GRMFBS CH100

Gu Jiancheng received the new fireworks photo Zhan Yan had resent.

The shapes were sharp, the colors vibrant, and the brilliant flames contrasted starkly against the pitch-black background.

He clicked on a photo that captured two fireworks blooming simultaneously—a cyan firework and a golden one nestled close together, their fiery trails intertwining.

After scrolling through the series of photos, at the very bottom was Zhan Yan’s latest message:

[I sent the wrong one earlier!]

[This is my true skill level!]

Gu Jiancheng couldn’t help but chuckle softly.

After laughing for a bit and replying to the message, Gu Jiancheng lay back on his bed and gazed at the ocean.

He was staying in an underwater hotel opened by the Retirees’ Alliance. The Retirees’ Alliance had its own industries, utilizing their supernatural advantages to develop amenities far beyond the reach of ordinary hotels—like the ocean right above his head.

The ceiling of the room was a transparent dome, through which massive fish glided lazily by. Gu Jiancheng thought of the “Big Heart.”

That day, when Zhan Yan went to the amusement park with him, they rode the Ferris wheel.

At the very top of the Ferris wheel, Zhan Yan had pointed out the “Big Heart” to him. From that vantage point, it looked like a fish resting leisurely in a corner of the sky.

This was Gu Jiancheng’s first time experiencing the various novelty industries set up by the Retirees’ Alliance. He had never been interested before, but now, he felt Yan Yan would definitely love it. He wanted to bring Yan Yan here to stay once everything was over.

The “Retirees’ Alliance”… He thought he could finally understand the meaning of the word “Retirees” now.

Retirement meant beginning to look forward to life.

But to retire as soon as possible, he still had a lot of work to do.

Gu Jiancheng closed his eyes, and the shadows unfurled within his consciousness.

The usually placid surface of the Sea of Shadows rippled, the waves growing larger and larger toward the center. Beneath the shadows, the source churning up the waves was none other than the Black Nest he had devoured earlier.

After all these days, it was finally on the verge of being completely digested.

Gu Jiancheng stepped across the surface of the sea, walking toward the most turbulent waves. Every step he took sent out ripples that crashed against the waves whipped up by the Black Nest, suppressing them step by step.

By the time he reached the center of the turbulence, the sea’s surface was calm once more.

Gu Jiancheng looked down into the shadows.

The Black Nest had become part of the Sea of Shadows. Gu Jiancheng tapped his toe, and the shadow of the Black Nest floated up.

Stripped of all useless elements, the Black Nest had left him two things.

One was a message: Long time no see, my perfect test subject.

Gu Jiancheng felt thoroughly disgusted.

The only person who dared call him a “test subject” was that sick pervert, the Monster Doctor. He had always wanted to research Gu Jiancheng because he was the only player in Infinite who possessed the ability to devour monsters.

Calling Deep Shadow a “test subject” was purely the Monster Doctor flattering himself. Gu Jiancheng had never once been reduced to being his test subject.

The Monster Doctor genuinely did want to study him, though. In the beginning, he had played the role of a good guy to cooperate with him in an instance, and Gu Jiancheng had actually believed he was willing to save people.

Later, the guy revealed his true colors. When deception failed, he attempted coercion and bribery, and even tried to cast a Mind-Link on him.

Expressionlessly, Gu Jiancheng crushed the message.

The second item was the real reason he had gone through the trouble of devouring the Black Nest.

Every Black Nest possessed its own anomaly classification, which meant every Black Nest possessed its own unique set of rules. By obtaining a Black Nest’s rules, one could discover its weaknesses.

Of course, in the past, this kind of information was practically useless.

To obtain a Black Nest’s rules, you either had to study a massive number of monsters spawned from that specific Black Nest and deduce them yourself, or you had to kill the Black Nest.

The former would cost an unknown number of lives, and the deduced rules might not even be accurate. As for the latter—if you’ve already killed it, why would you still need its rules? The rules of one Black Nest didn’t apply to others.

But this time was different.

The Monster Doctor should have been buried within the Black Nest, yet he hadn’t perished; instead, he had transformed into an anomaly.

Behind all the nameless anomalies born into this world lay the shadow of the Monster Doctor. After crossing swords a few times, Gu Jiancheng’s intuition told him that the Monster Doctor had formed a tight bond with the Black Nests and developed some new variations of them. His traces were similarly left within this captured Black Nest, which meant the rules of this Black Nest contained portions of the Monster Doctor’s own rules—his weaknesses.

Deep Shadow and the Magician had been a step too slow in their pursuit this time, failing to catch the Monster Doctor. But they hadn’t been too slow either; otherwise, the Monster Doctor would never have left this Black Nest behind—he simply hadn’t had the time to dispose of it.

The shadow of the Black Nest floated on the Sea of Shadows, clearly displaying its rules.

Long time no see?

Heh. Next time we meet, I’m going to kill you!

Gu Jiancheng tilted his head back, looked at the sky, and suddenly froze.

Gu Jiancheng rarely looked up while inside the Sea of Shadows, so he hadn’t noticed that in its perpetually gloomy sky, a star had appeared at some unknown time.

With his head tilted back, Gu Jiancheng stood frozen for a long time. That star shone brightly over the Sea of Shadows the entire time.

It looked as if it would hang in the sky forever, never to burn out.

He instinctively reached a hand out, only to pull it back at the last moment.

Only then did Gu Jiancheng realize that he actually didn’t really like the Sea of Shadows.

It was the source of his power, but it was also the source of his corruption, the root of his lingering trauma, and a place he could neither escape nor abandon.

It was too dark here.

But now, there was a star here.

After sending the fireworks photos to Gu Jiancheng, Zhan Yan didn’t feel very sleepy anymore. With firecrackers still going off outside, he decided to scroll through the Gossip System before bed.

He checked the information panel first to see which categories were close to leveling up, planning to focus on digging up related gossip to collect another little star as soon as possible.

Hmm? When did this new information tag appear in my “Abilities” section?

The tag was called “Sanctuary Spell,” a golden tag accompanied by a brief annotation:

[Bestows auspicious omens, prays for illnesses to swiftly depart, blesses with peace and stability, and protects eternally without extinguishing.]

Zhan Yan was utterly baffled; he had no memory of collecting this golden tag.

Let’s search it up in the search bar.

Just as he switched to the search bar, before he could even type anything, Zhan Yan noticed a gossip slip about himself:

[You noticed a flaw in the “Item Description.”]

Zhan Yan suddenly remembered how his eyes had played tricks on him while reading the small silver lock’s item description earlier.

Is this gossip slip referring to that?

Zhan Yan picked up the small silver lock and opened the item description.

No matter how he looked at it, it was exactly the same as before.

He wasn’t entirely sure if he had misread it or not, but he still had System Backup!

Zhan Yan opened System Backup and rewound the scene to when he was hugging his mom.

Some of the text in the item description had overlapped, partially obscuring the description for the small silver lock:

[This is a silver lock brimming with lightning… silver lock, silver content…]

He hadn’t misread it; the word “Lightning” was definitely there.

But looking at the small silver lock’s item description now, it had reverted to its normal appearance.

The system mentioned a flaw in the “Item Description”…

Zhan Yan poked the little star representing “Item Description”: “Hey, could it be that you actually can’t detect the hidden true nature of things at all?”

The little star flashed, and the silver lock’s item description began to stubbornly refresh itself.

[This is a silver lock brimming with blessings. Ag content is 95.5%, Cu content is 2.7%…]

…Well then, I guess my theory was right.

So, there was a secret to the small silver lock his mom gave him. This secret couldn’t be displayed by the usual item description, but under special circumstances, when the state of the small silver lock altered, the item description was able to read it.

The moment the small silver lock’s state altered was when he got shocked by the static electricity on his mom. The static current felt like it shot straight to his chest. But no matter how you looked at it, a static shock shouldn’t be classified as “Lightning”…

Zhan Yan swallowed hard.

He had some rather unusual suspicions…

Let’s check Mom’s gossip slips first…

Zhan Yan took a look:

[Zhan Yunkai turned on the stereo, opened the curtains, and invited Ji Yueming to dance a ballroom waltz with him amidst the night’s fireworks.]

Zhan Yan: …My nervous feelings suddenly calmed down a lot.

Thinking about it, there was really no need to be so nervous; what could possibly happen anyway? His dad was the Chongming Demon King; he had already won the grand prize once. You can’t be too greedy in life, and you shouldn’t get ahead of yourself.

There were plenty of other plausible explanations for the small silver lock’s secret, right?

Outside the window, fireworks were in full bloom. Downstairs in the living room, dance music was playing. His older brother was agonizingly trying to code the cake shop’s mini-program, and his older sister was applying a face mask, preparing to get a good beauty sleep.

In the cleared-out living room, blooming fondant cake flowers sat on display, while Zhan Yunkai, having just undergone emergency ballroom dance training, held Ji Yueming by the waist, teaching her the steps.

Everything was perfectly normal; everything was perfectly peaceful.

This was just another perfectly ordinary day.

Zhan Yan took a few deep breaths, then began furiously poking the “Item Description” star:

“Come on, show me the content you read earlier again!”

The little star representing the item description was poked so hard it slid all over the panel.

[You forcefully demanded the development of a recovery log function for Item Description and failed.]

Zhan Yan: “…”

I’m going to forcefully demand it anyway! Is that not allowed?

The system’s information integration function only worked when there were sufficient clues. He absolutely had to get to the bottom of this tonight!

He tried dragging the “Item Description” star and the “System Backup” star together on the panel.

The moment he let go, the two stars pew-ed right back to their original spots.

Very well! So you won’t develop it, huh?

“Item Description” was an ability under the “Entities” category, while “System Backup” fell under the “Anomalies” category.

It had been a while since either of these categories last leveled up, and their energy bars had accumulated quite a bit.

I’m going to log onto the forum and grind gossip slips to level up right now!

Zhan Yan rolled up his sleeves, logged onto the chaofan forum, opened the task section, and began grinding missions like crazy. As long as it involved entities or anomalies he hadn’t collected before, he took it!

The forum was currently bustling, filled with discussions about the earth-shattering lightning strike and the Chongming Demon King’s cry that had deterred evil and echoed across the land.

The front page of the water cooler section was constantly refreshing with related threads. Posts asking for the situation had built up into massive skyscrapers, and the accounts of several big bosses were being relentlessly tagged.

Yet none of the bosses had appeared or offered any explanations, and the forum members who had tapped into their networks had no concrete news either. Unable to contact the directly involved parties, the forum members turned to the well-informed bosses on the forum—perhaps they knew something?

{Everyone, hurry to the task section and look! @Approaching Science is grinding missions like crazy! Boss @Approaching Science, please come spill the tea!}

OP:

@Approaching Science hasn’t accepted many missions in quite a while, has he?

@Approaching Science, may I ask if your sudden mission-grinding is related to tonight’s events?

Do you have any inside info on the commotion tonight, which seems to involve both the Tianshi and the Chongming Demon King making moves?

Begging for the tea!!!