GRMFBS CH121

Zhan Suiru reached out and picked up the tissue box.

In the other room, the Broker watched as the Artisan smiled at the camera, and then his last monitor went dead.

Broker: …

He slammed the table!

“How could he possibly have discovered it?!”

The Supervisor cautiously said, “The Artisan… probably has some kind of item appraisal ability, right?”

For a master creator of such powerful items, it would be normal to discover hidden items with special effects.

“What do you know? That was custom-made by me… forget it.” The Broker didn’t want to argue anymore and switched back to his anger. “Since he discovered the camera, why didn’t he deal with it earlier?!”

The Artisan had deliberately left that one monitor, waiting until he saw that the “Artisan” who arrived was a puppet before turning it off. This was intentionally to anger him!!!

The Broker raged impotently in his room. On the other side, Zhan Suiru was already chatting with Gu Zhixing.

After realizing he had messed up, Gu Zhixing became lost and sat on the sofa, questioning his life.

“Why did it feel like a living person no matter how I sensed it?”

If the Artisan hadn’t opened the chest panel in front of him, he still wouldn’t have realized the person before him was a fake.

Zhan Suiru placed the tissue box back on the table and sat down leisurely on the sofa. “Speak. What did you want to discuss with me?”

“Please wait a moment.” Gu Zhixing took out a piece of paper. “The deputy director told me what to do in this situation… ah, the deputy director said it’s normal for me to fail and told me not to take it to heart. He chose me to come not to forcibly detain Mr. Artisan, but to control Mr. Broker first.”

Zhan Suiru thought to herself that she had cut off the surveillance too early; it was a pity the Broker didn’t get to hear that part.

…

At home, Zhan Yan had just seen this piece of gossip and was laughing uncontrollably while hugging Xingxing.

Today, both his older brother and sister had work to attend to. After finishing his morning exercises alone, Zhan Yan returned home to find his parents, who had nothing to do, were planning to watch a movie. The third wheel, Zhan Yan, consciously returned to his own room.

I need to quickly level up the information confidentiality ability by another star, otherwise watching those two be lovey-dovey is always nerve-wracking.

Zhan Yan opened the gossip system and started scrolling through gossip to collect ability information keywords. He now had several sources of gossip: one from the Chaofan Forum, one from the network group he joined at the Cultivator Conference, and another from the community of information-based, super-powered individuals that Secretary Ao had invited him to.

Three sources of gossip would surely help him level up to another star quickly!

Zhan Yan first went to the Chaofan Forum for a stroll. The task invitation he sent to the Artisan a few days ago still had no reply. Was it impossible to do, or was something else going on?

He first searched the gossip system for the Artisan’s past achievements.

[The Artisan attempted to create a “Marauder’s Map” of the black market but failed, instead creating a “Broker Monitor Map.”]

Pfft. Was this an intentional failure?

Zhan Yan then found many other strange items the Artisan had made. If they could create all that, then creating an item to find the afterimage of the Candle Dragon should also be possible, right?

He then searched for why the Artisan wasn’t accepting orders.

[The puppet butler, Xiao Ran, urged the Artisan about their work progress. The Artisan resisted strongly, saying: “Your job is to be my butler, not a supervisor for my clients, okay!”]

Pfft. So it turned out that being pushed too hard by their own butler had given the Artisan PTSD about work, making them very resistant to accepting new orders.

Fine, then he would just wait for the Artisan to finish their current orders.

Following the thread about being urged to work, Zhan Yan found the gossip about the Artisan pranking the Broker, and along with it, the gossip about the Broker being pranked by the Master, Gu Zhixing. He collected two ability information keywords in a row: the Broker’s “Forced Transaction” and Gu Zhixing’s “Listen to me for a moment.”

The levels of these two abilities were not low, helping him push the energy bar in the “Ability” column up a small notch. He was very happy!

However, one thing was strange. When Zhan Yan had browsed gossip about the Artisan before, he had come across the puppet butler and had also seen the Artisan refer to the puppet butler as “Xiao Ran” in their words. But in the previous gossip threads, “puppet butler” was just “puppet butler,” without the name “Xiao Ran” attached.

Had the Artisan changed to a new puppet butler, or had this puppet butler undergone some kind of change?

Zhan Yan went into the information panel to check and confirmed that the “puppet butler” from the previous gossip threads and the current “puppet butler Xiao Ran” were the same information keyword. That meant it hadn’t been replaced, but that the puppet butler itself had changed.

Zhan Yan scrolled back through the gossip threads to find out when the information keyword for the puppet butler had changed.

Hmm, it was after New Year’s Eve, but there was no indication of any special change; the keyword just suddenly changed.

A bit strange. Zhan Yan dragged the few gossip threads around this change into his favorites to save them. Maybe he could find a clue later.

After he was almost done with the forum’s gossip, Zhan Yan opened the group chat he had joined at the Cultivator Conference.

This group chat was not easy to find because anyone could change the group name, and sometimes it could change ten times a day.

This time, Zhan Yan scrolled back and forth five times before realizing that the group named “Mentong Big Grapes 6.6 a jin, guaranteed sweet and delicious” was the one.

He thought he had accidentally joined some kind of sales group.

He clicked into the group.

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: “Come and see! Mentong big grapes 6.6 a jin, personally cultivated by this venerable one, guaranteed fragrant and sweet!”

Zhan Yan: ???

He exited the chat interface, clicked on the group members, and confirmed again. Weng Yan, Zhuo Shu, and other seniors he had met at the Cultivator Conference were all there. He hadn’t entered the wrong group.

Others in the chat had also started asking.

Huan Dali of Bailian Sect: “Who pulled this grape seller in? Admin, kick them out quickly.”

Wen Jingyun of Wujian Dock: “That’s Puyang Xia.”

Huan Dali of Bailian Sect: “The old grape vine spirit? What, are you selling the grapes you grew yourself? No need to sell, at 6.6 a jin, I’ll buy the whole lot!”

Puyang Xia was an 800-year-old grape vine demon. The fruit produced by a demon was different from that of an ordinary fruit tree. For a great demon nearly a thousand years old to bear fruit, it was no worse than a spiritual medicine. 6.6 was a huge bargain.

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: “@Huan Dali of Bailian Sect Go away! In your dreams.”

“I don’t bear fruit.”

Plants expend nutrients to flower and bear fruit, so after they cultivate into demons, unless there are special circumstances, they generally don’t bear fruit anymore.

Puyang Xia continued to hawk his wares.

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: “I participated in improving and cultivating these grapes. Although they have no special effects, they are particularly delicious!”

“Come and see! Free shipping except for remote areas.”

Wu Hailan of Qingtao Gate: “You have to give out red envelopes for advertising.”

King of Fruits: “Give it up, those grapes of yours are destined to rot in the fields. You should pull them out and plant lychees instead.”

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: “Pah! What kind of heaty fruit is lychee? You should change that stupid name of yours.”

“Not only does it attract pests, but it can also cause hypoglycemia? Grapes are much better than lychees!”

Yi Wen of Wuxia Valley: “Who is this now?”

Wen Jingyun of Wujian Dock: “Lihuo Dan.”

Zhan Yan searched the gossip system and found that this person was an old lychee tree spirit.

The two great plant demons started fighting in the group over which fruit was the best. Zhan Yan watched the excitement while searching. He was quite interested in the grapes improved by a great demon.

The gossip system quickly found out what was going on.

Mentong County was a small, mountainous county that had always been relatively poor. Many years ago, during the poverty alleviation campaign, they surveyed the local conditions and decided it was very suitable for growing grapes, so they planted them.

For one reason or another, Puyang Xia had participated in the grape variety improvement back then. The grape variety he improved had large fruit size, high yield, good resistance to various diseases, and a special aroma, making it fragrant, sweet, and delicious. The only drawback was that the fruit was slightly soft and not resistant to transportation.

Not resistant to transportation. No matter how good the grapes were, they could only be eaten locally.

For this reason, Mentong County raised money to build a road. After the road was built, the grapes could be transported out, but they still couldn’t be stored for long. The grapes’ reputation didn’t take off, they sold slowly, and those that were transported out would just rot.

Mentong County couldn’t take it anymore and decided to switch to a fruit that was more resistant to transportation.

Lihuo Dan originally had nothing to do with this, but he had an old grudge with Puyang Xia. So after hearing about it, he cheerfully went to suggest that Mentong County chop down all the grape vines and plant lychees instead, offering his technical guidance for free.

Mentong County was quite tempted.

Puyang Xia was still cursing in the group.

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: “Pah, you outdated old tree sapling, do you even know what modern planting improvement and production technology is? Your rustic lychees haven’t even been improved. The fruit is small and astringent, and the skin is ridiculously thick. No one wants to eat it. You should hide in the deep mountains and old forests and not come out to harm people.”

Lihuo Dan really didn’t know about fruit tree improvement techniques. He knew how to make lychee trees grow well, but a well-growing lychee tree and a high-yield lychee fruit tree were two different things.

Grandma Zhuo Shu also appeared.

Zhuo Shu, Specialist in Intractable Diseases: “Puyang, why did you think of improving the edible variety of grapes?”

That’s right. Although demon races don’t consider their non-sentient prototypes as their own kind—this is especially true for plant demons—a grape demon improving an edible variety of grapes still sounded very strange.

Lihuo Dan seized on this point and immediately launched a counterattack.

King of Fruits: “So what if you can improve them? This is not doing your proper job!”

“Improving grapes to help humans eat better?”

“Did you mess up your brain during cultivation?”

Zhan Yan’s mind, however, suddenly went in another direction.

Chá King: “Would a grape demon that evolved from a variety with higher disease resistance and better cold and heat tolerance be stronger than one that evolved from a common grape?”

The group fell silent, completely silenced by his question.

Zhan Yan felt that his thinking was not without reason. Different living beings have different natural talents, and even demons of the same race have different levels of talent.

Among dog demons, a greyhound demon would be faster than a Saint Bernard demon, but a Saint Bernard would be stronger than a greyhound demon.

Under the same conditions, a grape demon that evolved from a high-resistance, good-variety grape should also be stronger than one that evolved from a common variety, right?

After a long time, someone in the group finally spoke.

Zhuo Shu, Specialist in Intractable Diseases: “This is a very interesting new research topic.”

“@Call Me Wu Yingjun If your demon university starts a research project on this topic, can you include me?”

“Call Me Wu Yingjun” was a parrot demon who was a professor at the demon university.

The parrot professor soon appeared and showed great research interest in this new topic.

This was a new direction for nurturing the new generation of demons and improving future development.

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