I Am Your Natural Enemy

”I mean, you send the message.”

The old lady immediately took out her phone, smoothly switched on voice input, told Zhou Xiaorong to start dictating, and then his great‑grandma walked a little distance away.

When he finished speaking and the words were automatically transcribed, his great‑grandma came back over to continue operating the phone and sent the message to Wen Yan.

Wen Yan was just about to enter the Desolate Tomb when he saw the message. He glanced at the beginning, put his phone away, and stopped walking.

He thought for a moment, turned around, and walked back, watching from not far away.

He noticed something a bit off: there wasn’t a trace of backlash on Zhou Xiaorong.

But when he saw Zhou Xiaorong finish speaking, his great‑grandma come over and send the message—at the moment she saw that content, black smoke started to drift off Zhou Xiaorong. Wen Yan had seen this before; this was the backlash kicking in.

But the strength of the backlash was far weaker than on Men Xinsheng.

He immediately strode forward and pressed a hand on Zhou Xiaorong, suppressing that bit of backlash.

”Have you read the contract terms?”

”Of course I’ve read them.”

”So you didn’t know there’d be backlash?”

”I’ve studied it. The backlash is proportional to the wealth I have on hand. I’ve got nothing now; I can tank it.”

Wen Yan thought it over and felt he’d probably found a loophole.

According to the contract, Zhou Xiaorong had already leaked part of the forbidden content, so why hadn’t the backlash triggered immediately?

Why did it only show up when that content was seen by his great‑grandma?

”Hold on.”

Wen Yan opened his phone and posted a task to the Black Box, telling it to pull the content Zhou Xiaorong had sent, then reorganize the wording, run a Chinese‑to‑Chinese rephrasing pass on it, change every word it could, and list it out again.

When Wen Yan looked at the Black Box’s version, gave it a rough scan, the faint backlash on Zhou Xiaorong didn’t change at all.

In other words, their contract only triggered backlash when the leaked target was a sentient creature.

Which made sense. It couldn’t possibly count as leaking if Zhou Xiaorong was just talking to himself, right?

Whenever he talked, there was always something else around.

Tables, rocks, little shrines, and so on.

So the phone also counted as a dead object and wouldn’t trigger anything.

And AI didn’t count as a sentient creature either, so it likewise wouldn’t trigger it.

The Black Box had mangled the wording beyond recognition; the similarity rate had to be extremely low. For example, Corpse Oil had been changed to ”residual lipids extracted from the mortal remains of late‑stage Homo sapiens subspecies organisms.”

Wen Yan could still understand the meaning, but the phrasing was definitely completely different from how Zhou Xiaorong had described it.

Wen Yan didn’t know how exactly that contract made its determinations, but after carefully reading through the Black Box’s Chinese‑to‑Chinese output, Zhou Xiaorong indeed showed no change.

Wen Yan watched quietly. After waiting a good while, the faint backlash power on Zhou Xiaorong gradually dissipated.

Zhou Xiaorong looked completely unconcerned.

”I’ve studied it. Aside from being tied to the wealth you hold, the backlash is also related to the abilities you’ve exchanged for, your rank‑ups, and so on.

I haven’t redeemed any extra boosts for myself, and on top of that I’ve got nothing now.

This backlash sure as hell can’t kill me; people have tested this before.

The backlash isn’t like, the moment there’s a tiny slip‑up, it just kills the Ghost Wealth God outright.

The Ghost Wealth God transformation itself has a low probability; it’s heavily luck‑based.

The most important thing here is that so‑called currency; everything else can be bought with money.”

”Don’t let your great‑grandma see what you said.”

Wen Yan pulled Zhou Xiaorong along and kept experimenting.

As long as no sentient creature saw or heard the first‑hand information Zhou Xiaorong leaked, the backlash wouldn’t be triggered.

Sending it to the Black Box for Chinese‑to‑Chinese rephrasing was equivalent to destroying the first‑hand information, basically the same as Zhou Xiaorong talking to a rock.

Wen Yan mulled it over. Gauss had said this contract referenced parts of a Devil Contract. Looked like the scope defined by this ancient contract had already fallen behind the times.

Once he confirmed there was no problem, Wen Yan finally left and told Zhou Xiaorong to go gather intel, as long as he protected himself first.

Wen Yan exited via the Nether Path, and when he came out of the Desolate Tomb, his phone started receiving long blocks of Chinese‑to‑Chinese processed information.

What Zhou Xiaorong was talking about was a bit all over the place; there was no way he’d finish in a short time. Wen Yan wasn’t in a rush to read it and just waited.

He’d painted a big pie for Zhou Xiaorong; he had to at least loop in the General Director first.

Once the call connected, he laid his thoughts out bluntly and also described the big pie he’d painted.

The General Director was half laughing, half crying as he listened, and hurriedly cut Wen Yan off.

”What I mean is, you don’t have to tell me. You don’t need to be this honest.”

If you tell me everything, doesn’t that make it look like the General Director is personally leading the charge to stir up trouble?

”No, no, no, this is totally by the book—uniting all forces that can be united. It’s about respecting tradition.

Besides, he’s an undercover!

An undercover Minister Cai planted ahead of time as a contingency.”

”Cai Qidong hadn’t even arrived in Nanwu County a year ago...” The General Director reminded Wen Yan.

”Doesn’t that just show how sharp Minister Cai’s eye was? And anyway, this isn’t a Nanwu County matter.”

”...”

The General Director was speechless.

Cai Qidong was already cold in the ground, and they were still piling black pots on his back. Wasn’t that a bit much?

The way Wen Yan put it, there wasn’t even a way to verify it now.

Given Wen Yan’s relationship with Cai Qidong, it was perfectly reasonable that before Cai Qidong went cold, he’d hand his leads over to Wen Yan.

The General Director was even sure that if Cai Qidong were still alive, even hearing about this for the first time, he could claim it with a straight face and steady heartbeat.

If the person asking didn’t have the right status, Cai Qidong would probably even bite back: why do you know about this classified intel?

”Handle it as you see fit. As long as it solves the big problem, what he’s asking for is no big deal.”

The General Director stopped Wen Yan from describing any more of the pie and directly granted authorization.

He had no idea what Wen Yan had done to make a Ghost Wealth God defect to this extent.