GRMFBS CH177

Perhaps because of the newly upgraded function, Zhan Yan’s experience entering the network this time was quite different from before.

He felt a massive neural network surface in his consciousness. Against a deep blue background, azure fluorescence formed a dot matrix, with glowing white nodes and lines interconnecting within the matrix, much like the neural net in a human brain.

Many faint lights resembling shooting stars hung within the neural net, and among them, many made him feel a sense of resonance—these were the pieces of information related to him on the network.

Zhan Yan first experimented with the sensation of hiding beneath information. He felt like a tiny electron, sliding swiftly along the neural net, and under the guidance of his consciousness, entering a shooting star that resonated with him.

[Hahahaha, when will little brother Melon Badger King realize that Sledgehammer Eighty is his sister? Looking forward to it.]

Zhan Yan: …

Alright then, it’s just being forced to confront my own gossip threads, what’s there to be ashamed of.

Thanks, buddy, for providing this information concealment spot!

Zhan Yan began attempting to shuttle between various concealment spots, sliding along the electronic neural network.

Sliding back and forth~ sliding back and forth~

Hehe, it felt pretty good.

[Who is this curly-haired little brother only showing his side profile to Zhan Yunkai?]

[A photo from Old Man Luan’s birthday banquet—the top of Zhan Yan’s head in the crowd.]

[There’s a junior at our school with this animal-attracting constitution; whenever he stands there, small animals will come scampering over. We often use him to find escaped lab animals.]

[An award-winning photography picture—Zhan Yan standing side-by-side with Gu Jiancheng on a field ridge.]

[His Majesty Chongming’s cub is so cute.]

[Approaching Science is way too hard to tease.]

[I went to the venue today and ran into my high school classmate and his boyfriend. They look like such a good match.]

[Me encontré con un nuevo amigo.]

…

Zhan Yan originally thought he didn’t have many gossip threads on the network that could be used for concealment, aside from gaining a bit of popularity as the noob little brother “Melon Badger King” being carried by Qi Ye. To his surprise, there were quite a lot. Aside from the popularity brought by Qi Ye, most of the attention came from his dad’s identity as an actor. After his dad exploded in popularity those two times, the video of him helping his dad shake off the stalking manager had been dug up and speculated upon. However, because he was protected by the little star for information concealment, his identity had never been dug up.

His attendance at the birthday banquet, photos unintentionally taken of him, mentions from people he knew… these fragmented pieces of information had now all become his sanctuaries. They knew him, thought of him, and he had left an impression in their hearts; most were good, many, many were friendly…

Zhan Yan felt as if he had been struck by something.

He suddenly remembered his childhood.

He hadn’t thought about his childhood in a long time.

From the moment his memories began, he appeared in front of an orphanage. He didn’t remember why he was there.

He wasn’t as talkative as he was now since childhood. When he was young, he was always silent, not much better than his brother. He heard people call him a little mute behind his back, and later, some even called him that to his face.

Silent children are considered well-behaved, but are also easily neglected. He understood very clearly why, but still remained silent, like a habit that was very hard to break.

Later, he entered this new family, and before he even noticed, he turned into the way he was now.

He existed here as one of the living beings, and was also known by the living beings.

[Voice: The maturation of a grape is the death of a grape, but a dead grape can turn into wine. Nothing is fixed.]

This was one of the game voice lines Zhan Yan recorded when shooting a promotional advertisement for Shoude Company.

Zhan Yan wanted to go take a look around the game world within that network, and this piece of information was the closest to it. Although he didn’t know why, he just wanted to go.

Riding this piece of information, he arrived at the closest place it could get to the game world.

Zhan Yan saw an incredibly magnificent world.

It was so huge.

Even in the vast network world, its size was breathtaking. The operating laws of its surface data were beautiful, rigorous, meticulous, and full of creativity, constituting a beauty unique to itself.

And the unseen interior of the game world became exceptionally attractive precisely because of this—its exterior was already so beautiful, what kind of magnificent world would the inside reveal?

However, this world was not open right now, and was tightly sealed.

A layer of translucent dark red light adhered to the outside of the world, sparkling with fragmented golden light streams.

It was undoubtedly beautiful, but that dark red color reminded Zhan Yan of blood. Not the kind from a horror movie, but it did possess a certain indescribable deterrent power, heavy and majestic.

This must be the protection set up by that mysterious network-type big shot, right?

Zhan Yan was uncontrollably drawn to it. He couldn’t say why, but he was exceptionally curious about this layer of protection. It was as if to him, it wasn’t just rare, but also carried a subtle sense of intimacy.

He decided to get closer to it.

This layer of dark red light sparked many associations in his mind. Many familiar and unfamiliar images flashed through his mind, vanishing before he could capture them.

He wanted to catch those images and thoughts that flashed by like shooting stars. Perhaps if he got a little closer, just a little closer, the things he thought of would become clearer.

…He thought of a dream. The last time he dreamed of that perspective where he could see the Candle Dragon, the world was like a black crystal suspending countless stars. His perspective shifted away from the Candle Dragon and the world, and then he saw another world. That world tightly wrapped in rust and stains.

He felt regret in the dream, and then he saw countless lights erupting from within that world… Why would he associate it with this?

Before Zhan Yan even noticed, he had already gotten too close, so close that he began to break away from the limits of that piece of information.

After Zhan Suiru entered the network, she headed straight for the game world. She decided to start her investigation with this big guy first.

This time, she restrained her psychic power as much as possible. She didn’t want to attract other people’s attention, and casually crushed all the network anomalies she discovered along the way.

Although she retracted her psychic power to the extreme, she still felt an unparalleled freedom. She had been separated from her psychic power for far too long, a full twenty-six… almost twenty-seven years.

The return of this familiar power made her feel reassured and carefree. If it were here, she should have more ways to improve Xiao Ran’s condition.

But she needed to familiarize herself with the interaction between data and psychic power first.

Arriving outside the game world, Zhan Suiru first checked her own psychic barrier. Very good, no problems whatsoever.

The psychic barrier also possessed a recording function. She checked it and found that Qi Ye, the network-type who built the game world with her, the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau’s Network Ghost, and some other network-type superpowered individuals hadn’t visited infrequently during this time; they were all studying her psychic barrier.

Because the game world was too massive, they cautiously busied themselves back and forth like diligent little ants.

She also recorded some fragmented data from them:

[Where did this mysterious big shot come from, this is just too awesome!]

[Never seen this kind of method before.]

[You came too, I see almost all the network-types have come to visit over these past few days, right?]

[Isn’t that right, this is such a rare occurrence…]

…

Most of them didn’t dare to directly touch her psychic barrier, even their probing research was done cautiously. Only the people from the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau used some unknown, strange item to inspect her psychic barrier—were there items in the network world too? Or was this item also composed of data, just like this game world jointly built by data and psychic power?

Perhaps because they hadn’t found any results after studying it for many days, fewer and fewer people came. Aside from a few network-types arranged by the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau working shifts nearby, there was no one else left now.

These network-types completely failed to notice that Zhan Suiru had already approached the game world close up. She hid her psychic power within the barrier and began studying what was going on with the data flowing on the surface of the game world.

Halfway through her research, Zhan Suiru vaguely felt as if something was approaching. She sensitively scanned the area but found nothing.

After a while, this feeling grew stronger, accompanied by a strange intuition—she felt like a pine tree targeted by a squirrel. The squirrel targeting her was stealthily approaching, wanting to snap a pinecone off her.

Zhan Suiru stopped researching; she began to focus on waiting.

After waiting a while, she finally discovered a clue. A set of data with an abnormal flow was approaching the game world.

That set of data stopped while still a distance away from the game world.

Zhan Suiru became alert.

What was this? A new method cooked up by Infinite?

Before Zhan Suiru decided whether to strike first, she saw a network-type gradually detach from that set of data and quietly approach the game world.

Oh, so this was the “squirrel”.

Those few network-types on shift didn’t notice a thing, still constantly producing junk data like “I want to get off work,” or “Let’s eat mountain delicacies noodles for the next meal.”

The “squirrel” stealthily approached her psychic barrier without anyone else noticing.

And then, reached out and touched it.

Zhan Suiru: …So gutsy.

The “squirrel” was the first person to directly touch the barrier.

Although her psychic barrier indeed wouldn’t launch an attack just from being touched, other people didn’t know that.

She stared at this gutsy network-type for a while.

This guy’s abilities looked pretty good, and judging by this sneaky appearance, he probably wasn’t very familiar with the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau. Zhan Suiru intuitively felt this person was also not bad.

He’s the one! She’d find him for lessons later!

Zhan Yan wasn’t entirely that reckless either. He had checked it using item appraisal; although the item appraisal couldn’t identify much about this dark red barrier, he could confirm that this thing was very stable and wouldn’t be triggered casually. Just touching it wouldn’t cause any problems.

He fell into a strange intuition that this dark red barrier was very important to him. Not the kind of important where he had to obtain it, but that it was tied to something very important to Zhan Yan.

He wanted to understand it; perhaps it would make him have another very important dream and glean some information from it.

Zhan Yan tried touching this layer of dark red light.

It was indeed very stable and showed no reaction to Zhan Yan’s touch.

So Zhan Yan tried poking it. He could poke it, but the further in he went, the greater the rebounding force; he could at most poke it in up to a fingertip.

Zhan Yan was a bit disappointed. He had touched it, but those things that flashed through his mind earlier didn’t become clearer, and now no new inspiration was being born either.

Perhaps he needed a deeper understanding of this psychic barrier?

He wasn’t sure, so he’d keep touching it and see.

After he fiddled with it here for a long time, the people sent by the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau for the shift finally noticed him.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

Zhan Yan subconsciously wanted to hide, before remembering he had already detached from his concealment.

“I’m here to research this,” Zhan Yan said.

Ning Xi and Nie Yu had both kept Approaching Science’s network-type abilities a secret, so others didn’t know he was Approaching Science. These two people merely thought he was an ordinary network-type.

“Why did you touch it directly?” they said, “What if it’s dangerous?”

Any network-type could sense the terrifyingly powerful strength within this barrier upon approaching it, and deeply feel how huge the gap was between themselves and the big shot who laid down this barrier.

So many network-types came and went to investigate here, yet not a single one dared to touch it directly. This wasn’t because there were no fools among the network-types, but rather because of the terrifying deterrent force radiating from the barrier.

Zhan Yan still had one hand resting on the psychic barrier, and he scratched it twice more.

“Oh, oh, it’s fine. Look, I…”

Zhan Suiru’s wicked humor flared up, and she slowly emerged from the psychic barrier: “You what?”

Zhan Yan suddenly froze.

Ahhh, how could it be such a coincidence that he got caught red-handed?!