Pet King

Zhang Zian wanted to find a moment of leisure in his busy life.

He was heading off to the capital the next day, so that day was his last leisure time before he had to leave.

In the morning, Zhang Zian and the shop assistants finished cleaning and saw that it was still early. There were no guests for the time being, so they each went to find their own places to rest.

Lu Yiyun laid on the cashier’s desk, concentrating on painting. Even though she did not want to go out to sea to whale watch, she was unable to endure the urges of the rest of the people. She was hesitating as to whether she should join the rest to watch a movie at night, but that meant that she needed go to the cinema.

She had not gone to the cinema in a very long time. She often felt that it was kind of an exclusive place that had nothing to do with her, but she did not give a flat refusal. Instead, she thought about it over and over again.

Wang Qian was not using his phone to play games, which was rare for him. Instead, he was searching for different kinds of snacks from online retailers. It was a difficult chance to come by––to go out to sea to play for a day––and he definitely wanted to play for a long time. He wanted to play to his heart’s content.

Li Kun was next door choosing drinks to buy.

Jiang Feifei borrowed a camera from her classmates. It was best to bring a DSLR camera with a long focus lens. At sea, the shooting range of a phone camera was not enough. If they met whales but did not have any pictures, wouldn’t that be a pity?

Zhang Zian was reclined on the recliner chair with a Ge You posture, and was also playing his phone; however, he was not chatting with anyone and was not playing games. Instead, he was checking the forums.

Recently, he had been busy with things, so he did not have time to casually check through the Wang Haige Forum. Since that could be considered where his store grew from, he would occasionally go and bless it.

As he entered the pets section, he just happened to find a new post:

[High Salt Content]: “I want to buy a cat. Which local pet shop or cat house is most reliable?”

He suddenly felt refreshed, and his hands quickly typed out a reply.

[The Hottie Manager]: “Of course it’s the Amazing Fate Pet Shop on Zhonghua Road. The prices are affordable––they don’t cheat you of your money––and the most important thing is that the boss is very handsome! Right, is the host a beautiful woman? If you are a beautiful woman, it is not recommended that you go, because you could faint because of the boss’ handsomeness.”

He pressed “reply” contentedly.

He did not think someone would reply so fast.

[High Salt Content]: “Haha, it’s not a beautiful woman, it’s a rough man. Zhonghua Road right? All right, I’ve taken note of it.”

Immediately, there were other people replying.

[Projectile]: “What the f*ck! The rare elite has appeared. Everyone come and quickly kill it! Maybe a few cats and dogs will drop!”

[The Forehead Reflects Light]: “Silently watching a big scale, pretentious act fail in real life.”

[High Salt Content]: “??? What are you all saying? Is this some code that the pet section specially uses?”

[A Deadly Stone]: “I’ll be kind-hearted and tell the host: the first person who replied you is the owner of that shop. He is not handsome at all!”

Zhang Zian had already separated himself from that forum post, and went to browse other posts in the pet section. He would let them show off for a while, then in a while he would return to open up a group ridicule.

He was swiping his finger on the screen, and very quickly noticed another post.

[Fat Security Guard]: “Have you all heard about the cat abuse case at Shimen Street Primary School a few days ago?”

[Look At That Dog]: “I did not hear about it. What happened?”

[Strongest Paragraph Player]: “What? Even primary school children are abusing cats now?”

[Collapse The World]: “I heard about this incident. I live at Shimen Street, so I heard about it. I even went to the actual scene.”

[Fat Security Guard]: “Brother, talk about it.”

[Collapse The World]: “There’s actually nothing to talk about… You all know the bamboo forest behind Shimen Street Primary School, right? There are quite a lot of old people near there, so in the mornings, there are often old men or old women doing Tai Chi or kicking shuttlecocks. Since there isn’t any cement pavement, there is no one square dancing. I don’t know when it began, but it has become a base for stray cats. Sometimes people take things to feed the stray cats, but I personally don’t support it. When they do that, more stray cats will gather.

A few days ago, I heard that there were pupils abusing cats there. Teachers told parents that they needed to teach their children to not bully kittens––the kids could not catch up to the adult cats, so they could only bully kittens.

When I first heard of it, I thought it was just children being mischievous and throwing stones at kittens; however, this morning when I passed by that place on the way to work, I saw something squirming in the grass. I thought it was a kitten that had not opened its eyes. Upon seeing that there were no big cats around, I decided to go and help it.

I meowed to imitate the cat. There was a kitten that crawled out of the grass; it limped and crawled to where I was. As it crawled and crawled, it crawled incorrectly…”

[Fat Security Guard]: “Brother, why did you stop? Is it that the child broke the kitten’s legs?”

[Collapse The World]: “No, the kitten’s eyes had been dug out.”

[Strongest Paragraph Player]: “It couldn’t be, right? That’s so cruel.”

[Look At That Dog]: “F*ck! Are you sure a child did it?”

[Collapse The World]: “It’s practically confirmed, even though I did not see it with my own eyes. If I had seen it with my own eyes, I would definitely have stopped the child.”

[Fat Security Guard]: “It’s really that there are talented people coming out every generation, and each new generation takes the place of the old generation! Thinking back, when I was young, all I dared to do was pull on the grasshopper’s legs and use hot water to burn ants…”

[34562]: “Did no one bother about this incident? Are the parents not going to educate the child?”

[Collapse The World]: “Didn’t I say it just now that the teacher had issued a warning to the parents? There weren’t many parents that took it seriously, though… They only cared about the children’s grades. It seemed like there was a child who had been caught red-handed abusing cats, and the teacher had his parents come over… But his parents only lightly said, ‘He’s just a kid.'”

[Graceful Rhythm]: “My back turned cold after reading this. I predict that in 20 years, the China version of Hannibal will appear in Binhai City.”

[lxm]: “What you said was right. Many notorious serial killers started off with childhood animal abuse.”

[Dark Night MK]: “These parents are really… Sooner or later, there will be a day they regret it.”

[Wooden Horse]: “The vital part is that our country does not have a protection law for small animals currently… Even if an adult was caught abusing animals, the only punishment would be judgement.”

[Fat Security Guard]: “Migrate, migrate! Before this group of children grows up, I need to quickly move to another city. Does any nice person know which city has less perverted children?”

[Collapse The World]: “Speaking of that, I actually heard about something else.”

[Fat Security Guard]: “If it’s another case of a child abusing a cat, then forget it. My heart cannot take it anymore…”

[Collapse The World]: “That’s not it. After I heard about this case, I suddenly had an idea and compiled a web crawler program to collect relevant information with the keyword “cat abuse.” Guess what I found?”

[Look At That Dog]: “What?”

[Collapse The World]: “Our Binhai City’s local forum is Wang Haige Forum, and the rest of the big, medium, and small cities all have their own local forums. Usually, only locals go to these forums, and news only spreads and is discussed in these forums. The web crawler software I programmed searches through the local forums of other cities throughout the country. It found that cat abuse cases do not only exist in Binhai City.”

[Fat Security Guard]: “Brother, aren’t you just saying crap? It’s not possible that only Binhai City people do bad things!”

[Collapse The World]: “No, I haven’t finished saying what I want to say yet. I have compiled the cat abuse cases over the last three months, and I have found a very interesting phenomenon. Cat abuse cases have occurred frequently in all parts of the country in the past three months, but they are most concentrated in the eastern part of the country… Of course, it seems normal since the eastern region is densely populated with a lot of humans and cats, so having more cat abuses cases was also normal… However, the most interesting thing is that, if we count the number of cat abuse incidents and connect the cities with similar numbers together, we will find that the cat abuse cases seem to be occur with Binhai City as the center. From there, they radiate out to the whole country.”

[Fat Security Guard]: “…What does this imply?”

[Wooden Horse]: “With Binhai City as the center? When did Binhai City suddenly get a place as a first tier city in the country? Is this just a coincidence?”

[Collapse The World]: “I don’t know… I’m just truthfully describing the results after the web crawler collected information and filtered it. How to analyze these results, on the other hand, is not what I specialize at. Actually the original reason I created this web crawler program was to write a psychological paper concerning cat abuse, but the more I checked into it the weirder it became. The more I checked, the colder my heart became, and I could no longer write the paper anymore.”

[Fat Security Guard]: “Brother, I feel that you should continue writing it. If this paper is published, perhaps it could change the situation for the better.”

[Collapse The World]: “Haha, I know clearly my own worth. Even if the paper was published, it would be like a splash of a small stone thrown into the sea.”

[Fat Security Guard]: “Don’t underestimate yourself! I think you speak clearly and reasonably. The paper you write would definitely be excellent. Maybe you will even win a Nobel Prize in Psychology!”

[Collapse The World]: “…”

[The Hottie Manager]: “@Collapse The World, Can you send me a copy of the web crawler software you programmed? Would it infringe on your patent or copyright or something?”

[The Forehead Reflects Light]: “Oh ho! The pretentious shop manager has learned guerilla warfare and ran here to show off again.”

[Collapse The World]: “@The Hottie Manager, It’s not to the extent of infringing on my patent. This program is not really that complicated, and if you want it I can send it to you. What do you want it for?”

[The Hottie Manager]: “Because I’m interested in this cat abuse case, but I don’t want to do research like you. Instead, I want to find the law, and perhaps there will be a way to spread the news of such cases.”

[A Deadly Stone]: “@The Hottie Manager, This posing of yours is destined to fail! The person has already said that cat abuse cases are occurring all over the country. What are you going to use to stop it? Unless you pass a law right now, and it’s a law that is strictly enforced, there is no way to stop this!”

[Collapse The World]: “@The Hottie Manager, Check your private message.”

Zhang Zian’s gaze moved to the top right hand corner of the forum application. There was a small red dot there, showing that there was new message.

He entered the forum’s inbox and saw a new website’s short message there. The message was very short, only one sentence long.

[Collapse The World]: “The website does not allow me to send an attached file. Give me an email address.”

Zhang Zian liked that kind of efficient person. He instantly sent his email address over.

After a short while, his phone notification showed that he had received a new email. The email had multiple attachments.

The email body said, “The software can be used on the windows platform, and in the file there is the instructions on how to use it. Collecting data needs a certain amount of time, so you can first take a look at the data I collected. If you have something you are not sure of, you can contact me.”

Zhang Zian rolled out of the reclining chair and stood up, holding his phone. With a thump, thump, thump, he came to the living room on the second floor.

“Pi, let me use the computer for a while,” he said.

“Zhi zhi.” Pi saved the document it had yet to finish writing. It stretched and jumped down from the chair, walking in circles around the living room.

“Right, Pi… How about taking a few days off starting tomorrow?” he casually asked as he sat down and opened his email inbox.

“Zhi zhi?” Pi blinked its eyes, shocked.

“I’m bringing Famous to the capital to take part in the movie festival tomorrow. Why don’t we all go together and have fun? There should be quite a few interesting places in the capital… Haven’t you stayed at home since the Spring Festival when you went to the countryside to set off fireworks? Take this opportunity to go to the capital, take a look around, and learn. You must not only read ten thousand books, but you must also walk ten thousand miles,” he advised.

He could discuss it with the rest of the elfins later, but if Pi wanted to come along, it needed to ask for leave in its chapter that was set to be published that day.

Pi scratched its head, troubled. On one hand, it did want to go and have a fun trip with the rest, but on the other hand, it could not bear to stop its updates.

Zhang Zian let it consider for a while while he downloaded the files in the email to the computer. Just in case, he even did a virus scan…

The attachments included a web crawler program, an instruction manual, and even a zip file, which was all pictures.

He did a simple scan of the instruction manual. This web crawler program was specially used for searching for cat abuse cases, and the way to use it was quite simple; however, depending on the performance of the computer, it would take a long time. If it was an in-depth search, it would take even more time.

The notebook was bought a few years ago, and it could not be said to be a very high-performance computer. It was more than enough for Pi to type and write his stories, though. It was all right that it took a lot of time, anyway. Pi was practically on the computer from morning to night, and he could let the program slowly crawl in the background.

The only problem was that tomorrow, he was going out, and the results of the crawl could only be seen after he returned.

He unzipped the zip file, and on the desktop, a file that contained quite a lot of photos appeared.

The photos were from after [Collapse The World] had used the web crawler program. He had screenshotted the results he had found, and some were screenshots of parts of the paper he was writing.

[Collapse The World] had not been lying; he was really writing a psychological paper about cat abuse. In the screenshots, there were a lot of professional words that Zhang Zian could not understand.

In the last picture, it was a clear picture of the map of China. The map that was shaped like a cock was dotted with many cities, scattered like the stars in the sky, and many cities had been circled in red with different Arabic numbers written next to them.

The first city Zhang Zian found was Binhai City,

The red circle around Binhai City was thick and emphasized, and the numbers written next to it were even bigger than the numbers written for the other cities around it.

Not only Binhai City, but practically all the first, second, and third tier cities were also all circled in red. As for the fourth, fifth, and sixth tier cities, it was not that the small and medium cities did not have any cat abuse cases, but that they probably did not have their own local forums.

He was unaware that cat abuse cases had actually spread in a large scale towards the rest of the country, with Binhai City as the center.

The horrifying red color on the map shocked him until his whole forehead was full of cold sweat. The severity of the situation was beyond what he had imagined…

En?

He suddenly noticed a strange part of the map. A certain big city was not circled in red…

[Collapse The World] seemed to also not understand what was going on with that and had drawn a question mark next to the city.

The big city was the cock’s heart––the capital.