Pet King

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.