To be honest, Yuchi Xiu had never truly felt a sense of reality regarding the fact that he had transmigrated into a political intrigue novel.
It was hardly surprising. After all, two full years had passed since the Aorong Principality was nearly engulfed and reduced to ruins by being dragged into the fierce, underhanded struggle between two imperial princes in the capital, up until the Prince led troops to reclaim the lost territory from the man-eating beasts. The city walls damaged by those man-eating beasts had long since been patched up, and heavy military forces had been deployed to guard any remaining unrepaired, hazardous weak spots, making their defense patrol system exceptionally thorough.
Civilian personnel like Yuchi Xiu who merely sat in the Prince’s Manor drinking tea and reading case files all day naturally had no opportunity to witness Aorong Principality’s mortal enemies firsthand: those blood-drinking, flesh-devouring man-eating beasts. Consequently, he had naturally never witnessed the brutal scenes of martial generals charging to the front lines to slaughter the enemy in order to protect their homeland.
Moreover, when Yuchi Xiu transmigrated, the Aorong Principality was right in the middle of vibrant, blooming spring. There were still a good six months remaining before the harsh winter season when the man-eating beasts usually headed south to pillage, making it the most peaceful season along the border.
Therefore, aside from everyday life blending ancient styles with occasional modern elements, which made him occasionally think, “Oh, this must be an alternative fictional feudal dynasty based on the author’s settings; the author’s imagination is truly wild,” there were virtually zero hardcore elements that allowed him to deeply experience the reality that this was a “novel world.”
Because of this, by the time two and a half months had passed since his transmigration, Yuchi Xiu had completely forgotten that this was a web-fiction world where no matter how absurd things got, nothing could be considered strange.
To the extent that when he was wandering the streets in the dead of night and happened to encounter a muscular, giant cat three chi long, his very first reaction was: “Holy shit, what is that? An exclusive native breed of the Aorong Principality? Followed immediately by mocking his own overly wild imagination: “What are you even thinking? It’s probably just a relatively large cat breed. Big is good, big looks pretty cute too,”even daring to boldly approach and cozy up to the creature without knowing any better.
And simply because the other party was a cat, he had even grumbled right to its face: “Why does the Prince have to torture me like that? If only that living king of hell were a cat.”
Of course, beneath the pitch-black night sky, while being stared down by that black cat, he had faintly felt as though the creature could understand his words, making his heart feel somewhat creeped out… But upon second thought, cat masters were naturally magical creatures anyway; possessing a bit of spiritual intelligence could be considered entirely within the realm of reason.
He genuinely used to think that way.
However, when he went to the Prince’s Manor to see the Prince the very next day.
Yuchi Xiu finally had an awakening.
With a trembling gaze, Yuchi Xiu traced the line of sight of Old General Yuchi who was currently reporting official business to the Prince, and happened to be none other than Yuchi Xiu’s old man.
Hanging from the belt of the passionately reporting old man was a sword, and the red sword tassel tied to the hilt swayed back and forth with his every movement.
Meanwhile, that living king of hell was fixing his gaze fiercer than usual dead upon that swaying sword tassel.
What was going on here?
The Prince’s stern, dignified, and deadpan iceberg face bore eyeballs that were following the sword tassel’s sway, tracking it right, left, and back right again in a repetitive sweep.
With every movement, those originally deep pupils dilated into a circle, before shrinking back to normal in a continuous loop.
It caused Yuchi Xiu who was following his line of sight to involuntarily hold his breath along with him.
Suddenly, within those sharp, emerald-green pupils, the black pupils dilated ferociously.
Thump.
The tip of the fine Xuancheng wolf-hair brush in the Prince’s hand accurately poked right into the sword tassel on Old General Yuchi’s sword.
How should he put it…
That movement was simply identical to… someone who couldn’t take their eyes off a moving object, finally failing to hold back and reaching out a paw to bat at it…
Just like a cat.
What on earth was going on here?
However, it seemed Yuchi Xiu wasn’t the only one who felt something was amiss.
“Ah!”
Scared nearly out of his wits by the Prince’s sudden movement, Old General Yuchi dropped straight to his knees, flopping face-down onto the Western-style carpet as he yelled:
“Your Highness, spare my life! This subordinate actually dared to point a sword hilt toward Your Highness this subordinate has committed a heinous crime, I beg Your Highness to spare my life!”
Trembling like a leaf in the wind, Old General Yuchi practically tossed the sword onto the ground, turning into a broken-record repeating machine as he kowtowed frantically to beg for mercy.
“Enough. Dismissed.”
The sword tassel stopped swaying, and the Prince seemed to instantly lose interest, casting his gaze back down onto the official documents on his desk until he coldly spoke up to dismiss him.
“This subordinate deserves a thousand deaths! Thank Your Highness for not killing me! This subordinate takes his leave!”
Although watching his old man who was sprawled trembling on the ground and scrambling away in a mad panic look rather pitiful…
That was fundamentally not the point right now.
At the exact moment the Prince gave the order, Old General Yuchi hurriedly knocked his head against the floor and bolted as though chased by a ghost, but Yuchi Xiu didn’t watch his old man’s desperate escape; instead, he kept his eyes locked firmly on the Prince.
Specifically, the Prince’s eyes as he looked at the official documents.
Just before poking his old man’s sword tassel, those pupils which had dilated like a cat’s playfully revving up to pounce and kill its prey had now shrunk back down.
Though they didn’t shrink into tiny round dots… instead, they had constricted into a pair of vertical slits.
What on earth was that, oh my sweet heavens.
No matter how you looked at it, those slender, vertical pupils were definitely not eyes that a normal human being could possibly grow.
If anything…
Wasn’t that simply a pair of living, breathing cat eyes?
Yuchi Xiu frantically racked his brain trying to recall whether the Prince’s eyes had always looked like that, but because every time he saw this living king of hell previously, he was too terrified to look him straight in the eye, aside from feeling that he was terrifying, he couldn’t remember a single detail clearly.
Yet what he could be certain of was that, regardless of what they looked like in the past, right now his boss’s eyes whether considering their shape or their reaction to light were absolutely not human eyes; they were a pair of thorough, unadulterated cat eyes.
Furthermore, that Aorong Prince whose name alone made the entire Aorong Principality tremble with fear…
Overnight, had actually begun acting just like a cat.
That’s right, exactly like a cat.
Throughout the past five days, the Prince in Yuchi Xiu’s eyes had always glared at him with a murderous expression, or stared him down with a threatening look, or glared at him while radiating cold air capable of freezing people to death.
Yet today’s Prince was completely different.
When clocking in for work at dawn, the Prince seemed to merely glance at him before instantly averting his gaze, never once looking him straight in the eye again.
While Yuchi Xiu was still dazed, wondering what kind of game this was and why the living king of hell had suddenly stopped staring him down? Before he could figure out what this 180-degree attitude shift implied, the Prince had already begun doing other things during the time he was supposed to be monitoring him.
For instance, just like earlier, he would fixate on anything swaying until he simply had to reach out and pin it down.
Or in the study, chasing light spots cast onto the floor by sunlight filtering through the window branches as they danced about.
Or when staring blankly out the window, twitching reflexively upon seeing a sparrow flutter past.
These actions…
Were precisely, 100% things that only cats would do!
No. How could the dignified Aorong Prince act like a cat…
While this statement sounded like it was adding cute tropes to a living king of hell, Yuchi Xiu genuinely and from the bottom of his heart did not want to attach any cute attributes to an adult martial warrior built like a bear.
Nor did he want to associate cats creatures known for their delicate softness with a man who still radiated a terrifying aura capable of shaking people to their core even when watched secretly from a hundred paces away.
He even began to suspect whether his mental state had broken down, causing him to constantly conjure up such absurd illusions.
However, as a veteran cat-slave who had grown up surrounded by felines, how could Yuchi Xiu fail to recognize those iconic cat behaviors? After all, according to his mom, he had even learned how to scratch his ears with his feet from the family cat before he had even learned how to speak…
He really didn’t want to think in this direction, but every single movement of the Prince seemed to overlap with a translucent black cat silhouette, leaving Yuchi Xiu feeling profoundly broken down.
After a full day of psychological struggle, when he ultimately caught the Prince’s eyes glowing like a night-prowling cat’s in the pitch-black darkness around the corner of the corridor, Yuchi Xiu finally resigned himself to fate. The Aorong Prince had genuinely turned into a cat.
Tuoba Lin—the Aorong Prince reborn as a god of slaughter had suddenly transformed into a feline overnight.
Although he hadn’t grown furry ears and a tail like the fox demons in strange-tales folktales, short of “cat-human transformation,” there simply wasn’t any more rational explanation to be found.
Facing this sudden, overwhelmingly magical development.
Yuchi Xiu suddenly remembered that he had transmigrated into a fucking novel!
This place featured both a black-hearted Prince’s Manor and a tyrannical Prince; he had foolishly assumed he was just continuing to work as an ox and a horse under a new dynasty.
Once he accepted the setting of “this is a novel world,” Yuchi Xiu stopped being able to distinguish what counted as common sense in this world anymore.
Thinking about it carefully, this trash novel not only featured man-eating beasts and royal family members willing to hack their own brothers to pieces for the throne, but also the Crown Prince’s earth-shattering homosexual love affair. What else was impossible?
Therefore…
Having an immortalized, spirit-awakened cat around was perfectly reasonable, right?
Within Yuchi Xiu’s scrambled, tangled brain, the black cat he had encountered the previous night abruptly flashed into view. That creature had instantly given off the impression at first glance of “this is definitely no ordinary specimen,” sporting a massive physique and carrying its own murderous aura entirely unlike a regular stray cat. Moreover, right after making the wish to that cat: “If only the living king of hell were a cat,” the very next day the Prince had genuinely started acting like a cat.
Although this plotline sounded far too much like the opening act of a third-rate strange-tales novel…
Yet he was literally, truly living inside a novel right here.
Even an imperial prince had grown cat eyes and started practicing pouncing on butterflies, so what else couldn’t happen?
Tormented all day long by the various feline antics pulled by that deadpan-faced Aorong Prince, Yuchi Xiu knew his current train of thought might be slightly extreme.
However, if someone could maintain absolute rationality while watching a terrifying Prince suddenly start chasing light spots like a cat, they would have to be the ones genuinely sick in the head.
No, digging deeper, the fact that he had already transmigrated into a novel and still expected to use science and reason to explain all this was a joke in itself.
At this critical juncture where his common sense lay shattered to pieces and he had no clue how to process anything.
Though the thought felt rather far-fetched, within Yuchi Xiu’s thoroughly scrambled mind, the sole prime suspect he could possibly pin it on was none other than the black cat from the previous night.
Could that fellow be a cat immortal? No way, does that kind of thing actually exist? But if it really was true…
Then it was entirely because of his loose lips that he had inexplicably turned the Prince into a cat.
What was even more horrifying was that the Prince didn’t seem to realize what he was currently doing. Watching an awe-inspiring, upright warrior standing eight chi tall casually execute various feline behaviors produced a bizarre visual effect that made Yuchi Xiu’s scalp tingle with numbness.
Having spent a chaotic day wading through shattered worldviews. The moment his shift ended, Yuchi Xiu hurried with burning urgency toward the exact spot where he had encountered that black cat the night before.
Squatting there for who knows how long.
Right at the exact time he had met the cat yesterday, that feline finally materialized.
Showing off for reasons unknown, its fluffy, massive tail stood straight up pointing toward the clouds, and it deliberately puffed out its furry chest, striking an overbearing, arrogant pose.
Because the Prince was currently feeling exceptionally floaty.