Chapter 1

When Tantai Tian lifted his head, he found that the cat was still there. The cat was thin and small, shivering uncontrollably in the cold of such a heavy snowfall.

Behind him, a eunuch holding an umbrella spoke in a soft, hushed voice. “Your Highness, please hurry. His Majesty is waiting.”

Tantai Tian withdrew his gaze indifferently and followed the eunuch away.

The cat crouched atop the palace wall, trembling and mewing, and there was something almost despairing in the sound.

In truth, the cat was talking to the System.

Though admittedly, the cat really was rather desperate too.

“Didn’t the System say Tantai Tian had a gentle and courteous personality?

“Didn’t the System say that if the Cat just acted weak and pitiful, he would help with barely any effort at all?

“Didn’t the System also say the first task would be easy, easy, easy to complete?”

Three questions in a row, each one more pitiful than the last.

[Thirty years ago, Spacetime Turbulence erupted, and an otherworldly visitor transmigrated into this world. The main plotline descended into chaos, and Tantai Tian’s personality changed as a result.]

So the Tantai Tian of today was nowhere near as gentle and kind as he was originally supposed to be.

The cat shivering on the wall, of course, knew all about the main plotline.

After all, the price the System had paid for saving the cat’s life was sending him here to complete tasks that would push the main plotline forward.

The cat let out a couple more mournful mews, then trembling on all four legs, hopped down from the wall. Gradually growing accustomed to his new, tiny body, he raced through the palace under the cover of night.

His target, naturally, was the group from just now.

Snowy days were cold, but they also muffled plenty of sound.

Following footprints and scent trails, the cat made his way without incident to a majestic great hall, scampered up a pillar in a few leaps, and slipped nimbly inside.

The moment he entered, warmth washed over him, so cozy the cat wanted to roll around on the floor.

But before he could find a suitable spot to settle, a furious roar erupted from below.

Perched on the crossbeam, the cat looked down.

A fat man dressed in yellow, looking very much like an emperor, was bellowing in rage.

“Have all these years of the Crown Prince’s schooling gone straight into a dog’s gut? Your elder brother visited you out of fraternal affection, and what did you do!”

Emperor Changle berated Tantai Tian, tearing him apart from head to toe.

Up on the crossbeam, the cat sharpened his claws against the wood, producing a crisp, grating scrape, and his dangling tail flicked back and forth. He looked rather displeased.

The cat said to the System, “Cat doesn’t like this fatty.”

[The System doesn’t like him either.]

The cat’s mood improved slightly, and his tail flicked again.

Below, Emperor Changle had already accelerated straight into accusations of disloyalty, unfiliality, heartlessness, unrighteousness, and being lower than swine. Naturally, besides the Emperor and the Crown Prince, there were plenty of others in the hall as well.

But those people were like the wood the cat was now scratching. Not one of them showed the slightest reaction.

Tantai Tian kept his head lowered, silent and still.

He was tall, taller than most of the humans the cat had ever seen.

The Fat Emperor wasn’t short either, and he had a round belly that jiggled and wobbled with every furious shout, which honestly looked rather ugly.

“Cowering like that, where is your dignity as a ruler? Raise your head for This Emperor!”

Scolding from behind wasn’t satisfying enough. Emperor Changle needed to roar right into Tantai Tian’s face to vent his anger.

Tantai Tian slowly lifted his head. His expression was blank, but on closer look, those deep, dark eyes were locked directly onto Emperor Changle’s, brimming with dead silence and unfathomable menace.

For a single instant, even Emperor Changle froze where he stood.

His mouth trembled for a moment, and from that trembling, rage was born.

Emperor Changle snatched the jade bottle beside the table and hurled it viciously at Tantai Tian. The cold water meant for the flower arrangements drenched him from head to face. The lingering chill from outside hadn’t yet left his body, and it seized him in an uncontrollable shiver as even more blood slid down from his temple.

And still, Tantai Tian gazed coldly at Emperor Changle.

Watching him with a cold, obsessive, twisted stare, as if looking at some dead thing.

That faint, almost-smiling expression was even more like mockery.

Emperor Changle shook so hard with fury that even his fingers trembled. Before he could seize something heavier to throw, a whistle of wind sliced past his ear, and then something pounced onto his face, clawing wildly.

“AAAAAH!”

The claws bit deep, the pain digging straight to the bone, and Emperor Changle howled in agony. The attendants who had stood like wooden statues and clay figurines finally came alive, all of them shouting “Protect His Majesty!” as they flung themselves at him.

Amid the chaotic scrum of “protection,” no one got a clear look at what exactly had attacked Emperor Changle.

Only Tantai Tian blinked, slowly.

He had seen a flash of black.

It looked like the little cat from the palace wall.

…

After attacking Emperor Changle, the cat darted out of the hall, leaping across treetops and palace walls into the wind and snow.

The cat was still very cold.

But the cat was also very excited.

The cat truly hated that noisy, fat Emperor.

Tantai Tian wasn’t his owner, but he was still the System’s mission target, and Emperor Changle was simply insufferable.

The cat ran a while, rested a while, and finally, guided by the System’s directions, arrived at the Hall of Peace and Ease.

Before long, Tantai Tian was carried back as well.

The wound at his temple had already frozen into a clot of blood, to say nothing of his water-soaked clothes. Returning on such a winter day, he had been chilled to the point of becoming a block of ice.

After an incident like that, Emperor Changle naturally had no more thought to spare for this tiresome son. He clutched his wounded face and roared, summoning the Imperial Physician, cursing the guards, his fingers slick with trails of running blood.

That shade of red gave Tantai Tian a small measure of satisfaction.

The Hall of Blessed Tranquility had no time for him, so Chief Steward Xu Chunming of the palace front made the call and had him sent back. The wind and snow along the way stripped away every last trace of warmth, and by the time Tantai Tian returned and sat down, he was too frozen to speak.

The Hall of Peace and Ease was a small Buddhist chapel within the palace.

Very small. Aside from the chapel itself for worship, only the two side rooms could be lived in.

Tantai Tian occupied the left side room; the right one housed two eunuchs, Liang Ze and Yu Zeming.

Liang Ze tried to go out and fetch an Imperial Physician, but the patrolling Imperial Guards drove him back.

Left with no choice, Yu Zeming brought out what little charcoal remained. Hardly had it caught fire before a choking smell filled the side room. Hurriedly, he moved the brazier over by the window and cracked it open for ventilation.

Once the room had warmed a little, he and Liang Ze worked together to strip off Tantai Tian’s soaked, stiffened clothes, wiped the blood clots from his wounds with snowwater warmed over the brazier, and wrapped everything up as best they could with clean strips of cloth.

The cat asked, “Human, no medicine applied.”

The mewing was very faint.

Liang Ze looked up at the ceiling and, after a long moment, decided he must have misheard.

[The Hall of Peace and Ease has no medicine.]

The System said this to the cat after finishing its scan.

In fact, the being the System had originally wanted to bind with was not this cat.

The cat had lived a dozen-odd years, but a cat was, in the end, a cat. Not the same species as a human.

Through a twist of fate, at the moment of possession, a car accident occurred. The human the System had intended to possess died on the spot, while the cat run over by the wheels still clung to a thread of life.

The System, its binding only half complete: …

With no other option, the System took up residence in the cat.

A close call. Fortunately, the cat was already over a dozen years old and had awakened sentience.

Otherwise, the System might have had to spend a few years first, learning how to raise a cat to have a slightly better brain.

The cat lay sprawled on the crossbeam, sniffing at the stinky smell, his little cat face turning stinky too.

After the two humans left and shut the door behind them, the cat nimbly leapt down from the crossbeam, then bounded once more onto the bed.

Such a big human, lying ill in bed, actually looked a little frail.

The cat paced back and forth by the pillow.

His tail swept back and forth across Tantai Tian’s face.

The cat sat down and instinctively licked his paw.

Then, he stuck out his tongue.

So stinky.

He had tasted human blood.

Though most of the traces had vanished during his earlier run, some bloodstains still clung between his claws.

Slowly, the cat rubbed his damp paw pads against the bedspread, leaving a few dark smudges. Then he pressed a paw pad against Tantai Tian’s face.

The pad twitched. It seemed fun, so he pressed a few more times.

Wow. So hot.

Even now, Tantai Tian’s cold face showed no hint of relaxation. The cat, who could see perfectly well in the dark, watched the furrow between his brows and asked the System, a little worried, “Human, going to die?”

The cat had once, briefly, had a home.

An elderly person had seen the cat downstairs and brought him home.

She bought him a cat bed, cat food, a litter box.

She was very kind.

But with age came accidents, sooner or later.

The cat was bad. He didn’t raise the old person well.

One time, after the elderly person went to sleep, she never got up again. It was the cat’s relentless yowling that finally drew the neighbors. They took her to the hospital, and two days later, her children hurried home.

But it was too late.

Grief-stricken, the children treated the black cat the elderly person had brought home as a devil that courted disaster, and they threw him out of the house.

A place without the elderly person held no interest for the cat.

But the cat still remembered how hot her body had been that day. Just like this human before him now.

“…Cold…”

Tantai Tian frowned, murmuring faintly in his sleep.

The cat said, “Human, very hot.”

The System replied.

[When you have a fever, you feel cold.]

The cat thought about that, then steeled himself and burrowed under the covers.

A small ball of black cat, crouched on the cold chest of Tantai Tian.