GRMFBS CH75

Zhan Yan began eating the gossip about the Ghost King Wan Yan.

Wan Yan Cat had been living quite happily lately.

College students were so energetic! Knowing there was such a wish-granting spirit cat, they played all sorts of tricks, even mimicking offerings by setting out three bowls for him: fish strips, chicken strips, and milk. They placed a small incense burner in front of the bowls with three sticks of incense. The college students bowed to him devoutly.

Wan Yan crouched on the stone pedestal at the foot of the campus’s great figure statue, cooperating perfectly by staying completely still, his golden eyes looking down disdainfully at the bowing students.

Hmph, good taste!

Make your wish! Seeing as you’re the first to treat this lord with such solemnity, as long as your wish isn’t excessive, this lord will help you!

The student didn’t make a wish. After finishing filming their video, they happily posted it on social media and tried to reach up to pet the cat’s head: “The wish cat is so well-behaved! It didn’t move at all just now!”

Wan Yan Cat: Claws out!

The student pulled their hand back and took out their phone to film the cat showing its claws.

Caption: “Wish kitty won’t let me pet [longing emoji]”

Wan Yan glanced at them coolly, jumped down from the platform and left. What terrible fish strips and chicken strips! Even the milk was watered down! He didn’t care for it!

Heaven knows, the college student wasn’t that stingy – the milk came out of the carton like that.

Wan Yan left, planning to find Zhan Yan. After trying this and that, this human’s cat food still suited his taste best.

A calico cat that had been hiding nearby darted up and ate the offerings Wan Yan hadn’t touched until its belly was round, drank half the bowl of milk, and even carried off a few pieces of dried meat.

Before jumping down from the platform, its wild gaze swept around the area below.

Hidden under unnoticed bushes and behind decorative street lamps were stray cats, one after another. They waited for this fierce calico to leave so they could jump onto the stone platform and share the remaining food.

But Ghost King Wan Yan hadn’t forgotten his main business. As soon as Zhan Yan logged onto the Chaofan Forum, he saw his post looking for the Ghost King Lin Yuan:

{@Admin WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat
@Admin WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat
@Admin WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat}

He had now learned to @ people, performing the great summoning technique once a day. Now, everyone knew that “WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat” was the Ghost King Lin Yuan’s account.

No wonder the Chaofu Mountain admin never appeared! He was hiding from the Ghost King Wan Yan!

The crowd was enthusiastic about eating this gossip, but currently there was only a one-sided monologue – not enough drama to sink their teeth into!

The forum built quite a tall thread:

“I’m so anxious I’m so anxious I’m so anxious! What exactly is this gossip about! Why does the Ghost King Lin Yuan keep avoiding the Ghost King Wan Yan!”

Some helped @ Admin_WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat, others @ed him.

“@ApproachingScience come help crack this gossip open!”

Zhan Yan: What could he reveal? Say that the Ghost King Wan Yan is a cat and the Ghost King Lin Yuan is a fish, so it’s normal for the cat to chase and fish to flee?

After browsing just a few gossip posts, Zhan Yan received a private message from Fang Pai.

Fang Pai: “Have you heard the rumors about ‘Infinite Treasure’?”

Zhan Yan hadn’t heard of it, but the word “infinite” had already triggered his associations. He began searching in the gossip system.

Fang Pai continued explaining: “Hacker discovered it through some hidden channels.”

Hacker was network-type. The Chaofan Forum wasn’t the only community where Chaofan beings gathered online – it was just the largest and most orthodox.

There were quite a few communities privately built by other network-type ability users. Hacker had discovered this through these channels.

“Infinite Treasure” – something that supposedly could enhance abilities, even increase them. This news had been circulating for about the past few days, accompanied by some ambiguous evidence, but had already gotten many people’s hearts racing.

Hacker had initially been tempted too. Then he went back to search the Chaofan Forum and found there wasn’t a whisper of it there, but some seemingly preparatory posts had begun appearing sporadically. These posts individually seemed innocuous, but after learning about “Infinite Treasure,” he realized these posts were actually priming people’s emotions – preparing to whip up a frenzy when the “Infinite Treasure” news moved from underground to the surface.

Hacker began to feel something was off about this whole thing.

Zhan Yan searched through the gossip system and pretty much figured out what was going on.

The news that the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau was recently looking for infinite fragments had been leaked – with their behavior of going everywhere looking for people to do tasks, it would have been impossible not to leak! So there appeared a group wanting to muddy the waters, as well as others with hidden agendas.

He immediately went to find Luo Wang – who knew who was actually using that Ling Yu account lately!

Luo Wang took it seriously and contacted Hacker. They quickly found those suspicious accounts, traced all their main and alternate accounts, and banned them all in one sweep.

The front page posts suddenly cleared out a small section, and many floors under other posts also emptied considerably.

Luo Wang’s post-clearing was quickly discovered, and soon someone made a post asking – those posts seemed fine, why ban the original posters?

Clearing posts was for fishing.

Luo Wang was a dream demon who could directly trace desires. This rare ability allowed her to sniff out some of the essence behind accounts that had posted, even through Jin Gang Ming Wang’s unmoving mountain protection.

Behind those seemingly innocent posts lurked intense and similar malicious intent.

Before banning the accounts, Luo Wang had already packaged these suspicious accounts for others to investigate. Her ability let her identify all accounts belonging to the same person. She banned all these accounts together. The banned people couldn’t post anymore, so how would they know she had not only cleared posts but also banned accounts?

Luo Wang fished a while longer, and after catching no new fish, repeated the same operations again.

Zhan Yan delegated the task to official personnel, but didn’t stay idle himself. He went through the list one by one, eating gossip to see if he could catch any clues to root out the troublemakers.

Then he ate some major gossip!

The Chaofan Forum had tight security, so these people didn’t dare cause trouble there, using methods that exploited psychological weaknesses instead. But in other smaller communities it was different – they used curses!

Using curse power to stir up the darkness in human hearts, compelling those affected to act according to their wishes.

The big gossip was: this curse power came from the Ghost King Lin Yuan!

Zhan Yan hurriedly searched around and confirmed this matter had nothing to do with the Ghost King Lin Yuan, nor with Wan Yan Cat. But he couldn’t find the reason and could only look for the Ghost King Lin Yuan – he might have clues.

He went to private message “WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat” but found the Ghost King Lin Yuan’s private messages were closed. So he went to find Luo Wang.

Admin Luo Wang: “His private messages have always been closed. We have the same permissions, I can’t contact him either.”

You could say he was hiding from Wan Yan quite thoroughly.

Luo Wang pointed him in another direction: “Ling Yu is network-type, should be able to make contact.”

But who knew who was actually behind that Ling Yu account now. Even if it was “Network Ghost” himself, Zhan Yan worried it might be the type where a whole group was watching the screen. Zhan Yan didn’t quite trust the Abnormal Affairs Management Bureau right now.

No choice, Zhan Yan made a post, @ing Admin WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat.

The forum was a mixed bag – he couldn’t put this matter directly up there. So how could he get the Ghost King Lin Yuan’s attention?

{I know where the Salty Party Hungry Ghost is. @Admin WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat}

That hungry ghost who had been harmed by garbled anomaly no. 1 was in the hands of the former Ghost King, who was the Ghost King Lin Yuan.

The Ghost King Lin Yuan was most afraid of being found by the Ghost King Wan Yan. Hinting that he knew the Ghost King Lin Yuan’s address should be able to fish him out.

By occasionally cracking gossip on the forum, the Approaching_Science account had some heat on the forum. Plus the title @ed the currently hot Ghost King Lin Yuan, so people quickly replied.

2F: Waiting for the gossip!

3F: What does the title mean? I don’t understand?

4F: What’s a Salty Party Hungry Ghost? Do hungry ghosts divide into salty and sweet parties too? Do any of you know hungry ghosts?

5F: Actually sounds quite reasonable. Shouldn’t hungry ghosts be divided into factions based on food taste preferences?

6F: Why @ the Ghost King Lin Yuan? Has the Ghost King Lin Yuan been dividing hungry ghosts into sweet and salty parties during his missing years?

8F: So the Ghost King Lin Yuan is looking for Salty Party hungry ghosts because he’s salty party?

9F: The Ghost King Lin Yuan is hiding from the Ghost King Wan Yan because the Ghost King Wan Yan is sweet party?

12F: The Ghost King Wan Yan is looking for the Ghost King Lin Yuan because of the sweet-salty party conflict?

Since this gossip had always lacked reaction from the other party, and the Ghost King Wan Yan only made noise looking for people without revealing gossip, everyone wasn’t very hopeful about whether this gossip could be consumed anymore. So the joking netizens began to play around.

15F: I think simply dividing by sweet and salty parties isn’t very reasonable. Should be refined and precise, can’t be sloppy. So, what does everyone think about dividing by the eight major cuisine systems?

16F: Above poster, the hungry ghosts will riot! Can’t there be those who like several cuisine systems simultaneously?

18F: @Wan Yan boss are you sweet party?

…

ApproachingScience never opened the gossip for everyone, but nobody minded much – everyone was having fun playing around.

36F “WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat”: @ApproachingScience what do you want to say?

37F “ApproachingScience”: @Admin WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat open private messages to chat.

40F: Wait??? What did I just scroll past?!

41F: The Ghost King Lin Yuan replied!!!

43F: Ahhhhh!!! Is this the Ghost King Lin Yuan’s first appearance on the forum??

45F: Why why why? How exactly did Approaching_Science fish out the Ghost King Lin Yuan?

46F: Is “Salty Party Hungry Ghost” some kind of code? Any deeper meaning? Any hungry ghost friends come analyze this quickly!

47F: @Wan Yan come quickly! The Ghost King Lin Yuan appeared!

49F: @Wan Yan so is the Ghost King Lin Yuan really hiding because of the sweet-salty party conflict??

In the following floors madly @ing Wan Yan, the Ghost King Wan Yan quickly appeared.

68F “Wan Yan”: @Admin WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat Come out!

69F “Wan Yan”: @Admin WouldRatherDieThanOwnACat I want private messages too!

However, even though Wan Yan single-handedly pushed the floor count past one hundred, the Ghost King Lin Yuan never replied.

121F: The Ghost King Lin Yuan publicly interacted with Approaching_Science but ignored the Ghost King Wan Yan.

122F: So sad. Lighting candles.