Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

  “Eeek!”


  After typing the title, Pi danced around with excitement, and high-fived Galaxy to celebrate this great achievement.

  “Wait a minute!” Zhang Zian could not ignore this. “Pi, do you want to write a novel about pets?”


  “Eeek!”


  Pi nodded. It pointed at him, at Galaxy, then at itself, and typed: “A novel about pets, pet shop and everybody.”


  Zhang Zian frowned slightly after hearing this, feeling worried about the future of this novel. He had not read many online novels, but his gut feeling was telling him that nobody would be interested in such a novel. For pet owners, they were so busy cuddling their cats and walking their dogs, how could they have time to read a novel about pets? For those who don’t own pets, they were either not interested in pets or even hated pets, not to mention reading a book about pets. The most likely potential readers were those who didn’t have time to own pets, but liked pets and wanted to own them remotely in a “cloud”. But how many of them could there be?

  Most online novels were about travelling back in time throughout history or another world, practicing Kongfu, writing poetry, being cool and kicking butts; or about being raised from the dead and returning to a city, then making monkey with prophetic knowledge and dating a few or dozens of women at the same time…He had never heard of a popular online novel about a pet shop.

  Pi wanted to kill time by writing a novel. He was happy about this. But for a novel with so few potential readers, it may lose confidence after finding out nobody was reading it. It may fall into deeper self-isolation.

  He knew all this, but he didn’t want to kill Pi’s enthusiasm at this moment. He smiled reluctantly. “OK. Will I be in it? Then write me as a handsome man.”


  “Eeek!”


  Pi grinned and typed: “This is hard…”


  Zhang Xian said, “I was just kidding. But, Pi, when is the beginning of the story? Now?”


  “Eeek.”


  Pi nodded and typed: “From last year, when you just returned to this city.”


  Zhang Zian thought about it. Maybe a good story can be written about it, such as writing him as a hero with hundreds of years of experience, but met his “Waterloo” and died, then was brought back to life. This may interest the readers and meet their expectations. He smiled. “OK. I’ll tell you my story before coming to the pet shop… Do you know Wang Qian and Li Kun, the two guys working part-time in the shop? They always believed that I was a big hero during the time of Jindan. In fact, this is true…”


  “Eeek!”


  Pi waved its hands and interrupted him. It showed him the nameless book, and typed: “No. Everything that happened in the past can be found in the book.”


  Zhang Zian: “I’m just an ordinary Joe in real life. Can’t you gratify me in the novel?”


  Famous interrupted him as well. “Everything in the past? Does it include my stories in the Imagined Landscape?”


  “Eeek!”


  Pi nodded.

  Famous said, “Can’t I have any privacy? I gotta pay attention to my image in the Imagined Landscape.”


  “Which website will you publish your work? I mean, there are a lot of online novel websites. Where do you want to publish? There is a saying that goes: the worst that could happen to a man is getting into a wrong profession; while the worst that could happen to a woman is marrying the wrong husband. The websites have different styles. This is a book for a small population of readers. If you pick the wrong website, you may have even fewer readers…” Zhang Zian reminded it tactfully.

  “Eeek!”


  Pi swiped the tablet screen to unlock it. Then it opened up a reading app and showed it to Zhang Zian.

  “Oh, Qidian Web novel, that’s the site I used earlier for online reading…” Zhang Zian nodded. He didn’t know the online novel websites very well and could not have offered more help. But he heard that this was one of the biggest literature websites. It might be a good choice for Pi.

  Pi tapped on a menu button: “Becoming a writer”, then showed it to Zhang Zian.

  “A photo ID is needed?” Zhang Zian took a glance, and thought this was complicated.

  “Eeek.”


  Pi typed: “I’m a residential alien. I don’t have an ID.”


  Zhang Zian’s face twitched. He didn’t know where it learned the words “residential alien”…but it was appropriately used.

  “That is to say…you need my ID?” He pointed at his nose and asked.

  Pi nodded.

  Fine. He was the only one with an ID in the pet shop. Although uploading his ID was not a safe move, he was an ordinary Joe after all. Not many hackers were targeting him. The internet was a free space. If all publications were anonymous, it could cause big problems. The dark web developers might blend in and advertise their illegal business.

  Zhang Zian took a picture of his ID photo, and uploaded it according to the website instructions. After identity verification, he finally created a new book and uploaded new chapters with his account.

  “Eeek!”


  Pi typed the title of the first chapter eagerly: Amazing Fate Pet Shop. Then it entered the text: On the magnificent East Coast of the motherland, there was a quiet coastal city called Binhai City. It was beautiful, with a large economy and a slow pace of life. Binhai had an absence of large industrial enterprises, making it a suitable place to live a peaceful life…


  “Wait a minute!”


  Zhang Zian found a big mistake, and asked Pi to pause, in case the mistake grew bigger.

  “Eeek?”


  Pi gestured to inquire.

  “What the heck is Binhai City?” Zhang Zian pointed out the mistake. “Pi, did you make a mistake? This is not Binhai City, and there is no such a city in China.”


  “Eeek.”


  Pi pointed at the website instructions for authors to show Zhang Zian.

  He stretched his neck, gazed at the screen and read. “In order to avoid unnecessary complications caused by real information in your work, we suggest the that authors avoid using real information in your writing, such as geographic locations, celebrity names, well-known companies, etc…. What the heck is this?”


  That was why. No wonder Pi used “Binhai City” to replace the real name of the city. He thought Pi was making a mistake.

  “But this city name is too sloppy. You’d better make a note, in case the readers complain about it.” Zhang Zian reminded it.

  Pi nodded bitterly and continued: “In this city with a sloppy name, there was a small, unknown pet shop.”


  Zhang Zian nodded with satisfaction. But the next sentence made him uneasy again!

  “Who is Zhang Zian? Why haven’t I heard of this guy?” He asked.

  Pi pointed at him, meaning “you”, then at the website instructions on “celebrity names”.

  Fine…I’m a celebrity at the end of the day. I was about to be myself and win the heart of a thousand girls…Zhang Zian was speechless. But to avoid breaking the website’s rule by using a real name, he had to accept this weird alias.

  “How about you, Galaxy and Famous? And Fina, Old Time Tea, Richard, and Snowy Lionet? Will they have aliases too?” He asked.

  Pi typed: “No. We are not humans, so we can keep our names.”


  After typing, it deleted this extra sentence.

  This cheered Famous up. “Great! I always wanted to keep my real name, not using an alias nor becoming a substitute of another dog.”


  This is unfair… Dogs have more rights than men these days? Zhang Zian was a little upset in his heart.

  After writing for a while, Pi was stuck, and could not tap any more keys on the keyboard. It scratched its head, read the nameless book for a few minutes, then resumed typing.

  Pi was a slow typist. Before this, it was typing out newspapers, following a template. Chinese was not its mother tongue. It had to design a plot, sketch the Chinese words in its head, then type them out.

  If it were someone else with the same typing speed, Zhang Zian would not have watched on the side. But Pi was the one typing, and the story was about himself. He watched with great patience, going downstairs occasionally for business.

  As the words jumped from of Pi’s keyboard onto the laptop screen, Zhang Zian’s memory gradually came back. He relived the unforgettable days with Pi’s words.

  The detail that Pi described were things that he never told anybody else. He had even forgotten some of them himself. He lived everything in first person, but Pi recorded from an objective, third-person perspective, just like an invisible camera floating around him, recording every tiny detail.

  “I absolutely didn’t have dark eye circles.” He pointed out.

  Pi typed “Yes” with certainty, then deleted it. It waved the nameless book, suggesting the nameless book’s record could never be wrong.

  Zhang Zian didn’t know how to defend himself. He knew that he may have dark eye circles then after a few sleepless nights in the hospital, and being exhausted with the funeral. He might have very dark eye circles, but he couldn’t see it himself.

  After the debut of Little Celery in Pi’s writing, he laughed and said: “If Wang Yaning reads this novel, my obsession with young girls would be made known… Oh, Pi, apart from the names and locations, is everything else real?”


  Pi thought about it and typed: “70% real and 30% unreal, just like ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’.”


  Zhang Zian laughed silently. Pi certainly read the four masterpieces.

  After finishing the first chapter, with a 2079 word count, Pi uploaded it with satisfaction.

  “Take a break, Pi.” suggested Zhang Zian. Two to three hours had passed since Pi started writing this chapter.

  Pi jumped off the chair obediently to stretch itself. But it was worried about the fate of this novel. The beginning was so ordinary. Would someone read it?