[Xiao Bai is actually a cat?!]
[I have sinned. I actually cursed a cat out loud, QAQ.]
[My mom asked me why my optical computer eyes looked so lifeless. That was my soul repenting.]
In an instant, the comments on the interstellar network reversed completely. The view count of Ruan Bai’s streaming clip surged at an astonishing rate, quickly climbing to the number one spot on the Empire’s Interstellar Network trending list.
The number of people following him also skyrocketed, reaching over seven billion in a short period of time.
This was a cat streaming live!!
In the interstellar era, cats were an extremely rare, precious, and notoriously spoiled, temperamental species.
Have a cat stream live?
You’d be lucky if they were willing to sit in front of a camera for a few minutes.
Netizens who had no cats to pet were immersed in various mimetic forms. Now that they were told there was a cat that was exceptionally well-behaved and smart, who couldn’t love it?
As the netizens immersed themselves in the joy of being able to pet a cat up close, the popularity of a certain trending topic began to climb, catching them off guard and delivering a sharp blow.
#Can cats eat energy crystals?#
The post laid out the evidence logically and reasoned out the segment where Ruan Bai ate the energy crystal, maintaining a neutral attitude.
[Hiss! There’s something fishy going on here. I’ve never heard of a cat eating energy crystals.]
[There might be some hidden story behind it, right?]
[ upstairs, stop covering for him. This video has been professionally authenticated; the energy crystal is not a mimicry.]
The fact that the energy crystal was not a mimicry precisely showed that the item the cat was holding in its paws was deliberately made to look like an energy crystal.
[Who knows? Aren’t all cat owners capitalists? Isn’t it easy to do whatever they want?]
Zhu Yu looked at the newly posted thread, feeling quite good.
He didn’t need to worry about this cat anymore. After all, the matter of the energy crystals was like a thorn stuck deep in the netizens’ hearts.
Even if they chose to swallow their anger for now just to watch a real cat, wouldn’t people’s repressed emotions only explode all the more violently later on?
When that time came, all the anger from being deceived would backlash entirely onto its owner. After all, a cat wouldn’t fake eating energy crystals on its own just to grab attention.
By then, with those people too busy dealing with their own mess, it naturally wouldn’t have any impact on him.
Zhu Yu’s manager, Lin Jin, wore a smile on his face. The threat this cat posed to Zhu Yu wasn’t that big anymore.
However, he was still worried: “Zhu Yu, was this really not your doing?”
If it was, they needed to prepare early. After all, Zhu Yu couldn’t afford to have any black marks on his record.
Zhu Yu was also puzzled. “Brother Lin, it really wasn’t me.”
That cat had been cursed at so miserably earlier, and he had even smoothly ridden that wave of traffic to gain exposure; there was no need to go looking for trouble.
“Perhaps it got in someone else’s way.”
The “someone” whose way had been blocked—Marshal Huo—coldly looked at Luo Yucheng, who had leaked the news. A hint of danger flashed across his narrow, dark eyes as he said ruthlessly, “Is this the method you were talking about?”
Luo Yucheng felt his conscience prick and put on a fawning expression. “There has to be a buildup first… Haha… Little Hua is also eating energy crystals alongside Xiao Bai now. Once the popularity goes up, applying for sentient creature status will happen naturally.”
He had brought Little Hua back for two years, and its body size had never changed.
Physical examinations and the like were also done frequently.
Up until now, Little Hua was in tip-top shape, with no other issues besides the occasional split personality.
Luo Yucheng endured Marshal Huo’s murderous glare. “Only when there’s more attention online will it have an effect.”
The young master Luo stubbornly braved this pressure and delayed the broadcast until the next day to open a live stream for the two little kittens.
As soon as the broadcast started, tens of thousands of people flooded into the live streaming room instantly, and the number continued to grow at an astonishing rate.
The server was even slightly overloaded for a moment.
Luo Yucheng clicked his tongue. Network equipment in the interstellar era was extremely powerful and generally didn’t require manual maintenance; Xiao Bai’s traffic really made people envious.
[Xiao Bai started streaming!!]
[Cat!!]
[Xiao Bai, look at me.]
[There’s also a little tabby cat. Tears of jealousy are falling from the corners of my mouth.]
The barrage comments scrolled past so fast they were unreadable. Luo Yucheng simply turned off the barrage entirely.
“Thank you everyone for your concern for Xiao Bai,” a clear, pleasant male voice rang out in the streaming room. “We are now opening up the holographic, non-mimetic mode for everyone.”
The non-mimetic mode in holographic streaming meant that people on the network could truly experience close-range contact with the people or objects on screen, with a tactile realism approaching nearly one hundred percent.
They could completely touch and feel for themselves whether the energy crystals were real or fake.
Considering Marshal Huo’s possessiveness, he still prudently set it so that the cats could not be touched.
He didn’t want Little Hua to be touched by others either.
Sure enough, as soon as the hologram opened, netizens instantly wanted to pet the cat.
Discovering that they couldn’t touch the cat, they had no choice but to shift their focus to the energy crystals the two kittens were gnawing on.
[Wuwu QwQ, so stingy, you won’t even let us touch them in hologram.]
[Exactly! And we can’t actually touch the cat QAQ.]
[This… energy crystal actually seems real.]
Netizens went from disbelief to doubting their entire lives.
[This… can cats really eat energy crystals?!]
Fearing that this batch of netizens would cause trouble and harm the little kittens, Luo Yucheng added lazily, “Whether cats eat energy crystals depends entirely on themselves. After all, humans have things they don’t eat, too.”
He said with malicious intent, “If you hurt a kitty’s feelings and make them angry, then congratulations, you will lose your kitty.”
[So overbearing! I suspect he’s threatening us.]
[Taking a look at the ancestral beast at home, I don’t dare QAQ.]
[This sounds like it makes sense, but why is it so weird?]
No matter what the netizens on the interstellar network thought, their purpose this time had been achieved. Now they were just waiting for the people from the Empire’s Species Bureau to come knocking.
Thinking this, young master Luo decisively cut off the stream. “Everyone, I’m going to pet my cat now. Bye-bye.”
The very next second after his smiling tone faded, the live streaming room went pitch black. By the time the netizens reacted, the screen only left behind a single sentence: “This streamer has gone offline, recommending related streamers for you.”
“What the heck?!”
In a high school in the Third Star System, a girl in a school uniform looked dazed.
She had just been observing the cat up close, and it just cut off like that?
This streamer really isn’t human!!!
This kind of situation happened in many, many places.
Netizens with nowhere to vent their frustration swarmed onto the interstellar network to post comments and leave messages.
A trending thread titled #-Digging Into That Inhuman Streamer-# grew increasingly popular.
Luo Yucheng was still unaware of the commotion on the interstellar network.
He only knew that if he didn’t leave soon, Marshal Huo would probably kill him.
He picked up Little Hua, who was still immersed in gnawing on the crystal, and left the Marshal’s Mansion without stopping.
The young master Luo, walking far too quickly, didn’t notice the tabby cat, which had spent two days gnawing on energy crystals, gazing at him with deep, unfathomable eyes.
Otherwise, Young Master Luo probably would have run for his life overnight carrying it.
To be honest, those deep, dark eyes looked extremely dangerous, completely lacking their usual soft and cute appearance.