Feng Bujue opened his eyes to be greeted by the weak, soft light from inside of the gaming hub. Since he did not sleep the day before and the erratic sleep pattern that followed, his biological clock of sleeping from 4 am to noon that he had built over time was thrown for a loop.
At 2:30 am, he disconnected from the psychological connection and stepped out of the hub because he was struck by a sudden writing inspiration. Opening the door, he took the first step and felt a ball of something gooey and soft under his feet…
At the time, the room was very dark, and he was only wearing his socks. In the short moment, he already came to the correct deduction.
“If this is not cat poop…” He lowered his head. “What else could it be‽”
Twenty minutes later, he wiped the floor clean, washed the socks, and sat on the computer table, staring at Arthas, who looked at him like he had done nothing wrong. These days, personal privacy was a common thing; therefore, the building had a good sound proof system, or else Feng Bujue’s screaming, operating the washing machine, and mopping the ground would have sent his neighbors knocking on his door.
Arthas’ eyes released a green light in the dark, and looking at it for too long would be rather scary. Feng Bujue stared at the cat for a while before sighing. “I’ll deal with you tomorrow.”
He chased the cat off the table and opened the computer to start writing. He had not even started the draft for that month’s Hapless Detective and his Cat, so since he had some inspiration, he might as well make use of it and start writing. The issue with the Anomaly made Feng Bujue feel conflicted. “If the mere existence of a lifeform is a mistake, then what would the meaning of its existence be?”
This question circled around the man’s heart.
When he failed to grasp the answer, he would write about it inside his work—not because he was hoping to get the answer from the readers because he knew some things were unanswerable—he was merely sharing the conundrum with others. To put it simply, when he was caught up in an unsolvable problem, he would turn that problem that affected one person into one that affected many people. In the end, everyone would be dragged into the same position as him. In other words, it was the highest state of harming others without bringing benefit to oneself.
Of course, Feng Bujue could not write about his actual experience from the game in his story, so he had to set up a different plot to tell the Anomaly’s story from another perspective, adopting it into an arc within the Hapless Detective and his Cat.
Time flew as he focused on one thing. When he drew away from the story, he realized that the sun was already up, and the draft that he needed for this month was forming. Feng Bujue naturally could not have finished the whole draft within those five to six hours; he was merely constructing the frame. Even so, that was often the most demanding step. After completing this step, the rest was relatively easy. Filling in the content, editing, and then proof-reading! The editor would handle the quality control, but normally, Feng Bujue’s draft did not need any checking. He was one who valued his writing quality.
It was a Sunday, and the weather was nice. To Feng Bujue’s knowledge, Wang Tanzhi would volunteer at the kindergarten every Sunday, or to use Feng Bujue’s own words, it was to ‘spend more time with people his own age’.
Feng Bujue did not feel the same fire for voluntary work. Compared to a stand-up youth like Xiao Tan, if he really got involved in things like that… it was more likely for him to scare or be a bad example to the kids.
Speaking of Feng Bujue, the police station in his neighborhood knew his name well. Brother Jue was considered a legendary character there. For cases like a missing body at the hospital, the dog of a family giving birth to a cat, a child suddenly gaining the ability to smash a lightbulb using telekinesis, crop circles, or meteor pieces… As long as someone came to file a report about something supernatural, it was the right thing to find Feng Bujue. Usually, either he was responsible for it, it was related to him, or at the very least, he would be able to help them solve it.
Feng Bujue thought that this was not that bad. For someone like him who did not like to beg others for help but was willing to give others help, instead of saying that he was helping others, it was more like he enjoyed the feeling of ‘being needed’. To put it simply, he liked to have others come beg him, and this psychological thought had nothing to do with a sense of social justice—it was mainly his interest.
In any case, this Sunday was going to be a free day for Feng Bujue again. He only had gotten two hours sleep the previous night, and it was a dream-like sleep that was spent in-game. Then he continued to write until dawn. By then, he was quite sleepy. He yawned and crawled back to bed.
When he woke up, it was already noon. This time, Feng Bujue glanced to see if there were newly buried ‘mines’ from Arthas beside his bed. Thankfully, there were none, but he quickly ran into another when he walked into the living room.
As one who had once had a cat, he had the solution. First, he dragged Arthas to its creation and used both of his hands to hold the cat’s face to the feces. Then, before its eyes, he used a paper napkin to pick up the thing and placed it inside the litter box. He led Arthas to the litter box and patted its head to make sure it could recognize the location.
Only
Feng Bujue had tried to use this method when he was small to train his pet to use the human toilet, but it had ended with a failure. Reality proved that the flushing toilet was not designed with a cat in mind. If they were not careful, they would slip, and well…
After cleaning up the mess, he went to cook noodles for himself. He did not have much change left after buying breakfast yesterday, and Feng Bujue was literally penniless. Thankfully, he had Master Bao and Xiao Tan to treat him to two meals earlier to fill his stomach nicely. For the next nine days, until the next month when he could get his book royalties, those chances would not show up again, so he had to follow his meal rations closely and satisfy himself with soup noodles daily.
“Meow…” Arthas looked at Feng Bujue, who was cooking. It seemed to think that he was making something good and wanted a part of it.
Feng Bujue lowered his head to look at it. “Your cat food is far more delicious than this.”
Arthas seemed to understand him. It turned and jumped up the sofa to continue sleeping.
Ten minutes later, Feng Bujue carried his noodles to the computer and turned on the monitor. He logged into the forum for Thriller Paradise. Since who knew when, he had adopted the habit of watching or chatting when he ate, or else it would feel like he was wasting his life.
He just slurped down the first bunch of noodles when his eyes landed on the screen, and the first sentence at the top of forum almost made him cough the noodles out.
“As the number of players who have reached the maximum level during Closed Beta has passed ten percent of the total number of players, the server is now closed. We will perform the full upgrade in the next forty-eight hours and reveal the official Open Beta. Thank you.”
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