The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 72: Chapter 64: You’ve Become Famous

The headlights cut through the darkness as the van turned the final corner, finally stopping on the embankment of the Yangon Riverfront.

”Young master, I’ve dropped you off here; I need to hurry back to return the car.”

Gu Weijing waved goodbye to Brother Mumbai, who was already drowsy in the driver’s seat.

Just like when he went to the orphanage, the return trip through the winding city roads took quite some time.

It was now late at night, with the world in complete silence.

All the streetlights were extinguished; Gu Weijing quietly made his way home through the gallery’s back door, plugged his phone in to charge, and then went to the bathroom to take a bath.

After running around all day in the vast Yangon City, he was indeed tired.

Gu Weijing dispelled the thought of drawing another sketch and decided to wash up briefly and go to sleep.

”Buzz buzz!”

”The user you follow [Shengzi] has updated their INSTAGRAM.”

Coming out of the bathroom wrapped in a bathrobe,

Gu Weijing saw a new notification appear in the message box of his phone, which had just lit up again.

”Miss Sakai has posted a new photo?”

Ever since their encounter, they had exchanged contact details, and Gu Weijing had followed Miss Sakai on Instagram.

Known as INS, Instagram is the world’s largest social media platform with a fresh style, focusing on image sharing.

It’s owned by the same company as Facebook and is a platform where many Hollywood stars and artists have accounts.

Koizumi Katsuko manages her Instagram account very professionally.

Her account username is simply her name [Shengzi], with a note as a young artist and champion of the All-Japanese Youth Art Competition.

She frequently updates with new work announcements, personal photos, or award information from art competitions.

When Gu Weijing followed her, her account already had 203K followers.

This was almost twice as much as the official account run by the gallery’s manager team for her father, the renowned artist, Uncle Sakai, [Professor Ishikawa Ichiro’s Studio], which had over 70K followers.

On social media, in terms of audience or algorithm recommendations, a pretty young lady is far more popular than a chubby uncle who just paints.

However, since coming to Yangon, her INS update frequency slowed down.

He remembered the last photo posted by Miss Sakai was two weeks ago, with the Great Golden Pagoda in the background and an English caption, ”Met a talented friend, let’s work hard together!”

If Gu Weijing’s guess was right, she was referring to him.

Seeing that Miss Sakai posted new updates, he instinctively clicked in.

The page refreshed,

and a warm-toned crayon drawing and a Colored Pencil Drawing appeared on the screen.

Huh?

This painting...

”In the face of a silent master, I feel my humility and insignificance. Salute to Jian Anuo and Detective Cat, the winners of Mr. Hibernian’s channel challenge. - Koizumi Katsuko.”

This was the caption provided by Koizumi Katsuko on the photo wall update.

He saw Yakai Gangchang, Uncle Sakai, and Mrs. Sakai and many others liked it.

What on earth?

Gu Weijing’s immediate reaction to seeing this message was that it must be some kind of prank.

He almost clicked the video link under Koizumi Katsuko’s photo on YouTube with a bewildered expression.

When Thomas’s famous face appeared on the phone screen, Gu Weijing was almost stunned.

He knew this person,

No, he knew this person’s body,

Also no...

Gu Weijing knew this person’s muscle lines.

In the past, while doing illustration work, he had detailed drawings of this man cosplaying as Batman, even with the bat mask on, including his body muscle curves.

Now comparing it to the video of Mr. Hibernian, familiar images immediately emerged in his mind.

”WTF!”

Gu Weijing leaped off the bed like a fish struck by electricity, instantly wide awake.

With the video still playing, he quickly got off the bed and walked over to his computer, pressing the power button.

”Ding, ding, ding, ding ding ding...”

As soon as the computer booted up and was connected to the internet, various new message alert sounds all mixed together, forming a cascade of dings.

New messages flooded into the email linked with the Nutshell account as if it had been infected, instantly drowning in emails.

In the Windows taskbar, new email notifications popped up like a waterfall from the message box.

”Nutshell- You have a new message from #SEB STUDIO.”

”Nutshell- You have a new message from #Blue49890.”

”Nutshell- You have a new message from #송중기의작은미녀...”

Each email would slide out from the bottom right corner of the computer, only to be replaced by the next one in mere moments.

In almost just a matter of seconds, the new messages in the system exceeded the taskbar’s capacity limit, becoming 999+.

...

”Oh my god, there’s actually... such a coincidental thing.”

Half an hour later,

Gu Weijing was still staring at the video that had finished playing and the thousands of emails in his inbox, dumbfounded.

He couldn’t believe that the buyer who contacted him was actually the legendary world’s top internet celebrity, [Mr. Hibernian].

Actually, it was a coincidence, yet not entirely so.

Although Nutshell had over 2300 registered painters, excluding those who registered casually, never logged back in, or had too many negative reviews.

There were about 1100 regular business painters.

Approximately 67 illustrators charged less than 20 dollars, with only 7 charging exactly ten dollars.

A one in seven chance.

And Gu Weijing was the newest among them.

As long as someone searched in reverse order by ten-dollar units, his shop would easily appear under the recommendation algorithm.

However, he wasn’t in the mood to ponder over probabilities right now.

The new message sound kept ringing through the computer speakers.

He shut off the system’s new email notifications, finally quieting those endless dinging sounds.

Gu Weijing opened the Nutshell homepage.

He saw the first unread message under the completed orders section was sent from user [Hyperion1077].

”Surprise!!!”

”Hello, I am Mr. Hibernian (YouTube account: Mr. Hibernian’s channel), congratulations on your work winning the new video challenge [From One Dollar to One Million Dollars Painting Challenge] I recorded. This is the most incredible result I’ve seen since I began making these videos...”

The message also included a link to their new video’s tweet.

He logged onto Mr. Hibernian’s Twitter homepage on the computer and immediately understood where all those new messages in the inbox came from.

Thomas listed seven artists in his tweet, and apart from the vagabond roaming the streets, every one of their Twitter accounts or Nutshell shop owner links.

As the biggest internet celebrity in the world, his follower count on Twitter rivals that of a certain president’s viewership.

This tweet had already surpassed 36 million views, continuing to climb rapidly.

Even if only one in ten thousand viewers took a moment to click and leave a message on his Nutshell account, that would be thousands of unread messages.

Nutshell’s webpage client showed his unread messages had reached the server’s capacity limit of 10,000.

After all, this was just a cross-border part-time website.

From the day it went online, it probably never imagined one part-time shop owner’s inbox would face such an overwhelming data flow.

If not for the site’s backend monitoring abnormal traffic and emergency repairs, these sudden users almost crashed the entire site’s server.

”Thank you for allowing me to film an excellent video. Congratulations on your brilliant work receiving its deserved recognition—”

”You’ve become famous, Detective Cat Lady.”