The black cat left the hunting ground with a belly filled with rage.
Along the way, his mind was churning with various horrifying thoughts - for example, buying breakfast for Zhang Ji Xin tomorrow morning and spiking it with barb beans or cockroach feces; or asking Assistant Hilda to put him and Zhang Ji Xin together in the afternoon practice class so he could teach the red-faced male wizard a lesson with a newly learned curse. Or he could pretend to write a love letter to the bad-tempered Li Meng in the name of Zhang Ji Xin, and make it a bit vulgar, using some crude words.
With all these tactics combined, the young scholarship student believed that the red-faced male wizard would be in deep trouble whether he survived or not.
Imagining the scene of Jiang Yu leading a slew of angry witches throughout the academy chasing down Zhang Ji Xin made the black cat hopping around in the shrubs chuckle. His mood was mysteriously much better.
But this change was quickly interrupted by the happening of another event.
Zheng Qing originally planned to go back to the dormitory directly. He chose to take a detour - weaving through the grass, woods, and shrubs from start to finish, selecting the places where no one usually appeared to avoid being called ’meow meow’ by passing witches or wizards.
However, while crossing a long corridor, the black cat unexpectedly saw a green-vested mouse scampering past site.
Though the encounter was brief, the black cat judged by his intuition that the green-vested mouse was the Dangdang Ears that he had separated from just recently. As a cat, he was very confident in his instincts.
Where was that mouse rushing to?
The black cat licked his lips, curiosity piqued - such a panic could only mean it is going to meet a female mouse or returning to its nest to meet its Elderly Ancestor. Relatively speaking, the latter seemed more likely.
After all, Dangdang Ears had a gaunt face, deadpan eyes, a pair of attention-grabbing ears, a strand of mouse whiskers, he looked entirely devoid of any marriage prospects.
The most important thing was, it was a stingy and impoverished mouse! Which cultured mouse with ideals would love a mouse stuffing coal, treating it as a treasure into its bosom? No female mouse would ever like such a mouse!
However, perhaps this was an opportunity? An opportunity to find the nest of the clothed mice? The black cat hesitated for a few seconds, estimating the time he had left in this form, then looked up at the sky.
The sunset was early in winter, and so was the dark. Although it was just past five in the afternoon, there was hardly any light left. It was pitch dark and nothing could be seen.
The black cat still had plenty of transformation time left, and darkness wasn’t an enemy to the cat. After all, as a nocturnal creature, the black cat’s night vision was almost as clear as day.
With these thoughts in mind, the black cat instantly made the decision to hide his presence and silently followed the cheerfully hopping green vest mouse.
Looking left, looking right, looking forward, he moved one step at a time, like a devil.
The black cat, incarnating into a creature of the night, quietly weaved through the meadows and shrubs like a ghost. His sensitive whiskers and footpads perfectly concealed his track. To prevent accidents, the black cat even took out an invisibility talisman from his grey cloth bag. Although it was only a defective one, it was more than enough to conceal a cat’s traces—he was confident he could do no better!
After leaping over numerous walls and ditches, with the unevenness, the black cat hummed a tune while lightly jumping across another ditch, always keeping a distance of over one hundred meters from Dangdang Ears. Even though they didn’t walk the main road, he still easily identified from the changing surroundings that he had run out of the school’s boundary and was in a secluded corner of the first university, which seemed to look just like the place where another vested mouse had taken him before.
Looking at the ruined building in the distance, the black cat felt wary.
Before his wariness settled, Dangdang Ears who had been obediently showing him the way suddenly turned its head back, grinned, revealing a ’malicious’ smile.
Damn it! Did that rascal rat suspect me?
The black cat froze, abruptly halted, looking vigilantly left and right while being upset with himself for the reckless adventure alone. He should’ve at least brought his feline army for backup to boost his confidence.
"Why are you always following me?"
A sudden voice came from behind the black cat.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. With a jump, his claws slid and made a 180-degree drift, turning towards the source of the sound.
Only a few steps away, under a big locust tree, a green vest mouse was poking its head out of a tree hole, looking at him curiously.
The black cat blinked and looked forward. The figure that had been leading him all the way had disappeared, leaving only the cold wind howling in the empty field.
"There’s enough room on the open road for all...Who said I was following you?" The black cat stiffened his neck and insistently defended, "The school is so big, can’t it allow people to stroll around?"
"Oh? Is that so?" Dangdang Ears looked at him suspiciously.
"Absolutely true!" The black cat, sensing that things were going well, promptly agreed while forcedly laughing to praise the Mouse King, " ... I must say, your hole-making techniques are quite amusing... Hahaha, you just close your eyes and pop your head out of this hole. It’s hilarious!"
"But our Elderly Ancestor said ’A cat at night, painted with honey, is most dangerous.’... You’re considered a cat at night, right?" Dangdang Ears did not catch the black cat’s compliment, instead, he ponderously took out a long, thin stick from between his legs. There was a black, cylindrical object tied to one end of the stick, it was unclear what it was used for.
"Whose ghostly proverb is that?!" The black cat listened to the mouse’s words with a straight face, then anxiously looked at the stick it took out and asked, "And... what are you holding?"
"It is a professionally made alchemy product for warning, our mouse clan’s procurement expert imported it from abroad, for use when a lone mouse feels unsafe walking the night road," Dangdang Ears puffed out his chest and introduced it with a proud tone.
The black cat wore a subtle expression on his face, upon hearing this.
"Can you introduce that in front of me?" he couldn’t help but retort.
"You, a cat, followed a mouse through half the school under the cover of night, is that appropriate?!" Dangdang Ears swiftly retorted back.