Doomsday Cat City Lord - Chapter 23

Halfway up Mount Muyuan.

From early morning, figures were scurrying about. Inside the large log cabin temporarily serving as a canteen, humans and animals stood in long queues, occasionally letting out exclamations while holding their light screens.

Deng Huai held a small notebook in his hand, registering client requests. Most of the orders were requests to modify bicycles into electric cargo vehicles. Occasionally, one or two clients with plenty of points would order a car; such major projects required going outside to find wrecked vehicles suitable for repairs.

Speaking of cars, Deng Huai felt a bit puzzled. The City Lord and the others didn’t seem enthusiastic about increasing the number of large-scale transport vehicles.

Having gone back and forth to Lushan Town so many times, he noticed there were only 3 buses for carrying people and 10 trucks for hauling goods in the parking lot at the foot of the mountain; the rest were bicycles that could be exchanged for just 1 point.

After leaving the deep mountains, the monsters gradually increased. Those who wanted to go out to collect supplies would follow Rong City’s collection teams, paying 2 points to ride the bus for free and gain the protection of the Rong City Guard.

However, the amount of supplies one could carry on a public bus was limited; having one’s own vehicle was still more convenient.

Around the octagonal log cabin was a vacant square, and beyond the square lay the architectural zones on the city plan published by Rong City this morning.

From the foot of the mountain to the mountainside, along both sides of the newly tamped roads, there were 10 planned residential areas, with cultivation areas separated in between.

People were successively submitting their land use applications on the website. Once approved, they would take their tools and find Yang Hailin, waiting for him to measure the specific land area.

Yang Hailin’s previous job had required him to run construction sites all year round, and he had also done surveying work. His wife used to be a kindergarten teacher, but now she spent more time looking after a few young children and animal cubs, finding time to go out with Grandpa Feng and the others to collect supplies. The work of earning points for the family fell on his shoulders.

When he received the Vice City Lord’s job invitation, he agreed without hesitation.

Now, running all over the mountain with tools, he still found it marvelous this was becoming a civil servant with such ease.

It was just that communicating with animal citizens was a bit troublesome. Some animals that had learned simple text could communicate via communicators, while others required his colleague, the King Bird-of-Paradise, to act as an animal translator.

At nine in the morning, the animal guard team, wearing uniform black vests, gathered in the square. The giant panda Luoyun, the red panda Xiao Quan, and the lion Kuangkuang were on duty today. They led the other three animal team members whose abilities leaned toward vigilance and reconnaissance into the vehicle and began today’s field guard work.

“…That’s how things are. During my absence, maintain the existing mode and ensure that nothing falls into chaos. If you discover special situations like an increase in monster numbers or abnormal climate, find the City Lord and let it decide the subsequent arrangements.”

In the corner of the log cabin serving as a temporary warehouse, Cheng Ningye, Lu Jia, and the old Monkey King sat facing each other, each looking down at their light screens.

Cheng Ningye typed out large chunks of text, assigning work to both of them.

One human and one animal, both were willing to contribute their strength to the development of Rong City. Their strength, personalities, and the leadership style they had previously shown in stepping forward to stabilize the situation also made them suitable to compete for the extra Vice City Lord position.

After arranging all the work, Cheng Ningye packed a small bag and drove away with Xuan Yu.

Mi Miaomiao watched the car drive into the distance, then turned and began to plant the “city wall” around Mount Muyuan.

Cheng Ningye and Xuan Yu’s destination for this trip was Qitai City, to scout the situation at the artificial meat factory. If possible, they could also transfer the needed instruments and materials to Rong City through the system warehouse.

Monsters would likely be able to penetrate deep into the Mount Muyuan area in about five days; Mi Miaomiao had to stay behind to surround Mount Muyuan.

But this rare period of peace couldn’t be wasted. Cheng Ningye and Xuan Yu were the two most suitable beings to go out and collect supplies alone; traveling together, one could fly with formidable combat power, while the other’s mental energy was on the verge of breaking through Level 4 capable of scouting for information and hiding traces. By the way, they could also try to find a Level 4 mental-type monster.

Planting trees was a boring job, especially since it couldn’t exhaust all its ability at once while away from the outside. Mi Miaomiao would leave behind one-fifth of its ability to prevent sudden emergencies.

After a day passed, the bored white cat began to catalyze peppermint during its spare time while recovering its ability.

This was the second healing-type plant it was prepared to bind. Peppermint, also known as “night-breath incense,” could treat colds, headaches, fever, eczema, and many other ailments; its scent was refreshing and could repel insects.

With vigorous growth and strong adaptability, Mi Miaomiao planned to plant peppermint in most areas of the mountain forest. Isolating the scent of monsters was one thing; on the other hand, it could also repel insect-type monsters, preventing them from forming massive tribes and threatening Rong City.

But what it wanted to bind was a Level 1 plant with special effects. After all, for a wood-type ability user, only the bound primary plant could grow its upper limit along with the level; bound secondary plants were basically in whatever state they were when bound, forever remaining in that state.

Peppermint preferred a hot and humid environment; Mi Miaomiao wanted to cultivate a Level 1 peppermint that was cold-resistant and drought-resistant.

Cultivating advanced plants was extremely difficult, otherwise, there wouldn’t have been so many years of drought in its past life without any base appearing with drought-resistant crops.

But this mountain forest was nourished by the energy of the great banyan tree, making it inherently suitable for the birth of plant evolvers, and Mi Miaomiao had enough time and energy to cultivate the plants patiently. There would always be a chance to plant the peppermint it was satisfied with.

On the third day, Cheng Ningye and Xuan Yu arrived at Qitai City. The journey for the human and the cat could be described as having experienced countless hardships and obstacles.

Between the mountain forests to the east of Boyun Province lay large stretches of swampland that couldn’t be bypassed and had to be crossed. They were filled with a large number of monsters mutated from birds, amphibians, and invertebrates; the sky, trees, water, and the occasionally encountered dry floating islands were all filled with traces of monsters.

Cheng Ningye and Xuan Yu weathered all of this. Just as they were about to enter Qitai City, they encountered a group of spiders in the woods capable of producing oxygen. Once touching the spider webs they wove, one would get “oxygen-drunk.” Their leader was a giant spider with Level 4 king-level aptitude that could break through to Level 5 at any moment.

Unable to defeat it, they could only flee, which was precisely how they ended up hiding inside Qitai City, giving Cheng Ningye finally the time to use the system panel to communicate with Mi Miaomiao.

“The situation here in Qitai City is also very chaotic. Half of the city is monsters, and half is evolved animals all of them were poultry, livestock, cattle, and sheep that were farmed as meat in the past. They have fiery tempers, are extremely xenophobic, and are highly aggressive toward humans.” Cheng Ningye rubbed his face, staring gloomily at his jacket, which was covered in bird droppings. He felt fortunate that the system panel didn’t have a video function, so this embarrassing scene didn’t need to be seen by Miaomiao.

Holding his breath, bending over, and walking on tiptoe to the window, he pulled the curtain open a crack. On the street, a group of evolved dairy cows were crashing around, kicking up huge clouds of dust; in the sky, giant roosters with colorful tail feathers were flying, crying out ostentatiously.

Shaking his head, Cheng Ningye found a more secluded room in the skyscraper, lay down, and continued typing: “Now I can only hide. I’ll have Xuan Yu go out and scout the way. But looking at the situation, there are no traces of humans in the entire city. The artificial meat factory shouldn’t have been occupied by other human factions it just depends on whether these animals, in their anger, have destroyed the factory directly.”

Mi Miaomiao: “I express my deep sympathy. Please stay safe at all costs.”

Things weren’t going smoothly on Xuan Yu and Cheng Ningye’s side, and progress was similarly difficult on Mi Miaomiao’s side.

The peppermint only cultivated one advanced plant, but it only gained the ability to bloom, which was completely inconsistent with expectations.

The city walls were only one-third built. Fortunately, this part of the city wall was constructed according to the width and height of the system city walls, so it was impressive enough on the surface. The remaining two-thirds were at the back of Rong City, which everyone hadn’t explored to yet; Mi Miaomiao intended to fudge it and just barely surround the back mountain.

On the fifth day, the system city walls completely landed. The big white cat tried to slam into them with full force, but the city walls didn’t budge a mud imprint simply appeared on the off-white wall surface.

Only then did Mi Miaomiao realize that it hadn’t groomed its fur for five days; it had been continuously catalyzing plants upon waking, and when it was exhausted, it hid inside the tree wall and fell asleep on the ground. There was no image left to speak of.

The fluffy fur was stuck together in strands, looking dusty and gray.

It heard the faint sound of running water in its ears. The big white cat shook its fur, stepped on the city wall, and flipped outside the wall in a few movements.

“Meow, as expected, it’s still necessary to arrange patrols. This city wall can’t stop flying monsters; perhaps I should consider building anti-air devices.”

Among the system’s functional buildings, there seemed to be similar buildings…

Mi Miaomiao had already reached the depths of the canyon. Before it was a small waterfall left behind along the mountain wall, and beneath the waterfall, silver-gray mountain rocks held a clear, refreshing pool of water.

Temporarily casting aside the thoughts in its mind, it determined that the taste of the pool water was very clear and clean, and the big cat plunged into the water entirely. At such times, it didn’t reject the water at all. It swam back and forth in it twice, found the stream downstream of the pool, and the fur on its body became clean again.

Shaking off most of the water, Mi Miaomiao looked at the messy long fur on its body, found a clean, large rock, lay on it, and slurp, slurp began to groom itself.

Fur on the back, lick, lick, lick!

Beautiful long tail, brush, brush, brush!

Two sturdy hind legs, two slender front legs every part had to be licked!

The highlight was the soft, pink paw pads!

While gnawing on its paw pads, Mi Miaomiao almost forgot how long it had been since it groomed its body so relaxedly.

“Gulp, are cat paws really that delicious to gnaw on?”

“I’ve never eaten them either, but its fur is so long. I want to pet it; it would be even better if I could have some to make a nest.”

“Better not get close. I heard that cats outside the mountains have bad tempers and are masters of humans. I wonder if it will dislike us rabbits born and bred in the mountains?”

Long ears, three-petaled mouths, short brown-gray fuzz two rabbits of similar size were hiding behind a large rock near the water pool, quietly peeking at the big cat gnawing on its feet.

A tuft of long white fur was suddenly thrown in front of the two rabbits. Looking back, the big cat had appeared behind them at some point, tucking its hands and quietly watching them.

“Wow, so much fur! Is it all a gift for us?”

The tuft of fur Mi Miaomiao had just groomed off was actually four or five times that of the two rabbits, whose body size hadn’t changed much before and after evolution. They buried themselves in the pile of fur, issuing incredulous exclamations.

Mi Miaomiao nodded. It was very curious about the origins of the two rabbits.

Having received the gift they wanted and discovering that the big cat was as gentle as the bobcat brother who used to take care of them, the two rabbits told them everything.

“The great banyan tree placed us outside the forest, but it hasn’t been safe there lately. Monsters always appear.”

“Brother Yellow Donkey saw the great banyan tree yesterday and said to let us move back into the depths of the forest, where there is an animal city that will protect us.”

“That’s right, Brother Yellow Donkey said the City Lord of the animal city is a big cat. Could it be you?”

Mi Miaomiao nodded, and not long after, met the yellow donkey that had come looking for the rabbits.

The people of Rong City had already accepted the plant city walls built for them by the City Lord. But this afternoon, a debate arose near the city gate because of the city walls.

“I went to the back mountain to look. The entire Mount Muyuan has been surrounded, and the plant city wall is only the surface layer. The interior is made of hard brick and stone; you can’t damage even a bit of the wall skin easily!”

“Really? Could it be that a Level 4 or Level 5 earth-type ability user came here?”

The crowd gathered around the city wall to begin testing, then were shocked by the City Lord’s major investment.

Mi Miaomiao looked at the donkey beside it and fell into deep thought. The donkey was carrying a large bag, inside of which were a squirrel, a nest of rabbits, and a nest of “ants”!

They were all saved by Yellow Donkey at the beginning of the apocalypse; they could be considered the only remaining lives in the entire mountain range. With the guarantee of the great banyan tree, Mi Miaomiao had brought them all back.

The rabbit nest had eight rabbits, but… there were 2,310 ants in the ant nest! How were they to be settled? Surely they couldn’t still have 50 square meters of land per city resident?

If other tiny colonies came later, Rong City would have no foothold left!

Mi Miaomiao also discovered that its animal city had neglected a very critical issue: how were animals of vastly different body sizes supposed to live together harmoniously?

If this problem wasn’t resolved, it was very likely that countless tragedies would be caused by a single wrong step!

Just as it was agonizing over this, the system panel suddenly lit up, and Cheng Ningye sent an emergency message:

“Miaomiao, emergency! We got into the artificial meat factory, but the system warehouse is full and can’t hold any more supplies! Help me think of a way, hurry!”