A Fortuitous Encounter at an Internet Café

The outskirts of Wu City were where the lowest class of commoners lived. There were many poor people here, many dilapidated buildings, and naturally, it was a place that harbored filth and evil.

Thus, there were also many beggars, thieves, and stray cats and dogs.

Chen Nan had not walked far before he found some stray dogs and linked them all to his mind.

Now, Chen Nan discovered that the number of small animals he could link to was related to the size of their brains. With creatures like rats, whose brains were small, he could link to many more—at most, around a hundred and fifty rats.

But with animals like dogs, the number dropped sharply, to only around twenty or so. To leave more room in his mind, Chen Nan controlled only seven stray dogs, naturally choosing large breeds with extremely strong attack power.

After selecting his assistants—or perhaps bodyguards—he had one big yellow dog follow him while the others kept a certain distance away.

Then Chen Nan needed to change his appearance.

He could not go to a proper clothing store and could only visit roadside stalls and little shops. Fortunately, there were plenty of such stalls in this district.

At one stall, he picked out underwear, long pants, a shirt, shoes, socks, a cap, and a small backpack. After haggling, he got everything for just over forty yuan.

Then Chen Nan found a public restroom, briefly washed up at the communal sink, and changed into all his new clothes.

Back on the street, looking completely refreshed and wearing a duckbill cap, Chen Nan was utterly different from the beggar he had been before. Yet he was still not satisfied. He needed a bath too, to be clean inside and out.

He found a public bathhouse. A wash and scrub cost two yuan and fifty cents. When he returned to the street this time, Chen Nan finally felt truly comfortable.

Clean from head to toe and dressed in clean clothes, his whole body felt smooth and fresh. This counted as returning to the life of a normal person.

However, he had not forgotten the problem before him. Since it was still early, he wanted to find an internet café and investigate some information.

After looking around for a while, he finally found an internet café called Seven Degrees Space near a middle school. But as soon as he entered, the attendant asked for his ID for registration. Without registering an ID, he was not allowed online.

This stumped Chen Nan and also reminded him of even more problems.

Right. He needed an ID. How else could he stay at hotels or rent a place without one?

Besides, even if he had an ID, things would not be easy at his age.

Take staying at a hotel, for example. What ordinary hotel would casually let a child of around ten stay there? Renting a place was even more so. It seemed he needed to think of a solution for these matters.

Just as Chen Nan was considering these problems, the attendant leaned close and asked, "Do you really want to get online that badly?"

Chen Nan froze, then immediately nodded.

The attendant said, "I can rent you an ID. One yuan per use, and you can stay online as long as you want."

Chen Nan immediately said, "All right, I'll rent one."

After taking the one yuan with a smile, the attendant said, "Sure thing. Internet time is fifty cents an hour."

Chen Nan tossed him another yuan and said, "Give me a computer in a corner."

The attendant smiled. "Kid, doing that at your age isn't good. But if that's what you want, I've got websites for it. Just give me fifty cents..."

Chen Nan's forehead instantly filled with black lines. What the hell was this supposed to mean? Still, this was a discreet method. He pulled out fifty cents and accepted the little slip of paper the attendant handed him with an embarrassed expression.

"Don't watch too much—it's bad for your health!" the attendant brother thoughtfully called after him as Chen Nan walked inside.

Chen Nan wanted to curse on the spot. This attendant was setting him up! With that shout, wouldn't everyone in the internet café look at him?

Sure enough, gazes turned toward him one after another. One teenage girl even let out a snicker as Chen Nan passed by.

How stifling!

He could only pull his duckbill cap lower. Fortunately, the computer the attendant assigned him was far enough into a corner. It was blocked by a load-bearing pillar and a wall, making it quite secluded.

After turning on the computer, Chen Nan leaned back in his chair and truly felt exhausted. But once the screen lit up, he straightened up and pulled himself together.

The computer interface here was largely similar to Earth's, though the meanings represented by the desktop icons were different. The problem was that he could not find the icon for websites, so he sat there studying them.

Suddenly, a fragrant scent drifted over. Slightly cool hair brushed across his cheek, and a soft voice said, "What, you don't even know how to get online? Big sister will show you. This is the icon for opening websites."

She held Chen Nan's hand, moved the mouse, and double-clicked the icon made of a lightning bolt and a W.

As he watched the browser open and felt the girl's soft, smooth little hand, Chen Nan's heart stirred as well. He somewhat understood why Conan in those old anime never managed to turn back into an adult after so many episodes.

Being a child really did have its natural advantages.

"Watch for now. If there's nothing to do, you can come play with big sister too." The girl pinched Chen Nan's cheek, then walked away.

From beneath his duckbill cap, Chen Nan secretly watched the girl: short skirt, stockings, a graceful figure. Her gait in particular sent a chill down his spine.

He knew that walk all too well. Back at the orphanage, that was precisely how they trained the girls to walk!

Was it a coincidence, or was there something else going on? Chen Nan was nervous beyond measure. With no other choice, he first unfolded the slip the attendant had given him, entered one of the URLs written on it, and pretended to browse.

Time trickled by. Chen Nan found nothing unusual, and the girl never came over again. She was still surfing the internet over there.

About an hour later, since nothing had happened, Chen Nan could no longer hold back and closed the website. Then he opened a search engine. When he secretly looked over, he discovered that the girl had actually left.

Chen Nan immediately connected with his yellow dog. He had named it Da Huang and told it to watch where the girl went, then return to stand guard at the entrance.

The girl walked far away without speaking to anyone. Since Da Huang still had to return and keep watch, it did not investigate further. After Chen Nan received the definite report, he began searching quickly.

The first thing he searched for was Wu City Orphanage.

Page after page of information appeared in the search engine, and he began skimming through it.

There was not much useful information about the orphanage. There were, however, quite a few photos of the Prefecture Office at the ancient tree, along with official boilerplate.

Occasionally, there was information reflecting negative news about the orphanage, but no one paid attention to such things.

Among those negative reports was one claiming that the orphanage trained male and female companions for various illegal activities. Others said that some of the children in the orphanage had been trafficked.

But such information was all treated as rumor. Some people had even been sentenced for spreading those rumors.

Naturally, Chen Nan believed even more firmly that they were not rumors but facts. What concerned him more was the situation of Director Wang himself.

After searching for the person, the information quickly appeared.

Director Wang's real name was Wang Yifu. He was forty-six years old, unaffiliated with any political party, and a famous philanthropist, educator, and child psychologist.

According to some Lesser Dao reports, he had a younger brother named Wang Yide and a younger sister named Wang Yuan'e.

Wang Yide was the owner of a high-end club in Wu City called Immortal Realm. His sister, Wang Yuan'e, was the director of Renxin Maternity Hospital in Wu City. It was a private hospital, and Wang Yuan'e was naturally its legal representative.

In short, the three Wang Clan siblings were all either wealthy or powerful, renowned figures in Wu City.

Chen Nan could roughly guess what a high-end club was. He was deeply glad that when he had thought of killing Wang Yifu, he had investigated the man's relatives first.

If Wang Yifu truly died an unnatural death, then leaving aside everything else, Wang Yide definitely would not let it rest. After all, people who ran that kind of place had their own methods in society.

These were all society's elites and outstanding talents. How was he, a ten-year-old child, supposed to fight them?

This grave problem before him reminded Chen Nan that he possessed extraordinary power. If he joined the ranks of the Immortals, would everything not become much easier?

That was right. He should also look up information about Immortals and see whether he had any path to enter their ranks. Judging by the bearing of Li Yu and Xun Xin, even though they had merely been dispatched to assess people at an orphanage, Wang Yifu could not afford to offend them. That alone proved that Immortals and ordinary people existed on entirely different levels.

Chen Nan would not think them overwhelmingly powerful merely because Li Yu had revealed a miraculous medical skill and revived the ancient tree.

From the fact that they had come to the orphanage to carry out an assessment task, they were the sort of Immortals who needed to deal with ordinary people. Such Immortals were clearly relatively low in both strength and status.

Moreover, judging from how greedy they were for money, their cultivation could not have been very high. A gentleman loves wealth, but acquires it by proper means...

Forget it. All his own money had been stolen, so he had no right to say that.

However, just as Chen Nan was about to continue investigating information about Immortals, the computer automatically locked because his internet time had run out.

It was time for lunch anyway, and he needed to rest a little, so he logged off. After greeting the attendant, he left Seven Degrees Space.

Chen Nan decided to eat something good for lunch. At the same time, he needed to buy food for his seven dogs. They were working for him now—how could he possibly mistreat them?