GRMFBS CH233

What was there to grind for? Sleep!

He absolutely was not staying up late.

Dad, Mom, Brother, and Sister were all at home. The only reason he had managed to muddle through today was because his sister had something else going on, and Dad, Mom, and Brother had all had their attention pulled away by Teng Jian. Many thanks for Teng Jian’s sacrifice.

Zhan Yan shut off the gossip system and went to sleep.

He ignored Xiao Gu. Anyway, if Xiao Gu couldn’t find an outlet for all that energy, then after a while, once the excitement wore off on its own, he’d be able to sleep peacefully too.

Zhan Yan closed his eyes and quickly sank into sleep.

Gu Jiancheng waited a while and then discovered that Approaching Science had gone offline.

…Heh! Fragile little information-types really were no good. It was only one night without sleep, and he already couldn’t take it anymore.

But since Approaching Science couldn’t hold on and had gone to sleep, then he’d just go look for someone else.

Wan Shitong definitely wouldn’t do. As for other information-types, he honestly didn’t think much of any of them. He had just finalized cooperation with the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau, but the Bureau had never once relaxed its pursuit of Infinite anyway, so even if he asked them now, he probably wouldn’t get any fresh information.

Who else could he use?

Gu Jiancheng couldn’t help thinking of Linyuan Ghost King.

Although Linyuan Ghost King wasn’t an information-type, his “wish machine” constitution really was extremely useful. In this world, Gu Jiancheng had never enjoyed smashing anomalies as much as he had then.

All he had to do was make a wish to Linyuan Ghost King, and then all those troublesome anomalies would come crashing into him one after another.

The only concern was that the aftereffects of Linyuan Ghost King’s divine ability were truly terrifying—he had originally been able to spend three whole months cuddling with Yan Yan, but instead it had forcibly turned into three months of separation.

Gu Jiancheng thought for a while, then decided to postpone using that ultimate self-damaging weapon that killed one thousand enemies at the cost of eight hundred to himself. He’d activate it only if there was really no other choice.

Hmm. Actually, Rong Sui would also be a reliable partner, but she probably wasn’t in the mood to deal with such troublesome matters right now.

After thinking it over, Gu Jiancheng realized that at present, he really didn’t have much he could do.

Forget it. He might as well sleep.

Yan Yan was asleep too.

They were sleeping under the same night sky, so rounding things up, that basically meant…

…

Zhan Yan had a wonderful sleep.

The next morning when he woke up, he continued his busy day:

washing up, morning exercise, eating seriously, playing with Xingxing, continuing to sort through Di Ting’s images, collecting Candle Dragon power, entering the Dawn World to grind information tags and level up, dealing with his sister while trying hard to preserve Xiao Gu’s cover…

And also investigating Monster Doctor and Infinite for Big Boss Deep Shadow.

Damn it, wasn’t he supposed to be on vacation?

Zhan Yan flopped down in a random spot in the newbie village of the Dawn World.

This world still retained some game-world settings, such as the fact that the newbie village was absolutely safe.

He found an empty haystack and threw himself down on it, lying flat in the sun. The sunlight seeped warmly into all four limbs, the dried wheat straw gave off a strange, wonderful fragrance under the sunlight, the breeze stirred his dragon whiskers, and several sparrows landed on his dragon horns.

Ah… this was vacation.

From a distance, Qi Ye spotted a flock of little birds rising and falling, and walked over to take a look.

A person with a dragon head was lying face-up on the haystack. The sunlight was bright, the straw was golden, the dragon head with its eyes closed was relaxed and at ease, and a flock of birds hopped around on his dragon horns and the haystack.

The image was kind of classic. Qi Ye’s artistic cells were instantly activated, and inspiration for her graduation project started bursting out one after another—oh, right, she had already graduated. Never mind then.

Zhan Yan sensed someone nearby. He opened his eyes and turned to look this way. The little birds perched on his dragon horns burst into the air all at once, then landed on the nearby haystack, pecking around in the straw and picking out the missed grains of wheat to eat.

One stubborn little sparrow refused to leave, though. It spread its wings and flapped a few times to maintain its balance, then lowered its head in dissatisfaction and pecked at the dragon horn.

“Hi,” Zhan Yan greeted her.

Qi Ye let out a soft breath. This world was always reminding her in little unintentional details that it had already become a real world. No matter how carefully she and Wan Shitong had designed the game world, birds would never have shown such vivid changes in behavior.

“Hi,” she replied, climbing up onto the haystack too. The sparrows were so startled that they all flew away at once.

“If you make yourself a dragon head, do you automatically get an animal-attracting physique?”

Zhan Yan thought to himself that it had nothing to do with the dragon head—this was purely an extension of his own personal constitution.

“Where is everyone else?” he asked.

Qi Ye had now joined the Wan Yao Alliance. Whenever she was in the Dawn World, she was usually surrounded by the network-types from the Wan Yao Alliance.

“I came to slack off for a bit,” Qi Ye said.

At once, Zhan Yan felt a deep sense of understanding toward her.

“You guys have been so busy exploring the Dawn World lately.”

He had seen it on the gossip feed. The Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau and the Wan Yao Alliance were now working in rotating shifts, 24 hours a day without stopping. Qi Ye and Wan Shitong were also taking rotating shifts. Of course it wasn’t that brutal—they weren’t being forced to stay online twelve hours every single day. They could still do their own things, but during their assigned shifts they had to be ready to receive a string of life-ending emergency calls at any moment.

Qi Ye found in his sympathetic tone an irresistible urge to vent. “Rush, rush, rush. Right now it’s not just the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau constantly grinding like crazy—even the Wan Yao Alliance keeps pushing too. I heard several of the great demons in the alliance are all interested in the Dawn World and want to come in and take a look, so they keep pushing us to find a passage connecting the Dawn World with reality as soon as possible.”

“Did you join the Wan Yao Alliance because you thought they’d be less intense?” Zhan Yan asked.

“Not really.” Qi Ye sighed helplessly. “I also did it to protect my cover…”

Building a complete world in the network world was very difficult, so she and Wan Shitong had chosen to make an ordinary version of the game too, so they could use it as a comparison while finding bugs. Then they had gone looking for investment for the ordinary version of the game. And to attract investment, they had needed an ordinary-person cover identity.

Back then, Qi Ye had still been relatively naive. She had figured that in any case they weren’t planning to open up the game world just yet—according to the plan, that would be at least after the ordinary game had launched and run for a few years, after they had patched and improved the game world to a more complete state, that it might possibly be opened bit by bit.

Before the game world was opened, no one would know what it looked like inside, and no one would connect the game world to the ordinary game version.

So broad-minded Qi Ye had at the time completely failed to consider that this might lead to her cover being exposed—she had directly used her ordinary-person identity to seek investors.

Wan Shitong, who had clawed his way out of Infinite, had also completely failed to consider that Qi Ye would lack the common sense to create several fake identities, so he hadn’t reminded her either.

Then, after the apocalypse world merged in and the game world had to be gradually opened, Qi Ye had suddenly realized: this was bad. Once network-types who had entered the Dawn World saw the Dawn Continent game and realized how similar the two were, wouldn’t they immediately know that Qi Ye, who had created the “Dawn Continent” game, was connected to either “Play Games With Me” or “Wan Shitong,” the creators of the game world?

She had no time to regret it. Like her butt was on fire, she hurriedly found herself a huge backer.

Fortunately, she had a connection with the little white wolf Bai Ji, and through him she directly threw herself into the Wan Yao Alliance, entering the protection of Howling Moon Wolf King Bai Po, one of the Ten Great Demon Kings.

As long as your own strength was high enough or your backing was strong enough, exposing the cover identity of your ordinary-person self in the Chaofan world wasn’t too big a problem. The Wan Yao Alliance had plenty of great demons who mixed among human society for fun anyway.

But finding herself a backer also meant finding herself a boss. And Bai Po just happened to be the sort of Demon King who loved to have fun and was intensely curious about what the Dawn World was like. He really, really wanted to come in and play.

So Qi Ye had been forced into the grind.

Zhan Yan understood deeply.

“Sigh, and in a few days the game is going to the expo, so I have to go too.” Qi Ye flopped over listlessly.

It was a game exhibition, and Dawn Continent would be releasing a complete set of physical game equipment there.

She and Wan Shitong, as the creators of the game, absolutely had to be there. And the moment she thought about how her cover was basically about to be peeled away in the Chaofan world, she felt a faint sorrow. Fortunately, even though Howling Moon Wolf King had been constantly grinding her, he was still very responsible about protecting her personal safety. Besides equipping her with a whole set of protective charms, Bai Po had also rummaged through his own clan and found a great demon with very strong combat power to protect her, a fragile network-type.

“I hope they’re all drawn away by the new version by then and stop pushing me so hard,” Qi Ye murmured in prayer.

“But what if after playing the new version, they want even more badly to experience full immersion inside the Dawn World?” Zhan Yan offered another possibility.

Qi Ye slowly turned her dead-fish eyes toward him.

After leaving the Dawn World, Zhan Yan also received a message from Luo Luoluo.

The expo setup for Dawn Continent had basically all been finalized, and Luo Luoluo was asking if he wanted to go—the little boss’s popularity shouldn’t go to waste.

Not even a few minutes later, he got another message from his sister, also asking whether he was going to the expo.

Luo Luoluo had also messaged Zhan Suiru, because Zhan Suiru had previously asked her for an internal game account.

Zhan Yan refused without even thinking. His sister would definitely take the opportunity to try to pry into Xiao Gu’s hidden identity.

Zhan Suiru came to knock on his door.

Zhan Yan: …

He couldn’t exactly refuse to open the door for his sister.

The moment he opened it, his sister started casting magic:

“Yan Yan, why do I feel like you’ve been avoiding me these past few days?”

“Your big sister is so hurt.”

Zhan Yan: See? He knew it!

“How could I possibly be avoiding you? It’s all in your imagination!” Zhan Yan said with great seriousness.

“Then how about we go to the expo together in a few days?” Zhan Suiru asked.

“But on the day of the expo…”

“Do you already have other plans on the day of the expo? Then another day during your vacation works too. How about we go out and have fun together?” Zhan Suiru looked at him with a smile.

By instinct, she was convinced that Gu Jiancheng was a dangerous person. Now that Xiao Ran’s trouble had already been solved, the most worrisome person around her was her younger brother. If she couldn’t figure out who her little brother’s love interest was before the vacation ended, then once school started again, Yan Yan would once more be in close contact with that dangerous person! There was no way Zhan Suiru could feel reassured.

“Then I’m free on the day of the expo,” Zhan Yan changed his answer.

Fine. He couldn’t exactly dodge his sister for the entire vacation. Anyway, his sister thought he was an ordinary person, so there was no way she could know Gu Jiancheng’s true identity. The extent of what she could probe was limited.

Satisfied, Zhan Suiru left.

From her younger brother, at most she would get a few suspicious details. The key still lay on the Chaofan side.

Zhan Suiru logged onto the Chaofan forum, preparing to ask Approaching Science how the investigation was going. There was no need to finish checking everyone before giving her a list—however many there were so far would do, which would make it convenient for her to verify them one by one.

But before she could message Approaching Science, she received another message from Deep Shadow, this one about those giant toys.

Right—Deep Shadow should know the player group very well too. Other than Approaching Science, she could also ask Deep Shadow.

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