☆, Chapter 5: An Elder
Hao Ren stared at the mess on the floor, wanting to cry but having no tears. She could keep the toy mice and balls of yarn, but what was she supposed to do with all the dead mice and sparrows?
“As for those dead mice and sparrows, just put them on the windowsill. Something will naturally come and eat them.” Just as Hao Ren was agonizing over it, a pleasant male voice suddenly sounded by her ear. The voice was very similar to South of the South’s, but it was more mature and world-weary.
She turned her head and saw Daizi’s face.
“Stop worrying about it. Becoming the King of a Hundred Beasts is a good thing.” As Daizi spoke, it nuzzled the back of Hao Ren’s hand with its head. “Rest assured, whether you’re an ordinary human or the King of a Hundred Beasts, you’ll always be my little girl. I will protect you, forever. This time, I absolutely will not let what happened in our last life happen again.”
Hao Ren had thought that everything that had happened before was fantastical enough, but she never expected something even more fantastical to follow. She swallowed hard and, with great difficulty, managed to ask, “You… you were reborn too?”
Daizi nodded with a deadpan expression.
“Daizi, what did you just call me? Little girl?” Hao Ren had only focused on the main point of its sentence just now, but she now realized that her dog’s form of address for her seemed a bit inappropriate.
“You are a little girl!” Daizi looked at Hao Ren seriously. “Little girl! The one you picked up back then was actually an uncle! Calculated in your human years, I’m already thirty-five this year. What should I call you if not ‘little girl’? If I hadn’t been old and frail when you were kidnapped, I would have definitely bitten those two bastards to death! Little girl, in terms of seniority, you should actually call me Uncle!”
Strangely, upon hearing Daizi’s words, Hao Ren found that not only was she not angry, she actually felt a little warm—the warmth of being cared for by an elder. The man she called “father” would probably never, even on his deathbed, show a fraction of the care for her that Daizi did.
She smiled faintly and, without hesitation, called out, “Uncle Daizi!”
Daizi’s eyes softened, and it looked up to nuzzle the back of her hand again.
“Uncle Daizi, thank you for everything you’ve done for me all these years!” Hao Ren squatted down and hugged Daizi tightly.
Daizi replied in that pleasant, uncle-like voice, coolly, “It’s only natural for an elder to take care of a junior!”
Hao Ren chuckled, feeling a little unused to it. She had always thought of Daizi as a cute and silly child, but it turned out he was a cool uncle at heart. While that was also quite nice, it was still a bit disillusioning. She felt like she would never again be able to look at its JJ so freely during bath time.
Although her thoughts were churning and it was impossible for her to fall asleep, after cleaning up the pile of gifts the cats had left, Hao Ren still had to climb into bed.
She wasn’t too worried about tomorrow’s exams. She was completely confident about all the questions in the comprehensive science section; it was the English exam in the afternoon that concerned her. English was Hao Ren’s biggest headache. If it hadn’t been for her poor English skills dragging her down back then, she could have easily been recommended for university admission based on her other scores.
She wasn’t worried about the multiple-choice section; what she worried about was the final essay. For a foreign language failure like her, writing in English was practically a death sentence. Although she had read many model essays after the exam in her past life, her heaven-defying memory would tragically fail her when it came to English. Tomorrow’s English essay would have to rely entirely on her own ability.
Perhaps she was truly just too tired. Although her mind was racing, Hao Ren still drifted off into a hazy sleep.
In her dream, she dreamt of a handsome young boy who looked two or three years younger than her current self. Although the young boy had Asian features, his eyes were a deep blue, and he wore a large, red collar around his neck. When Hao Ren saw him, he was staring at her intently in a strange, four-limbed posture.
“Are you worried about tomorrow morning’s English exam? I can help you.” Those ocean-blue eyes stared at Hao Ren without blinking, a hint of fear and shyness in them. His expression was less like someone offering help and more like someone begging for a handout.
“Who are you?” Hao Ren felt a little uncomfortable under his expectant gaze.
“I’m Lucky!” The corner of the young boy’s mouth curled up, revealing two cute little canine teeth. After speaking, he crawled over and licked Hao Ren’s hand with his pink tongue.
ao Ren had no strange penchant for children, and her first reaction upon being licked was to flee. However, before she could pull her hand back, she noticed that the young boy’s tongue had a strange texture against her hand, like sandpaper.
While she was still in a daze, the handsome young boy had already finished this gesture of affection. He looked up, his gaze burning as he stared at her, and said in a tone even more fearful than before, “Your Majesty… c-can you keep me? I… I can warm your bed…”
When he mentioned warming the bed, the little brat’s face actually turned red, a bashful look on his face. This made Hao Ren, who was already feeling incredibly awkward because of him, feel even more so.
“You can do anything you want to me.” As if to make matters worse, the guy added with a coy look.
Hao Ren instantly felt goosebumps rise all over her skin. If it had been a scruffy, bearded uncle in front of her, she could have just dragged him out and beaten him to death. But faced with such a delicate and handsome young boy with starry eyes, Hao Ren was frustrated to find that she couldn’t bring herself to lay a hand on him!
“Your Majesty, I’ll be very, very good… Please take me in…” The handsome young boy stared at Hao Ren with large, wet eyes like Bambi’s, his gaze filled with anticipation and fear.
Faced with such a pair of eyes, Hao Ren was frustrated to find that she simply couldn’t utter a single word of refusal. Just as she was agonizing over what to do, a one-armed uncle suddenly intruded into her dream. The one-armed uncle was incredibly charismatic, with thick brows, large eyes, and an air of righteousness. Although she had been tempted by the handsome young boy for a while, Hao Ren still felt her eyes light up at the sight of him.
Yang Guo! The middle-aged Yang Guo, weathered by time and at his most charismatic!
“Brat, get away from my little girl if you don’t want to die!” As soon as the uncle entered, he unhesitatingly grabbed the boy by the collar around his neck and lifted him up like a kitten.
“Uncle Daizi, I promise I won’t compete with you for favor! I just want a place to stay! Please, just let me stay by Her Majesty the Queen’s side… I know English, I can be useful to Her Majesty the Queen…”
The uncle had been about to throw the boy out, but he paused at those last words. He loosened his grip and dropped him to the floor.
The handsome young boy fell heavily to the ground but didn’t cry out in pain. Instead, he let out a long sigh of relief.
“What are you… What are you all…” Hao Ren looked at the handsome young boy, then at the kind-looking uncle. “Uncle Daizi…”
The one-armed uncle smiled and nodded, then gradually faded away. Even the handsome young boy’s figure began to blur along with him.
“You’ll see me when you wake up… Entering your dream consumed too much of my mental energy, please don’t wake me…” Before he disappeared, the handsome young boy’s expression was one of exhaustion.
When Hao Ren woke up, it was already broad daylight. Daizi was curled up at her feet, staring blankly at the tree shadows outside the window. Asleep on her pillow was a beautiful, blue British Shorthair cat. The cat was probably not yet an adult, its body half-grown, but it had inherited its breed’s natural gifts well, being plump and fluffy. The red collar around its neck was identical to the one on the handsome young boy in Hao Ren’s dream. It must have snuck in last night when the other cats came to pay homage.
“Don’t tell me it’s…”
“Exactly as you think!” The half-grown cat was sound asleep. It was Daizi who answered her.
Although so many shocking things had happened recently, Hao Ren still felt deeply shaken. “So powerful, it can actually enter dreams. Were the ancient legends of sending dreams your doing? And the fox spirits meeting scholars at night in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, could it be…”
“Mhm!” Daizi nodded. “Among all animals, foxes and snakes have the strongest mental power. Of course, it’s only mental power. Things like having children are impossible. As you humans would say, they can only fantasize about it.”
“Holy crap!” Hao Ren couldn’t help but swear. “So, in the dream, when he said I could do anything I want to him, he meant…”
Before Hao Ren could finish her sentence, she felt Daizi’s gaze turn ice-cold in an instant.
“Little girl, remember, you are a human!” The tone was frigid, carrying the weight of an elder’s warning to a junior.
Hao Ren was quite frightened by its sudden cold stare and quickly said, “Uncle Daizi, don’t be so serious. I was just curious and asking…”
After finishing breakfast with Daizi using the beef jerky Hao Yi had given them yesterday, and tearing open another pack to leave beside the British Shorthair on her pillow, Hao Ren left the house with Daizi.
Hao Ren had thought that today wouldn’t be as troublesome as yesterday, with its car accidents and dead dogs. She never expected that today’s short, ten-minute journey would be even more arduous than yesterday’s.
Dogs, small birds, mice, snakes… wave after wave of small animals surged toward her like a tide, scrambling to be the first to express their reverence for her.
“Greetings to the new King!”
“Paying our respects to Her Majesty the Queen!”
“Long live Her Majesty the Queen!”
“Your Majesty, Your Majesty, we love you!”
…
The dogs ran in circles around her, the small birds circled above her, the mice lined up beside the sewer drains to bow to her, and when she walked past a certain smelly ditch, she even encountered a hair-raising tide of cockroaches…
Fortunately, there were large trees everywhere, which did a good job of hiding the beast tide. Otherwise, such a magnificent scene would have definitely caused a panic among the citizens. The short, ten-minute journey felt more painful to Hao Ren than climbing a mountain of knives or descending into a sea of fire. By the time she had cut through the thorns and cleared all obstacles to reach the exam site, the exam had, of course, already begun. Luckily, just like yesterday, she hadn’t missed the deadline for entry.
When Hao Ren entered the room, she was once again met with the curious gazes of the crowd. Today, she looked even more miserable than yesterday. Although she hadn’t forgotten her pen, her appearance was more than just a little disheveled. There were flower petals sprinkled by birds stuck in her hair, stains from dogs rubbing against her pant cuffs, and even a fresh dollop of bird poop on her shoulder…
Just moments before, several green pet snakes had enthusiastically coiled around her legs, saying they wanted to help cool her down. She had to coax them for a long time before she could persuade them to leave. Luckily, she wasn’t afraid of snakes. If a girl who was afraid of snakes had encountered the same thing, forget cooling down, she might have been scared so badly she lost all body temperature.
The two proctors’ opinion of her had clearly improved yesterday afternoon, but now their gazes had reverted to looking at a crazy person.
Hao Ren gave a wry smile, sat down in her seat, and began to answer the questions at high speed, just like yesterday. There was no other reason. She just wanted to finish the exam as quickly as possible, go home, and take a shower. She didn’t care about anything else, but the fresh, not-yet-dry dollop of bird poop on her shoulder was bothering her. Birds, with their lack of an intestinal sphincter, were truly shameless, dropping their bombs wherever they flew.