The little orb of light unfolded a screen about the size of two palms, just big enough to make out what Tantai Tian was up to.
The poor human had to go to work again.
The cat yawned lazily, tilting his little head against the edge of the cat bed.
With his head drooping over like that, anyone who didn’t know better would think the cat was dying.
The sunshine was just right. Warm clear through, Rendong had melted into a puddle in the cat bed by the window. It was the cat’s newest favorite, small enough to hold exactly one Rendong, maybe even a touch snug.
When Qingyun first saw the size the Imperial Cat Bureau had delivered, she’d meant to send it back for something more suitable. Then Rendong discovered the little cat bed.
Tail held high, the cat paced around it, then with one nimble leap, a little dark cloud pounced inside. Fluffy fur spilled over the edges until Rendong squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, and finally poured himself perfectly into the cat bed.
Good bed.
Cat liked it.
And so the cat often curled up into a tiny ball in his cat bed and siphoned his human.
What’s that? Why not follow along to the great hall and siphon up front at court? Because the cat did NOT want to get up early, that’s why!
Cats need lots and lots of sleep, meow.
Watching its Host so hopelessly addicted to siphoning humans, the System fell silent for a moment and quietly double-checked its quests. The main quest wasn’t “Save the Tyrant”… was it?
And yet the Host appeared to be charging full speed in exactly that direction.
“Rendong raised this human, so Rendong has to take responsibility, meow.” Rendong tucked his head back into the cat bed; now his whole body fit inside, front paws curled obediently in front of him. “The cat raised the human from cold and chilly to warm and toasty. Very hard work.”
Winter was cold.
A human Rendong had raised on his own warm, toasty body? How could he just toss him aside!
【But Tantai Tian is not the Male Lead.】
According to the plot, Tantai Tian, as the Second Male Lead, was destined to fade away.
Rendong shot upright with a jolt, eyes going perfectly round. “The human… can die?”
Well, no. Not exactly.
The plot only said the tyrant vanished during a rebellion.
Oh. Oh. Uninterested again, the cat licked at the fur beneath his chin. As long as it didn’t say the human would die, all was fine.
By the time the plot reached that point, Rendong’s quest would surely be finished. Then he could simply watch where the human ran and run along after him. Easy. The cat was excellent at catching mice, and birds, and even snakes!
The human definitely wouldn’t starve on his watch.
The System had discovered a terrifying truth.
Because of the deviation in the plot, Tantai Tian had been in a dreadful state when the Host first arrived. First impressions mattered. From that moment on, Tantai Tian existed in the Host’s mind as a poor, pitiful creature, the sort who might drop dead at any moment unless he was properly cared for.
More than the main quest, Rendong now seemed to treat raising his human as the truly important thing.
Just look at that enthusiasm for grinding side quests. The cat had already worked hard to earn 280 points.
What a diligent cat.
But after the System’s meticulous analysis, it elected not to intervene for now.
The cat wanting to save the tyrant wouldn’t interfere with the main quest. Besides, the quests the System issued these days all benefited Tantai Tian anyway, meant to steer the early plot back onto course.
The sunlight drifted slowly westward. By the time the little bed lost the sun, Rendong had finished siphoning his human and slept his fill, and he oozed groggily out of the bed.
Ha. He was a blob again, one that had grown four rather short little legs.
Tail in the air, Rendong took a couple of halfhearted laps of water and darted outside in a blur.
What a busy, busy cat.
Not only did he have to save up points, he had to keep an eye on Dowager Consort Wang.
The cat was nimble indeed. Every day he made time to scope out the Dowager Consort’s palace. The whole Inner Palace knew it by now: if you spotted a little dark cloud scurrying past, that was most likely His Majesty’s beloved cat.
Yet every time Rendong crouched in the hall eavesdropping, nobody ever caught him!
Heh heh. Spy cat.
Today, while the sweeping maids weren’t looking, Rendong slipped inside with practiced ease, flattened himself into a thin strip, and wriggled beneath the soft couch.
The space here was narrow and dark, but it was Rendong’s favorite spot in the entire palace.
Dowager Consort Wang often played chess and drank tea here, her trailing robes spilling just outside the gap. A pair of brilliant golden cat eyes frequently stared at them hungrily, and furry little paws had tested them with a few tentative taps.
But Rendong had tremendous willpower!
He had resisted every single time, mrow.
Before long, Dowager Consort Wang, her midday nap finished, arrived at the soft couch for tea as usual. But today the room was crowded. Besides her, several other Dowager Consorts had come as well, and the thick cloud of perfume made Rendong’s nose twitch until he drew a furry paw back to cover his face.
Mrow heavens, the cat was about to sneeze.
The Dowager Consorts seated around, naturally, had no idea a little unknown kitty was hiding in their midst. They flattered Dowager Consort Wang without pause.
The Empress Dowager paid no mind to worldly affairs, and the Grand Empress Dowager was advanced in years, so for now the management of the Inner Palace had fallen to Dowager Consort Wang. Even though Emperor Taichu’s ascension had made the others wary of clinging to her as they once had, they still could hardly skip the social calls.
The women spoke in soft, gentle voices, every sentence laced with hidden meaning, and Rendong soon grew dizzy from listening. He accidentally dozed off for a while.
Only at the mention of the Imperial Draft Selection did the half-asleep cat struggle awake.
A draft selection? Where? The cat wanted to watch too!
Rendong perked up at once.
Back in the day, when he used to lie outside human shops watching television, so much always happened during draft selections: the Male Lead and Female Lead falling in love, assassinations and poisonings, sinister scheming. Thrilling, edge-of-the-seat stuff.
“…At His Majesty’s age, he really ought to marry. That draft selection…”
“Who knows when it will be…”
“…Will the Empress Dowager preside…”
Even with his ears alone, Rendong could taste the thick gossip in the air.
The Late Emperor had fathered more than a dozen children. Aside from the former Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace, every adult Imperial Prince was already married, some with a whole flock of sons and daughters.
To the world, the Late Emperor explained that the Crown Prince’s marriage required careful, meticulous selection and could not be rushed.
That “careful selection” dragged on for more than five years.
By the time Emperor Taichu ascended the throne, the Inner Palace was still empty. He didn’t have so much as a single concubine.
Which was, of course, entirely unseemly.
Once the twenty-seven days of mourning, each day standing in for a month, had passed, the civil and military officials kept submitting memorials urging His Majesty to take an Empress and consorts. Emperor Taichu consistently deflected, only recently showing signs of yielding.
And so it became the most hotly debated topic of the day.
Once the Dowager Consorts dispersed, the smile slowly drained from Dowager Consort Wang’s face, leaving traces of irritation behind. The palace was to hold an Imperial Draft Selection. However hands-off the Empress Dowager might be, this was one duty that absolutely could not be shirked.
Dowager Consort Wang knew perfectly well that the Empress Dowager had no interest in managing the Inner Palace, yet that did nothing to settle her nerves. The Empress Dowager might not care, but her son was the Emperor!
Emperor Taichu had no Empress and no children. Such instability shook the very pillars of the court. Naturally, Dowager Consort Wang had no wish to see him hold a draft selection, but the matter was entirely legitimate, and she had no grounds to stop it. Unless…
Dowager Consort Wang’s expression darkened, and she turned to the female palace official at her side. “Has there been any movement from the Hall of Compassionate Origin lately?”
“Her Majesty has been devoted to her Buddhist devotions and hasn’t set foot outside,” Danzhu said softly. “We’ve been watching the whole time.”
Rubbing her temple with the onset of a headache, Dowager Consort Wang sighed. “Those old foxes. Ever since the Grand Military Review, every last one of them has been on their best behavior. Now that the Emperor means to hold a draft selection, they’ll all come swarming like locusts, all for that position.”
At the thought, her fury flared hot.
She had stayed out of the Grand Military Review because she’d been certain it would make Emperor Taichu stumble hard. Who could have guessed the thunder of that coordinated cannon volley would shatter her delusions?
The Capital Garrison was commanded by her family’s concubine-born younger brother. How could there possibly be such a surprise?
The Grand Military Review had been staged with such grandeur and martial might that it utterly cowed everyone nursing schemes of their own.
With the Capital Garrison in hand, Emperor Taichu effectively controlled the Imperial Capital’s defenses. Even the ambitious thought twice, and anyone wavering beat a swift retreat.
Who would dare act up?
Quietly, without anyone marking the moment, no one dared slight the New Emperor anymore. If anything, a new reverence had taken root.
Furious, Dowager Consort Wang had been on the verge of writing a letter demanding answers. Instead, what came was her mother arriving at the palace in person, to tell her of the concubine-born son’s break with the family.
Rarely, in all of history, had such a thing occurred.
To turn one’s back on one’s own family name was the height of forgetting one’s ancestors, an absurdity that would bar a man even from the ancestral graves.
Yet when Dowager Consort Wang pressed for the reason, it turned out to be some trifling matter even she could barely remember.
Many years ago, on the eve of her own entry into the palace, a concubine of the household had fallen gravely ill. Fearing she would sour the auspicious occasion, the family had moved her out.
Not long after, that concubine died. Dowager Consort Wang, already sequestered in the palace, naturally never knew.
That concubine had been the concubine-born son’s own mother.
All over that!
In that instant, bitter resentment welled up in Dowager Consort Wang’s heart.
For Wang Xiuming to win that position in the first place, hadn’t it all been thanks to the Wang Family!
However deep her hatred, Dowager Consort Wang couldn’t slap Wang Xiuming across the face from here. She could only swallow her temper and urge the family to handle the matter quickly.
Matters outside the palace were far beyond her reach. But inside the palace… a venomous look crept across Dowager Consort Wang’s face. That, no one could blame her for.
Rendong, stuffed full of gossip, was deeply satisfied.
He would have liked to keep listening, but the human was off work, so the cat had to go too.
The tiny ball of cat flattened out and oozed from his hiding spot, crouched at the side of the soft couch to shake out his fur, then darted quick as a wink between the tall display cabinets.
The cat Carriage rolled out the door without a sound!
Into the wind, the cat ran fast, fast.
The human was coming back from the hunt, and the cat had to check whether he’d been hurt!
The human’s subordinates were all so wicked. What if the human got bullied?
The cat scaled walls and squeezed through holes, nearly got lured away by a butterfly, but thankfully remembered what he was supposed to be doing and more or less stayed on the path back… Except, somewhere along the way, he still split-legged around a corner.
The human’s scent, over here!
The cat caught a whiff!
Purring away, the Small Cat Carriage pulled up outside a quiet palace hall, and the cat looked up at the plaque overhead.
Not a single fat word of it could he read.
【Hall of Compassionate Origin.】
The System translated for the cat: the Empress Dowager lived here.
Where the human’s mother lived.
The cat memorized it.
The human’s scent was stronger here. Was the human inside?
Rendong’s paw pads pitter-pattered back and forth, but before he could dart inside, the tightly shut doors of the hall swung open.
A crowd of attendants surrounded His Majesty as he came out.
Tantai Tian spotted the little cat below the steps at a glance.
The steps were rather high. Rendong’s front paws gripped the stone slab, most of his body hidden, only a round, fluffy little head peeking out, ears flicking nimbly twice.
As if he’d known all along the human was here, he let out a soft mrow.
Tantai Tian’s thin, pale face was dark and brooding; his mood was likely not a good one. But at the sight of the cat, that pervasive chill melted, just a little.
The human’s clothes today were rich and splendid, covered in lots of shiny threads, and even Rendong felt a stirring urge to pounce.
The human strolled down the steps, and the moment he came to a stop beside Rendong, the cat impatiently shifted position, splayed out two legs, and plopped his bottom right down on top of the human’s foot.
Heh heh. Rendong was heavy, wasn’t he!
Was he heavy enough that the human couldn’t walk?
Quick, beg the Great Cat King for mercy!
