GRMFBS CH121

Zhan Suiru reached out and picked up the tissue box.

The broker in the other room watched helplessly as the Artisan smiled at the camera, and then his last monitor also disconnected.

Broker: …

He slammed the table!

“How could he have discovered it?!”

The supervisor said cautiously, “The Artisan… should have some sort of item appraisal supernatural power, right?”.

For a big shot who was so incredible at manufacturing, it was perfectly normal for him to discover hidden items with special effects.

“What do you know? That was custom-ordered by me… forget it.” The broker was unwilling to argue further, instead continuing his furious rant, “Since he already discovered the monitor, why didn’t he deal with it earlier?!”

The Artisan deliberately left that monitor running, waiting until he saw that the arriving “Artisan” was just a puppet before turning it off. This was intentionally done to piss him off!!!

The broker raged incompetently in his room. On the other end, Zhan Suiru had already started chatting with Gu Zhixing.

Gu Zhixing became lost in confusion after realizing he had botched the job, sitting on the sofa and doubting his life.

“Why did my perception tell me it was a living person no matter how I sensed it?”

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

Zhan Suiru placed the tissue box back on the desk and leisurely sat down on the sofa. “Speak, what do you all want to discuss with me?”.

“Please wait a moment.” Gu Zhixing pulled out a piece of paper. “The Deputy Bureau Chief told me what to do in this situation… Ah, the Deputy Bureau Chief said it’s completely normal for me to fail, and told me not to take it to heart. He didn’t choose me to forcibly make Mr. Artisan stay, but just to temporarily control Mr. Broker first.”.

Zhan Suiru thought to herself that she had disconnected the monitor too early; it was a pity the broker hadn’t heard this part.

…

At home, Zhan Yan had just scrolled to this piece of gossip and was laughing uncontrollably while holding Xingxing.

Today, his older brother and sister both had work to do. After Zhan Yan finished his morning exercise alone, he returned home to find that his parents, who had nothing going on today, were planning to watch a movie at home. As the third wheel, Zhan Yan consciously retreated to his own room.

He had to quickly grind out another little star for his information concealment ability; otherwise, watching the two of them be all lovey-dovey would make his heart pound with fear every time.

Zhan Yan opened the Gossip System and started scrolling through gossip to collect supernatural power information words. He now had several sources of gossip: the chaofan forum, a networking group he joined at the Cultivator’s Conference, and an information-type superpowered individual community that Book of Secrets had pulled him into.

With three gossip sources, they would definitely help him upgrade a little star as quickly as possible!

Zhan Yan first logged onto the chaofan forum to take a stroll around. The task invitation he sent to the Artisan a few days ago still hadn’t received a reply. Was it because he couldn’t do it, or did something happen?

He first went on the Gossip System to search through the Artisan’s past track record.

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

Pfft. Was this an intentional failure?

Zhan Yan also found many strange items that the Artisan had made. Since he could make all of these, presumably making an item to find the Candle Dragon Remnant should also be possible, right?

He searched again to see why the Artisan wasn’t accepting orders.

[The puppet butler, Xiao Ran, urged the Artisan about his work progress. The Artisan was extremely resistant, stating: “Your task is to be my butler, not to act as an overseer for my clients, okay!”]

Pfft. So it turned out he was being rushed so closely by his own butler that it caused the Artisan to develop PTSD toward work, making him highly resistant to accepting new task orders.

Alright then, he’d just wait until the Artisan finished the task orders currently on his hands before talking about it.

Following the gossip thread about being rushed for work, Zhan Yan scrolled down to the gossip about the Artisan scamming the broker. Along the way, he also ate the melon about the broker being scammed by the master Gu Zhixing, consecutively collecting two ability information words: the broker’s “Forced Trade” and Gu Zhixing’s “Just Hear Me Out”.

The levels of these two abilities weren’t low either, helping him push the energy gauge in the “Abilities” tab up by a small notch. He was so happy!

However, there was one strange thing. When Zhan Yan previously scrolled through the Artisan’s gossip threads, he had come across the puppet butler before, and had also seen the Artisan verbally refer to the puppet butler as “Xiao Ran”. But in previous gossip threads, “puppet butler” was simply “puppet butler”, without the name “Xiao Ran” appended to it.

Did the Artisan switch to a new puppet butler, or did something change with this current one?

Zhan Yan checked his information drive and confirmed that the “puppet butler” from the previous gossip threads and the current “puppet butler Xiao Ran” were the exact same information word. That meant it hadn’t been replaced; rather, this puppet butler had undergone some sort of change.

Zhan Yan pulled the gossip threads back to start checking when the puppet butler’s information word had changed.

Hmm, it was after New Year’s Eve, but it didn’t display any particular changes; the term had just suddenly shifted.

A bit weird. Zhan Yan dragged a few gossip threads from around the time of this change into his favorites to save them. Perhaps he could find clues later.

Having scrolled through most of the forum’s gossip, Zhan Yan opened the group chat he had joined at the Cultivator’s Conference.

This group chat was actually somewhat hard to find because anyone could change the group name; sometimes it could be changed ten times in a single day.

Zhan Yan refreshed it back and forth five times this time before realizing that the group named “Mentong Big Grapes, 6.6 a Jin, Guaranteed Sweet and Deliciously Good” was the one.

He thought he had accidentally joined some random sales group.

He clicked into the group.

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: [Come take a look, everyone! Mentong Big Grapes, 6.6 RMB a jin, personally cultivated by yours truly. Guaranteed to be fragrant and sweet!]

Zhan Yan: ???

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

Other people in the chat interface were also starting to ask questions.

Huan Dali of the Hundred Forges Sect: [Who pulled this grape seller in? Admin, hurry up and kick them out.]

Wen Jingyun of the Infernal Dock: [This is Puyang Xia.]

Huan Dali of the Hundred Forges Sect: [The old grape vine spirit? What, you’re selling the grapes you grew yourself? No need to sell them, at 6.6 RMB a jin, I’ll buy the entire lot!]

Puyang Xia was a grape vine demon with eight hundred years of tree age. The fruits borne by demons were quite different from those grown by ordinary fruit trees. A fruit borne by a nearly millennium-old great demon like this was no less effective than a spiritual medicine. 6.6 RMB was an incredibly cheap bargain.

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: [@Huan Dali of the Hundred Forges Sect Piss off! Keep dreaming.]

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: [I don’t bear fruit.]

Plants consumed nutrients to bloom and bear fruit. Therefore, after cultivating to become demons, unless they encountered a special situation, they generally wouldn’t bear fruit anymore.

Puyang Xia continued shouting out his wares.

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: [These grapes are ones that I participated in improving and cultivating. Although they don’t have any special effects, they’re extremely delicious!]

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: [Come take a look, everyone! Free shipping everywhere except to remote regions.]

Wu Hailan of the Qingtao Sect: [You have to send a red envelope if you’re going to advertise.]

King of Fruits: [Give it a rest, those grapes of yours are destined to rot in the fields. You’re better off uprooting them early and planting lychees instead.]

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: [Bah! What kind of heat-inducing fruit is a lychee? You’d better change your trash name soon.]

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: [Not only is it prone to worms, but it easily causes hypoglycemia? Grapes are much better than lychees!]

Yi Wen of Wuxia Valley: [And who is this now?]

Wen Jingyun of the Infernal Dock: [Li Huodan.]

Zhan Yan opened the Gossip System and searched, finding out that this person was an old lychee tree spirit.

The two great plant demons started fighting in the group chat over which fruit was the best. Zhan Yan watched the drama while searching; he was quite interested in grapes that had been improved by a great demon.

The Gossip System quickly searched up what was going on.

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

For one reason or another, Puyang Xia had participated in the grape variety improvement back then. The grape variety he improved produced large grapes with a high fruit-bearing rate, good resistance to various diseases, and even had a special aroma that tasted fragrant, sweet, and delicious. The only drawback was that the fruit’s firmness was a bit soft, making it unsuited for transportation.

Because they couldn’t withstand transportation, no matter how good the grapes were, the locals could only eat them themselves.

Because of this, Mentong County pooled money together 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 hadn’t built up a reputation, sold slowly, and even when shipped out, they were only left to rot.

Mentong County couldn’t take it anymore and decided to switch to planting fruits that were more durable for transportation.

Li Huodan originally had nothing to do with this matter, but he had an old grudge against Puyang Xia. So, after hearing about this, he happily ran over to suggest to Mentong County that they cut down all their grape vines and switch to planting lychees, offering to provide free technical guidance.

Mentong County was quite tempted.

Puyang Xia was still cursing in the group.

AAA Mentong Big Grapes 6.6: [Bah! You outdated old tree seedling, what do you know about modern planting, improvement, and production techniques? Your local lychee hasn’t undergone variety improvement at all; the fruit it bears is small, astringent, and has an incredibly thick skin. No one is willing to eat it at all. You’d better hide in the deep mountains and old forests early on and stop coming out to scam people.]

Li Huodan genuinely didn’t understand fruit tree improvement techniques. He knew how to make a lychee tree grow well, but a lychee tree growing well and a lychee fruit tree having a high yield were two different things.

Granny Zhuo Shu also popped up.

Zhuo Shu Specializes in Incurable Diseases: [Puyang, why did you think of improving the edible varieties of grapes?]

Right. Although the demon race wouldn’t consider un-enlightened prototypes of the same species as their kin—this was especially true for plant demons—a grape demon improving the edible varieties of grapes still sounded very bizarre.

Li Huodan seized this point and immediately launched a counterattack.

King of Fruits: [So what if you can improve them? This is neglecting your proper duties!]

King of Fruits: [Improving grapes to help humans eat better?]

King of Fruits: [You haven’t messed up your brain in cultivation, have you?]

Zhan Yan’s imagination, however, suddenly opened up in a completely different direction.

Melon Badger King: [Will grapes with higher disease resistance and better cold/heat tolerance have stronger constitutions after becoming spirits compared to ordinary grapes becoming spirits?]

The group chat instantly fell silent, forcibly muted by his question.

Zhan Yan felt that his thoughts weren’t without reason. Different living creatures had different natural talents, and demons of the same race also had high and low talents.

Even among dog demons, a Greyhound demon’s speed would be faster than a Saint Bernard demon’s, but a Saint Bernard’s strength would be greater than a Greyhound demon’s.

Under the same circumstances, a highly resistant, high-quality variety of grape that became a spirit should also be stronger than a regular variety of grape becoming a spirit, right?

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

Zhuo Shu Specializes in Incurable Diseases: [This is a very interesting new research topic.]

Zhuo Shu Specializes in Incurable Diseases: [@Call Me Wu Yingjun If your Demon Race University opens up this research topic, can you bring me along?]

“Call Me Wu Yingjun” was a parrot demon who worked as a professor at the Demon Race University.

Professor Parrot quickly popped up and showed immense research interest in this new topic.

This was a new direction for cultivating the new generation of the demon race and improving future development!