GRMFBS CH62

Zhan Yan fell asleep.

He couldn’t remember which part of the story he fell asleep at; his impression was hearing about a little bear getting covered in ketchup, and then he dreamt of a little bear sitting in front of a tree hole, hugging a large watermelon.

He cut the melon open with a watermelon knife, pointed the knife at the tree hole, and said, “Look, that’s not ketchup, it’s watermelon juice. You don’t have a watermelon, do you?”

Later, he dreamt of a gigantic bird’s nest perched on the edge of a cliff.

His dad turned into a large bird and said to them, “Children, you are all grown up now. It’s time to learn how to fly.”

His older brother and sister stretched out their arms, which turned into wings, and leaped off the edge of the nest without hesitation, flying merrily.

His dad looked at him in confusion and said, “Yan Yan, why aren’t you flying? Are you afraid? Don’t be afraid, you won’t be able to inherit the demon clan like this.”

He shook his head in horror and said, “No, no, no! I’m human! I don’t want to inherit the demon clan!”

His dad looked at him with a loving face and said, “It’s alright, Dad will help you.”

And then kicked him down.

Zhan Yan plummeted, screaming “Ahhhhh” for what felt like ages. As he fell, his brother and sister flew in circles around him, cheering him on, until he finally hit the bottom.

He woke up with a start, discovering the sky was still a grayish-blue. He checked his watch: 4:48 AM.

Zhan Yan wearily dragged himself out of bed and washed his face.

Gu Jiancheng’s story was only good for putting him to sleep, not for controlling his dreams! All the churning thoughts in his heart had settled down, leaving only one thought occupying his mind:

That big bird with his dad’s head in the dream was too weird!

Unable to fall back asleep, Zhan Yan pushed open the window. Outside, the early birds had already started their noisy chirping.

“Dare to steal my bug! I’ll kick you down!” “Hehe, I can fly!”

Not long after, Zhan Yan heard the sounds of his dad getting up and washing. The front door opened and closed, and the Gossip System refreshed:

[Zhan Yunkai got up early for morning exercise.]

[Congratulations on achieving the ‘Waking Up Earlier Than Dad’ milestone.]

Zhan Yan glanced at his watch. 5:20 AM. His dad’s schedule was truly unusual.

Ten minutes later, Zhan Yan refreshed another entry in the Chongming Demon King gossip feed: [Chongming Demon King is circling the cities around Qixia Mountain, scattering the aura of a divine bird to protect the peace and health of the region.]

Half an hour later, Chongming Demon King finished circling—normally, his dad’s morning exercise also lasted exactly half an hour.

The next piece of gossip was that Chongming Demon King returned to Qixia Mountain and met with his subordinate, the black-necked crane demon Gong Yun, to exchange information about the situation during his days away. The exchange ended half an hour later.

His dad returned home half an hour later than usual, carrying soy milk bought from the downstairs breakfast shop, and started making vegetable and egg pancakes in the pan.

The timing was impeccable.

Zhan Yan looked up at the gossip feeds. His dad’s feed was lined up on the left, and Chongming Demon King’s feed was lined up on the right.

The blank spaces were like the grooves of a gear. He dragged the two gossip strips together, and the gears meshed tightly as if they were born as one entity.

Intertwining, merging. In the information disk, the white star named “Zhan Yunkai” rose beside the golden star, consolidating with “Chongming Demon King” into a single entry.

Past information began to refresh, revealing a world that needed to be re-evaluated:

[Wan Yao Alliance Demon King Zhan Yunkai unfortunately got covered in the pollen of the Corpse Flower Konjac demon while hunting a traitor. To prevent his wife and children from finding out, he took seven showers and used up a whole bottle of perfume before going home.]

Zhan Yan took a very, very deep breath.

He wasn’t just being delusional!

His dad was a genuine demon king! He could fly, fight, and even antagonize the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau, with a whole bunch of demons under his command…

Zhan Yan practically floated down the stairs.

The egg pancakes smelled incredibly appetizing. His dad, still wearing an apron, smiled when he saw him: “Yan Yan is up so early today. Didn’t sleep well?”

Zhan Yunkai smoothed down his messy, sleep-tousled curly hair.

Smelling the aroma of the egg pancakes, Zhan Yan’s stomach growled.

“I don’t want to do morning exercises today.”

“Then take a day off.” Hearing his stomach rumble, Zhan Yunkai chuckled. “Eat first if you’re hungry, it’s not suitable to exercise right after eating.”

Zhan Yan held the egg pancake his dad served him and took a bite.

So what if he was Chongming Demon King? His dad was still his dad. He would make him delicious food, worry about whether he slept well, and…

Zhan Yunkai plated a serving of vegetable egg pancakes with soy milk and went back to the bedroom.

…and he especially loved his wife.

Left alone in the dining room to eat his breakfast, Zhan Yan silently took a sip of soy milk. The freshly ground stuff from downstairs was really good!

But did his mom know that his dad was a demon?

She probably didn’t know. If she knew, his dad wouldn’t need to find a job as a D-list actor for cover. Furthermore, he even adopted the three of them, ordinary kids.

Mom was an ordinary person, but Dad was a demon king. It was probably very difficult for the two of them to have offspring.

Speaking of which, the talent agency his dad signed with probably wasn’t an ordinary company either, right? Thinking about it carefully, normal companies needed to make money; how could they let his dad waste that face of his and just coast along for over a decade? If he had offended someone, he shouldn’t be as comfortable as he was now. The entertainment industry had countless ways of messing with people; how could his dad be allowed to operate like this, rejecting all variety shows and commercials and only taking on an occasional acting gig? His dad was so obscure, yet the company still sent a bunch of gifts every holiday!

Zhan Yan grew interested in his dad’s talent agency. Could the “people” in the company all be demons? He had met a few people from Mingtang Film and Television, including the boss Xia Yuexian. Were they all demons?

So curious!

This morning, after dragging his dad’s two gossip strips together, the energy bar measuring his spiritual energy shot right up to full, granting him his third little star: Information Integration.

[Given sufficient clues, you can uncover secrets the system hasn’t yet detected and integrate seemingly unrelated information together.]

[—Are you happy? Are you excited? Your dad is a demon king!]

Well, excitement was definitely there. He had always held a favorable impression of Chongming Demon King, because Chongming Demon King had consistently been protecting the area where their family lived. Looking at it now, this was clearly his dad including his own home in his protection zone!

After knowing that his dad was Chongming Demon King, a lot of things were different.

Dad had certainly set up protections for everyone in the family. Looking at it this way… he didn’t need to save up points anymore?

Ahhh, suddenly he could just lie flat and slack off!

Logging onto the chaofan forum again, he suddenly felt like he had nothing much left to do.

However, his private messages were bustling. A bunch of people were @-ing him to drop gossip. Even Lingyu and Luowang had sent messages asking him what was going on with that demon who escaped an arranged marriage for Da Wule.

Da Wule had also come to ask.

Zhan Yan: Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Approaching Science: [You saved them in the past. Don’t you remember?]

Lingzhou Wendi had waited for his reply for an entire night. Throughout the night, he had been bombarded with all sorts of messages, all coming to eat his gossip.

But he genuinely didn’t remember! He had only casually joked about “hooking up”; he had never actually put it into practice!

No one believed him! He had ended up saddled with the title of a scumbag for no reason at all.

Lingzhou Wendi was completely fired up right now. Seeing Approaching Science finally speak, he irritably replied:

Lingzhou Wendi: [I’ve saved tens of thousands of people, do I have nothing better to do than memorize names?]

Approaching Science: [‘I think you dance quite well. In the future, maybe you can be my support.’]

Approaching Science: [Words you said yourself, the other party remembered for almost twenty years.]

Lingzhou Wendi’s brows slowly furrowed together.

He hadn’t partnered with anyone for a ritual in over twenty years. For the suburban sacrifices held by the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau every year, he was always the only one who came; no one could match his rituals.

Therefore, he wouldn’t easily say things like that.

“Almost twenty years”, and it was a demon.

Demons didn’t cultivate rituals. Sacrificial rituals were a cultivation method invented by humans and only suitable for humans. If a demon tried to learn this, it would be twice the effort for half the result.

He slowly dug up an old matter from his memories.

Over ten years ago, the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau and the Wan Yao Alliance had once conducted an exchange program aimed at easing relations between the two sides.

At that time, among the exchanged demons, there was a little butterfly demon studying ritual dance. She wasn’t learning it well. The humans laughed at her terrible dancing, and the demons who came with her also ridiculed her for insisting on learning a human’s cultivation method. When Da Wule walked by, he chimed in with those few sentences to help her out.

But it truly was only those two sentences! Before and after that, he never had any interactions with the other party—oh, Approaching Science said he saved her before, that was possible, but the number of humans, demons, and ghosts he had saved was vast like an ocean!

How wrongfully accused!

After remembering what had happened, Lingzhou Wendi leaned back and tugged at his collar with two fingers. Looking at the screen, he suddenly snorted a laugh.

When replying to him in the threads, it was all polite “yous”, but in the private messages, it had completely turned into casual “yous”.

The kid was really hard to tease.

Zhan Yan then clicked open Lingyu’s private messages.

Aside from gossip, Lingyu was looking for him for a task, asking him about that Corpse Flower Konjac demon.

The Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau couldn’t search for the Corpse Flower Konjac demon’s past tracks from within the alliance like the Wan Yao Alliance could, so investigating it would be a bit more troublesome.

Handing the Corpse Flower Konjac demon clone over to the Wan Yao Alliance for efficiency was one thing, but continuing to investigate on their own was another. If they stopped investigating after handing it over, would they still be called control freaks?

Zhan Yan looked at this task and hesitated for a moment.

He used to get along quite well with Lingyu, and the big shot Tianshi took good care of him too. However, his dad was the Wan Yao Alliance’s Chongming Demon King. When it came down to it, people naturally prioritized those closer to them.

The fact that the Corpse Flower Konjac demon was a traitor had infuriated his dad enough; if he provided Lingyu with more information from his end…

Zhan Yan tactfully stated that he planned to do this task for Luowang, so he would have to decline Lingyu’s side; he wouldn’t sell the same information to two different buyers.

Nie Yu: ???

Lingyu: [Is the Wan Yao Alliance offering a higher price?]

Lingyu: [How much are they offering?]

Lingyu: [I can increase it.]

However, Approaching Science didn’t reply.

Zhan Yan went to look for Luowang now. Luowang hadn’t issued him a task to investigate the Corpse Flower Konjac demon, but he prepared to ask proactively.

Taking a free job without a reward wasn’t entirely impossible either. Today, when integrating his dad’s gossip feeds, he discovered that all the tasks he accepted from Luowang awarded double points, and the extra points were all privately funded by his dad!

Wuwuwu, Dad is so good!

His dad didn’t even know that Approaching Science was his alt account. Was this the tacit understanding between a father and son? Even across the internet cables, his dad wanted to treat him well!

On the other end, since Lingyu hadn’t received a reply from Approaching Science, he went directly to poke Luowang.

Lingyu: [Hehe, your Wan Yao Alliance has fallen, hasn’t it? You can’t even investigate your own traitor internally and have to issue tasks to find outside help?]

Luowang was completely baffled.

Luowang: [What are you talking about?]

Lingyu: [Stop acting. I issued a task for Approaching Science to investigate the Corpse Flower Konjac demon, but he didn’t accept it, saying he was taking this task from you guys.]

Luowang: [?]

Luowang: [I didn’t issue him this task.]

Luowang: [We would never entrust this kind of internal traitor investigation to outsiders.]

Especially since this matter was exposed by the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau, the big shots within the alliance were furious, making it even more impossible to seek outside help.

Besides, now that the traitor had been caught and brought back by Chongming Demon King, what need did they have to find someone else to investigate?

Nie Yu bit his nails, pondering.

What Luowang said was more reasonable. If it were their Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau, they wouldn’t look for outsiders to search for a traitor either. But Approaching Science had no reason to lie…

At this time, Luowang received a private message from Approaching Science. After reading the contents of the message, her eyes lit up.

Oh~ hehe, pulling one back!

Luowang: [Approaching Science just contacted me.]

Luowang: [Asking me if we need the Corpse Flower Konjac demon investigated.]

Luowang: [He can help for free.]

Nie Yu: ?!

Why!!!