DA chapter 38

 

“Lin Jia… listen to my explanation…” The cat cried hoarsely. It didn’t dare struggle, afraid its claws would scratch Lin Jia and make him angrier. “This is how it happened…”

The cat received a call from the first client. The client was sincere and willing to pay a deposit. But this time, the cat was smart. It vaguely remembered that transfers between accounts required system confirmation for the receiving account amount—confirming that the transfer was personally operated, and confirming the correctness of the transfer account.

And confirming the correctness of the transfer account would expose the recipient’s personal information.

The cat had lived with Lin Jia for some time. Even for the forum number, Lin Jia had left the cat’s phone number, so he clearly did not want to expose himself.

The cat did not agree, but still wanted to help Lin Jia make money.

Before the cat’s CPU completely overheated, it came up with a method: it told the client to pay with fish spirit stones.

In the Underwater Wold, wealthy people didn’t necessarily convert all their fish spirit stones into money—if their account balance was already sufficient, they simply couldn’t be bothered to exchange them. High-quality fish spirit stones were crystal clear and beautiful, and could even be displayed at home as decorative pieces.

Some people were drowning in wealth while others were starving—that was just how the tastes of the rich worked.

Coincidentally, this client had fish spirit stones that had not been exchanged, so the deal was made. The client agreed to put the stones down as a deposit somewhere. After collecting them, they would arrange for someone to come and cook a meal.

The mother’s number was stored in the cat’s smartwatch. After finishing the call with the client, it immediately called her.

Aunt Zhang listened to the cat and happily agreed.

After asking someone to take care of her daughter, she rushed to the deposit location.

There really were some scattered fish spirit stones. If exchanged, they could be worth around ten thousand yuan.

After that, Aunt Zhang went to the client’s home in the sixth district of Underwater Wold.

The cat thought it over again and again. The client’s generous deposit made the cat worry that the client had ulterior motives and that Aunt Zhang might be in danger. In the end, the cat decided to follow along. If something happened, the cat thought it could help somehow. Even if it couldn’t help, it could still call for help.

With this thought in mind, the cat opened the door and left the room.

With its intelligence, the cat naturally never thought the hotel had surveillance cameras, so all of its actions were recorded. The cat did not take the elevator intentionally either. It worried that there would be no signal in the elevator and that it would miss Aunt Zhang’s distress call because of signal loss if she ran into trouble during that time.

The cat chose the fire escape.

Going down from the seventeenth floor, the cat got so tired that it nearly vomited.

However, it did not dare delay and headed toward the sixth district to the address the client had given it.

There was a long distance between the second district, where Jialing Hotel was located, and the sixth district, so the cat could only go by bus. However, the cat was missing its brainstem, so it could not understand the bus routes very well and could not ask for help. After much hardship and taking several wrong buses, the cat finally arrived in the sixth district.

Thankfully, the bus did not charge the cat a fare.

The client’s address was a detached villa. The cat lay on the outer wall and looked inside, watching the movements closely.

Aunt Zhang had arrived much earlier than the cat. By the time the cat arrived, Aunt Zhang had already prepared a full table of dishes.

The cat saw the client invite Aunt Zhang to sit down and eat together. After refusing several times, Aunt Zhang finally sat down. The client was a young man, around twenty years old, with a childish face. However, life in Underwater Wold had added a numbness to his face that did not match his age.

Only when Aunt Zhang picked up food and placed it in the client’s bowl did his eyes instantly redden. He cried while finishing the meal.

At that moment, the cat’s smartwatch rang. Aunt Zhang asked about the fee.

The cat felt that earning 10,000 yuan for one meal was good, but this amount definitely wouldn’t impress Lin Jia. According to Lin Jia, the client needed emotional value, not this meal.

The cat steeled itself and spoke. “Thirty thousand.”

As the cat nervously watched the house, wondering if the client would pay, it was suddenly arrested.

A capture net came down over its head. Before the cat could curse, it was locked inside a cage.

Seeing the inspection team uniform, the cat swallowed back the dirty words in its throat.

“After that, you already know what happened…”

The cat felt miserable, regretting its misunderstanding with Lin Jia. Who was it doing this for? It was doing this for Lin Jia, and now Lin Jia wanted to strangle it!

Ring ring ring—

The cat’s smartwatch rang again.

Lin Jia glanced at the cat and let it go.

The call was from Aunt Zhang. The cat coughed a few times before answering weakly.

Aunt Zhang didn’t know she was speaking with a cat and said, “Mr. Lin, I’m home.”

The cat: “Mm-hmm.”

Aunt Zhang: “The client transferred the money to me. Together with the deposit, it’s fifty thousand. I’ll transfer it to you. Your account number is…”

The cat looked up at Lin Jia. Lin Jia nodded.

Only then did the cat report Lin Jia’s account information to Aunt Zhang, who immediately processed the transfer.

The cat heard the “ding-dong” sound of Lin Jia’s phone notifying that money had arrived. However, Lin Jia did not check it. Instead, he sat behind the desk, turned on the laptop, and started working.

Aunt Zhang said, “Oh, right. Mr. Lin, the client intends to cooperate with you in the long term. I told him to contact you.”

The cat: “Okay.”

After the call ended, the cat jumped onto the desk and asked Lin Jia how much money he had received.

Lin Jia threw his phone to the cat. The cat checked. “All fifty thousand was transferred!”

This meant that Aunt Zhang had not taken her deserved payment this time and had even exchanged the fish spirit stones and transferred that money as well on the way home.

Lin Jia did not react. His fingers rested on the keyboard and tapped twice.

The cat carefully asked Lin Jia, “Not… not giving Aunt Zhang some payment?”

Lin Jia: “No.”

The cat: “…”

What a black-hearted capitalist!

Lin Jia looked up and saw the cat’s indescribable expression, then also saw the fur around the cat’s neck flattened in a circle—his own handiwork.

Misunderstood by the cat, Lin Jia explained, “If she doesn’t repay the favor, she’ll always owe me. She won’t be able to stand up straight or speak properly.”

The cat nodded vaguely. “Oh, so that’s how it is.”

Seeing that Lin Jia was still typing, the cat asked, “What are you doing?”

Lin Jia: “Developing new business.”

The cat became very interested. “What is it? What is it?”

It looked at the computer screen and saw that Lin Jia had posted another thread on the Underwater Wold forum.

The thread title was: Petting cat, cat is obedient, contact phone 184XXXXXXXX if needed.

Cat: “……”

It was also part of Lin Jia’s play.

Remembering the several times Lin Jia had used it for emotional comfort, the cat said: “It’s not impossible, but I have three conditions.”

Lin Jia didn’t even look at the cat. “The door is over there.”

Cat: “…”

The cat bargained. “Two.”

Lin Jia: “Remember to close the door when you leave.”

Cat: “One… just one…”

But Lin Jia’s expression didn’t change, so the cat tried flattery: “One request, just one.”

Lin Jia: “Say it.”

The cat grumbled under its breath. Lin Jia knew what the cat wanted, yet he made it say it anyway.

Because it had mistaken the wrong person, wrongly identifying Deputy Chen and causing Lin Jia to hand over the fish spirit stone, the cat said awkwardly: “Help me find my real self.”

Lin Jia did not respond. The cat carefully touched Lin Jia’s sleeve with its paw. “This time it’s not like searching for a needle in the ocean. I have a candidate.”

Lin Jia said: “Deputy Chen has two men beside him. Why not Yan Xu?”

The cat answered naturally. “I feel annoyed just looking at Yan Xu. How could my true self be Yan Xu?”

The cat was not lying. It truly hated Yan Xu. From the first glance, the cat felt uncomfortable. After later interactions and confrontations, the cat developed a deep-seated disgust for Yan Xu.

Lin Jia raised his head and looked at the cat. “Hate Yan Xu? How much?”

Cat: “Super hate him, super disgusted. Just seeing him makes my heart uncomfortable.”

Heaven knew how the cat endured those negative emotions toward Yan Xu while making those affectionate gestures.

Mm…even more annoying now.

Seeing Lin Jia lower his eyes in thought, the cat touched him again with its paw. “Are you agreeing to help?”

Lin Jia did not answer directly, only saying: “If there’s a chance, meet him first, and then talk.”

What he said was “if there’s a chance,” not “find a chance.” In the broken cloud D2481 layer, Lin Jia had already seen that Deputy Chen wanted his life. Creating an opportunity to verify whether the person beside Deputy Chen was the cat’s true self was not worth the risk. Lin Jia did not engage in high-risk, low-return trades.

So they would wait for an opportunity.

As for when that opportunity would come, Lin Jia did not care too much. During this period, he had other things to do.

The intermediary business only had two resources: cooking and petting the cat. Lin Jia needed to find more laborers.

Unexpectedly, opportunity came to the door before stable and loyal labor could be found.

Lin Jia’s fish spirit stone was exchanged for 1.2 million, and Old Zhou transferred another 100,000 to Lin Jia. After hearing the full story from Xiao Yao and Xiao Tian about what happened in Fish Belly, and learning that Xiao Yao had contributed nothing and would have died without Lin Jia, Old Zhou sent Lin Jia a long message. The first half was brainless praise and rainbow farts for Lin Jia, the second half was misery-selling: over twenty people in the group had to be supported, and he sincerely hoped Lin Jia would not become dissatisfied or distant toward him and Sharp Knife because of the money distribution.

The cat read the message aloud and retold it to Lin Jia. Lin Jia had only one reaction: “Heh.”

The cat felt ashamed because Boss Zhou had indeed gotten Deputy Chen into the D2481 Cloud Layer and had also given Lin Jia one-third of the Fish Spirit Stone. Lin Jia was mocking the cat—mocking the fact that it identified the wrong person, causing such huge losses.

The cat did not dare speak. Just then, the smartwatch rang; a client was asking about the price of petting the cat.

To show that it was working hard to earn money for Lin Jia, the cat turned on speakerphone.

Client: “What cat?”

Cat: “A domestic cat.”

Client: “I mean, what breed?”

Cat: “Black cat.”

Client: “…Forget it, do you have a photo?”

Cat: “I’ll send an MMS.”

As he spoke, the increasingly tech-savvy cat used his smartwatch to send his prepared selfie.

Cat: “Did you get it?”

Client: “Black? Are there any other cats? It looks a bit ominous and doesn’t seem very good for petting.”

The cat became furious: “No! Only this one!”

Client: “All right, what about the price?”

Cat: “Ten thousand per hour.”

Client: “I’ll think about it.”

The deal fell through, and the cat was upset. The cat felt sad. But, upon further reflection, the cat realized that it was not really a cat, so it was not the one being disliked, but rather Lin Jia’s cat.

Thinking this way made the cat feel much better.

The cat hung up and asked gloomily, “Lin Jia, what do you think my real self actually looks like?”

Lin Jia: “You don’t know, so how would I know?”

The cat wanted to say more, but Lin Jia pressed its face down. Only then did the cat realize that Lin Jia’s sentence wasn’t answering it; he had received a phone call. The cat quickly shut up and muted itself.

Lin Jia stood up and went to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Underwater Wold.

The Underwater Wold offered a unique view. From his high vantage point, Lin Jia saw things differently than he did looking down through the office. In the real world, pedestrians moving among buildings appeared free, but in the Underwater Wold, they did not. The tiny figures revealed panic. People in the Underwater Wold were not free, nor were they guaranteed safety. They were illusory and more humble than dust.

Being dragged into this unpeaceful Underwater Wold was like grains of sand falling into raging waves—swallowed without a sound. None of the tall buildings here could shelter them. They drifted, homeless, living a life where today was all they had.

Lin Jia’s voice was calm as his slender fingers held the phone. He pitied no one because he was also part of the Underwater Wold. However, he did not think himself pitiful. “Where are you?”

“Mm, I’ll come over.”

After hanging up, the cat noticed Lin Jia rubbing his fingertips and became nervous. “Did something happen?”

Lin Jia looked over with an uneven, scattered gaze. After a long while, he parted his lips. “I hope this time you won’t mistake the wrong person again.”

 

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