Zhang Zian read the editor's message and carefully read it. He had an inexplicable sense of expectation. Did things change?
The weather was warm now, and he could go out in just an unlined shirt. Without hesitation, he asked Pi to wait for a while, ran downstairs, opened the shutter door, and trotted to the newsstand in the north to buy a newspaper.
He came early today, and sure enough, he bought the freshly baked morning paper.
Although it was not the headline, he found an article the size of a tofu block in the corner of the front page. The signature was very familiar. It was Zhu Jisheng again. The title of the article was "Literary Criticism Should Not Be Overcorrected."
This time, it seemed to be written in a hurry. It was relatively short, not as long as the last time, but the overall meaning was very clear. It expressed that online literature should not be one-size-fits-all, and should be analyzed in detail. It was necessary to guide and support the healthy and orderly development of online novels. Traditional literature and online literature were not opposites, and could play a role in promoting each other.
At the end of the article, it vaguely indicated that the content of the previous article was ambiguous. Pi's novel should have been on the recommended reading list, but due to errors in writing and typography, it was wronged. Here, it expressed its sincere apology to the author of the novel.
Zhang Zian finished reading in one breath, and let out a long sigh of relief. The haze that had been pressing on his heart for many days was finally swept away.
However, this person's explanation seemed very suspicious. Was it really an error in writing and typography? With such a big name and a headline article in such a widely circulated newspaper, how could he not proofread it first before sending it to the editor? Considering this person's age, it was not entirely impossible for him to make such a mistake, but … it just felt weird.
There was no time to think so much now. He took the newspaper and trotted all the way back to the pet shop. When he reached the second floor, he excitedly slapped the newspaper on the desk and pointed at it for Pi to read.
"Pi, don't worry, your novel has been corrected!"
"Eeek?"
The listless Pi was startled by Zhang Zian. It read the article carefully after Zhang Zian urged it to.
"I didn't expect you to be injured by accident. You're really unlucky. But it's a blessing in disguise. This person's influence is so great. Being recommended by him should be enough to make up for the loss of my recommendation spot."
"Eeek?"
Pi was confused by the sudden turn of events. It still couldn't believe it.
Zhang Zian explained the stakes to it. This kind of newspaper would never joke, and the message left by the editor could also be used as proof. In short, there was no need to worry anymore.
Pi repeatedly confirmed with him several times, and after getting a positive answer from him, the expression on its face turned from gloomy to sunny, and it was full of energy. It remembered that it hadn't finished writing today's chapter, so it sat up straight and started typing.
Among the elfins, only Vladimir was still sleeping. At this time, he was also awakened by their voices. He rolled out from under the bed, scratched the back of his neck with his claws, yawned, and asked, "It's so early in the morning. What are you all so excited about?"
Zhang Zian couldn't wait to tell everyone the good news. He immediately replied, "I'm sorry, Vladimir. I woke you up. In fact, Pi's novel has been vindicated. The person who wrote the article previously published an article again, saying that he had made a mistake."
"Oh, that's good."
Vladimir was unmoved, as if it had heard a very common piece of news.
"Well, the only suspicious point is that this person's attitude changed from arrogance to humility. It seems a bit strange," he whispered when Pi wasn't paying attention.
Vladimir smiled faintly. "That's not strange. People are fickle. Besides, he might have really made a mistake before. Anyway, it's good that it's okay."
"It should be okay." Zhang Zian sincerely hoped that was the case.
Pi's matter had temporarily come to an end. He just had to wait for the editor to come to work to confirm with the editor.
Vladimir randomly wiped its face, then wagged its tail and ran downstairs.
He looked at his phone. A night had passed, and there were a few more unread messages. In addition to the interview requests from media reporters, [Collapse the World], who he hadn't contacted for a while, sent an email.
[Collapse the World] was someone he knew from the Wang Haige forum. This person had written a web crawler program, and was the first to discover that cat abuse incidents had spread throughout the country.
The web crawler program had been placed in the self-starting list of the laptop. As long as Pi turned on the computer to write a novel, the program would always run in the background, automatically collecting, analyzing, and sorting out cat abuse incidents in forums all over the country.
There was no longer a need for this program now. He could just find a time to delete it.
[Collapse the World]: I had my doubts at first, but you're right. Through these few days of observation, I found that the cat abuse incidents throughout the country were rapidly subsiding. The speed of subsiding was like a basin of cold water being poured on a charcoal fire. The fire was almost completely extinguished, and only a few sporadic sparks were still burning. This should be an exception. I'm very curious. How did you know in advance? Previously, you said that this was due to the progress made in the construction of socialist spiritual civilization. You shouldn't be serious, right?
[The Hottie]: [Funny] Of course I'm serious.
He thanked the other party for generously sharing the crawler program, but it wasn't convenient to explain the inside story to the other party.
After the email was sent, he didn't expect the other party to immediately reply with another email. It seemed that this person had also woken up, or perhaps he hadn't slept yet — based on Zhang Zian's understanding of technology geeks, it was most likely the latter.
[Collapse the World]: [Cry] Alright, since you don't intend to say it, then I won't ask. After all, everyone has their own secrets.
[The Hottie]: [Funny] [Funny]
Zhang Zian treated this as a daily chat. He and [Collapse the World] had never met before. They had gotten to know each other on the forum because of the cat abuse incident, so they didn't know much about each other. Now that the cat abuse incident had subsided, if nothing unexpected happened, this might be the last contact between him and the other party. Then, they would slowly forget about each other.
It was like making friends in an online game. No matter how congenial they were when playing the game, most of them would stop contacting each other as the popularity of the game waned. Finally, they would completely forget each other as the game shut down. Because the game was the link that connected each other, just like how the cat abuse incident was the link between Zhang Zian and [Collapse the World].
Zhang Zian had thought that it would be pretty good to end with two [Funny] emojis.
He didn't expect that just as he put down his phone and was about to go downstairs to do his daily routine cleaning work, the other party would send him another email.
[Collapse the World]: Although the cat abuse incident has shown signs of ending, I want to remind you that the world is still in a state of collapse.
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