Because the illustrations Yue took were basically all two-dimensional, the livestream platform she chose was Bolingboling.
There were two hours of livestream tasks every day; finish them and she could collect a meager salary.
Even a mosquito’s leg was still meat. As long as the money was earned through her own effort, Yue would never complain that it was too little.
She adjusted the chair to its highest setting; there was still a bit of distance from the desktop.
No choice. Yue could only climb onto the chair and stand up to adjust the camera’s position.
As for why she was using a camera…
Showing her face was impossible. Yue had never shown her face even when she had been streaming before, let alone in this state. This was a real loli!
It would cause huge trouble…
The camera was only used to capture motion.
Mm, VUP.
She pulled a USB drive from her satchel, plugged it into the computer tower, and downloaded the paper-person model together with the painting-software toolkit.
She placed the paper person in the bottom-right corner of the screen—a golden-furred nine-tailed little fox girl.
Mm… the face had been drawn after that guy Liuli…
Mm… the figure too…
Fine. In truth she had just changed Liuli’s hair color and clothes, then added a few extra tails.
To be honest, nearly half the popularity of Yue’s livestream room was attracted by Little Liuli.
Watch the adorable golden Little Liuli sway her head, wag her tail, twitch her ears…
Little fox so cute, I’m dead!
Then the gifts began pouring in swish swish swish.
Everyone really did have a pair of eyes that could discover beauty…
She called up the files from the USB in the painting software—drafts she had not finished before.
A considerable portion of them were illustration commissions the novel editor had forwarded, jobs for other popular novels…
“Although Teacher may not be very good at writing novels, we have always highly recognized your drawing. You must persist, okay?”
Well…
Although she felt a little unwilling, Yue was still very grateful to the great editor.
Because of AI, he had taken down every work she had ever published on public platforms.
Only when there was an official commission would she show her portfolio to the client.
Doing it this way, to a certain extent, prevented her works from being fed to AI, but the number of people who came to commission her on their own had also dropped quite a bit.
Moreover, that feeling of erasing her own past little by little really did not feel good…
She called up the livestream backend interface and set a short title: [Slacking~]
Clicked to go live.
There was still one traditional signature bit that had to be done live after the stream started.
Yue lifted the drawing tablet, set it on her lap, lightly tapped the tail of the cyan stylus against her chin, then let it fall onto the tablet and began drawing cleanly and decisively.
Brush tip, ink pigment.
Ten seconds. Done.
A somewhat flowing “八”, decorated around the edges with assorted shadows.
Unrestrained freehand.
Yue screenshotted it, placed it in the bottom-left corner of the screen, and added a line of subtitles: 『Today’s Auspicious Sign!』
Then… she transferred a little luck onto this “八” pattern.
Unlike before, however, this time she only made the luck adhere to the surface of the “八”, rather than injecting the luck into the interior of the “八”.
If Yue’s previous use of the Heaven-Chosen Skill [Luck Control] had been [Bestow], then this derived usage was [Attach].
[Bestow] could change the state of a thing; the luck belonged to the thing itself and was relatively hard for outsiders to intercept.
[Attach] could not change the state of a thing; the luck was public, and both the outside and the thing itself could obtain it. A more fitting word would be—“contend”.
And so this “八” pattern gained an effect similar to a lucky koi.
Repost this black “八” and you can obtain good luck~
But an 『Auspicious Sign』 like the black “八” had to be made uniquely each time she livestreamed.
Otherwise, if she simply typed out an 8, there were so many 8s in the world that the little bit of luck Yue [Attached] would never be enough.
The traditional signature bit called 『Auspicious Sign』 had attracted nearly the other half of the viewers who came to crowd Yue’s livestream room, most of them gamers.
There were even many unlucky players who camped her stream every day just to catch a glimpse of the “fair countenance” of 『Today’s Auspicious Sign』 and then return to their games for a single pull that went straight into the soul!
But that would also cause unnecessary trouble. After all, if it were truly that efficacious, it would definitely attract some shareholders and conglomerates, and those methods of theirs, tsk tsk…
To prevent that from happening, the amount of luck Yue [Attached] to the 『Auspicious Sign』 was a very subtle quantity.
That quantity could only guarantee that a small portion of players would have a short hot streak of their own, and would not be snatched away by some stockholders to the point of affecting the direction of the stock market.
The two were simply not on the same order of magnitude.
So her livestream room would occasionally have a few stockholders who wanted to get rich hear the rumors and come over, only to discover it was almost useless, and then leave.
So the problem was not big.
Sometimes Yue simply did not [Attach] any luck at all, just leaving an ineffective 『Auspicious Sign』 sitting there…
She was this cautious for a reason, of course.
An ordinary person commits no crime; possessing the jade is the crime. Greed is a terrifying thing that devours soul and bone.
Think of that lawyer from before…
Think of that sinister man from before…
The former had lost the capital by which he stood in this society; the latter had directly lost his life.
That was why Yue, even while possessing such a Heaven-Chosen Skill, chose to live as much like an ordinary person as possible.
Greed was probably the greatest enemy of a child of luck.
She snuck a glance at the danmaku overlay…
Hiss, today seemed especially lively…
Yue simply pushed the chair a little closer to the computer desk, put both legs up onto the chair, curled them like that, and set the tablet on her lap to draw.
The original posture was bad for the cervical spine, and because of her height her feet had been dangling the whole time, very uncomfortable, so she just put them up.
After a single glance, Yue no longer paid any attention to the situation in the livestream room.
She was joking; she was a technical streamer.
Danmaku would only affect the speed of her waving pen.
Once the two-hour task was done she would drop the stream at light speed.
Every draft she drew during the livestream had been drawn only after obtaining the client’s consent.
However, those high-pay drafts all required that they not see the light of day before being submitted. Although she had tried asking, without exception they had all refused.
[Yue]: Can I livestream drawing your draft?
Client [blocked]: Weren’t you there when the NDA was signed? Crawl away!
In the flicker of her thoughts, the half-finished piece on the screen had already become a completed work.
Yue lifted her head and glanced at the time.
Mm, only half an hour had passed.
Because while drawing the entire piece she had basically never used the erase function; almost every line had been completed in a single stroke, one pass and done.
Luck had played an especially important role in this.
Other people drawing: erase, rotate, zoom, split layers, look for references.
Me drawing: one layer. Just that…
Yue stretched, her small hand reaching for the hot milk on the table, and took a little sip.
She looked at the livestream room; the heat had not dropped in the slightest.
How nice. They were all a group of mature viewers who could liven things up and chat in the streamer’s place.
She set the cup back in its original spot, lowered her head, and stared thoughtfully at the exquisite drawing on the tablet in front of her, losing focus for a moment.
She was truly glad she had made that decision back then. Facts had told her exactly what gratifying returns effort could bring…
To be honest, being a lucky koi was not that easy.
It was also only in such a civilized society that Yue could survive. If it had really been ancient times, she might have been burned as a heretic long ago.
It was true that a koi would bring good luck to the people around it.
But what about the koi itself?
The total amount of luck never changed. However much others took, you lost that much.
Just like this “八”. Its luck was in an [Attached] state and could be contended for by the outside.
If too much luck was even divided away…
Then you were a jinx!
A street rat everyone shouted to beat!
And those people shouting to beat the rat were all the guys who used to approach you with smiling faces, trying to obtain good luck.
Like a beggar. You gave him money once, and then he stayed there every day pestering you for more.
The day you stopped giving, or even turned around and gave him a club, see whether he would hit you or not?
Unfortunately, Yue had originally been exactly that kind of koi.
It was not until she met that old Daoist who called himself “Cloud Immortal” that she learned how to firmly grasp what belonged to herself, learned how to dominate her own fate…
“……”
After a moment of silence, Yue shook her head.
She had finally made it ashore; there was no need to think about things in the sea anymore.
She opened the Writer’s Assistant, preparing for a hearty, unrestrained session of creation. The eyes of the masses were sharp. She believed that with so many viewers in the livestream room, someone would surely be able to appreciate her masterpiece.
However—
“Holy shit, the streamer’s about to fiddle with that damn Thunder novel of his again and pollute my eyes! Somebody stop him!”
“Yue-bao, listen to advice, how about we just go draw? Drawing is talent, writing is a work injury.”
“Where is the streamer posting the book? Let’s hurry over and hold an event for him!”
“Uh, looks like it still hasn’t passed review even now?”
“Holy shit, the editor did beautifully!”
In that instant every viewer in the livestream room raised their arms and cheered: Review! Review!
Yue: “……”
…Sure enough, the path of art was lonely in the end.
The next second, a golden highlighted comment worth 648 flashed across the screen:
“Streamer want to try game streaming?”
Yue subconsciously read it aloud, her voice still carrying a trace of undispersed dejection.
It was not until the danmaku exploded after several seconds of silence that she finally realized something was wrong.
Bro, where did the microphone come from?!
Liuli: “Ehehe~”
When did you come in again!!