GRMFBS CH173

Deep Shadow, who had been hanging around on the forum waiting for a reply from Approaching Science and never got one: …

Gu Jiancheng had been ghosted by the Lin Yuan Ghost King for a whole day, and now Approaching Science was leaving him on read for another day—and speaking up in favor of the Lin Yuan Ghost King!

He was very annoyed.

Annoyed, Lord Deep Shadow went to his boyfriend for comfort, sticking to him as much as possible over their bedtime call.

Zhan Yan: “Rough day at work?”

Gu Jiancheng: “It was okay. That’s just how things are at a pig farm.”

Zhan Yan’s heart ached at once. He’d looked it up in advance—conditions at pig farms weren’t great, and the work was exhausting. He’d been worried Gu Jiancheng wouldn’t adapt; if his headaches flared up there, it’d be much harder than at school.

Zhan Yan’s voice softened. “Are you sleeping well? Any discomfort, any insomnia?”

Gu Jiancheng immediately pushed his luck. “Not really. Let’s sleep on the phone together tonight. I want to hear you breathing.”

Zhan Yan couldn’t help touching the fitness band on his wrist.

Their heart‑rate data was still shared, after all.

The next morning, his internal clock woke him. He rolled over with his eyes closed, planning to laze in bed a bit longer. Yesterday had been mentally draining; he needed to recharge.

As he turned, his hand bumped into a cool, hard flat surface—thunk.

“Yan Yan? You awake?” Gu Jiancheng’s voice came from the other end of the call.

Zhan Yan remembered—they’d fallen asleep on the phone.

He yawned, groped for the phone, and said with a sleepy, nasal tone, “Morning. You’re awake too?”

Gu Jiancheng: “Mm. Want to do morning exercises together? I still remember the training routine you taught me.”

Zhan Yan involuntarily thought of that time he’d tutored Gu Jiancheng one‑on‑one.

Classmate Gu was very talented. After Zhan Yan warned him not to progress too fast, he instantly transformed into a clumsy student who “needed someone to adjust his posture step by step.”

Zhan Yan had confirmed it—Classmate Gu had an excellent figure.

It was the weekend; they didn’t have work.

After breakfast, the other two still weren’t up. Bao Qingshan was—if he stayed in bed and skipped cultivation every day, his ancestral granny at Withered‑Pine Ravine would beat him when he went back.

Once he’d eaten, Zhan Yan finally remembered Lord Deep Shadow, whom he’d left hanging.

He opened the forum to see Deep Shadow’s chat window still stuck on that “heh.”

Oh no. Time to coax.

Approaching Science: “Sorry, I had an emergency yesterday.”

Right then, Gu Jiancheng was busy using shadow clones to grind for Lin Yuan. Having just been coaxed by his boyfriend, Lord Deep Shadow couldn’t be bothered to argue with Approaching Science. After seeing the message, he just snorted and started posting point‑reward tasks.

Zhan Yan: Huh, Deep Shadow’s this easy to coax today?

Whatever—better finish the tasks first. He took Deep Shadow’s earlier sense of “something wrong” quite seriously.

As someone who’d climbed out of Infinite’s hellscape, Deep Shadow’s intuition wouldn’t be baseless. Ever since their conversation, Zhan Yan had felt a faint unease, but before he could dig deeper, Huang No. 24 had shown up for recognition, then Ten‑Thousand‑Manifestations and his brother’s identity reveal had followed.

Now he followed the leads Deep Shadow had given and dug deeper.

In the matter of targeting his brother, the Lin Yuan Ghost King, both the Monster Doctor and Record Keeper had been involved. The curse‑scales from before were the Monster Doctor’s handiwork; the Drunken Soul Incense they’d just discovered was something Record Keeper had found a way to design, also using the Monster Doctor’s help.

The Lin Yuan Ghost scales and blood Infinite had collected twenty‑six years ago weren’t enough to grow Drunken Soul Incense, so the Monster Doctor used them to cultivate special anomalies. Record Keeper then used those anomalies to refine the Drunken Soul Incense specifically aimed at the Lin Yuan Ghost King.

Zhan Yan started flipping through data on Record Keeper. Record Keeper’s abilities were troublesome—he was a “jack‑of‑all‑trades,” dabbling in every field. But someone had noticed that one of his abilities matched that of another ranked player who’d gone missing. They suspected Record Keeper could copy others’ abilities.

Copying might cause fatal harm to the one copied. The copied ability might be limited by usage count or other constraints—a consumable, essentially.

The problem was: no one knew how many abilities this guy had stockpiled.

Could Infinite be trying to copy his brother’s Blessing Bound to Curse through Record Keeper?

That seemed unlikely. The rules of the two worlds were different.

Record Keeper’s powers came from Infinite itself—if Infinite could freely copy, it would’ve done so twenty‑six years ago, when it was at its strongest.

Zhan Yan found another piece of gossip.

To keep the Drunken Soul Incense’s effect from being polluted by anomalies and maintain its attraction to the Lin Yuan Ghost King, Record Keeper went to great trouble. In the end, he barely succeeded—but the finished incense was extremely unstable. Its scent dispersed uncontrollably and couldn’t be stored—that’s how the contaminated Drunken Fish Grass had come about.

The dissipated incense couldn’t affect someone at the Lin Yuan Ghost King’s level.

It was a scrapped plan.

Deep Shadow’s guess had been correct. Infinite wouldn’t waste so many anomalies on a dead plan, especially with Black Nest involved as well. The only reason it blocked Deep Shadow and the Lin Yuan Ghost King was to keep them tangled up there, preventing them from interfering with some other operation.

Zhan Yan sent the newly found intel to Deep Shadow.

I Just Saved the World!: “Figured as much.”

Zhan Yan: Tsk, what a breezy reply.

Approaching Science: “Boss, what’s your plan?”

At this point, there wasn’t much left to investigate. The Black Nest and anomalies Infinite had produced from the Lin Yuan Ghost King’s scales and blood had been wiped out, their underground lab torn apart, and their process for targeting the Lin Yuan Ghost King laid bare.

I Just Saved the World!: “I can’t do anything about the stuff on the network side.”
“You keep an eye on that.”
“Have Lin Yuan watch the apocalypse world. Infinite won’t pass up that variable.”
“As for here…”

Gu Jiancheng, phone in one hand, looked up at the anomalies writhing toward him. They were like heaps of slug‑meat studded with eyes, each rising stalk ending in a glaring eyeball that shone like a searchlight.

This was very much the Monster Doctor’s signature style—and very “fresh.”

They’d all only just been created, already imbued with abilities tuned against “shadows.” But the polluted light they cast couldn’t do anything to the Sea of Shadows. Rather than being designed to counter the shadows, it was more like they were meant to disgust Deep Shadow.

A provocation.

The Monster Doctor was right here. Infinite knew its former top‑ranked player well. Once it realized its original scheme could no longer keep them busy, it threw out the Monster Doctor as bait.

Gu Jiancheng was happy to let it lose on both fronts.

I Just Saved the World!: “I’ll dig the Monster Doctor out here and take him down.”

Zhan Yan watched from afar as Lord Deep Shadow pulled a set of dazzling moves. Seeing that the situation on that side was under control, he went to ask Nie Yu about the network.

Nie Yu hadn’t replied yet—but the Artisan came looking for him.

That big shot hated oversight and dodged the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau whenever he could, so he didn’t contact Zhan Yan often. After Zhan had relayed the Bureau’s last mission invitation to him, the Artisan had vanished again—they hadn’t spoken in nearly a week.

But with the apocalypse world about to brush up against theirs and Infinite plotting something in the dark, the Bureau could never just leave the Artisan alone—he came from the apocalypse world himself.

So what had he come for now?

Zhan Yan opened the private message.

The Artisan was asking if he knew anyone with abilities related to “concepts.”

Concepts? That sounded way too abstract. What did “concept‑related” abilities even mean? What did the Artisan want with that?

But searching his gossip feeds turned up nothing—nothing under abilities tied to “concepts” either.

Approaching Science: “Can you give something more specific?”
“What do you mean by ‘concept’? Like ‘wish‑fulfillment’?”

Artisan: “…Forget it.”

Approaching Science: “???”
“Don’t ‘forget it’!”
“Explain!”

But the Artisan had already gone offline.

Zhan Suiru logged off the Chaofan Forum and let out a long breath. She felt she’d been too impatient.

Resurrection was tricky; making no progress for a while was normal.

Bringing someone back was hard enough—but why was Xiaoran’s consciousness recovering so slowly, too?

Zhan Suiru had already regained her perception of her own mental power. Under the effect of Concept Replacement, she couldn’t project her spirit outside her body in the real world, but as someone who’d endured countless reincarnations as a mental‑type, she had some special tricks.

She tried sensing the will of Xiaoran inside the puppet butler without sending her spirit out.

It was very faint.

Maybe her sensing was too limited…

The puppet butler brought her a cup of milk tea. “Would you like to play games with your younger brother for a while?”

Zhan Suiru had just taken a sip and almost sprayed it. “Younger brothers aren’t for using like that.”

The puppet butler tilted his head, humbly curious. “Then what is a younger brother for?”

Zhan Suiru: “No, I mean—he’s not something to be used—why does that sound so wrong?”

Puppet butler: “You mean the younger brother is useless?”

Zhan Suiru: “He’s not useless either—argh, a younger brother is my family.”

She turned her chair, took the butler’s arm, and tugged him down so they were eye‑level. “Family is what you love. Xiaoran, it’s like us—you’re not my tool.”

The puppet butler captured the image before him. He felt that her eyes were different from usual, though he couldn’t say how. He compared this scene with previous recordings. Was it the dilation of her pupils? The way the light hit them? The movement of her eyelids?

None of those seemed quite right. They were related, but not the whole answer.

He suddenly realized he hadn’t responded.

“I am your butler,” he said.

Zhan Suiru: “Right, and butlers aren’t tools either. You’re more than just my butler.”

The gears in the butler’s pupils turned. He arranged the logic of her words and reached an equation. “You mean… you love me?”

Zhan Suiru: “Cough! Ahem!”

Puppet butler: “But I am a puppet, lacking the corresponding functions. I cannot…”

Zhan Suiru: “I’m going to go play games with my brother!”

She let go of Xiaoran, who was still kneeling in front of her, and rolled her chair over to the game console, logging into the top‑ranked account “Big Hammer Eighty.”

It was the weekend; Yan Yan should be resting. His account wasn’t online, but that was fine—this game’s invites arrived via text.

She hit the invite button.

Just after finishing smashing a batch of anomalies, Gu Jiancheng got a text.

He opened it at the pig farm. A game invite? Oh right, it was the game Yan Yan had installed for him, and the account was Yan Yan’s too.

So this must be the guy who’d been power‑leveling Yan Yan’s rank.

He was very curious to see just how good this person really was.

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