GRMFBS CH224

For advanced chapters, visit my Patreon.
__

Wan Yan dreamed many dreams. The ones that appeared most often were of Baize and Linyuan — his two best friends.

Ah — he remembered now.

Baize had tricked him.

He’d figured it out as soon as he went back.

Because he had made a new friend, the time he spent with Linyuan grew longer, and the frequency with which he went looking for Baize grew lower. The next time he finally visited Baize after a longer absence, all he did was talk about Linyuan nonstop.

So Baize had played a small prank on him.

……

Wan Yan Cat was curled up in a ball under the Wenyushu tree, sleeping somewhat restlessly — twitching his ears one moment, stretching his paws the next.

Just as he had once had only Baize as a friend, back then Baize had only him as a friend.

Diting could hear the faintest passing thought in any living being’s heart.

Baize had no way of knowing the hidden thoughts inside someone’s heart the way he did — but Baize would know what a person had done in the past and what they would do in the future.

One was knowing the heart; the other was knowing the traces. Both were abilities that required self-restraint.

Baize knew everything, and so he could say nothing.

He loved Diting’s ability because he didn’t have to say a word — Diting would understand him anyway.

Baize. Baize, who had known he would appear and had been looking forward to it for so long. Baize, who dragged him around to watch gossip everywhere. Baize, who even knowing that Linyuan would pull his attention away, still went ahead and introduced Linyuan to him. Baize, who would play pranks on him out of jealousy… was gone.

Baize had died. Even his soul had vanished without a trace.

The little white cat curled up under the Wenyushu tree whimpered softly in his dream.

Minghe sat by the tree resting her chin on her hand, watching him. She reached out and smoothed the fur on top of his head that had gotten mussed.

Wan Yan stopped making his muffled sobbing sounds, shifted into a new position, curled up tighter, and went back to sleep.

Minghe touched his soft little ears. His ears twitched twice. He showed no other reaction and kept sleeping.

Minghe squeezed his fluffy little toe beans. Wan Yan tucked his paws in, purred, and kept sleeping.

“Cats are quite fun.” Minghe extended a finger toward the little cat’s whiskers.

After she’d played enough, Minghe lazily got up and drifted away.

Wan Yan quietly opened one eye to a slit and peered at his surroundings.

Minghe was gone. Time to escape Chaofu Mountain!

Hmph — who needed fishing anyway? He was going to find Baize!

He’d already searched throughout the Minghe River for so long without finding any trace of Baize. He’d come to feel that Minghe and the others were looking in the wrong direction. Baize most likely hadn’t passed through the Minghe River for reincarnation at all.

Baize knew everything. If he wanted to hide, he definitely wouldn’t leave any trace for others to follow.

Baize absolutely couldn’t have had his soul scattered!

Mm… but how was he supposed to find Baize? He still remembered too little right now — he couldn’t figure out where Baize might be. He needed to recover more memories first. Don’t even think about keeping him locked up on Chaofu Mountain!

Wan Yan rolled upright, and while Minghe was away, quickly scrambled up the Wenyushu tree.

After climbing up to Chaofu Mountain on the side of the living world, Wan Yan smugly twitched his whiskers in triumph… smugly twitched… couldn’t twitch. His whiskers had been braided together?!

【The Minghe Ghost King saw through the Wan Yan Ghost King’s pretend sleep and started teasing the cat. After braiding the Wan Yan Ghost King’s cat whiskers and playing to her heart’s content, the Minghe Ghost King pretended she hadn’t noticed anything and left him an opportunity to escape on his own.】

Zhan Yan: Pfft… when his brother had handed Wan Yan Cat over to Minghe to take back to Chaofu Mountain, he’d never intended to keep him locked up — but Wan Yan Cat didn’t know that.

【The Wan Yan Ghost King wishes to recover more of his memories.】

Wan Yan Cat wanted to recover his memories. That was something he could keep using the Gossip System to look for clues on. But the problem was: how could he frame it so that the credit landed on Deep Shadow, and get his brother to change his opinion of him?

Then again, he couldn’t very well take a deliberately roundabout path — hand the clues to Deep Shadow, then have Deep Shadow pass them to Wan Yan, right?

Both Deep Shadow and Wan Yan would think he was nuts.

Ahh… why was everything so hard?

Zhan Yan turned it over and over in his mind but couldn’t come up with anything, and could only decide to set it aside for now and wait to see if an opportunity came up later.

Besides his brother, there was still Mom and Dad to think about…

Dad had once wanted to meet Deep Shadow in person. That was at least good news — Deep Shadow hadn’t gotten on Dad’s bad side. But Dad wasn’t lacking for anything at the moment, so there was no angle to work from.

Mom’s Lightning Body used to have side effects, but it had been growing more and more stable lately. It looked like she was sorting it out on her own, which meant there was no opportunity for Little Gu to earn her recognition that way either.

That couldn’t be rushed either. For now, making a good first impression when they met would have to be enough.

After running through the cover-identity issues in his head, Zhan Yan’s thoughts drifted to Infinite.

Infinite, the Monster Doctor, the Chronicle of Ages — all of them were supremely good at hiding.

The Chronicle of Ages never appeared directly, controlling others through its ability. The Monster Doctor had turned itself into an anomaly and fragmented into a split-body form — you couldn’t take it down in one go. After his sister had dealt Infinite a serious blow, it had also gone dormant. Ever since the Apocalypse had merged in, it hadn’t stirred at all.

Zhan Yan searched keyword by keyword and still got a pile of 【Loading…】 entries.

He needed to level up!

Later he’d go back to the Dawn World to grind for entries — first go to the core zone and eat a batch of Concept Dumplings, then keep wandering around.

After mapping out everything he needed to do, Zhan Yan couldn’t help letting out a long sigh for his own sake.

It really was bittersweet! Wasn’t the whole point of discovering that everyone around you was a big shot supposed to be that you could let loose and live freely? Why was it that in his case it left him even more tied down with a whole heap of extra tasks? And tomorrow he still had to keep up with the extra training based on that Wen Yinghui fitness program his dad had figured out for him!

Zhan Yan felt a little mentally drained and in serious need of replenishment.

He crumpled the sweet bread his brother had brought for him back into a doughy ball and swallowed it, then lay peacefully flat on his bed, closed his eyes, entered the Dawn World to eat Concept Dumplings, had a goodnight call with Gu Jiancheng after that, and went to sleep.

No staying up late tonight. Tomorrow he was going to the movies with his family, and before that he still had to get through the upgraded version of his morning workout.

The next day, Zhan Yan happily enjoyed the breakfast his dad made with his own hands. Fermented rice ball congee paired with refreshing cold-dressed side dishes — pure happiness!

Zhan Yunkai kept smiling as he tempted him along: “Yanyan finished his morning workout! Amazing! What do you want for the afternoon? Dad will make it for you.”

Zhan Yan was still thinking about what to ask for. Zhan Yunkai had already started fiddling with the rice wine he’d filtered out while making the fermented rice.

“Dad, what are you making?” Zhan Yan asked.

“Iced milk junket. We’ll come back after the movie and it’ll be ready to eat.”

Mix the rice wine together with warm milk, let it sit for a while, and it would set into a custardy, egg-cake-like consistency.

The rice wine was naturally sweet, so no extra sugar was needed in the milk. Zhan Yunkai made an unsweetened version and an extra-sweet version — pushing right to the edge of what wouldn’t ruin the texture.

That was as sweet as it could get. If it still wasn’t sweet enough, Zhan Jinli could add his own honey.

“This rice wine smells amazing, Dad — where did you buy it?” Zhan Yan asked.

There was definitely no way he’d brewed it himself. Dad had only just gotten home yesterday; he wouldn’t have had the time.

Zhan Yunkai gave a vague murmur and changed the subject: “A friend gave it to me. Have a small glass and taste it.”

Zhan Yan sipped the rice wine in small mouthfuls while opening his gossip feed. The alcohol was light, carrying the scent of rice alongside a fragrance that couldn’t quite be put into words — mildly sweet, not cloying.

【Chongming Demon King Zhan Yunkai returned to Qixia Mountain. Before beginning his routine patrol, he was intercepted by the long-nosed monkey demon Guanpu. Guanpu stammered his way through an expression of gratitude to Zhan Yunkai, and presented him with a variety of carefully brewed wines.
Zhan Yunkai found his rice wine very good — suitable for cooking.】

The various wines brewed by Guanpu added a string of new information entries to Zhan Yan’s “Items” column — all of them green, with a few in blue.

Ordinary items were usually white or green. Zhan Yan opened the descriptions for each wine, and they were all perfectly ordinary beverages with no supernatural effects. Hoh! These had been bumped up to blue entries purely on the strength of how good they tasted!

This long-nosed monkey demon was also a brewing genius.

Come to think of it, this monkey demon looked a little familiar. He searched again.

Last year, a traitor had appeared within the Wan Yao Alliance — a corpse flower taro demon — and that incident had left a deep impression on Zhan Yan. His dad, while chasing down the traitor, had accidentally gotten a speck of pollen on the tip of his wing. He’d found it so disgusting that he burned off the feathers, bathed seven times, and then poured an entire bottle of perfume over himself.

Guanpu was the poor scapegoat who had been pushed out to take the blame after that incident. After being talked around by the black-necked crane demon, he had settled down and made his home on Qixia Mountain.

After living there for a while, Guanpu gradually stopped being anxious, and realized that life under the Chongming Demon King’s protection was genuinely wonderful — so much better than wherever he’d lived before! No backstabbing, no scheming. The demons of Qixia Mountain had no taste for plotting and intrigue, let alone the bad habits of slandering others or throwing people under the bus — His Majesty Chongming was fair-natured by temperament, and those twin divine eyes of his missed nothing. Playing those games in front of His Majesty was just inviting trouble for yourself.

Guanpu found life here supremely comfortable! Easy days with no need to rack his brains. The eight hundred cunning little stratagems the long-nosed monkey demon had honed in his old home began to gradually atrophy. Now he was wholly and helplessly obsessed with brewing wine.

Zhan Yan was very curious to try the other wines and what they tasted like — especially that one that had muscled its way up to a blue entry on sheer flavor alone.

But his dad hadn’t brought all the wine back, only the rice wine this time.

Mm. He’d just have to wait for next time.

Zhan Yunkai put the finished junket in the fridge. It would be perfectly cool and refreshing by the time they came back.

The cicadas in the trees were crying out about the heat. A little bird flew past searching for water.

Zhan Yan took a small hooked vessel, filled it with water, and hung it from a tree branch in the courtyard.

Ji Yueming glanced thoughtfully at the courtyard, and exchanged a look with Zhan Yunkai. Both of them found themselves drifting into reminiscence.

They hadn’t lived here at the start — they’d moved to this complex later, when the family had grown larger.

The house came with a courtyard, which was one of the reasons they’d fallen in love with it back then: a space where the children could run around. While buying it, Zhan Yunkai and Ji Yueming had both fantasized about how to design the courtyard, but once they actually moved in, they discovered they had almost no time to tend it. The children had school; the two of them were constantly being called away on trips or to film sets because of their cover identities. Leave the courtyard a few days without attention and it grew a layer of weeds. In the end they’d simply paved it with bricks, kept a few bare patches of earth, and left one low-maintenance maple tree and a few short shrubs around the borders.

Now Infinite was dormant, work wasn’t as hectic, and the children had all grown up. They should start picking up the pieces of the life they’d let slip through their fingers.

Zhan Yan watched his parents exchange that look, and felt the atmosphere between them turning suddenly exclusive.

Ugh!

He looked over at his brother. His brother was wearing a face mask in the middle of summer. In the past Zhan Yan would have felt sorry for how hot he must be, but now…well, reincarnated Ghost King — what heat?

When they got to the cinema, Mom and Dad sat hand-in-hand on one side, with Zhan Jinli seated next to them — eldest son, quiet and introverted, a model child who would never get in the way of his parents’ romance.

Zhan Yan sat to his brother’s right, with his sister on his right.

Before the film started, Zhan Yan noticed a QR code for a paid massage on the seat’s armrest. Hey — when had the cinema upgraded its chairs?

His heart moved. The last film he’d watched he’d spent getting knocked around the whole time. This time he wanted to try a massage.

Zhan Yan scanned the code and paid.

Hm? Why was nothing happening?

To his left, Zhan Jinli’s chair slowly began to move. The seatback reclined, a section rose beneath it, and his lower legs were lifted up.

Zhan Jinli turned to look at his little brother with an expressionless face.

Zhan Yan: “…Pfft, I’m sorry, gege, I didn’t know I’d scanned yours.”

Zhan Suiru: “HAHAHAHAHA gege just enjoy it while it runs. Think of it as a free upgrade. Yanyan, scan the one on this side.”

Zhan Yan switched to the right armrest and paid again. After a moment, his sister’s chair began to move.

Zhan Yan: ???

Zhan Suiru: …

Zhan Jinli: Heh.

Zhan Yunkai and Ji Yueming: …Pfft. We cannot laugh.

Zhan Yan was thoroughly confused.

Isn’t there something wrong with this chair design?! Why is there one on the left, one on the right, with a regular chair sandwiched in between?!

【The owner of Rainbow Cinema, Fu Hongcheng, purchased a job lot of various massage chairs at a bargain price from a friend whose massage chair business had failed, and used them to upgrade his cinema. Because there weren’t enough discounted chairs to go around, the upgrade was done in a staggered pattern.】

Zhan Yan: Right, understood. He was the one who got staggered out.

Zhan Jinli sent him a message: “Do you want to swap seats?”

Zhan Yan: “It’s fine, I was just curious.”

Zhan Jinli and Zhan Suiru enjoyed their massage cinema experience.

Ji Lele’s direction was still very much on form. Screams and gasps rang out periodically throughout the theater.

By comparison, their little section was particularly and conspicuously quiet.

Mom and Dad were performing being scared, mostly just huddled together without making a sound. His brother was his usual silent self; his sister was equally unbothered. Little Gu wasn’t here, and Zhan Yan had no desire to perform being frightened to act cute in front of his siblings.

This time watching the film, Zhan Yan paid special attention to how Ji Lele used her camera lens to capture the sculpture.

Ji Lele truly was a genius. The first time he’d watched it he’d only felt he could understand what Ji Lele was expressing — he had sensed the force of a soul struggling through the lens’s language. The second time he watched it he wanted to cry.

When the sculpture revealed its terrifying shadow on screen for the first time, the rows in front and behind erupted into screams. Zhan Yan let out a long, awed breath.

His dad, mom, brother, and sister all involuntarily glanced over at him.

If he wasn’t misreading it, the director’s intention with this shot was to frighten the audience. It was one thing for Yanyan not to be scared — but what was that look of being deeply moved? Had his aesthetic sensibilities warped to this degree?

Zhan Jinli turned to look at Zhan Suiru: How did you manage this?

Zhan Suiru: …What does that have to do with me?

Zhan Yan quietly reminded his brother: “Don’t lose focus, keep watching.”

The next series of shots on the sculpture were absolutely brilliant!

Zhan Jinli: …

Fine, fine, watching. Hm? Is that a close-up of little brother? Really well shot.

Zhan Yunkai and Ji Yueming were also impressed. Their Yanyan really did photograph well.

The film ended. As they walked out of the cinema, Zhan Suiru said: “What do you all think about Yan—”

Zhan Yan looked at them with bright, shining eyes: “Wasn’t sister’s sculpture absolutely incredible?!”

The whole family fell into a peculiar silence for a moment.

They had understood Ji Lele’s lens work, which was precisely why they weren’t ready to bring it up yet. She wasn’t versed in art, but she had felt the emotions that had been poured into those sculptures and transmitted through them.

Those struggling, anguished, desperately straining and yet despairing things.

What on earth had accumulated inside Zhan Suiru’s heart to produce sculptures like that…

They all felt that they hadn’t paid enough attention to their daughter and sister in their day-to-day lives.

The whole family fell into a silent bout of reflection.

Zhan Yan: ?

Did none of you understand it?

Zhan Yan: “Those sculptures were so good!”
“They were so full of life! Struggling with such determination.” As he spoke, Zhan Yan couldn’t help starting to gesture enthusiastically, putting tremendous effort into explaining it to everyone. “Especially that segment where time shifts — the way light and shadow were used, under the light it almost looked like it was growing!”

“Exactly!” A voice of admiration suddenly came from behind Zhan Yan.

Zhan Yan stopped and turned around.

A young woman in a white top and a red skirt embroidered with yellow flower patterns came walking over.

“Hello, my name is Teng Jian.” Teng Jian greeted them without any shyness. “Sorry for interrupting — I just find it so hard to meet people who understand… wait, didn’t you appear in the film?”

Zhan Yan: “Ah… the Haunted School production recruited extras from university. I went in as an extra.”

“How wonderful!” Teng Jian was envious. “I’d love to go work on a film set.”

Besides Haunted School, she was familiar with Ji Lele’s other films as well, and her eyes lit up whenever she talked about them.

Zhan Yan understood — this was a Ji Lele fan.

“The one I think she shot best is High Grassland.” Teng Jian finished the sentence and gave a small, involuntary gulp.

Zhan Yan: ???

Why are you getting hungry when you mention a horror film?

The Gossip System, unwilling to be left out: 【You have encountered Teng Jian. Regrettably, you have no idea who Teng Jian is.】

Who was Teng Jian? Was she famous?

Zhan Yan started searching.

Teng Jian — a legendary divine beast that ate ghosts. More precisely, what it consumed was not the soul of the ghost itself, but the energy called “inauspicious” that clung to the ghost.

Teng Jian was not particularly well-known among humans, so she had simply gone ahead and used this name to live openly in human society.

“High Grassland really was so good…” Teng Jian swallowed the word “to eat” that followed.

Zhan Yan: …So you watch Ji Lele’s horror films as a food documentary?

“I won’t keep you any longer.” Teng Jian exchanged contact information with Zhan Yan, waved goodbye, and walked away.

Zhan Yan turned back around to find his whole family in collective silence.

【Zhan Yunkai recognized Teng Jian and considers your social connections to be extremely peculiar.】

【Zhan Jinli recognized Teng Jian and considers your social connections to be extremely peculiar.】

【Ji Yueming does not know Teng Jian, but she sensed that Teng Jian was not an ordinary person. Upon hearing Teng Jian’s name, she suddenly understood, and considers your social connections to be extremely peculiar.】

【Zhan Suiru does not know Teng Jian. Like you, she had never heard the name before, but she sensed that Teng Jian was not an ordinary person, and considers your social connections to be extremely peculiar.】

Zhan Yan: …

Support me on Ko-fi