GRMFBS CH55

Zhan Yan had browsed far too many gossip logs tonight and needed a break, so he opted to log into the forum instead.

The chaofan forum was completely peaceful, devoid of any commotion regarding Beiling City. The topic generating the most buzz lately was the Wan Yao Alliance sprint tournament.

A few days ago, the horse demon Ma Xingfan had been insufferably arrogant after his upset victory, gathering a pack of demon friends to throw a party. Refusing to let go of an earlier wager, he demanded that the others address him as “Daddy”.

Some of the demons refused, bringing them to the verge of a fistfight.

A closer friend stepped in to break up the quarrel, asking him, “Didn’t you already take the championship? If he doesn’t want to say it, let it go. Who doesn’t know you won? Why are you being so irritable?”

Excited as Ma Xingfan was, he had grievances he couldn’t put into words.

To onlookers, he appeared smug and in high spirits, but he personally felt wretched from head to toe, as if his muscles had stiffened into dead wood.

Thinking back, he had started feeling off on the day he took the train sleeper berth. His left shoulder had begun stiffening that day, though it hadn’t been severe—just like the numbness and stiffness from lying on it too long, which usually faded after shaking it out.

Ma Xingfan hadn’t taken it seriously, but his condition only deteriorated as time went on. He would occasionally lose all sensation in parts of his limbs; while it only lasted a few seconds before returning, it was still utterly terrifying!

Ma Xingfan ran searches on Baidu, growing more terrified the more he read. The symptoms of every terminal illness seemed to match his condition, and every precursor to a fatal disease looked eerily familiar. After a round of searching, his heart rate spiked into overdrive.

A few days later, Ma Xingfan finally visited a physician—a demon healer. Yet the demon doctor found nothing wrong with him: no traces of a curse, no bottlenecks or mishaps in his cultivation, no injuries, and no illness. Yet here he was, insisting something felt wrong and that his whole body frequently stiffened until he couldn’t move.

Ma Xingfan had a volcanic temper and cursed the healer as a quack.

The demon doctor possessed an equally fiery temper: “I told you there’s nothing wrong, yet you insist you’re sick! You’ve got problems in the head!”

Clang! A brand-new perspective dawned on Ma Xingfan. Physical medical examinations by humans were useless on him, but humans also practiced psychiatry!

As a demon who “knew a bit about human society, but not very much,” Ma Xingfan adopted a trendy fake identity—just like when he took the high-speed rail to the race—and went to see a psychiatrist.

After a battery of evaluations, Ma Xingfan was diagnosed with severe paranoia, sensory processing disorder, cognitive dissonance, and a whole slew of baffling clinical conditions.

Clutching his medical chart, tears streamed down Ma Xingfan’s face.

I knew it, I’m truly sick!

Hiding inside a psychiatric hospital, however, did not save him from having his tournament cheating uncovered.

Not only was Ma Xingfan’s prize stripped, but he was also slapped with disciplinary punishment. The demons he had forced into the “Daddy” wager came knocking at his door, leaving him in a truly miserable state.

Zhan Yan had been curious about how the guy had managed to get himself checked into a mental facility, so he gave him the honor of running a quick search.

Ah. This fellow must have offended some senior expert and gotten taught a lesson. As for when he’ll recover, that depends entirely on when that senior lets go of their anger.

With Garbled Anomaly No. 2 finally resolved smoothly, Zhan Yan enjoyed a solid night of sleep. Over the next few days, aside from tracking progress on the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau’s end, he focused on digging up intel related to Infinite.

Information on Infinite was exceedingly difficult to find. Searching with it as a standalone keyword only yielded fragmented snippets of modern users discussing it. If he tried to dig further back, the Gossip System’s current level wasn’t high enough to unearth older events.

Piecing together those scattered fragments, he managed to assemble a rough picture of what Infinite was.

To the vast majority of supernatural users in this world, anomalies had materialized out of nowhere twenty-six years ago. Ever since, organizations large and small dedicated to confronting anomalies had sprung into existence: giants like the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau, down to small hunting squads formed by three to five independent supernatural users.

The origin of anomalies had always been a subject of speculation among supernatural users, yet no definitive answer had ever surfaced.

Now, Zhan Yan held that answer: anomalies originated from the Infinite World.

Twenty-six years ago, Infinite had made contact with their world, though Zhan Yan couldn’t yet find details on what had transpired. Deducing backward from the current clues, however, it was certain that Infinite had suffered a monumental loss back then—after all, actual fragments had been sheared off.

Yet many bizarre inconsistencies remained.

Zhan Yan combed through news archives from twenty-six years ago—covering both ordinary mortal affairs and supernatural topics—without discovering anything particularly unusual.

Twenty-six years wasn’t a terribly distant past; if a monumental event had taken place, why were there no records of it?

Could the information have been deliberately scrubbed by human hands?

Because knowledge related to anomalies carried the risk of contamination, had someone expunged those records just as True Science Press did?

Still, plenty of people had lived through that era. Zhan Yan hadn’t been born yet, but he could consult someone who already had memories from that time!

“Pao Pao—”

Hearing that voice, the Siberian husky immediately tugged hard on the leash, dragging Professor Fang in the opposite direction.

Professor Fang was delighted to hand the leash over to them: “No classes again this morning?”

“No classes in the early morning,” Zhan Yan replied, scratching Pao Pao’s head. “We can only play with him for a little bit.”

Pao Pao’s ears perked up; abandoning all attempts to bolt, he circled around their ankles, eager to play.

Professor Fang glanced between Zhan Yan and Gu Jiancheng, asking, “Say, were you two the ones who helped the animal husbandry department catch that pig a few days back?”

Zhan Yan nodded: “Yes, a senior asked for my help. How did that reach your ears, Professor?”

Professor Fang chuckled heartily: “The two of you are quite famous now.”

Zhan Yan and Gu Jiancheng had jointly spread their renown straight into the College of Agriculture.

Every agriculture student who lived in daily terror of having the prized, painstakingly nurtured lone specimens in their experimental plots eaten by birds, dug up by small critters, plucked by wandering brats and elderly foragers, or devoured by neighboring livestock like chickens, pigs, sheep, and rabbits now knew that there were two remarkably capable students next door.

One could repel beasts on sight, and the other could pin a pig single-handedly!

The animal husbandry department—especially those handling large livestock—were eager to build ties with Gu Jiancheng. The horticulture department, particularly the graduate students who had spent years tending the fields, placed far more value on Zhan Yan:

They wished they could plant this junior right in the middle of their plots!

Seizing the opportunity under the pretext of the university’s journalism club, Zhan Yan brought up old events from twenty-six years ago with Professor Fang.

“Twenty-six years ago?” Professor Fang racked his memory. “I was still in middle school back then. I don’t recall anything particularly unusual…”

“Well, if you really want to count something, I remember there were a few celestial anomalies around that time,” Professor Fang recalled. “There were solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, and meteor showers! The news kept hyping them up as once-in-a-century events, but look at today—we get them every few years! Didn’t we just have an unprecedented lightning storm a while back?”

“Because of those events, they even assigned us extra-curricular homework. I even took photographs! Back then, taking pictures wasn’t as convenient as using smartphones; we used film cameras. I think I still have those photos at home. If you need them, I can look for them.”

As they chatted, Professor Fang drifted into nostalgia, sharing amusing anecdotes from his middle school days alongside major headlines from that period.

Yet those major headlines were strictly confined to ordinary human affairs, devoid of anything peculiar or supernatural.

Using the keen eye he had cultivated at True Science Press, Zhan Yan deduced that only a handful of those major news stories showed hints of having been covered up.

Setting aside those ambiguous events, there was genuinely nothing extraordinary twenty-six years ago beyond the celestial anomalies.

Yet if a massive surge of anomalies had suddenly flooded the world twenty-six years ago, how could it have left ordinary society so completely untouched?

Unable to find leads among ordinary mortals, Zhan Yan decided to ask a demon.

As luck would have it, a demon he knew came knocking on his door.

White Hair Hottie: [Up for a game together?]

Zhan Yan hadn’t gamed with him in a while, partly because he had been swamped, and partly because the young wolf demon Bai Ji was still a student.

The one who initially reached out to Zhan Yan was Qi Ye. Aside from the stretch spent hunting Garbled Anomaly No. 2, Zhan Yan had played with her a few times.

Qi Ye had mentioned that “White Hair Hottie” complained about being repeatedly turned down and asked if Zhan Yan disliked him.

Zhan Yan had replied: “Not at all. He just feels like a student, and I didn’t want to distract him from his schoolwork.”

Qi Ye went to ask White Hair Hottie and confirmed he was indeed a student.

“Your intuition is pretty sharp!” Qi Ye had texted back in astonishment.

Still, hopping on for a couple of casual rounds to unwind was fine.

Over the weekend, Qi Ye hosted another livestream lobby. This was Zhan Yan’s second time joining Qi Ye’s stream, and the chat was brimming with enthusiasm.

[Little Brother! Is this the Little Brother who showers everyone in praises?]

[Is this the Little Brother who’s terrible at the game?]

[Is this the Little Brother who got dragged down and lost on round one?]

Seven Big Coconuts: “Hey, hey, hey! That’s enough from you guys!”

“Stop calling him terrible! Little Brother has improved!”

[Ha! Do you actually care about them calling him bad? You just don’t want them mentioning how you threw round one and dragged him down!]

The matchmaking queue popped, so Qi Ye ignored the teasing chat and jumped into the match.

Qi Ye’s claim that Zhan Yan had improved was genuine.

Previously, Zhan Yan had zero grasp of skill combos or activation timing, basically looking at cooldown timers and mashing whichever button became available.

Now, he understood skill combinations, recognizing that chaining different abilities produced different effects and that distinct encounters called for different mechanics.

However, game mechanics weren’t something one could pull off simply by understanding them. A wide chasm separated knowing the theory from executing it. Learning this only evolved Zhan Yan from playing poorly in a bland way to playing poorly in wonderfully creative ways.

[Hahahahaha, you can tell Little Brother is really trying.]

While watching an elite player was exciting, carrying a teammate who failed with such colorful variety was the real entertainment!

Viewer counts in Qi Ye’s livestream surged.

After getting carried through two rounds, Zhan Yan bowed out. The chat expressed reluctant disappointment, asking when the sweet-talking Little Brother would return.

Exiting the game, Zhan Yan asked White Hair Hottie about the events of twenty-six years ago.

Bai Ji didn’t even need to rack his brains: twenty-six years ago, both of his parents had entered seclusion, leaving him stranded under the thumb of his older brother, who supervised him relentlessly. But he couldn’t share that with an outsider.

Other than that, there was nothing noteworthy, was there? He didn’t know much about human affairs.

Zhan Yan let out a disappointed sigh.

Scrolling through his family’s gossip logs, his brother had already arrived in Fengyu City and would begin his fondant cake classes in a few days; everything appeared smooth on that front.

His mother’s company was growing busy; after investing in Meihu opera previously, she had formed a good bond with a performer, and an opportunity for collaboration seemed to have opened up.

His sister appeared to have landed a massive commission and was buried in work as well.

His father had an upcoming film shoot and would be leaving home for a while.

The family group chat happened to be discussing this. Zhan Yunkai’s filming schedule had come up so suddenly that he hadn’t had time to prepare proper meals, leaving only broth in the refrigerator; the household would have to make do with simple noodles for the next few days.

Departing in haste, Zhan Yunkai let out a quiet sigh. Locking his phone, he lifted his head, his phoenix eyes narrowing into an icy, forbidding gaze:

“Start talking. What is going on with that traitor?”