Wait.
'No, I can't.'
The moment she was about to tap it, Gu Ning pulled her finger back. She opened her video again and checked the comment section.
The top few comments had already amassed thousands of replies, and half of them were debating whether she was a real female.
Beastmen were betting Crystal Stones and even their clan's honor. Some had even revealed their identities to arrange offline fights. The arguments were getting heated.
Gu Ning's attention lingered on the comments arguing about her gender.
The Dog Clan and Wolf Clan were having the most intense reactions. One of the top comments said they were going to the Beast Alliance for verification, and many others chimed in with support.
Gu Ning felt a shiver of fear when she saw that comment.
Instantly, a thousand terrible thoughts flashed through her mind.
'At this rate,' she thought, 'it won't be long before my account gets doxxed.'
Gu Ning's gaze fell on the "Male Beastman" option, and she tapped it.
A prompt popped up: [Please confirm your selection].
Gu Ning steeled herself and chose "Confirm."
'Since I can choose my own identity, why should I expose myself to this risk?'
After selecting her gender, Gu Ning hesitated for a moment over the clan options before finally choosing the Wolf Clan.
Most of the comments in her section were bashing the Dog Clan, though the Dog Clan members were just as vicious in their replies.
'The Dog Clan is too extreme,' she decided. 'I'll just go with the Wolf Clan.'
Once her selection was made, Gu Ning swallowed nervously and tapped "Verify."
Before she could even react, the verification was approved instantly.
'Yikes...'
'Isn't that a little too fast?'
Gu Ning had been worried about facial recognition or scanning a genetic code, but they didn't even need to verify the personal information on her terminal?
She found it a bit strange, but mostly she felt a sense of relief, as if she'd just survived a disaster.
In any case, she had passed the identity verification hurdle.
Just then, a message popped up on the screen. Gu Ning looked closely:
[You have made the correct choice]
The message vanished after just two seconds.
Gu Ning was a bit confused.
'What does that mean?'
Suddenly, she recalled that the message didn't seem to be in the Beastman language.
The message had appeared and disappeared so abruptly that Gu Ning wasn't entirely sure.
She assumed it was a standard system message sent after a successful verification. She opened her back-end to search for it, but aside from the few pinned official announcements she'd already seen, everything else was a private message.
She scrolled through the most recent messages but couldn't find the one she had just seen.
'Was I just seeing things?'
As Gu Ning was searching through her messages one by one, a new DM arrived, and her finger tapped it by chance.
[Miss Female? You're just joking with us, right?] (confused dog emoji)
'Joking?'
The Beastman quickly sent several more messages:
[Miss Female, are those awful people in the comments bothering you?]
[It's okay, you can delete the comments you don't like. Please don't be sad. I will fight for you to the very end!]
[Friendly reminder: you can DM the admins to change your identity verification!] (dog with starry eyes emoji)
The Beastman's words were filled with a kind of cautious uncertainty. He repeatedly urged Gu Ning to delete the top comments questioning her identity and reminded her to change her verification status. He even offered to help her contact the admins, worried she didn't know how.
Gu Ning figured if she replied with "I'm a male," he'd probably pass out from rage.
His avatar and ID looked very familiar. Gu Ning stared at his username for a few seconds and realized he was the one from the top comment who said he'd go to the Beast Alliance for proof. He was also the Beastman who had spammed the most comments.
'So fanatical. So terrifying.'
Gu Ning chose to block him.
'Goodbye, little puppy Leo from Zone 11!'
After blocking the fanatical, almost-deranged Dog Clan Beastman, Gu Ning received a flood of similar DMs.
Some of the slightly more level-headed ones had already started cursing her out.
But they didn't seem to fully believe it, so their insults weren't as vicious as the flame wars between Beastmen in the comments.
A DM from the official "Paw-print" account arrived as well. It started with some trivial words of concern before asking if she was unfamiliar with the platform's functions.
Gu Ning didn't think the admins were any gentler than the other Beastmen. She had personally seen the official account jump into flame wars, its tone aggressive and fierce. Of course, they always apologized afterward, claiming they'd forgotten to switch accounts.
But she'd seen the admins "forget to switch accounts" quite a few times.
They would always finish cursing someone out with the official account before claiming it was a mistake. Sometimes they would even curse and apologize simultaneously, switching back and forth seamlessly. It was a real eye-opener for her. 'You can get away with this in the Beastman World?' If this happened back in her world, they would've been torn to shreds online, with their entire family tree getting cursed.
Gu Ning didn't dare reply to the official account either. If the admins found out a burly male Beastman was behind the videos of a "female," getting cursed out would be the least of her worries. If they got angry enough to ban her account, it would all be over.
Gu Ning didn't reply to a single DM. After thinking for a moment, she went straight to her profile bio and wrote:
New virtual creator. If you like my virtual character, please leave lots of paw-prints and likes. I'll produce more and better videos. (Appended with a serious-looking Wolf Clan avatar)
After she finished writing her bio, her inbox was quiet for a minute.
Then, it was blown to smithereens.
So many DMs poured in that her screen started to lag. Gu Ning glanced over them and saw nothing but a stream of profanity.
Indeed, you can't judge a beastman by their cover.
'Look, look,' she thought. 'They're already triggered.'
Gu Ning wasn't afraid of their insults. She was a human named Gu Ning. What did the curses aimed at Gu Demiao Ning, a Wolf Clan Beastman, have to do with her?
There were too many DMs to read, so she just exited her inbox. She turned off DM notifications, and once she was out of the back-end, everything went quiet.
However, her video's comment section had also been nuked.
Gu Ning opened the video and saw the comment section below flickering. There were so many new comments that the system was constantly refreshing.
The screen, once filled with colorful paw-print likes, was now covered in colorful poop-shaped icons.
The Beastmen were all downvoting, throwing poop icons at her. But even in their rage, they only threw the poop icons around the video frame, not onto her character in the video itself.
Some Beastmen even placed a protective circle of bullet-comment effects around her, telling others to throw their poop icons further away.
Seeing this peculiar scene, Gu Ning couldn't help but laugh out loud.
She was just about to say that these Beastmen still had some decency, when she saw the Affinity Value on the side of the video—the very thing that determined her account level—dropping continuously.
She could only watch as the Affinity Value she had accumulated—enough to reach level two—was stomped down by the Beastmen in less than ten minutes. And it was still plummeting.
NOOOO!!!
Only then did Gu Ning remember to level up her account, but it was too late. Her Affinity Value was no longer high enough for level two.
The downvotes already outnumbered the likes. Even if she managed to level up, she'd be demoted immediately.
Gu Ning took a few deep breaths to calm down and went to check the comment section.
The top comment was still from that Dog Clan Beastman named Leo.
His comments—the one about going to the Beast Alliance for verification and another one full of praise for her—had been edited.
[BULLSHIT!!! YOU SCUM OF THE WOLF CLAN!!! IF YOU HAVE THE GUTS TO TRICK ME, THEN HAVE THE GUTS TO UNBLOCK ME!!!]
[(VOMIT!!!) Wolf Clan scum! And you're still using that cat's avatar! Give me your address, and see if I don't smash your head in!]
Gu Ning saw that he had passionately posted dozens of angry comments and clicked "Delete All Comments by This User."
Ah, that felt good.