Doomsday Cat City Lord - Chapter 10

“Miaomiao, those laser knives they’re holding are the exact ones I left behind in the tower,” Cheng Ningye muttered from inside the car, his psychic energy already fanning out to observe both sides of the skirmish in precise detail.

Aside from the laser knives, the weapons wielded by the eight thugs included daggers and fire axes. Each man also hauled a massive, heavy backpack packed with unknown contents. Judging by their instinctual movements to shield their faces and the distinctive, long-term scarring left on their wrists by electronic monitoring shackles, Cheng Ningye’s initial hypothesis regarding their identities was entirely spot-on.

Taiyang stood locked in a standoff against two men, his black fur marked by freshly scorched patches. Dongfeng kept a unique, clay-skinned evolved individual pinned down, his teeth grinding against the thug’s hardened skin with a bone-jarring, grating screech.

The two-meter-tall giant Red Panda stood back-to-back with another man. The man was dressed in deep green utility overalls; his face was deathly pale, yet his forehead burned with a feverish, dry flush. His eyes radiated a desperate, ruthless edge as he locked his gaze onto the surrounding thugs. Spikes protruded from the brass knuckles fitted over his clenched fists, his strikes so sharp and aggressive that even the thugs holding laser knives didn’t dare press into his close-quarters range.

The Red Panda mirrored the man’s martial arts movements almost perfectly, throwing punches and deliberately absorbing strikes to keep him shielded.

With the arrival of Mi Miaomiao and the main squad, the chaotic battlefield ground into a tense, frozen stalemate.

Zhang Qu tied off a bandage around a bloody dog bite on the back of his hand. He looked at the massive white cat, then at the visibly evolved cats and dogs flanking it, his expression twisting into an ugly grimace.

Having already tasted the lethal capabilities of these evolved creatures, he wasn’t about to underestimate animals he could have effortlessly crushed just twenty-four hours ago.

His venomous gaze drifted toward the four massive cargo pods trailing behind the convoy, then flicked back to the memory of the two ships locked tight within the iron grasp of the heavy vines. Zhang Qu gestured with his hand to the lackeys backing him up.

Mi Miaomiao lowered its front torso into a predatory crouch. Following their leader’s gesture, the aura radiating from the thugs instantly spiked into something hyper-volatile, greedy, and unhinged.

This lot belonged to the exact same breed of psychopaths as the humans who completely discarded their moral baselines during the later stages of the apocalypse.

Sensing a critical opening, Dongfeng executed a crisp backflip to kick himself clear of the hardened-skin evolutionist, racing straight to the giant white cat to lodge his complaint:

“Woof, woof, woof!” Miaomiao, they were pouring gasoline all along the outer perimeter of the estate! They want to burn down the houses!

“Meow-ow!” Engage!

Mi Miaomiao’s physical acceleration was blinding, but the black cat flanking it was even faster. Xuanyu ran as though he were floating entirely uncoupled from the ground. Within a heartbeat, he tackled a low-statured human holding an edge position, burying his teeth deep into the man’s wrist.

As the thug crashed hard onto the ground, a deep crimson blood bag slipped loose from his sleeve and splashed into a muddy puddle.

“Get back! Stay the hell away from us!” Faced with the sudden, explosive ferocity of the animal squad, Zhang Qu panicked. He yanked a blood bag from his jacket, slicing it open to spray blood across the asphalt. Feeling the threat level still wasn’t absolute, he and his subordinates ripped open their backpacks simultaneously, exposing a cache of sealed, insulated blood packs.

The instant the raw scent of blood hit the air, a frenzied rustling and scratching echoed from the depths of the nearby storm drains. The metallic tang of fresh blood instantly mingled with the putrid, decaying stench of approaching monsters.

Observing that the animals had ground to a halt, refusing to advance further, Zhang Qu twirled the laser knife in his grip and pointed it toward the cargo train. “Hey, whoever’s inside the car! I know damn well I can’t beat your army of cats and dogs, but you don’t want us all dragged down and swallowed whole by a monster horde either, do you? Leave half your supplies behind, and we’ll cut our losses and walk away!”

“We’re all desperate men with nothing left to lose. In an apocalypse, there are no rules holding us back. Make your decision fast, or else we all—”

The distant vehicle headlights suddenly cut out. Within the shifting shadows of the pitch-black darkness, pairs of cold, unblinking, luminous green predatory eyes locked onto them with absolute, lethal intent. Zhang Qu’s throat tightened, cold sweat mixing with driving rain as it poured down his face.

He and his men huddled closer into a tight defensive ring, swinging their weapons wildly at the empty air. They couldn’t comprehend where their leverage had failed. Were these animals completely devoid of a survival instinct?

“Meow-ow!”

“Woof, woof, woof!”

“Roar—!”

Every shred of the ensuing bloodshed was completely masked by the consuming dark. Ai Yuan froze in place, his face entirely drained of color. His ears were filled with the enraged roars of animals and the desperate, agonizing screams of humans, punctuated by the rhythmic, chaotic patter of countless monster footsteps.

The oppressive scent of blood hung so thick in the air it nearly suffocated the foul stench of the variants. Suddenly, a clean, subtle floral fragrance drifted past his nose. His waist tightened as an abrupt, crushing force hauled him backward, pulling him straight into the vehicle cabin.

The engine roared to life, the wheels spinning as the vehicle swung its frame around, retreating at high speed. The faint, ambient luminescence of the dashboard cast a cold, rigid contour over the driver’s face.

“What exactly happened back there…? Why did those animals snap so suddenly?”

“The animals can smell it. The blood bags those men carried were filled with the blood of their own kind… and it was laced with fresh human blood too.” Cheng Ningye felt a numbing paralysis creeping through his limbs due to Ai Yuan’s physical proximity, hazy distortions flickering across his vision. Yet, fiercely unwilling to let the cats be misunderstood, he fought through the sensory static, forcing out the explanation one deliberate syllable at a time.

Cheng Ningye was thoroughly incensed. The cats and dogs that had cleared out of Lehai City recently had all been systematically pulled from active disaster zones by the hands of the Meow-Meow Squad and stray alphas like Taiyang. He had assumed they had safely migrated to secure ground ahead of the curve, only to find they had fallen into the hands of these subhuman scumbags.

“That crew… they’re likely the violent inmates who broke out of the penitentiary during the initial chaos. Thank you… and please thank the animals for saving my life.” Ai Yuan’s initial caution toward that group had completely morphed into a cold, lingering terror.

Ai Yuan tried to push himself upright, but the searing fever left his muscles completely unresponsive. The stray raindrops drifting through the open window vanished into white vapor the second they touched his burning skin.

His gaze settled onto the young driver. Noting his strained, pale expression and reflecting on the bizarre, profound connection he held with this army of animals, a spark of intense curiosity and hope flickered within his light-brown eyes.

The white cat was the first to halt its strikes. No matter how deep their hatred ran, it would not allow these stray animals to taint themselves with human body counts over a pile of human trash.

“Meow!” The white cat let out a raspy, authoritative command.

The cats and dogs tearing into the thugs instantly aborted their movements, gathering back around the white cat’s flank. Enclosed within a secure perimeter hastily constructed by thick, intertwined branches, the animals watched with eyes full of grief and burning fury as the incapacitated humans were entirely blanketed by the very monster horde they had summoned.

The Husky threw his head back in a long, agonizing wail, thrashing his head wildly against the wooden wall until Mi Miaomiao deployed vine tendrils to gently bind him and lead him away.

Cheng Ningye stepped out of the vehicle, dropping into a low crouch before the utterly despondent Husky lying flat against the wet ground. He offered a sincere, heavy apology: “I’m sorry, Taiyang. Those laser knives were left inside the Wanye Tower by my own hands; I intended for them to be salvaged by later human survivors. It was an oversight on my part that let them fall into their possession.”

“But I want you to know—the animals migrating out of Lehai City left a long time ago. I only left those blades behind yesterday.”

“Awoo!” The Siberian Husky’s dull, dead blue eyes blinked slowly, a heavy bead of moisture tracing the path of an old scar near his eye before splashing onto the pavement.

“Woof-ooo…” It has nothing to do with you. I should have been strong enough to protect them all and keep them behind!

Cheng Ningye lowered his head, his pale fingers gently soothing the fur along the Husky’s neck. Compared to this hollow, broken silence, he much preferred the loud, foul-mouthed, trash-talking version of the Husky.

The variants, completely whipped into a frenzy by the blood, wouldn’t disperse anytime soon. The transport convoy had no choice but to retreat back into the residential compound, the vibrant green branches weaving a massive, seamless defensive wall across the main entrance gates.

The core members of the Meow-Meow Squad drew their laser knives, thrusting them through the gaps in the wooden wall to systematically slice through the low-Tier monsters hammering against the barrier.

“Quack, quack, quack!” Thank you for saving us!

The giant Red Panda gently set down his unconscious handler, his large, brownish-red eyes blinking with absolute, glittering adoration as he stared at the gigantified white cat, his massive white ears fanning forward and backward.

Ai Yuan’s consciousness had degraded into a blurry haze. Feeling the Red Panda’s massive paw gently stroking his burning forehead, he pleaded in a raspy, broken whisper: “When you leave… could you please… take Xiao Quan with you…?”

“Quack, quack!” The Red Panda instinctually threw both paws flat over his head, pacing in anxious, panicked circles. He bent over, completely at a loss as he tried to nudge the unconscious man awake, frantic, high-pitched vocalizations tearing from his throat.

“Humph, humph.” Handler… Handler, you’ve already been asleep for two days. Why are you passing out again?

Red Pandas were naturally timid, highly sensitive creatures. It was almost impossible to fathom how profound the bond between this animal and his handler had to be for him to find the raw courage to battle those vicious thugs, throwing his body into the line of fire to shield him without a single thought for his own safety.

Right now, the crimson Red Panda was frantically holding his paws up in a submissive, desperate posture, casting frightened, pleading looks toward the white cat, then toward the single human who had finally deigned to look at his handler, and finally toward the other cats and dogs still fighting on the line.

Observing one of the dogs address the white cat as “Boss,” and seeing a soft, pale-green light instantly blanket the dog’s frame to seal up its lacerations in real-time, Xiao Quan’s eyes lit up instantly.

He scrambled over to the white cat’s side, opening his front arms wide in the exact, endearing posture he used to beg for treats back at the zoo, gazing up at the white cat.

“Quack, quack.” Boss, please save my handler.

Mi Miaomiao and Cheng Ningye exchanged a swift glance, bringing up their system interfaces in perfect synchronization.

[Resident Dossier]

Name: Xiao Quan

Species: Red Panda (Ailuroidea)

Evolution Tier: Tier 2

Evolutionary Skills: Core Attribute: Gigantification | Fire-Attribute Supernatural Ability (Unawakened)

Status: Standard Citizen

Trust Rating: Green

Scale Reference: 0–30: Red | 30–60: Yellow | 60–100: Green

The initial trust rating was already sitting this high?

Mi Miaomiao had to admit let alone its handler, even it couldn’t harden its heart against the pure, utterly earnest, pleading gaze of such a simple and adorable Red Panda.

Besides, he was technically an Alliance Tier-2 Protected Animal!

A pulse of specialized healing energy funneled into Ai Yuan’s body, only to be instantly, violently absorbed by a roaring, incandescent reservoir of thermal energy. The white cat snapped its paw back from the blistering heat, turning its head toward its handler in sharp surprise.

“Miaomiao?” He’s currently a Tier 2, but he’s stuck in a Tier-2 elemental eruption phase. The fever is a direct byproduct of his preliminary supernatural ability awakening.

Under standard evolutionary parameters, organisms only achieved preliminary sensory synchronization with supernatural elements at Tier 3, allowing them to manipulate natural energies on a localized scale. They would only achieve absolute, explosive mastery over their respective elements by Tier 5.

Yet, exceptional lifeforms possessing hyper-advanced talent routinely bypassed the baseline, hitting Tier 2 during their first evolutionary phase or awakening supernatural abilities right out of the gate. So long as these specimens managed to survive the initial adaptation, their subsequent rate of progression was blisteringly fast, their combat efficiency immense they invariably transformed into powerhouse guardians capable of anchoring entire regions.

“Xiao Quan, what exactly is your handler’s job? Does he usually treat you well?” Cheng Ningye slid off his sunglasses, his dark eyes radiating genuine warmth as he looked at the giant Red Panda pressed tightly against the white cat.

Animals never wore masks; they revealed the true measure of a human’s character.

“A handler is a handler! A handler at the wildlife park! His name is Ai Yuan, and he’s the caretaker at the Panda House. He raises Giant Pandas, and he raises Red Pandas too! He’s always been incredibly good to us; he brings us delicious treats, plays games with us, and even taught me how to copy human boxing moves so the other red pandas wouldn’t bully me! This time, everyone inside the park was evacuating and moving houses. I sneaked out on my own and couldn’t find the group it was my handler who found me and brought me back to his place to take care of me!”

Under the deliberate, soothing guidance of a psychic evolutionist, the Red Panda completely let his guard down, spilling every detail of their history in a dizzy, rambling sequence. By the end of it, he even decided this human before him was incredibly nice the way his fingers massaged his fur felt even more comfortable than his handler’s.

Since this man had actively extended a hand to aid them, leaving him to die was out of the question. Cheng Ningye turned the next phase of logistics over in his mind for a brief moment, reaching down into his tactical pack to retrieve one of the Tier 2 crystals Mi Miaomiao had trusted to his care.

“Meow?” So, you were originally from the wildlife park up on the mountain? Have all the animals up there already evacuated?

Mi Miaomiao had merely tossed the question out as a casual, instinctual inquiry, completely unprepared for the sudden, violent trauma response it triggered within the little Red Panda.