Pet King
Pet King - Chapter 1070-1071: Ten Sins

Chapter 1070: Ten Sins

Wang Qian was extremely tired. He was handling a customer that was difficult, and upon seeing Zhang Zian walk down the stairs, he hurriedly called him over.

Zhang Zian waved his hand. “I have something to do. Just deal with it however you deem fit.”

When he passed by the cashier counter, Lu Yiyun took up a stack of printer paper and said, “Mr. Shopkeeper, I just checked the stock in the storeroom. Take a look…”

Zhang Zian did not stop walking. “Just deal with it however you see fit. Things that need to be ordered, order them; things that need to be dealt with, deal with them.”

He quickly walked outside the shop, then jogged towards the north side. There used to be a newspaper stand that was open all year round, but he did not know if it was still there. After all, he had not bought newspapers in very long time.

“Mister, do you have the newspaper for today?” After he reached the stand, even though the newspaper stand was still there, what was on display were colorful manga magazines. They were mostly targeted at young women and secondary and primary school children. There were very few newspapers.

“What kind do you want?” the old man stretched his head out and asked as he flipped through a magazine.

Zhang Zian said the name of the magazine, and was confident the newsstand would definitely have the biggest newspaper that was the most distributed in the country. He did not expect the old mister to shake his head and say, “There’s no more. It’s sold out.”

“What? You don’t even have a single copy?” Zhang Zian felt disappointed in his heart and confirmed with the man again. He thought, Such a serious newspaper is so popular? Logically, besides middle-aged and older people, no one read it…

The man said, “Nope! That newspaper is hard to find, so I only order two copies every day. The nearby old people buy them. After it sells out every day, there aren’t anymore.”

Zhang Zian said, “No wonder… Do you know if there are any other places that sell newspapers nearby?”

“That I’m not so sure about. Go and find someone else to ask about that.” The man’s gaze landed on the newspaper again, and he ended the conversation.

Nobody read newspapers anymore. Newspapers and kiosks could no longer be described as a sunset industry. They were already dying sun industries. It was not easy to find another kiosk. Moreover, even if he found one, they may be sold out as well. He usually bought newspapers in the morning because they were organized by importance.

Zhang Zian was a bit troubled standing at the head of the street. He wondered whether he should use his public account to ask for help from his customers, like the last time when he was trying to find fresh crucian carp to help the mother cat produce milk… Out of all the people that followed his public account, there had to be one or two people that ordered that newspaper, right?

“What are you here for? Are you contacting the underground cats?”

When Zhang Zian heard a voice from behind him, he turned his head back and didn’t see anyone. He then lowered his gaze and saw Vladimir.

“What the heck are underground cats? I want to buy a newspaper, but this newsstand has sold out,” he replied.

“Newspaper? You still read the newspaper?” Vladimir looking down on him made him feel defeated, but he could not argue. He normally did not read the newspaper.

Zhang Zian coughed dryly and explained, “The main thing is that today’s newspaper has a piece of very important news. I want to find it to take a look.”

“What news? Did the country approve of the protecting small animals law?” Vladimir asked curiously.

“No… Not that fast. It’s actually something concerning Pi.”

Talking to a cat on the streets drew too much attention. He brought Vladimir to the alleyway and simply explained to it what had happened before it arrived.

“Oh, I understand now. You wait here for a while.” Vladimir understood. It instantly jumped onto a wall and disappeared.

A few minutes later, it jumped back down from the wall, a newspaper in its mouth. “Is it this one?”

Zhang Zian took the newspaper from its mouth. Although there were bite holes from its teeth, it was indeed the right newspaper.

“You really helped me a lot! Let’s go back. We can talk about it in detail when we get back.”

He did not ask about where the newspaper came from. He and Vladimir walked back to the shop, and when they passed by the cashier counter, he instructed Lu Yiyun, “I have something to do now. If someone is looking for me, say that I’m not here. I went out.”

Lu Yiyun nodded.

He whistled, and Zhan Tian, who had received orders, obediently laid at the bottom of the stairs to stand guard.

Upn entering the room, he first asked Pi, “Pi, how is it? Are there any changes?”

“Zhi zhi.” Pi was unable to sit still while it waited, and it anxiously shook its head.

Zhang Zian laid the paper down on the table, and Pi came over to take a look with him. Vladimir also jumped onto the table.

At the beginning of the article, the author briefly reviewed the birth and development of cyber literature and affirmed the influence of cyber literature. Followed by a turn of the pen, he listed ten crimes of cyber literature, such as overemphasis on entertainment, theme hollowness, subject repetition, vulgar content, similar details, strict style, lack of criticism, lack of correct values for teenagers, etc. It was even mentioned that website features were not clear, and editorial quality needed to be improved urgently.

What shocked him the most was what he saw at the end of the article. It had listed a few books that needed to be heavily critiqued, and one of the books was Pi’s short story.

After reading it carefully, Zhang Zian skimmed through it quickly again to prevent himself from missing anything. He was deep in thought.

To be fair, the ten crimes criticized in the article were not entirely empty. After all, flies did not bite seamless eggs. There were many people in society who complained about the vigorous development of online literature. It was not wrong to put forward criticisms. It took time for a new thing to move from disorderly to normal. But all the books that the article focused on were written by gods of literature, except for Pi’s novel. How could Pi’s novel be juxtaposed with them?

Besides, there were so many books on the website that clearly conformed to the ten counts. Why did the article focus on Pi’s novel? In Pi’s novel, besides Richard’s suspected vulgarity, other characters, including Zhang Zian, were all great and glorious characters that were not considered distasteful…

Anyway, the article used Pi’s novel as a target and harshly critiqued it, which was strange and unconvincing.

Pi read the article halfway and could not bring itself to continue reading. It was so sad it squatted in the corner and drew circles on the ground.

It was clear that the reason the recommendation was replaced at the last minute by other books due to the fact the article named and criticized Pi’s novel.

That was hard to deal with… An arm could not manage to squeeze more than a thigh, but that thigh was like an elephant’s leg. Its thin arms could not win the author over.

Zhang Zian sighed and wanted to find words to comfort Pi, but he could not find any suitable words no matter how hard he tired. Any book critiqued like that by a person that was such a famous figure in the country, even if it did not die, it would surely be skinned.

Vladimir finished reading the article slightly slower, then raised a paw and pressed it onto the name of the author. It asked, “Who’s this person called Zhu Jisheng?”

With Vladimir’s reminder, Zhang Zian took a look at the author of the article. But even though he did so, it was useless. He didn’t know this person, and he had never heard the name.

“It doesn’t matter who they are. Anyone who can publish an article in a newspaper of this scale will definitely be someone with a lot of influence.” Zhang Zian shook his head. “I think we should confirm with our editors how bad the issue is…”

“No, something’s not right,” Vladimir interrupted him, insistent. “We should check first who this person is, and what his motive was for doing something like this.”

Zhang Zian knew that Vladimir had a strategic mind, and there was no harm in checking either, so he opened the browser and entered that name.

They immediately got a shock from the results.

Zhang Zian sucked in a cold breath, muttering, “This is the ex-principal of the Nameless Lake University, and he is currently retired. He’s said to be a descendant of Zhu Xi, and his predecessors have always been scholars. He’s a smart and hardworking guy and has been since he was young. He had a lot of expectations from his family from a young age, and they had even broken tradition and named him ‘Ji Sheng,’ meaning ‘To learn the ways of the honored, and to bring peace to the world.’”

If Zhang Zian were to write his own resume, it might only be a few sentences long. But the information that you could check online about this person was at least a few thousand words long. Just his positions and responsibilities that he had held, or was currently holding, were around thirty, a dizzying amount. If you included the awards and honors that he had received too, you would lose the motivation to even be jealous and envious of him.

“Hahaha! That’s hilarious!”

Zhang Zian still hadn’t finished the whole list of titles, but Vladimir had already collapsed on the floor in laughter.

Pi was even more dumbfounded, even upset, thinking that Vladimir was making fun of it.

“This… Vladimir, why are you laughing? What’s so hilarious?” Zhang Zian asked, hinting to him to consider Pi’s feelings with his eyes.

Vladimir finally ended its maniacal laughter, standing up and saying a little hoarsely, “He’s just a scholar, and he dares pride himself on ‘To learn the ways of the honoured, and to bring peace to the world’? How dare he?”

Zhang Zian didn’t understand. “Don’t belittle this man,” he said. “A person with a great reputation definitely has some skills in them. From what we’ve checked online, this person’s definitely well-read and well-respected. He has students all around the world, within and outside of China. Many of them are working in the government, big organizations, or even the Fortune 500. He doesn’t have many public speeches, but each one would cause a ripple through the world!”

Vladimir’s smile gradually turned colder and colder. It raised a paw and slammed it firmly onto the tabletop to punctuate its next words. “I only know that if you walk the wrong path, the more you know, the more they will work against you!”

Zhang Zian said nothing.

It turned to Pi. “I respect authors because authors are engineers of the human soul,” it explained. “But I don’t like scholars because some of them only know how to twist the truth, write some weird passages that come from the depths of hell, and throw shade at people they don’t like! What ‘learning the ways of the honored’? These old men haven’t understood that times have changed and only care about upholding tradition even if they know better!”

Both Zhang Zian and Pi had their mouths hanging open.

He recalled Vladimir’s response the first time he saw Professor Wei Kang and its comment about Professor Wei Kang’s strong academia vibes, and he finally understood why… It had never liked scholars much in the first place.

But Wei Kang’s main focus was natural sciences, and those would never be outdated.

The more Vladimir talked, the more agitated it got, and it slammed its paw on the newspaper again, the fire in its eyes almost shooting out in a torch-like fashion.

“F*ck this! From what I see, he wants to f*cking make use of history!”

Pi had initially been very upset, but with Vladimir’s thunderous outburst, its shock had instead washed away those feelings.

“History has proven time and time again, and will keep proving in the future, that anyone who tries to stop the world from moving on will be unceremoniously run over by its wheels, no exceptions!” Vladimir declared, hysterical. “People like these should be f*cking released into Siberia to get their heads straight!”

It was weird—the fractious Zhang Zian had calmed down now. Maybe it was the influence of Vladimir’s bold spirit of wanting to fight against the world.

“How about this. Now that we know who did this, let’s contact the editor first and get to know the details, hm?” Zhang Zian was worried that Vladimir would be too excited and tried to suggest something to cushion its feelings.

He was worried about Pi too. No one would know better than him how much Pi had put into this novel. He couldn’t just take this beating that came without rhyme or reason. But what could knowing who the culprit was do? All they could do was try and salvage what was left of the situation and see if they could recoup some of their losses.

Pi nodded in agreement. It was calm, unlike Vladimir, who blew up with the smallest flicker of a spark.

Zhang Zian clicked on the editor’s icon and started typing. “I’ve seen the newspaper. Is the situation dire?”

After a moment, the bald monk display picture blinked again, and the notification bell rang.

The editor replied, “It’s not looking good. Even the editing team has been receiving pressure from all around. We have to take care of this situation subtly. We will also try to tell our higher-ups about the situation, and I believe they will bring us justice.”

Zhang Zian read the paragraph a few times, trying to peel back all its layers to understand what it truly meant. First, due to the fact that the article had also brought up the fact that the editing quality still left much to be desired, the editing team had gotten significant pressure too. Next, taking care of it subtly meant that they would have to lie low, and the novel wouldn’t get into any “Recommendation” slots in the near future. Lastly, the editing team was trying their best to use their connections to report the situation back to their superiors, hoping to turn the situation around.

Even though the arrow was pointed at Pi’s story, this wasn’t actually aimed at Pi. Instead, it was a jab at the whole online novel community, and none of the online authors could escape from it. It was just that Pi had ended up as the sacrificial lamb to put on a demonstration for the rest of the community…

The impact to them was too sudden and too heavy. As for whether they could turn the situation around, they didn’t seem too confident either.

“Cheep cheep?” Pi asked Zhang Zian about the situation.

Zhang Zian tried to comfort it using the bright side of things and encourage it to not give up. But even he found his words empty, since the situation had already been blown out of their hands and control.

It was only after doing his best that Pi’s emotions finally crawled out of the pit.

Wang Qian had already called him from downstairs several times, and he had to go downstairs to take a look. But he suddenly realized that Vladimir had gone missing yet again.