The Cannon Fodder Also Has a Will to Survive [Rebirth] - Chapter 12

Lin Jingyuan kept a cat.

How extraordinary it was a prisoner, a mere plaything reserved for the elite, keeping an orange kitten within his cage. The kitten was tiny, no larger than a fist, and required little food. Most importantly, it understood his words. As long as they could communicate, there was hope.

However, while the kitten understood human speech, it was essentially a “little idiot.” It had no concept of magical formations, nor did it understand what the “formation eye” was that Lin Jingyuan kept asking it to find. Every time it squeezed out of the cage, it simply went to do its business. It felt a primitive need to bury its waste to hide its scent from other predators only then did it feel safe.

Lin Jingyuan did not let his frustration show. Had he not been sent to this hellish place, he never would have known such grotesqueries existed. He had only learned of “formations” and “eyes” by eavesdropping on the guards; he didn’t actually know what they looked like either. To pin his hopes for survival on a cat seemed absurd. Yet, he felt that “Ah Ju” (Little Orange) was no ordinary kitten, and so he persisted in raising it.

Aside from Lin Jingyuan, there were four other “monsters” in the room or rather, that was how they defined themselves.

The one closest to Lin Jingyuan was a “Mer-man.” He lacked the legendary beauty of the shark-folk; instead, his skin was a sickly grey-white, and his tail was devoid of scales. It was a gelatinous mass of flesh covered in repulsive tumors. He had reached the Seventh Level of Mutation. It was said that at the Tenth Level, scales would finally grow, the skin would clear, and fins would sprout from the hands and ears.

Another captive was a girl with wings sprouting from her back a Fifth Level Mutation. Her feathers were sparse and matted, resembling the pathetic, undeveloped wings of a hatchling. The remaining two were canine-hybrids at the Eighth and Sixth levels respectively. The one at the Eighth Level had ears, a tail, and feet that were rapidly transforming into paws.

Lin Jingyuan had the lowest mutation level the First Level manifesting only as a pair of feline ears. They were man-made monsters, created solely for the amusement of the nobility. There were dozens like them, but these five were considered the most “precious.”

Below them were those made through more primitive “Beast-Crafting” methods: children who were scalded over their entire bodies so that animal pelts could be grafted onto their raw wounds to grow into their skin. There were “Vase-Girls” whose limbs were severed to fit them into porcelain jars, and human-livestock hybrids with mismatched animal limbs. There were even darker, more cruel methods involving newborns.

The other captives saw the kitten, but they maintained a silent pact of feigned ignorance. For over half a month, the kitten lived in the cage with the youth.

After those two weeks, the hybrids were taken out one by one. Each time they returned, they were disheveled and their expressions more vacant. When Lin Jingyuan was taken, An Jiu scratched at the floor in a frenzy of worry. He feared Lin Jingyuan would return in that same hollow state. An Jiu couldn’t articulate the feeling, but he sensed the very life-force draining out of them.

But Lin Jingyuan was no ordinary victim. He was a prince of a fallen minor kingdom. His mother was said to be a demoness who vanished after his birth. Born with silver hair and heterochromatic eyes, he was shunned as an ill omen. When his kingdom fell to the Linsheng Dynasty, he was blamed for the defeat and handed over as a hostage. The Linsheng Emperor, a man of brutal caprice, viewed such a beautiful trophy with disdain and gifted him to a high official with depraved tastes the Master of this Beast-Crafting Pavilion.

Lin Jingyuan was taken out, forced to drink a medicinal concoction, and displayed as an exhibit for the Great Feng nobility. They stripped him only to inspect his mutation level; they didn’t dare touch the Master’s “treasures” just yet.

When the youth finally returned, An Jiu used his claws to climb up his clothes until he was nestled against the boy’s neck, nuzzling his jaw with his tiny forehead. The kitten was trying, in its own way, to comfort the human.

Lin Jingyuan’s state seemed stable. He pulled the kitten down, dipped his finger in water, and drew a pattern on the floor. “Can you remember this shape?”

This trip had not been fruitless. He had used his beauty to beguile a nobleman into a brief private audience. From that man, he learned the secret of the facility: the magical drugs and the formations were provided by a heretical Taoist from the Sun-Moon Pavilion of the Cultivation World. Thus, everything he created bore the mark of a Crescent Moon embracing the Sun.

An Jiu tilted his head, looking at the youth and then at the floor. Seeing nothing but water, he assumed it was a game and swiped at the boy’s finger with his paw. Lin Jingyuan remained patient, drawing the pattern over and over, ignoring the kitten’s playfulness. Eventually, the kitten understood the gravity of the task. It sat with its paws tucked neatly together, watching the pattern take shape.

Once the pattern was clear, An Jiu’s eyes lit up. He let out two sharp meows and darted out. The pattern felt familiar. Following a strange instinct, he found a pile of stones in the garden. After digging around, he found one that “felt” different. He gripped it in his teeth and ran back to the dark room.

Lin Jingyuan waited with bated breath, only to see the kitten drop a single stone. The cat then began batting the stone back and forth with its paws. It seemed it had just found a new toy.

Lin Jingyuan watched impassively before coldly muttering, “Stupid cat.”

From that day on, An Jiu brought back one stone every day. He only dared to sabotage one at a time to avoid detection. When he had enough, he arranged the stones on the floor to mirror the pattern the youth had drawn.

Lin Jingyuan pondered this. “Are you saying these stones were arranged in this pattern outside?”

An Jiu shook his head, then suddenly pounced on the pattern, biting and shaking one of the stones aggressively. Lin Jingyuan watched the performance and sighed. “If only you could speak.”

Defeated, An Jiu slumped down and began licking his paws.

The next day, they were all taken together to be fed the medicine. The canine-girl was approaching her Ninth Level of Mutation. The later stages were agonizing; she bit her own flesh as demonic energy surged in her eyes.

As time passed, the collective despair of the captives and the malice of the spectators served as fuel for Lin Jingyuan’s own fall into demonhood. He felt a foreign, dark power gathering within him. A murderous urge to slaughter everyone in the facility took root.

Back in the cage, the kitten sensed the change. It circled him, meowing and rubbing against him incessantly. Lin Jingyuan picked the kitten up. “Don’t be afraid. I will take you with me.”

An Jiu was terrified! The aura emanating from the youth was unsettling. He felt the boy was transforming into someone scary. He thought that if he destroyed the formation quickly, maybe the boy would go back to being his old self.

An Jiu nuzzled the boy’s chin with his wet nose and darted out. He stole the guard’s keys and brought them to the youth, then ran to the garden to dig up the remaining stones. However, destroying the formation so brazenly meant immediate discovery.

Just as Lin Jingyuan unlocked the cage, a cacophony of noise erupted outside. Usually, the formation muffled all external sounds. He realized instantly: the formation is broken.

But his joy was cut short by the snippets of conversation reaching his ears. “The formation is broken!” “Who did it? An enemy attack?” “We caught it a filthy cat!”

Then, Lin Jingyuan heard a horrific, agonized scream from a cat. His kitten. The little thing that only wanted a full belly it couldn’t have been more than three months old.

The demonic energy within him boiled over. The physical difference between humans and demons is often subtle, but when a demon reveals their True Form, there is no mistaking them.

A towering, humanoid monstrosity appeared in the Beast-Crafting Pavilion. It slaughtered hundreds before vanishing. Two days later, every person associated with the facility, including the Master, was found brutally murdered in their homes. Lin Jingyuan did not kill the other man-made monsters, but they had no desire to live. They set the pavilion ablaze. Amidst the towering inferno, only the silver-haired youth walked out alive.

When An Jiu woke up again, he was once more a ball of light. Unaware of his true form, he still believed he was an orange kitten and so he became one.

He looked around to find himself in the wilderness, standing before a small, freshly turned mound of earth. He didn’t know where to go, but the mound carried the youth’s scent. He guessed the boy would be nearby.

An Jiu climbed a tree next to the mound, planning to jump down and surprise the boy when he arrived. After a few hours, the youth appeared. An Jiu waited patiently, but even from a distance, he smelled the aroma of roast chicken.

The ambush plan was immediately abandoned. An Jiu scrambled down the tree and raced toward the youth.

Lin Jingyuan narrowed his eyes as he watched the orange blur charging toward him. The kitten seemed overjoyed to see him; as it ran, all four paws left the ground, looking like a bright, scorching flame.

Lin Jingyuan stopped and waited for the kitten to reach him as if waiting for the little creature to willingly run into the rest of his life.