GRMFBS CH233

Grind what grind? Sleep!

He wasn’t going to stay up late.

His parents and siblings were all at home. The only reason he managed to muddle through today was that his sister was busy with other matters, while his parents and brother had their attention captured by Teng Jian. Many thanks to Teng Jian’s contribution.

Zhan Yan turned off the Gossip System and went to sleep.

He ignored Xiao Gu. In any case, unable to find an outlet to vent his energy, Xiao Gu would calm down after a while and fall asleep peacefully.

Zhan Yan closed his eyes and soon fell into a deep slumber.

After waiting for a while, Gu Jiancheng noticed that Approaching Science had logged off.

…Heh! Fragile information-type users were simply useless; staying up for just one night was already too much for him.

Still, since Approaching Science couldn’t hold on and went to sleep, he would just find someone else.

Wan Shitong definitely wouldn’t do, and he truly looked down on the other information-type users. As for the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau, he had just finalized a cooperation agreement with them, but they had never slacked on their pursuit of Infinite either; going to ask them right now wouldn’t yield any new information.

Who else could he make use of?

Gu Jiancheng couldn’t help but think of Lin Yuan Ghost King.

Although Lin Yuan Ghost King was not an information-type, his “wishing machine” constitution was genuinely useful. Gu Jiancheng had never fought anomalies with such sheer satisfaction in this world before.

All he needed was to make a wish to Lin Yuan Ghost King, and those troublesome anomalies would continuously crash right before his eyes.

The only concern was that the backlash of Lin Yuan Ghost King’s divine ability was truly terrifying—he could have cuddled with Yan Yan for three months, but it had forcibly turned into being separated for three months instead.

Gu Jiancheng pondered for a moment, deciding it was best to hold off on Lin Yuan Ghost King, a weapon of mass destruction that inflicted damage on both sides, until later. He would only deploy him when there were truly no other options left.

Mmm, Rong Sui was actually a dependable collaborator too, but she probably wasn’t in the mood to handle such bothersome matters right now.

After turning it over in his mind, Gu Jiancheng realized he genuinely had nothing to do right now.

Forget it, he might as well sleep.

Even Yan Yan was already asleep.

They were sleeping under the same night sky; rounding up, that was practically equivalent to…

…

Zhan Yan slept soundly.

Waking up the next morning, he began another busy day:

Washing up, morning exercise, eating a proper breakfast, playing with Xingxing, continuing to sort through Di Ting’s memory scenes, gathering Candle Dragon’s power, diving into Dawn World to farm information words for leveling up, fooling his sister while doing his best to protect Xiao Gu’s secret identity…

And investigating news on Monster Doctor and Infinite for Boss Deep Shadow.

Dammit, isn’t he supposed to be on vacation?

Zhan Yan found a spot in Dawn World’s beginner village to lie flat.

This world still preserved some designs from the game world, such as the beginner village being absolutely safe.

Finding an unoccupied haystack, he threw himself down on it to bask in the sun. The warmth seeped into his limbs, the dry wheat stalks releasing a wondrous fragrance under the sunlight, the gentle breeze stirring his dragon whiskers as several sparrows perched upon his dragon horns.

Ah… this is what a vacation should feel like.

Catching sight of a flock of small birds fluttering up and down in the distance, Qi Ye walked over to investigate.

A person with a dragon’s head lay face up on the haystack under the bright sunshine and golden straw, eyes closed in serene relaxation, while a cluster of birds hopped around on his dragon horns and the straw.

This scene was quite cinematic. Qi Ye’s artistic senses were instantly sparked, inspiration for her graduation project bursting forth—oh, wait, she already graduated; never mind then.

Sensing someone nearby, Zhan Yan opened his eyes and glanced over. The flock of birds perched on his dragon horns took flight with a sudden whoosh, landing on a neighboring haystack to peck through the wheat stalks for leftover grains.

One stubborn little sparrow adamantly refused to leave; flapping its wings a few times to maintain balance, it pecked at his dragon horn in dissatisfaction.

“Hi,” Zhan Yan greeted her.

Qi Ye let out a soft sigh. This world never failed to remind her through inadvertent details that it had become a genuine reality. With only the game world built by her and Wan Shitong, no matter how meticulous, the birds would never show such lifelike variations.

“Hi.” She climbed onto the haystack as well, startling the sparrows into scattering in flight.

“Does sculpting a dragon head come with an innate animal-attracting trait?”

Zhan Yan thought to himself that it had nothing to do with the dragon head; it was purely an extension of his own constitution.

“Where are the others?” he asked.

Qi Ye had joined the Wan Yao Alliance now; when she was inside Dawn World, she was almost always accompanied by network-type users from the alliance.

“I came to slack off for a bit,” Qi Ye replied.

Zhan Yan immediately resonated with her.

“You’ve all been so busy exploring Dawn World lately.”

He had seen it in the gossip strips: the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau and the Wan Yao Alliance were currently working around the clock on rotating shifts. Qi Ye and Wan Shitong were also on alternating shifts—not brutally forced to stay online for twelve hours a day, of course, as they could attend to their own affairs, but they had to be prepared for relentless emergency calls during their duty hours.

Hearing his sympathetic tone, Qi Ye found an outlet for her grievances: “Nagging, constantly nagging! Now it’s not just the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau grinding relentlessly, even the Wan Yao Alliance is pushing like crazy. Word has it that several great demons in the alliance are curious about Dawn World and want to come inside to see, so they keep rushing us to find a channel connecting Dawn World to reality as soon as possible.”

“Did you join the Wan Yao Alliance thinking they wouldn’t be as demanding?” Zhan Yan asked.

“Not really.” Qi Ye sighed helplessly. “I did it to protect my secret identity…”

Building an entire world within the cyberspace network was exceedingly difficult, so she and Wan Shitong chose to develop an ordinary version of the game alongside it to cross-reference and hunt for bugs. Then, they sought investment for the standard game, and pitching for investments required an ordinary civilian identity.

Back then, Qi Ye was still relatively naive, thinking they didn’t plan on opening their game world anytime soon anyway—according to the schedule, that would only happen years after the ordinary game launched, once they patched and perfected the game world enough to gradually roll it out.

Before the game world opened, nobody would know what it looked like inside, nor would anyone connect the game world to the regular game.

Carefree as she was, Qi Ye never imagined she might drop her secret identity because of this—she had directly used her ordinary civilian persona to pull investments.

As someone who had clawed his way out of Infinite, Wan Shitong never expected Qi Ye to lack the common sense of maintaining multiple fake identities, so he hadn’t reminded her either.

When the apocalyptic world merged in and the game world was forced to open up step by step, Qi Ye suddenly realized: Disaster. Once the network-type users who entered Dawn World saw the Dawn Continent game and noticed how identical they were, wouldn’t they instantly realize that Qi Ye, creator of the Dawn Continent game, was linked to “Play Games With Me” or Wan Shitong, the creators of the game world?

With no time for regrets, Qi Ye scrambled frantically to find herself a powerful backer.

Fortunately, she had connections with the little white wolf Bai Ji, allowing her to seek refuge with the Wan Yao Alliance directly through him and come under the protection of White Po, the Howling Moon Wolf King, one of the Ten Great Demon Kings.

As long as one possessed formidable strength or solid backing, exposing an ordinary civilian identity in the supernatural world wasn’t a major issue; many great demons in the Wan Yao Alliance mingled and played within human society anyway.

However, finding a backer was also equivalent to getting a boss. Bai Po just happened to be a playful demon king who was intensely curious about what Dawn World was like and desperately wanted to come in and play.

Thus, Qi Ye was forced into the endless grind.

Zhan Yan completely understood.

“Sigh, the game is participating in an expo in a few days, and I have to go then.” Qi Ye rolled over like a thoroughly salted fish.

It was a gaming expo where Dawn Continent would launch a complete line of physical gaming hardware.

As game developers, she and Wan Shitong had to be present. The thought of her secret identity being stripped bare in the supernatural circle filled her with a faint melancholy. Thankfully, while the Howling Moon Wolf King drove her relentlessly, he was very responsible regarding her personal safety. On top of equipping her with a set of talismans, Bai Po had picked out a combat-heavy great demon from his own pack to guard a fragile network-type user like her.

“I hope the new version distracts them so they stop rushing me here,” Qi Ye mumbled prayerfully.

“What if playing the new version makes them want to experience the full-dive Dawn World even more?” Zhan Yan pointed out another possibility.

Qi Ye slowly turned her head to glare at him with dead-fish eyes.

After logging out of Dawn World, Zhan Yan also received a message from Luo Luoluo.

The booth setup for Dawn Continent at the expo was basically finalized, and Luo Luoluo asked if he wanted to attend—it would be a waste not to leverage the young boss’s popularity.

A few minutes later, he received a message from his sister asking whether he was going to the expo as well.

Luo Luoluo had messaged Zhan Suiru at the same time, since Zhan Suiru had previously asked her for an internal game account.

Zhan Yan turned it down without a second thought. His sister would definitely use the opportunity to fish for information about Xiao Gu’s identity.

Zhan Suiru came knocking on his door.

Zhan Yan: …

He couldn’t very well refuse to open the door for his sister.

The moment the door opened, his sister began casting her emotional spells:

“Yan Yan, why do I feel like you’ve been avoiding me these past few days?”

“Your sister is so heartbroken.”

Zhan Yan: See, he knew it!

“How could I be avoiding you? It’s just an illusion!” Zhan Yan said with utter seriousness.

“Then how about we go to the expo together in a couple of days?” Zhan Suiru asked.

“But on the day of the expo…”

“Do you have other plans that day? Any other time during your break works too; how about we go out and hang out together?” Zhan Suiru looked at him with a warm smile.

Her intuition told her Gu Jiancheng was a dangerous figure. Now that Xiao Ran’s troubles were resolved, the one she worried about most was her brother; if she couldn’t confirm who her brother was dating before the break ended, Yan Yan would be in close contact with that dangerous person again once school started! Zhan Suiru couldn’t rest easy.

“I’m free on the day of the expo,” Zhan Yan changed his tune.

Alright, he couldn’t hide from his sister for the entire break anyway. Since she assumed he was an ordinary human, she wouldn’t expect him to know Gu Jiancheng’s real identity, so there was a limit to what she could probe.

Zhan Suiru left satisfied.

At most, she could only gather suspicious details from her brother; the core investigation had to come from the supernatural side.

Zhan Suiru logged onto the chaofan forum, intending to ask Approaching Science how the investigation was going. There was no need to wait until he checked everyone before handing over the list; however many he had found would do, making it easier for her to verify them one by one.

Before she could message Approaching Science, Zhan Suiru received a message from Deep Shadow regarding those oversized toys.

Right, Deep Shadow should be very familiar with the player community too. Besides Approaching Science, she could ask Deep Shadow as well.