GRMFBS CH48

The instructor, practically run ragged by the dog, handed over the leash as if granting himself parole. At this moment, the cheerful husky still had no idea what was about to happen.

Zhan Yan stopped to catch his breath, while Gu Jiancheng took the leash and kept on running.

Panting heavily, the instructor managed after a long pause, “Thanks a lot, guys. This beast is just too energetic; he nearly dragged me flat on my face. Don’t you two have classes later? I’ll be fine just catching my breath here.”

“We don’t have any classes this morning. How about you lend him to us so we can pet him a bit longer, Professor?” Zhan Yan maintained his pure, harmless smile.

The instructor agreed readily, declaring that the dog was theirs for the entire morning, and they could hand him back at noon outside the cafeteria entrance.

Zhan Yan walked and chatted with the instructor. The dog was named “Pao Pao,” apparently because he had been rather frail as a puppy, so the instructor wanted him to exercise more to build a sturdier build.

Now, the instructor was thoroughly regretting that name.

Gu Jiancheng had already finished two laps with the dog. Feeling mostly recovered, Zhan Yan waved goodbye to the instructor and jogged over to join them.

“Youth truly means limitless stamina,” the instructor murmured wistfully with a wave.

Zhan Yan and Gu Jiancheng took the dog through several more laps. Zhan Yan jogged intermittently, stopping to catch his breath, while Gu Jiancheng ran continuously without breaking his stride. In the end, the husky sprawled flat across the track, refusing to get up for dear life, whereas Gu Jiancheng’s breathing had barely quickened.

Zhan Yan handed him water. When he paused mid-run, he had swung by the campus convenience store to pick up two bottles of water and a disposable plastic bowl. Crouching down, he poured some out for the dog.

The husky scrambled up, burying his snout into the bowl, gulping down the water with noisy huffs.

Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the bleacher steps with Gu Jiancheng, Zhan Yan gently rubbed the dog’s head with a sunny smile: “Still up for lapping us?”

The dog’s ears twitched twice. Keeping his snout in the water, he rolled his eyes upward to sneak a peek at Zhan Yan, privately wondering if this human had actually understood what he said earlier.

“This dog is quite smart,” Zhan Yan said, smoothing down the fur on its head once more.

Pao Pao hadn’t backed away. Was it because sheer exhaustion had suppressed his instinctive dread? Or was this particular breed simply too dull to pick up on it? He had heard that huskies could end up casually playing fetch with burglars who broke into their homes…

The husky couldn’t help but narrow his eyes in bliss under the stroking.

Gu Jiancheng glanced at him sideways: “His stamina is just trash.”

The husky lifted his head and let out an indignant bark.

There was no concrete language in it, just pure displeasure.

Zhan Yan chuckled. He had already witnessed Gu Jiancheng’s terrifying stamina firsthand during the university sports meet—specifically, the time Gu Jiancheng signed up for the 5,000-meter run. Because Zhan Yan had jokingly promised during registration that he would be on cheer duty and water-bottle delivery, he had actually shown up to support him.

Gu Jiancheng had kept an exact, steady pace throughout the entire race. When others kicked into their final sprint, he accelerated right along with them, finishing in fourth place. The runners ahead of him and behind him were all so utterly shattered that they wished they could melt into the track, leaning on classmates to limp forward, too winded to string a sentence together. Only Gu Jiancheng had casually strolled over, unscrewed his bottle cap, and offered a steady, even-toned thank you.

Gu Jiancheng answered the dog with a cold sneer, his eyes dripping with disdain.

The dog barked right back at him: Woof, woof, woof!

An early autumn breeze swept across the athletic grounds, rustling the leaves. Amidst the chirping of birds and the barking of dogs, Zhan Yan fought hard to stifle a snort of laughter.

He felt he urgently needed to figure out how to manually toggle this new ability on and off.

Before awakening this golden finger, birdsong had been merely birdsong to his ears—rather pleasant and melodious.

Now, however…

“Look how gorgeous my feathers are!” “Get away from me!” “Listen to how beautifully I sing!” “I’ll peck your eyes out!”

Meanwhile, the dog was howling internally: “Vile humans! Tricking me away from my master! Take me back this instant!”

“We don’t have any classes this morning, you know,” Zhan Yan said to the dog.

Failing to grasp the implication, the dog stared at him with wide, round eyes.

Zhan Yan went on to explain: “Which means we can walk you for the entire morning.”

The dog’s ears shot straight up, his body tensing backward in alarm:

“There’s no way you two can last the whole morning!”

Zhan Yan: “It also means that our entire class has no lectures this morning, and every single one of them would love to take a turn walking a dog. There are over thirty students in our class.”

The dog: ?!!

Over thirty humans taking turns walking just him alone?!

A low, whimpering whine bubbled from the dog’s throat. His tail whipped back and forth with desperate fervor as he shuffled forward, ingratiatingly pressing his forehead against the hand Zhan Yan had resting on his knee.

Gu Jiancheng shoved the canine snout aside, wedging his own hand right beneath Zhan Yan’s palm instead, tossing the dog a chilly sneer: “Heh.”

Pao Pao: …

When it comes to being a dog, you’re the real hound here.

With a broad smile, Zhan Yan led the dog into the department’s lecture hall.

Their classmates charged over with gleaming eyes, burying the dog in a frenzy of pets. But as they petted him, their vocational instincts inevitably flared up, and they began administering physical examinations on the spot, prying open his hind legs.

Their voices were dripping with tenderness, but the words were pure terror:

“Is Pao Pao a boy or a girl?”

“Has he been neutered yet?”

…

Surrounded by a pack of veterinary students, Pao Pao was plunged into utter bewilderment and despair, letting out helpless, mournful whimpers.

Taking advantage of the downtime, Zhan Yan pulled up the Gossip System.

Bao Qingshan had slipped off campus again today. Ever since that night spent stargazing, he hadn’t really skipped any more lectures, which had put his roommates’ worries to rest. Yet here he was, disappearing again today.

Stargazing at night could be written off as an eccentric quirk, but why play hooky in broad daylight?

This wasn’t the first time Old Bao had left campus during class hours. Connecting that with his newly developed quirk of slipping away to observe the stars at night… had Bao Qingshan fallen prey to some predatory cult?

Typing Bao Qingshan into the search bar, the very first result popped up:

[A fly landed on the fried stinky tofu Bao Qingshan had just bought; wearing a grief-stricken face, Bao Qingshan threw away the fried stinky tofu before he could take a single bite.]

Zhan Yan nearly leaped to his feet!

Garbled Anomaly No. 2! In real-time! He had caught it!

He instantly added the fly currently possessed by Garbled Anomaly No. 2 to his special follow list to avoid losing track of it.

He had to alert the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau, immediately! If he lost track of Garbled Anomaly No. 2 again, who knew when he would ever stumble across it a second time?

Contacting the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau required logging into the chaofan forum. Whenever he accessed the chaofan forum, streams of raw data flooded his vision; he vastly preferred doing so in a secure space—his bedroom at home, or at least his dorm bed at university. The department hall was far too bustling, but walking back to the dormitory would take at least ten minutes…

“I’m going to rest my head on the desk for a bit. Keep an eye out for me and make sure no one disturbs me,” Zhan Yan said to Gu Jiancheng.

Gu Jiancheng picked up on a subtle undercurrent of gravity in his expression.

Nodding, his brows drew together in a solemn line: “Understood.”

Reassured, Zhan Yan rested his head on his arms and linked into the chaofan forum.

The gossip logs for the fly continued to refresh. It had already taken flight toward another location, and Garbled Anomaly No. 2 had not yet decoupled from its body.

Zhan Yan opened Administrator Lingyu’s direct messaging window.

Approaching Science: [No. 42 Yongxing Street, third trash bin on the north side. A fly.]

Administrator Lingyu replied in less than a second:

[Real-time?]

Approaching Science: [Yes.]

Administrator Lingyu:

[Thank you for your hard work.]

Data synchronized; orders were dispatched.

The undercover personnel belonging to the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau across Beiling City sprang into high gear. Guided by the steady stream of real-time coordinates fed by Approaching Science, they set off in pursuit of the anomaly lurking within that single fly.

Tianshui Lane.

Rubbing his loudly rumbling belly, Bao Qingshan scratched at his arm, then his neck, shuffling down the alleyway with a dejected sigh.

A rocking chair was set beside the ancient well. The ancestral matriarch sat back with her eyes closed, waving a cattail leaf fan bound in red thread. The rhythmic creaking of the chair and the sway of the fan made her look every bit like an idle senior escaping the late-summer heat.

“Grandma, why do you keep trying to harvest inspiration here?” Bao Qingshan asked.

Mosquitoes had grown vicious lately; repellent sprays and coils were barely keeping them at bay. Tianshui Lane was precisely the sort of damp, shady hideout mosquitoes adored, and over the past few days, he had been covered in swollen welts.

Opening her eyes, the ancestral matriarch cast a look at Bao Qingshan: “Your cultivation is too shallow.”

The mosquitoes never dared bite her.

Bao Qingshan pulled a long face: “You’re right about that.”

How many years had he been cultivating? And how long had the ancestral matriarch lived?

“If the bites are that bad, head on back,” the ancestral matriarch added. “I reckon you’ve outlived your usefulness anyway.”

Bao Qingshan was utterly bewildered: “Huh?”

Earlier, she had insisted that this operation couldn’t function without him; now she declared he was of no more use. But what had he actually done? Without him lifting a finger, his role had simply expired?

“What about you, Grandma? Aren’t you heading back?” Bao Qingshan asked.

Shutting her eyes, the ancestral matriarch resumed fanning herself: “I reckon I’ll sit here a bit longer.”

Sifting through high-intensity gossip logs regarding Garbled Anomaly No. 2 in such a compressed timeframe left Zhan Yan somewhat drained, but now was no time to rest.

The fly moved remarkably fast and had an uncanny knack for evasion. The operational squad of the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau hadn’t managed to corner it yet, though they were closing in; the distance between them had shrunk drastically.

Hundreds of miles away, Nie Yu relayed every snippet of incoming intel to the field operatives in real time.

Beyond her, countless eyes were fixed on this operation.

Ning Xi, Ji Yueming… each of them was glued to the real-time feeds on their monitors, tracking the clusters of green blips representing field agents sweeping across the digital map.

Approaching Science: [Shanqiang Culture Building, seventh floor, men’s restroom on the left.]

Zhan Yan transmitted the updated coordinates.

On the tactical display, the red dot symbolizing the anomaly jumped to its new position, and the green markers promptly pivoted their vectors, tightening an iron cordon around the red target.

They were close. This was the closest they had ever come to pinning down Garbled Anomaly No. 2.

At the doorway, outside the windows—even inside the maintenance closet adjacent to the restroom—operatives skilled in earth-travel closed in. Equipped with specialized capture armaments, the agents breaching the doorway could already visually spot the fly…

A new entry suddenly flashed within the Gossip System:

[The fly buzzes aimlessly through the men’s restroom on the left side of the seventh floor in the Shanqiang Culture Building.]

Zhan Yan paused.

Approaching Science: [Call off the capture.]

The garbled code was gone. Garbled Anomaly No. 2 had decoupled from the fly.

This was its “leap.”

Garbled Anomaly No. 1’s attachment and departure had always generated distinct gossip logs—such as the Hungry Ghost consuming the Garbled Anomaly out of ravenous hunger, or vomiting it back out after being sickened by the excessive sweetness of a cake.

Garbled Anomaly No. 2, however, left no such signs. Its attachments and departures occurred without the slightest warning. The only trace confirming its presence was the sudden emergence and abrupt vanishing of garbled code within the gossip logs.

Staring at the line of text on her screen, the taut string in Nie Yu’s mind snapped without warning. Sitting petrified before her terminal, a hollow whisper slipped past her lips: “We failed.”

Ji Yueming reached out to gently stroke her head: “It’s alright. Failure is part of the process.”

Nie Yu couldn’t help but blurt out, “That was the closest we’ve ever been.”

Ji Yueming replied softly, “I know.”

Those two words felt far too sparse to contain the tidal wave of emotions churning in Nie Yu’s chest. Her voice tumbled out in an incoherent rush: “Tracking a Garbled Anomaly is difficult! Brutally difficult! The spiritual pollution from a Garbled Anomaly is far heavier than that of ordinary anomalies. I tried tracing related intel before, and it was agonizing. Catching it in the flesh comes down entirely to dumb luck!”

She could keenly feel what Approaching Science was enduring.

As a fellow information-type, she understood all too well what it felt like to confront the pollution of a Garbled Anomaly. To run this kind of non-stop, high-intensity tracking, where she received fresh updates from Approaching Science daily—she knew how mountainous the volume of data he had to sift through must be. And to seize a fleeting window of luck like this, who knew how many countless agonizing attempts had been made behind the scenes…

“After everything it took to finally…”

“A-Yu,” Nie Ling cut her off firmly.

Nie Yu stopped dead, lifting her head to look toward Ji Yueming.

Ji Yueming said nothing. Her eyes—faintly tinted with blue in the sclera, the irises carrying an ethereal, translucent texture—looked back at her with tender tolerance, offering solace like an open sky.

Their Captain understood. She knew intimately how punishing it was to track a Garbled Anomaly.

The Captain had endured and stood against far harsher trials long before them.

When she said, “Failure is part of the process,” it was because she had walked through countless more failures herself.

When she said, “I know,” it was because she truly, deeply understood.

Nie Yu lowered her voice: “I’m sorry, Captain, I didn’t mean to…”

Ji Yueming patted her head with gentle warmth: “Check on Approaching Science and see how he’s holding up.”

“Understood,” Nie Yu nodded, sniffling softly.

A real-time operation of this intensity was profoundly draining. While it took a physical toll on the operational squads, the one who bore the brunt of the burden was Approaching Science, who had been maintaining the direct psychic tether.

Even if Approaching Science possessed formidable spiritual energy, he was likely in desperate need of assistance right now.

Administrator Lingyu:

[Are you holding up alright?]

[I can supply high-grade mental soothing serums free of charge.]

[I can have field operatives drop them off at whatever dead-drop location you designate. No one will track your identity, you have my absolute word.]

[I also have access to advanced meditation techniques.]

[To be frank, supreme-tier meditation methods yield far better recovery, but those require a master to instruct you in person.]

[I’m not trying to bait you into coming out; supreme-tier meditation is simply very dangerous for beginners to attempt unguided.]

She followed up by sending a massive bundle containing several methods capable of soothing mental discomfort instantly.

Looking at Administrator Lingyu’s gentle, almost walking-on-eggshells tone, Zhan Yan checked his own condition. It was identical to normal—not a trace of fatigue or discomfort.

Approaching Science:

[I’m doing great.]

[I don’t really have any use for the things you mentioned. Can I trade them for points instead?]

Nie Yu: …

Confirmed: this guy definitely didn’t have a shred of mental backlash or side effects!

What kind of ungodly monster was he?!

What on earth was the point of all that careful fretting and emotional empathy she had just put herself through?!!