yesterday’s confession craze and despite gaining so much progress from those rejections, his fragile heart had been shattered a million times over, mostly due to him being fat.
“For love!”
Meng Fan arrived at the track while muttering to himself for encouragement. He opened the running app he had downloaded 6 months ago and began to run.
Run?
All right, from a speed perspective, Meng Fan’s pace was no faster than a regular person walking.
Bobbing up and down with each step, he barely made 100 meters before being riddled in sweat and struggling to breathe.
Straining to reach 200 meters, Meng Fan finally understood the pain of the saying “legs filled with lead.”
300 meters. The sweat on his forehead was pouring into his eyes, and his pace dropped to a point slower than a regular person walking.
“You can do it!”
From the edge of his vision like a blur of wind, a girl rushed by. She turned her head to look at Meng Fan. She had her thumb up and revealed a smile more beautiful than the sunrise.
That smile kept Meng Fan going the full lap. 400 meters.
“Don’t stop, if you can’t run anymore, walking is okay too.”
When Meng Fan hit 100 meters again, the girl had lapped him again.
“Stick to it, you got this!”
Meng Fan heaved as he encouraged himself. He was not stopping to walk. He instead dragged his clumsy body along the track.
“Ding.”
The mobile app’s notification appeared.
“You ran 0.5 km, lapsed time 7 minutes and 12 seconds.”
Meng Fan did not care how fast he was going. He only cared that he ran 500 meters. Aside from the 1000 meters he ran for the school entrance examination, this was the longest distance Meng Fan had persisted on running in his life.
Keep going, keep going!
Not relying on physical strength, or his swinging arms, or his breathing, or his perseverance, Meng Fan only relied on one thing; his courage.
The courage that allowed him to continue on, even if the next step meant falling face-first into a dog turd.
Two laps equalled 800 meters. Meng Fan’s feet were basically dragging on the surface of the track. He was not even running anymore. At this point, he was just slugging along.
“Ding. You can do it, you ran 1 km already, lapsed time 16 minutes and 5 seconds.”
At the same time the app reminder was triggered, the voice in Meng Fan’s mind also began to speak. Another accomplishment mission was unlocked.
“Beep! You’ve unlocked accomplishment [A Travelling Deity].”