GRMFBS CH80

“Do you want to study wishing cats? Stray cats don’t make good subjects for observation,” Zhan Yan tried his best to persuade him.

“No.” Gu Jiancheng was caught between laughter and tears, but found it difficult to explain. “I’m not looking anymore.”

He let out a long, quiet sigh in his heart.

Back in Infinite, persecution mania wasn’t considered an issue. But he was out of Infinite now; what he wanted was a peaceful, stable life.

He had left Infinite a long time ago, yet that shadow still seemed to loom over him.

“How about we go check out the library over the next couple of days?” Zhan Yan figured Gu Jiancheng might be considering his direction after graduation. “Over the break, we could also visit a livestock farm, or a veterinary station—even a pet hospital would work.”

Gu Jiancheng looked at Zhan Yan’s clear, bright eyes staring back at him, with a lock of untied hair sticking up on one side of his head, as the young man earnestly helped plan out his future.

He couldn’t hold back from pulling him into an embrace.

Suddenly pulled in, Zhan Yan felt a large head rest heavily on his shoulder.

“Yan Yan,” Gu Jiancheng murmured, still nuzzling against the side of his neck, “let’s go meet each other’s parents over the break.”

Zhan Yan: How did the topic suddenly jump all the way here?!

After managing to muddle his way through and change the subject, Zhan Yan suddenly realized—wait a second, wasn’t he supposed to be angry earlier?!

……

Gu Jiancheng didn’t get a definitive answer from Zhan Yan, but he wasn’t in any rush either. Chip away at it slowly, and it would happen sooner or later!

First, it was better to handle another matter: the Magician was investigating a black nest, and while they hadn’t tracked down its exact location yet, they had discovered many traces—traces of flesh-and-blood anomalies.

“Flesh-and-blood anomaly” was a classification given to anomalies by players who had emerged from Infinite. Generally speaking, a single black nest only produced one category of anomaly.

The anomaly Gu Jiancheng had obtained the black nest imprint from was certainly not a flesh-and-blood type.

Either this black nest could produce two categories of anomalies, or two different types of black nests were bound together.

However, Gu Jiancheng was thinking of something else—Monster Doctor was the one most adept at manipulating flesh and blood.

Infinite had all kinds of people, with a particular surplus of perverts and degenerates, but Monster Doctor had left the deepest impression on Gu Jiancheng.

When Gu Jiancheng first entered Infinite, it happened to be during his most chuunibyou years. Sharp-witted, physically fit, trained in sanda, and harboring a chuunibyou dream of saving the world—when his eyes shone brightly, he was extraordinarily likable, but he also attracted degenerates like moths to a flame.

Later on, every single one of those degenerates was wiped out by Gu Jiancheng.

If one had to rank degenerates into different tiers, the lowest tier consisted of those driven by pure, base desires, while high-tier lunatics possessed a self-consistent logic and seemingly grandiose, high-minded ideals.

Monster Doctor was precisely such a high-tier lunatic.

His ideal was to unravel all unknown enigmas and seek the truth of the world, so he began researching monsters. Treating monsters as raw material, he used them for scientific research and discovered quite a few monster weaknesses.

In the beginning, he was actually quite popular. While watching someone dissect monsters on an operating table with a scalpel looked rather psychotic, it was well within the realm of acceptable behavior in the Infinite world—and even provided a bit of catharsis.

Later, however, he began researching humans.

Why are humans able to acquire supernatural powers? What makes people with supernatural powers different from ordinary people? Monsters also possess supernatural powers, so what are the similarities and differences between superpowered humans and monsters? …

Whether low-tier or high-tier, nothing could change the fact that he was an absolute degenerate at his core. So, Gu Jiancheng kicked him straight into a black nest.

No player could survive inside a black nest—that was common knowledge in Infinite.

Monster Doctor was dead; the Magician had verified it using an Ouija board.

Yet Gu Jiancheng didn’t place much trust in common knowledge. Now that such clues had surfaced again, regardless of what had gone wrong, the Magician’s methods were no longer sufficient, and a different person was needed to investigate.

Gu Jiancheng thought of Approaching Science.

The forum had been fairly peaceful lately. The biggest excitement remained eating melons regarding the drama between Ghost King Wan Yan and Ghost King Lin Yuan.

Ghost King Wan Yan hadn’t stirred up a ruckus by @’ing Administrator Rather Die Than Own A Cat on the forum for quite some time. Everyone was speculating whether Ghost King Wan Yan had obtained a lead, as someone with his sheer tenacity wasn’t likely to simply give up.

Gu Jiancheng skimmed through it and closed the thread. The Ghost Kings of Mount Chaofu were so laid-back and idle they practically felt nonexistent; he had zero interest in these two Ghost Kings or the grudges between them.

So, he opened private messages to ping Approaching Science.

This was Zhan Yan’s first time hearing the codename “Monster Doctor”. Searching for it in the Gossip System:

[Loading…]

The last time he ran into a loading screen was when searching for the past affairs of Ghost King Wan Yan and Ghost King Lin Yuan. It had loaded afterward thanks to the power of the Candle Dragon coupled with running into the Wan Yan cat.

He had no idea what kind of conditions were required to trigger the load this time around. But the fact that a melon entry showed [Loading…] was a clue in and of itself.

Zhan Yan then combined “Monster Doctor” in searches with terms like “flesh-and-blood anomaly” and “Deep Shadow”. Some yielded [Loading…], while others returned nothing at all.

What came up and what didn’t provided another layer of clues.

Sifting through them like this, he uncovered an additional piece of information: the “Cursed Scale” anomaly originated from the very batch of flesh-and-blood anomalies Deep Shadow had recently been investigating.

Oh dear… Ghost King Lin Yuan was tracing upward along the Cursed Scale anomaly, while Deep Shadow was tracking downward along the flesh-and-blood anomalies. If they kept investigating like this, wouldn’t they end up crashing right into each other?!

Approaching Science: [The flesh-and-blood anomalies are related to Monster Doctor. Monster Doctor has shown activity in recent years. I cannot investigate anything further for now.]

Gu Jiancheng felt quite regretful, though being able to pinpoint who was behind the trouble was good enough.

Then, Approaching Science dropped another bombshell on him:

Approaching Science: [There is one more thing.]

Approaching Science: [Ghost King Lin Yuan is also investigating the flesh-and-blood anomalies.]

Gu Jiancheng’s old habit flared up again.

I Just Saved the World!: [Heh, what could he possibly uncover?]

People from this world only half-understood the affairs of Infinite to begin with; even the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau had a massive pile of things they hadn’t figured out, let alone an utterly lethargic place like Mount Chaofu.

Approaching Science: [You’re still on the wanted list.]

Gu Jiancheng: …

I Just Saved the World!: [He can’t beat me.]

Zhan Yan snorted internally.

If that guy lets out a single shout, a whole crowd will swarm over to corner you!

Deep Shadow could go ahead and be stubborn all he wanted.

In any case, he had delivered the warning.

Zhan Yan dragged the new term “Monster Doctor” onto his information board. It didn’t go under the “Spiritual” category, but instead entered the “Anomaly” category.

Among the melon entries brushing against Monster Doctor, the number of [Loading…] tags was unnaturally high. This batch of [Loading…] probably wasn’t something the power of the Candle Dragon could solve. He would have to find another way to investigate… Mm, though it would still be best to gather as much Candle Dragon power as possible; who knew when it might come in handy in the future?

There was still a Candle Dragon Remnant quest sitting in the forum’s hidden section.

Zhan Yan had previously searched for information related to the Candle Dragon Remnant using the Gossip System, but it hadn’t been easy to dig up, so he had set it aside. Now, he needed to pick it back up. Once the semester came to an end in a little while, he could go search for it. As for now… school came first. Final exams were approaching soon!

With course loads ramping up before finals, Zhan Yan carved out moments from his busy schedule to munch on melons and enjoy his romance.

After the Wan Yan cat was hauled off to Mount Chaofu, he was deeply displeased, throwing fits and refusing to do any work.

However, Ghost King Minghe had encircled Mount Chaofu with the Ming He River. Wan Yan couldn’t run out and spent all day sulking.

In the end, it was Chongming Demon King who knew how to handle him.

“Do you know why Lin Yuan ignores you?” Chongming Demon King asked.

Ghost King Wan Yan grunted and whined, puffing up his cheeks and refusing to acknowledge Chongming Demon King, though his ears perked right up.

“Do you still remember the things between you two from the past?” Zhan Yunkai asked again.

Ghost King Wan Yan continued to whine. Say whatever you want, I’m still ignoring you!

“You don’t even remember him anymore, so of course he’s angry and won’t pay attention to you. If your friend forgot all about you, wouldn’t you be angry?”

Ghost King Wan Yan slumped dejectedly, his small cat ears drooping flat.

If someone else forgot him, he would certainly be unhappy.

Then… Lin Yuan ignoring him actually made a lot of sense.

Having raised cubs often, Chongming Demon King guided him step-by-step: “So you need to find a way to recover your past memories first.”

Ghost King Wan Yan started to worry. He genuinely couldn’t recall anything from the past!

“Not only do you not remember him, you don’t remember me either, nor your other friends,” Zhan Yunkai said. “But we all used to know each other. Spend more time around us—remember a bit here, recall a little there, and maybe one day it will all come back to you?”

The Wan Yan cat thought the big red bird made sense. So, he began clinging to Zhan Yunkai, pestering him about their past.

The little white cat with golden eyes pawed at a section of Ghost King Minghe’s skirt that hadn’t dissolved into river water, gathering it into a wrinkled, messy, and soft little nest.

Ghost King Minghe leaned against the roots of the Wenyu Tree without a care in the world, listening along to Chongming Demon King tell his story.

The divine bird with double pupils perched upon the Wenyu Tree, its long tail feathers trailing down to the ground.

Zhan Yunkai began recounting it to them, seamlessly and unobtrusively steering the topic toward the relationship between Di Ting and Bai Ze.

Di Ting and Bai Ze didn’t share the exact same abilities, yet there were striking similarities—both knew a great deal.

Between the two, however, Di Ting’s ability was decidedly less popular. Bai Ze simply possessed vast knowledge, whereas Di Ting could listen to the voices of people’s hearts. No one liked having their inner thoughts eavesdropped on.

Even so, the relationship between the two was quite good.

Though Bai Ze knew much, he never spoke of it outward; if others didn’t ask, he wouldn’t tell, and even if they did, he might not answer. The more one knew, the more one had to keep tight-lipped.

Yet keeping tight-lipped didn’t mean one didn’t feel suffocated by it.

Having held things in for too long, Bai Ze grew to love eating melons and watching dramas. Whenever there was a spectacle, he would dash over to watch, but he had no one to share it with, no one to eat melons alongside.

Di Ting was wonderful! Without Bai Ze needing to say a word, Di Ting already understood everything!

The two great demons had hung out together for a long time, and their dynamic roughly looked like this:

Bai Ze: [You know what I mean, right?]

Di Ting: Nods!

Aside from the two of them, no one else could understand.

Yet after hanging out with Bai Ze for a while, Di Ting ran off to Mount Chaofu.

Di Ting said, “That guy thinks about far too many things—so much, so densely packed, like ten thousand quacking ducks!”

It was too noisy to endure, so he fled to Mount Chaofu to seek peace and quiet.

In truth, that wasn’t why.

It was because Bai Ze knew far too many things, and after overhearing some of them, Di Ting had been frightened away.

Yet he hadn’t run off for good; after staying in Mount Chaofu for a stretch and feeling bored, he would head out again to chat and hang out with Bai Ze, until one day he’d suddenly be spooked anew by the thoughts in Bai Ze’s heart, fleeing back to Mount Chaofu to recover before going back out to play with him again once he felt better.

The Wan Yan cat blinked his eyes: [Were we really on such good terms?]

Zhan Yunkai nodded. “Yes, you were very familiar with one another.”

[Then where did he go? Since he knows everything, he ought to know I didn’t forget everyone on purpose. Why hasn’t he come looking for me?] The Wan Yan cat pawed at the Chongming bird’s trailing tail feathers a couple of times, feeling a bit aggrieved.

The divine bird with double pupils lowered its head, its voice—pure and resonant as glazed jade beads—gently fell across the quiet, secluded depths of Mount Chaofu:

“He is dead.”