Fang Jing hopped and skipped along beside Lu Hao, chirping a few times.
What on earth are we looking for so late at night?
Lu Hao turned his head to look at the little white ball trotting right beside his feet. “How about I find some fragrant flower petals for you to take a bubble bath, hmm?”
“Chirp.”
Yay! He loved baths, he loved things that smelled nice, and he wanted to be his pooper-scooper’s most fragrant little beast.
“Chirp!”
When Lu Hao gently placed him into the wooden basin, Fang Jing let out a comfortable sigh of contentment.
It had been a long time since he felt this good. Not only was there a flower petal bath, but someone was even helping him scrub down. Days like this felt like living like an immortal—something not even a fortune could buy.
Supporting Fang Jing’s little head with one hand to prevent him from drowning, Lu Hao used his other hand to gently scrub back and forth across the little creature’s body.
Soft, fluffy white fur floated on the surface of the water, making the little white ball in the tub look a size bigger, as if his fur had all puffed up.
Lu Hao’s pressure was just right—neither too heavy nor too light. It felt so good that Fang Jing stayed completely still, quite blissfully enjoying himself as he closed his eyes and let Lu Hao “feel him up” from top to bottom.
“Chirp?”
Right until an unspeakable spot was touched, Fang Jing snapped his eyes open, and his widely splayed hind legs quickly clamped shut.
This meant rejection, defense, and absolutely no touching.
Pooper-scooper, what are you doing?!
That was a man’s most vulnerable area; you couldn’t just go around randomly touching it!
His master had said that whoever dared touch him there had to take responsibility, stay with him, and become his Dao companion. If someone touched him and refused to take responsibility, his master also said that for such a person, giving them a sword strike was letting them off easy.
It was a good thing he wasn’t human right now.
“What’s wrong?” Lu Hao withdrew his hand before Fang Jing could make another move.
Clearly, even his fragile belly could be touched completely unguarded, so why did the little guy react so strongly when it came to washing his lower half?
“Chirp.”
Floating on the water’s surface, Fang Jing belatedly realized that this looked a bit inappropriate. He tried to use his two front paws to cover up the sensitive area, but alas, his hands were too short and couldn’t reach at all.
Having no other choice, he could only flick his tail over to cover his two tiny, tiny eggs.
Once covered, Fang Jing finally looked up at Lu Hao, locking eyes with him.
A flash of inspiration struck Lu Hao, and he suddenly understood. “Yuanyuan, are you feeling shy?”
A level-ten pet beast could actually have a sense of shame and know how to be embarrassed?
This was simply unheard of, and at the same time, completely outside Lu Hao’s zone of knowledge.
The small canine pet beasts he had seen were hailed as some of the reigning champions of intelligence among level-ten pet beasts.
Canine pet beasts were a somewhat controversial existence.
Some people believed that canines shouldn’t be classified as level-ten pet beasts. While small canines indeed lacked strong offensive power, large canines were targets that ordinary people had to actively guard against.
Later, after formal evaluation, large canines were categorized according to their size and combat power, while small canines remained classified as level-ten pet beasts.
Regardless of whether they were large or small, there was no doubt that their intelligence was indeed higher than certain contracted beasts or regular pet beasts.
However, people actually had it wrong. It wasn’t that level-ten pet beasts had low intelligence; rather, language communication barriers led humans to believe pet beasts weren’t smart because they couldn’t seem to learn anything no matter how much they were taught. Meanwhile, the pet beasts thought humans were absolute idiots for chirping away for so long without figuring out what they wanted.
Yet, whether large or small, Lu Hao had never seen any pet beast that possessed a sense of shame exclusive to humans, just like his little white ball.
Consequently, alongside his surging emotions, Lu Hao felt a bit at a loss, and he asked again, “Yuanyuan, are you blushing? Is it because I touched your butt?”
Since the little white ball still knew how to feel shy, certain words had to be spoken with caution.
If he used the word “touch” for this kind of situation, what kind of person would that make him?
“Chirp.”
That’s right! You said it yourself: a man’s spot can’t be rubbed casually, so my spot definitely can’t be touched casually either. He wasn’t that kind of casual person.
Fearing that his pooper-scooper wouldn’t understand, Fang Jing even gave a little nod—double insurance. Surely the pooper-scooper would understand now?
“Sorry, I didn’t know.” Lu Hao had seen little dogs directly lifting a leg to pee by the roadside, and he had seen pet beasts mating right on the street, so he had naturally assumed his Yuanyuan was just like them.
“Chirp.”
I don’t blame you. You didn’t know I was human.
Lu Hao silently made a mental note of this, resolving to be more careful in the future.
The next day, Lu Hao set out once again on the path to find a contracted beast. To his surprise, this time, there was no need for him to cooperate with Lu Huan’s contracted beast. At the mere sound of a “chirp,” the contracted beast that had originally wanted to escape revealed a terrified expression, whimpered with a low growl, and unwillingly—yet too terrified to resist—lowered its head, allowing Lu Hao to slip a collar bearing the Lu family insignia around its neck.
This collar possessed the function of suppressing a contracted beast’s abilities and power. Once put on, not only would the beast be unable to use its inner powers, but if it ever harbored thoughts of killing its master and made an aggressive move, the Lu family members could press the electric shock button via the controller to protect themselves and issue punishment.
Filled with doubt and shock, Lu Hao felt his heart beating violently. He had too many questions: Why would a level-one contracted beast be afraid of his Yuanyuan’s cry? Could it be that Yuanyuan was actually some kind of King of Beasts?
Was that why it exerted a deterrent effect on the ice tiger?
Yet…
Lu Hao looked down at the four-dissimilar little white ball in his chest pouch, which was tilting its head to gaze back at him, and the hypothesis that had just risen in his heart instantly vanished into thin air.
Fang Jing’s eyes were bright and sparkling, and Lu Hao could clearly read the words “Quick, praise me! Hurry up and praise me!” in them.
This was truly a contracted beast that knew how to fish for merit and wanted to be praised.
Just looking into those big eyes melted Lu Hao’s heart. He cupped Fang Jing’s butt with one hand, lowered his head, and kissed Fang Jing’s furry forehead. “Yuanyuan is so amazing! You helped me, didn’t you?”
“Chirp!”
When Yuanyuan makes a move, success is guaranteed!
Lu Hao couldn’t figure out the exact reason behind it, but he was thankful that the live-stream orb had been eaten by the giant-mouthed beast. Otherwise, if this scene were broadcasted, it would likely cause a massive uproar online.
“Our Yuanyuan is really incredible. You even know how to help me solve my troubles. Such a good boy.” Finishing that, Lu Hao rubbed his cheek against Fang Jing’s forehead again.
Fang Jing felt like he was floating on air, dizzy and intoxicated as if he had drunk too much. He started chirping away, his front paws vigorously pawing at Lu Hao’s chest while he lifted his little head high—the meaning behind it couldn’t have been more obvious.
Finding it inwardly amusing, Lu Hao lowered his head, letting the little white ball smear his face all over with saliva. “Hehe… Alright, be a good boy. I’ll take you to go see my friend, alright? It’s Xie Zhinian, the one you saw that day. He’s tracking down the whereabouts of a fire fox nearby, so I’m going to go help him look.”
“Chirp.”
Having spent some time with Lu Hao, and ever since Lu Hao discovered that Fang Jing had brains, Lu Hao would show Fang Jing thirty minutes of video footage every day.
Of course, any more than that wouldn’t do; it would cut into a slacker’s sleeping time.
Even with just thirty minutes a day, given Fang Jing’s cleverness, he knew very well what high-level contracted beasts meant to interstellar humans.
Money, glory, status… In short, higher-level contracted beasts—especially those coming out of Fire Cloud Star—were existences that many ability users sought after but could never find, commanding a price but having no market availability.
The meat sold outside and all those delicious foods couldn’t just be obtained through brute force. This place wasn’t like the cultivation world, where strength was respected and whoever had the capability took what they wanted.
This was a place governed by law. You couldn’t just kill people at will, nor could you arbitrarily seize other people’s property, or else you would face legal sanctions.
The videos all said that people who suffered legal sanctions would have a very hard time mixing in society afterwards and would be looked down upon by others.
Fang Jing didn’t know if Lu Hao had money, but Lu Hao had already said that they were now one entity, so he couldn’t rely on Lu Hao for everything. He had to make some preparations for his future life as a slacker beast.
Want to be a slacker here?
You still had to possess—or rather, satisfy—one condition: having money.
That’s right. In the cultivation world, Fang Jing could be a slacker because he possessed the strength and status to back it up.
But in the interstellar era, besides his pooper-scooper, he had nothing.
Therefore, before leaving Fire Cloud Star, he had to make a fortune first.
Of course, this definitely couldn’t be done by his own hands; otherwise, what was the pooper-scooper contracted for?
Besides, the videos also said that every type of contracted beast had different abilities. Some contracted beasts, like that so-called space rat, were very popular among humans with low ability levels for contracts.
The so-called space rat didn’t mean the creature had the ability to travel through space; to put it bluntly, space rats were about the same as treasure-seeking mice.
Because of this, treasure space rats had become one of the favored pets contracted by low-level ability users. Contracting a space rat was practically equivalent to owning something similar to a storage ring.
The only slight drawback was that not every space rat came with the exact same inner space capacity. According to what interstellar humans had discovered so far, the largest space brought by a space rat was twenty square meters, and the smallest was one square meter.
Since space rats had spaces, Fang Jing decided he could have one too.