Pet King

Zhang Zian saw the message compiled by the editor. He savored it several times carefully, and in his heart, he felt an inexplicable sense of expectation. Had something changed?

Now the weather was warm, and he could go out wearing just a single layer. Without saying a word, he asked Pi to wait for a moment. He ran downstairs, opened the shutter door, and trotted to the Northside newsstand to buy newspapers.

He had gotten there early, and as expected, he managed to buy morning newspapers fresh off the printing press, smelling of ink.

Not in the headline, but in the corner of the front page, he found an article about the size of a tofu block, signed by Zhu Jisheng. The title of the article was “Literary Criticism Should Not Exceed the Proper Limits.”

It seemed to have been written in a hurry. It was rather short—not as long as the last one, but the overall meaning was very clear. It expressed that rather than being all-inclusive toward network literature, there should be specific analysis of specific issues to guide and support the healthy and orderly development of network novels. Traditional literature and network literature were not antagonistic toward one another and could play a mutually reinforcing role.

The end of the article obscurely indicated that the content of the previous article had contained a mistake. Pi’s novel should have been put on the list of recommended reading. However, due to the errors in writing and typesetting, it suffered unfair grievances. Here, the author wanted to express his sincere apologies to the novelist.

Zhang Zian finished reading in one breath and let out a long breath of relief. The dark cloud that had been pressing on his mind for many days was finally cleared away.

However, the explanation seemed suspicious. Was it really a mistake in writing and typesetting? With such a big name and such a large circulation of newspaper headlines, how could you send the manuscript to the editor without first proofreading it yourself? Considering this man’s age, it was not entirely impossible to make such a mistake, but… He kept feeling that it was quite weird.

He could not consider all of that now. He trotted all the way back to the pet shop with the newspaper, went up to the second floor, took the newspaper excitedly on his desk, and pointed to Pi to read it.

“Pi, there’s no need to worry, your novel’s situation has been reversed!”

“Zhi zhi?”

The listless Pi was frightened by him, and he read the article carefully under his continuous urging.

“Unexpectedly, you were injured by mistake, which is unfortunate enough—but thanks to good luck that came out of bad things, this person’s influence is great and you were recommended by name. The effect should be enough to compensate for the loss of the recommendation that was taken away before.”

“Zhi zhi?”

Pi was confused by a sudden twist and still did not dare to completely believe it.

Zhang Zian explained the stakes to it. This kind of newspaper was absolutely no joke. The obligatory message could also be used as side proof. In short, there was no longer any need to worry about it.

Pi repeatedly confirmed with him several times and got a positive answer. The expression on its face changed from dark to bright, and its whole body was full of energy. It remembered that today’s chapter had not been written yet, sat upright, and began typing with clicking-clacking sounds.

Among the elfins, only Vladimir was still sleeping, and at this moment, he was woken up by their speaking. He quickly rolled out from under the bed, scratching the back of its head with its claws and yawning, and asked, “It’s so early, what are you guys so excited about?”

Zhang Zian wanted to tell everyone the good news, and immediately answered, “Sorry, Vladimir, we woke you up. Pi’s novel was readdressed. The man who wrote the article published another, indicating that he had made a mistake before.”

“Oh, that’s very good.”

Vladimir was unmoved, like he had heard very ordinary information.

“The only part that is strange is that this man’s attitude changed from arrogance to humility,” he whispered while Pi wasn’t paying attention.

Vladimir smiled faintly. “It’s not surprising. People always change. Besides, he may have made a mistake before. Anyway, it’s good that everything is alright now.”

“It should be alright.” Zhang Zian hoped that it was.

The matter of Pi had come to an end for the time being. He just had to wait to confirm it with the editor-in-charge when the editor-in-charge came to work.

Vladimir randomly wiped its face, then flicked its tail and ran downstairs.

Zhang Zian looked at his cell phone. He had several unread messages from last night. In addition to the interview requests of media reporters, there was an email from [Collapse The World], who had not contacted him in a while.

He had met [Collapse The World] in Wang Haige Forum. This person had coded a web crawler program and had first discovered that cat abuse cases were spreading in the country.

That web crawler program had been placed in the automatic-startup list of the laptop computer. As long as Pi opened the computer to write a novel, the program would be running in the background, automatically collecting, analyzing, and sorting out cat abuse incidents in forums all over the country.

Now that he no longer needed this program anymore, he could find a time to delete it.

[Collapse The World]: I had some doubts at first, but you’re right. Through these days of observation, I found that cat abuse across the country is rapidly subsiding. The rate of its subsiding is like pouring a basin of cold water on a charcoal fire, almost completely extinguishing the fire. There are only a few embers still burning, which should be an apt example. I’m curious, how did you know in advance? Previously, you said that this is because the construction of socialist spiritual civilization has achieved results in phase. You were not serious, right?

[The Hottie]: [Comical face] Of course I’m serious.

He thanked the other party for sharing the crawler program generously, but it was inconvenient to explain the situation.

After the email was sent out, he did not expect the other party to reply to another email immediately. It seemed that this person had just woken up, or had not slept yet—with Zhang Zian’s understanding of the technological group of people, it was probably the latter.

[Collapse The World]: [Crying laughing face] Alright, since you aren’t planning on saying, I won’t chase you for answers anymore. After all, everyone has secrets.

[The Hottie]: [Comical face][Comical face]

Zhang Zian took this as a daily chat. He had never met [Collapse The World] before, and he knew little about the other, but he had met them in the forum due to the cat abuse incident. Now that the cat abuse had subsided, he expected that this may be his last contact with the other, and that they would slowly forget each other.

This was like friends in online games. No matter how lucky they were to meet each other, most of them would stop contacting each other with the decline of the game’s popularity, and they would finally forget each other completely with the closure of the game. The game was the link between them, just like the cat abuse incident was the link between Zhang Zian and [Collapse The World].

Zhang Zian had thought that, and used two [Comical face] as the ending, feeling that was quite good.

Unexpectedly, just as he put down his cell phone and was going downstairs to do his daily cleaning work, another email came from the other side.

[Collapse The World]: Although the cat abuse cases already have hints of ending, I want to remind you, the world is still in the state of collapse.