GRMFBS CH107

Yuan Shiyi stared blankly in shock.

Having ridden in the completely opposite direction, the physical cultivator jiejie didn’t have time to ride all the way back. Forced to abandon her grand ambition of cycling the entire way, she booked a train ticket instead.

Fortunately, it wasn’t peak travel season, or else she wouldn’t have even been able to get a ticket.

Yuan Shiyi was incredibly depressed, her thumbs incessantly rubbing the bicycle handles. “Sorry for the trouble, and thank you.”

Zhan Yan helped set up a route navigation app on her phone so she wouldn’t ride in the wrong direction while looking for the train station.

The enthusiastic Northeast bro, Gou Hou, was incredibly sympathetic. He recognized her as a sister on the spot, dragging Zhan Yan in as a little brother as well, and treated the despondent jiejie and little brother to a meal.

“Jiejie, how’s your appetite? Wanna go for a buffet?” Gou Hou rubbed his belly. “I’m starved, and I eat a lot. A buffet is the best bang for your buck.”

Yuan Shiyi indicated that she also had a huge appetite.

The buffet restaurant was currently running a promotion: customers could get discounts by gathering ‘likes’ on a WeChat Moments post. Thirty-three likes got you 20% off, 66 likes got you 30% off, 88 likes got you 40% off, and 188 likes made the meal entirely free.

That final “free” tier was practically just for show. The restaurant had a two-and-a-half-hour dining limit. Gathering 188 likes in that time frame meant getting more than one like per minute.

Among the three of them, only Zhan Yan posted to his Moments.

Yuan Shiyi felt very embarrassed. “I don’t have many acquaintances; I definitely won’t get enough.”

Gou Hou was embarrassed for a different reason. “Hehe, I eat a lot.”

Zhan Yan’s Moments post featured not just the buffet, but also photos of the hot spring and snow scenery from the past two days, accompanied by a few thoughts on his trip. The number of likes steadily ticked upwards.

Zhan Yan put his phone away and focused on eating first.

The two beside him rapidly piled their plates into mountains.

Zhan Yan’s eyes slowly widened.

Gou Hou could not only eat, but he could also talk. After chugging two bottles of beer, he started up, clapping Zhan Yan on the shoulder. “Stop calling people by their full names all the time, it ain’t friendly! You gotta call me Gege and her Jiejie! You gotta change how you address people first before you can really get close!”

A little while later, a server materialized beside their table, specifically assigned to keep an eye on whether they were wasting food.

They really weren’t! Both of them cherished food and were practically licking their plates clean.

Even after Zhan Yan was full, the two were still eating. Holding a bowl of ice cream, Zhan Yan watched them while eating, thinking to himself: Are these two going to get blacklisted by this buffet restaurant?

It wouldn’t matter much anyway. Gou Hou was here for the hot springs, and Yuan Shiyi had only ended up here because she took a wrong turn; neither was likely to return.

When it came time to pay the bill, Zhan Yan opened his Moments post. The owner looked over: 183 likes.

Everyone in Zhan Yan’s family had liked it. Gu Jiancheng had liked it. The business contacts he met through his mom, like Matthias and Wen Yinghui, had liked it. The entertainment industry contacts he met through his dad, like Ji Lele and Xie Dongshu, had liked it. Add in his classmates scrolling through their feeds, and that was over a hundred likes right there. Then came the heavy hitters: the middle-aged and elderly square dancing troupe he had added from his residential compound!

This group of uncles and aunties had rapidly propelled him toward his goal.

The owner glanced down at the comments.

Have fun!

I want to go next time too!

Looks like a great place for team building.

Cooool! Muy guaaaaaay!

Quancheng looks pretty nice. I’ll bring my grandson along next winter break.

…

Just who does this kid know? Why are there even foreigners?

The owner watched helplessly as 183 ticked up again, becoming 185. It jumped by two at once!

Only three left. Out of these three customers, two were eating enough for eight people, and the other’s social network was about to score them a free meal!

The owner’s heart trembled.

Zhan Yan: “Let’s just count it as 88.”

He really felt too embarrassed to make the owner take such a massive loss on their bill.

“N-no need, I’ll give you, I’ll give you a 60% discount.”

With his heart bleeding, the owner asked them to leave a positive review with photos.

After the meal, Zhan Yan bid farewell to his dog demon bro and the directionally challenged Jiejie—whose train ticket wasn’t for the same day—and boarded the high-speed rail to Donghuang City alone.

There were still a few days left before the cultivator convention officially began, but the elder from the Scarlet Sun Sect, Old Man Weng Yan, had also arrived early.

“Come, come, come! I’ll take you to meet a few people first.” As soon as Weng Yan saw Zhan Yan, he practically dragged him away.

Not everyone attending the convention arrived strictly on time; many arrived early. Weng Yan intended to take Zhan Yan to meet a few old acquaintances early on to study this kid’s oddities together—he absolutely refused to go looking for help during the convention! The whole disaster with Zhao Qingnan being pregnant with ten babies hadn’t blown over yet. His old friends might spare him some face and not mention it, but there were plenty of his old rivals at the convention! If that bunch seized the opportunity, they would mock him to death!

Thus, before the convention even began, Zhan Yan was dragged around to meet a group of senior experts in the cultivation world.

Weng Yan hadn’t randomly decided to drag Zhan Yan to see his old friends. He had tested Zhan Yan first to confirm the kid wasn’t lying and had genuinely dreamt of the Candle Dragon.

“The perspective from which you dreamt of the Candle Dragon isn’t quite right,” Weng Yan said, stroking his beard.

Normally, when someone dreamt of events from twenty-six years ago, it was directly from their own perspective. Just like Old Man Luan—in his dreams, he felt he was personally experiencing those events. That was because those things had actually happened to them on a different timeline.

Zhan Yan wasn’t old enough; Weng Yan had never encountered a case of someone under twenty-six dreaming of the Candle Dragon. But logically speaking, Zhan Yan’s dream should have been of his own past life.

Just what kind of perspective did his past life have to be able to see the entirety of the Candle Dragon?!

Weng Yan couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of situation that must have been, nor did he dare believe he could stumble upon such a massive stroke of luck. The last time the Scarlet Sun Sect thought they had stumbled upon a stroke of luck and birthed a new generation of brilliant youth, Zhao Qingnan ended up pregnant with ten babies in one go.

Therefore, Weng Yan only dared to assume that Zhan Yan possessed extraordinary innate talent and had inadvertently caught a glimpse of the world’s spiritual traces, allowing him to dream of secrets from twenty-six years ago without even realizing it.

But if he was truly that spiritually sensitive, how could he not even open his Yin-Yang Eyes?

Weng Yan grabbed a minor ghost off the street, had it sit invisibly in the room, and began attempting to open Zhan Yan’s Yin-Yang Eyes.

Four hours later…

Zhan Yan asked cautiously, “Are you tired? Do you want to rest for a bit?”

Weng Yan: “Tired? What’s there to be tired about? I haven’t even tried that many methods yet. You’re young, you need to have focus!”

Zhan Yan: Right, the number of attempts wasn’t that many—only about twenty or thirty.

Every single one had failed spectacularly on him.

[The minor ghost Ma Shan yawned in boredom and said to Weng Yan, “I charge by the hour, you know. You need to add another stick of incense for me.”]

Weng Yan replied impatiently, “I know, I know! Don’t interrupt me!”

He was locked in a stubborn battle with Zhan Yan’s non-existent Yin-Yang Eyes!

Zhan Yan: “Um, how about we just forget it? Maybe I really am just an ordinary person who stumbled upon that vision by sheer luck?”

Weng Yan didn’t know, but Zhan Yan himself knew perfectly well that dreaming of the Candle Dragon was purely a result of the system upgrade and had very little to do with him personally.

“Impossible!” Weng Yan declared with absolute certainty.

“Huh?”

“Little Yan, you’ve never been exposed to cultivation, so you don’t understand, which is why you think you just stumbled upon it by luck. Information possesses power. Not just anyone can remember a dream like that. If your own aptitude wasn’t high enough to bear it, even if a grandmaster forcefully poured it into your brain, you still wouldn’t be able to remember it!” Weng Yan explained.

Zhan Yan’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

If that’s the case, then my knowledge of this information isn’t purely because of the Gossip System, but also because I genuinely possess natural talent?

Exhausted from his attempts, Weng Yan sat down in a chair to rest. “Yes. But your inability to open your Yin-Yang Eyes is indeed strange. I’m not an expert in this area. Just wait; tomorrow I’ll take you to see my old friends. They might have a way.”

The minor ghost Ma Shan seized the opportunity to chime in: “Boss, do you still need me next? I’m cheap! Just three sticks of incense morning and night, and I’ll sit here for as long as you want! Of course, a bowl of rice would be even better, hehehe…”

Zhan Yan couldn’t help but start looking forward to it. Even though he had an overpowered cheat like the Gossip System, not even being able to open his Yin-Yang Eyes was a real problem.

Everyone on the forum thought Approaching Science was some incredibly powerful information-type boss, but Zhan Yan had always felt a bit guilty about it. Even ordinary people without any superpowers could open their Yin-Yang Eyes, yet he was a pure Muggle. Unless ghosts and monsters intentionally revealed themselves, he couldn’t see or hear them, relying entirely on the text descriptions in the Gossip System to guess what was happening.

In the past, he figured that as an outsider, not having Yin-Yang Eyes wouldn’t affect him much; happily eating gossip from afar was enough for him.

But the situation had changed now. His mom and dad belonged to two opposing major organizations, and their secret identities could be exposed at any moment. Add to that the crisis of Infinite reviving—his parents were the tall ones who would be holding up the sky when it fell. How could just having the Gossip System be enough? Zhan Yan desperately wished he could rapidly become stronger!

If someone among this group of senior experts could figure out what was wrong and fix it for him, he would hit the jackpot!

Over the next few days, Weng Yan took him everywhere to meet his old friends.

Filled with hope, Zhan Yan went to meet the first senior expert.

Feeling anxious, Zhan Yan went to meet the second senior expert.

Still holding onto some confidence, Zhan Yan went to meet the third senior expert.

…

Utterly numb, Zhan Yan went to meet the seventeenth senior expert.

Zhan Yan: “We’ve met so many people and none of them could do it. How about we just call it quits for now?”

Weng Yan: “What do you mean, ‘so many’? We’ve barely seen anyone! You’re young, stop thinking about giving up!”

Zhan Yan realized that Old Man Weng Yan’s concept of numbers was somewhat different from an ordinary person’s.

Weng Yan: “I still have at least five-sixths of my friends you haven’t met yet!”

Good heavens, he’s a social butterfly!

If he has over a hundred friends who are senior cultivators, then adding in the ones with lower cultivation levels and ordinary people without any cultivation like Old Man Luan… is your friend count pushing four digits?!

Weng Yan brought Zhan Yan to sit around a table and drink tea with his other friends. To Zhan Yan’s left was Weng Yan; to his right was a grandmother named Zhuo Shu, her silver-white hair swept back into a bun. She was also a good friend of Weng Yan’s and was highly skilled in treating various intractable diseases.

“Don’t overthink it. There are plenty of strange things in this world, and they all get resolved eventually,” Zhuo Shu chuckled. “A few years ago, a little cultivator came to me acting all secretive. In the dead of summer, he was wrapped in a thick overcoat, wearing a hat and mask, looking just like one of those young celebrities nowadays. He told me he had suddenly changed sex. Guess what happened?”

Under everyone’s curious gazes, Zhuo Shu took a sip of tea. “I investigated a whole slew of curses, anomalies, and the like, only to finally discover that he had clownfish demon ancestry in his lineage. Something went wrong during his cultivation, and he experienced an atavistic reversion.”

When the female population in a clownfish group was insufficient, some male clownfish would change into females to maintain the population’s reproduction.

Zhan Yan was incredibly curious. “Did he change back later?”

Zhuo Shu: “He changed back. I prescribed him some medicine and told him to go out and walk around more, rather than constantly mixing with his martial brothers. Since they were all males, if he stayed cooped up in there before his atavism was cured, he was highly likely to change sex again.”