Pet King
Pet King - Chapter 1068-1069: The Gale Has Rise

Chapter 1068: The Gale Has Rise

Zhang Zian saw the game hint. He felt that it was unexpected, but it also made sense. When Famous won the prize at the Berlin Film Festival, he gained a lot of belief power and was upgraded to the epic level. The power of belief was the experience value of the game. Although there was a gap between each level, it couldn’t hold up the large population of China. It was not boasting that it was much greater than the whole of Western Europe… Even if someone only had a little bit of strength, they could condense it into a super vigorous bomb…

Wait a minute, it seemed like he had changed to another scenario. Following that, the game displayed two more hints.

[Game Hints]: Your reincarnated dog is epic right now. After leveling up, it will become epic/legendary.

[Game Hints]: Do you want to level it up now? If you choose “no,” you can level it up at any time.

[Yes, No, Remind Me Later]

Seeing the game hints, Zhang Zian could not help but think. Famous had mentioned that it had a strange dream. It felt that its body was full of strength and confidence. Famous had thought that it could control the direction of its dream while it was still in its dream. Was that related to it reaching the standard for upgrading? Wasn’t that too much of a coincidence?

If he let it level up, it would mean that he would be setting it free for the next step… Was it a good thing or a bad thing to let it have stronger control over its dreams?

He knew the danger of being addicted to dreams. After all, many science fiction stories used VR games as an example to illustrate that point. If people indulged in dreams, it was really dangerous, because people’s desires were too strong and too complex. Any one of the seven emotions and six desires could make people sink forever. But… would Famous indulge in them?

Famous had been addicted before and had risen from hell to a happy heaven. It had fallen from heaven to a hell of amnesia. It had suffered and experienced prosperity. It had gone from a whipping dog that was an understudy to a superstar riding in the most luxurious cars, chewing the most delicious western food, tasting 1882 Lafite, wearing the most expensive diamond necklaces, and living in a luxury house that was like a palace… It could be said that whatever a dog could enjoy, it had enjoyed, and whatever a dog could suffer, it had also suffered––not in its dreams, but in reality.

But all of that did not make it feel happy. Instead, it felt pain because humans called it by a foreign name. It had had a multitude of different roles in movies but had lost itself in the end.

If every movie was a dream, then it had dreamed enough––so much so that it could describe the fickleness of the world in a sentence. As a result, Famous could probably resist the temptation of falling into its dreams. There was nothing in the dream world that could cause it to be immersed… Or, taking a step back, even if it could not resist the temptations of the dream world and was immersed in it, Zhang Zian had confidence that he could pull it out of its dream.

After hesitating a bit longer, Zhang Zian pressed “Yes.”

Once Famous had leveled up to epic/legendary, it did not have any strange feelings. It ate a dog biscuit that cleaned its mouth and then yawned as it went downstairs. Perhaps it would only notice the difference when it dreamed again.

******

The other end of Binhai City. Early morning.

Jiang Tianda buttoned up his sleeve as he walked downstairs. He had already changed into his suit pants and a white button-up shirt. After he put on his suit jacket, he could leave.

A western-style breakfast consisting of salad, toast, fried eggs, roasted sausage, and coffee had been arranged on the table, and for Snowy’s breakfast, the coffee had been replaced by orange juice.

“Snowy! Are you out of bed yet? Hurry! Come downstairs and eat!” Shi Rong yelled towards the stairs.

About half a minute later, Snowy’s lazy reply came from upstairs, “All right.”

After a few minutes, she slowly came downstairs wearing her pajamas and carrying Snowball. A few strands of Snowy’s hair curled up disobediently. It could only be imagined how bad her sleeping posture was.

Snowball’s breakfast had already been prepared in the form of ready-made canned cat food poured into a plastic bowl. Snowy put Snowball down and sat on her seat heavily, closing her eyes to continue to doze. Shi Rong started to scold and nag Snowy for going to sleep too late the night before. She nagged her until all her sleepiness was gone.

The Jiang family’s situation was similar every morning. If Snowy married into someone else’s household one day, there would be a very cold atmosphere in the morning. The old husband and wife tacitly understood each other like one’s left hand understood their right. It was unnecessary to say a word during the entire breakfast. Jiang Tianda was wondering if he wanted to recruit a son-in-law to marry into the home, but the question was, which promising boy would be willing to marry into his wife’s household?

Sigh… His expression did not change as he sighed.

Jiang Tianda had always eaten quickly. It was a habit left over from when he was in the army, and even when Shi Rong reminded him to eat slowly, he still ate his breakfast very quickly. When he was done, Snowy’s breakfast had yet to be touched at all.

He ate very cleanly and did not waste any food at all. After eating, he did not instantly leave the dining table. Instead, he held up his coffee and flipped through the newspaper. Reading newspapers was his daily compulsory chore. Although it was convenient to read news through mobile phones, some things could only be seen in newspapers––especially the core publications of the party and government agencies, which had always been an indicator of where politics and the economy were heading. Policy adjustment and economic transformation often began with signals that could be seen in the newspapers.

A cold wind had yet to move, but the cicada had already been awakened, and uncertainty would cause it to die without knowing why. In other words, a successful entrepreneur had to understand the hints between the lines. Otherwise, he would not even know he had died.

He was about to take a sip of coffee, but his hand stopped. His eyes were fixed on the article on the front page of the biggest newspaper in China. The headline read, “Ten Batches of Online Literature,” and the article had been written by an author by the name of Zhu Jisheng.

Jiang Tianda quickly looked through the article and put down the unfinished coffee. His heart had a shadow over it. He had nothing to do with network literature, but many of the views in the article were applicable to new things such as network literature and live broadcasting.

“What are you looking at me for? Is it just that my hair is sticking up?” Snowy noticed he was looking at her and pressed down heavily on the curled hair.

“Are you still going to live broadcast today?” he asked.

“Don’t worry. I don’t plan to right now.” She thought he wanted to scold her and pursed her lips unhappily.

Shi Rong hurriedly said, “Don’t go out today––it could rain. If you get wet and come down with the flu, you’ll be crying again!”

Snowy pouted. “When did I cry?”

Jiang Tianda picked up the napkin covering his legs and placed it on the table. He stood up and said, “I’m leaving. You two eat slowly.”

“Workaholic!” Snowy muttered.

Shi Rong walked him to the door and helped him put on his suit jacket. She pulled the ends of his shirt to straighten the non-existent wrinkles.

The car was already waiting outside, and his assistant helped him open the car door. The assistant said, “The speech for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference has been prepared. It’s in the car. Please have a look.”

“Okay.” Before getting into the car, Jiang Tianda looked up at the sky and saw that it was filled with gray clouds. The sky was changing.

Half of the calm day passed by in the blink of an eye.

From morning to afternoon, everything pretty much went on as usual. The store was busy, and there were people walking in and out.

Following the end of Dog Warrior’s airing, the fever brought on by the movie started to wane, too. But Famous would never be forgotten by people. It would only fade until its next movie blew up the box office again.

Zhang Zian ran back and forth between the two shops, helping clients choose their pets at the pet store one minute and helping the clients at the aquarium with their man-made decorations the next minute. Even his lunch time was really late in the afternoon.

Just because aquariums were slow moving goods, that didn’t mean they would be a burden. Their profit margin was relatively high since they were usually sold in a whole set. With the aquarium machinery, corals, sand, and aquatic animals sold in a package, they could usually sell them for thousands of dollars.

After he finished his lunch, it was already late afternoon. This time period was usually the quietest in the shop. Everyone was resting, and very few people came in at this time, even the ever zealous reporters. Besides, the weather wasn’t too good today. It had been cloudy for the whole period, and the threat of rain hung over their heads, so their customers were even fewer.

Wang Qian and Li Kun were playing mobile games in the corner. Lu Yiyun was focused on her drawing with Jasmine in her hands. Due to the fact that there had been too many customers recently, her illustration work had been piling up. Jiang Feifei next door was chatting with her classmates about employment, exams, love, and gossip—such topics that university girls liked to talk about. Even though she wasn’t that interested in those, it wouldn’t be good to seem too uncooperative.

Even the elfins were all napping. It was quiet in the room.

The ever-carefree Vladimir wasn’t in the shop either. Who knew where it had gone? But that was a common occurance too.

Seeing that there was nothing much to do in the shop now, Zhang Zian planned to return upstairs to take a nap and recharge his drained batteries.

Even the second floor was quiet. There were no sounds coming from the bathroom. Sihwa might still be asleep too.

“Pi, don’t always sit and stare at the computer. Everyone’s napping, so you should too. Resting never gets in the way of doing productive work.” Zhang Zian sat on his bed, getting ready for his nap.

But Pi didn’t reply to him with its usual “Cheep cheep,” and neither was it focused on typing. Instead it stared at the computer, spacing out.

Sensing that it seemed a bit off, his desire to sleep completely dissipated. He stood up again immediately even though he had already lay down, walking over to it to ask, “What’s wrong, Pi?”

Pi looked up at him, lost, and pointed at the computer screen, helplessness filling its eyes.

Zhang Zian took a look. The Chinese version of the Qidian Website was open. There were many fixed “Recommended” spots on the website. The more visible the spot, the more effective the advertisement—that, he already knew.

He thought initially that something had gone wrong with the website, but it seemed to be working normally.

“What is it, Pi? What’s wrong?” he asked again.

Pi finally came back to reality, taking the mouse to click on the author’s platform.

There was a message from two days ago, saying that at 2 p.m. today, its work would be put onto one of the “Recommended” slots on the website, and for it to continously update. If there was anything urgent, it should contact the editor in charge.

He looked at the time on the bottom right hand corner of the screen. It was already past 2 p.m.

Pi went back to the main page again.

This time, Zhang Zian finally understood. Pi’s book should have showed up on one of the recommended pages, but those spots were all taken by other books.

“Cheep, cheep?”

Pi gestured, meaning to ask, “Was there a mistake somewhere?”

Zhang Zian pulled a chair over, double-checking the time in the message and the novels on the “Recommended” slots. He gave it a thought before consoling Pi. “Pi, don’t panic. There might be some delay since it’s only a little past 2 p.m. Maybe your novel will only be updated later.”

These situations could happen occasionally. There were too many novels on the website, after all. Hundreds of thousands of books were updated every day, and the change of novels in the “Recommended” slots had to be personally done by the editors and staff. It was entirely possible that something might have happened to cause the delay.

Pi nodded, accepting his explanation, but it still continuously refreshed the webpage, its eyes staring at the position where its book should be appearing.

Zhang Zian had completely lost the urge to nap and sat by it, chatting occasionally, hoping to at least soothe some of its anxiety and uneasiness.

But even after half and hour of waiting, there was no change on the webpage at all.

Pi got more and more panicked, and even Zhang Zian couldn’t sit still anymore. There was a limited time they could have the “Recommended” slot, after all. They couldn’t just sit there and wait like idiots.

“Pi, contact the editors,” he suggested. “Didn’t the message say to contact the editors in case of any emergencies? Besides, the editors are there to help authors with their problems.”

Pi still hesitated.

“Then I’ll contact them for you.”

Zhang Zian knew that it was not familiar with interacting with people, so he volunteered to accomplish the task.

Pi jumped off the chair and waved its hand, asking him to sit before the computer.

Zhang Zian found the picture of the bald monk in its list of contacts. This was the editor in charge of Pi. Every editor had a few hundred authors under their care, and they were bombarded with work every day. They didn’t have time to chat with their authors, so Pi tried to not bother them.

He drafted a message summarizing the problem, subtly trying to hint at whether it was a mistake made by one of the staff, and asking them to take care of the issue on its behalf.

After the message was sent, he consoled it again. “Most likely it’s a member of the staff that missed it and forgot to put your novel up. We should be able to solve it soon.”

Pi nodded, but it was still nervous, and it couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t that simple.

Not too long later, the bald monk’s photo lit up, and the ping from the message box rang from the speakers.

“There’s a reply!”

Zhang Zian and Pi both perked up, immediately clicking on the message to open it.

The thing that shocked them both was that the editor didn’t reply to them with words or emojis. He had instead had sent a photo over.

What was with that?

Zhang Zian opened the photo, puzzled, to look at it more clearly.

The photo was taken with a phone. It was the front page of a newspaper.

He knew this newspaper. It was the most influencial newspaper in the entire country. The main headline was clearly printed out: “Ten Criticisms of Online Writing.”

Zhang Zian and Pi looked at each other. What was with the cryptic message?

Even though they hadn’t understood what was going on, the issue was clearly on this newspaper.

The photo wasn’t too clear, and it didn’t show the whole article.

Zhang Zian patted Pi’s shoulder, comforting it. “Wait here. I’ll go out to buy a newspaper. I’ll be back. Don’t worry, the world isn’t going to end.”