Transmigrated Into the Body of a Sickly Villain's Kitten - Chapter 22

Shi Yao had no idea what was going through the little cat’s mind, but the cat’s behavior was enough for her to guess what was troubling her.

How could a kitten who had always doubted the reality of this world possibly accept everything she now knew so easily?

Her mind was damaged, and with her current level of intelligence, trying to make sense of everything was bound to be incredibly difficult.

Shi Yao reached out to scratch Fu Rou’s chin, her movements exceptionally skilled. Though her tone still carried a hint of sarcasm, her touch was gentle: “You must have kept many things from me too, right? I used to think you were just a little yao. I was blind, failing to notice all these things I overlooked…”

So, why was it that after Youyou forged that pearl with her heart and gave it to Shi Yao, Shi Yao managed to survive the mermaid’s most grueling coming-of-age period so smoothly?

The emperor of the Yao Realm, how powerful must her heart be?

“Meow!” Enough already!

The little cat let out a fierce, open-mouthed cry.

Fu Rou’s mind was already on the verge of exploding, and she had no extra energy to deal with Shi Yao.

Shi Yao sighed softly and recited a calming mantra.

“Alright, I won’t tease you anymore. Don’t think about anything right now. Clear your mind and get some sleep.”

If the cultivators of the Immortal Realm saw the cat now, they would surely be disappointed.

The cat had not become the weapon of destruction they had hoped for. Instead, she was tormented nearly to madness by these incompatible powers and fragmented memories.

Fu Rou was nestled in Shi Yao’s embrace, feeling the warmth of her arms, and a few tears of sorrow trickled down.

Shi Yao gently wiped the cat’s tears away, her expression filled with heartache.

“I always regret not meeting you sooner. You’ve suffered so much, and even after coming to my side, you’ve had so few carefree days. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

According to He Qingye, ever since the great war between immortals and demons, the Immortal Realm had been burned to ashes, the Demon Realm destroyed, and the Yao Realm suffered countless casualties. Only the mortal realm retained some semblance of peace.

The Immortal Realm was now a wasteland, impossible to return to. The surviving immortals chose to retreat to secluded, uninhabited cliffs to meditate in seclusion, eventually merging with heaven and earth, vanishing into the mortal realm.

Their spiritual energy scattered across every corner of the mortal world, or they reincarnated as humans.

Demons, by nature, were warlike and bloodthirsty, making them unwelcome in the world. The gates to the Demon Realm were sealed shut, and the surviving demons were stripped of their powers through spells, unable to reproduce. Extinction was their only fate.

As for the remaining subjects of the Yao Realm, the Yao Emperor brought them to the mortal world to recuperate. As long as they did not harm humans, they were allowed to survive, with no further demands.

The Yao Emperor established rules to restrain the yao. They were permitted to live in the mortal realm but forbidden to harm humans. Any yao who committed evil deeds were to be shown no mercy and executed on the spot.

Some yao chose to revert to their original forms, hibernating in the mortal world to live long lives. Others, led by the Yao Emperor, learned human methods of farming and weaving, cultivating vast stretches of wasteland to become self-sufficient.

Meanwhile, the lingering spiritual energy in the mortal world gave rise to various cultivation sects. Yet, truly achieving enlightenment and ascending remained an exceedingly rare feat.

Over the many years of shifting stars and changing seasons, some cultivation sects gradually found themselves unable to endure, choosing to reincarnate like ordinary humans. Yet, more people still clung to the dream of becoming immortals, stepping into the world of cultivation and immediately proclaiming themselves as celestial sects.

Shi Yao and Youyou’s first encounter likely took place during an era when immortals were dying out or being eradicated, while cultivation sects relied on the remaining spiritual energy to practice, deluding themselves into believing they could attain enlightenment and ascend to immortality.

So why did Youyou transform from the Demon Emperor into a small cat? Could it be that she, too, was undergoing a tribulation?

That seemed to be the only reasonable explanation.

Suddenly, Shi Yao felt that letting those cultivation sect members die too quickly wasn’t something to be pleased about.

She should torment them slowly, strip their tendons, pull out their bones, drain their blood, and then gradually siphon away their spiritual energy, turning them into worthless beings.

As her hatred grew, Shi Yao took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. She then carried Fu Rou back to her room to rest and pressed her forehead against the cat’s.

Although mermaids possessed the ability to enter dreams, Shi Yao rarely used it.

Entering dreams not only consumed a great deal of the dream-walker’s spiritual energy but also transferred that expended energy to the person being dreamt of.

So, without Fu Rou’s knowledge, Shi Yao had been helping her cultivate all along.

Fu Rou knew she was having nightmares again.

In her dream, she knelt amidst ruins, with nothing but desolation stretching between heaven and earth.

This was the destroyed demon realm.

The Demon Emperor scooped up a handful of her homeland’s soil, the charred black earth slipping through her pale fingers and falling back to the ground.

Tears fell one by one onto her black robe, leaving damp stains.

“Once, I believed I could lead the demon realm to stand as equals with the immortal realm. For that goal, I painstakingly managed the demon tribe for years. Now I’ve achieved it, but the cost is… my home is gone, and the little demons who accompanied me for so many years have all perished on the battlefield.”

“You must hate me, don’t you? If it weren’t for my selfish desires, you wouldn’t have died. Even if your status was lowly, it would have been better than this.”

“Now the immortal realm has completely vanished into nothingness, and sooner or later, this place will disappear too. The entrance to the demon realm is shrinking, and of the former five realms, only the human world and the ghost domain remain.”

“But in the human world, demons are still treated as outcasts, just as they were back then. All these years of striving have turned out to be nothing but an illusory bubble. Had I known this would happen, what use would I have for those hollow titles?”

“In the end, it was I who brought ruin upon you…”

The Demon Emperor knelt on the ground, burying her face in her knees, weeping as if her heart would break.

The place where she had lived was slowly fading away. Of the demon tribe, fewer than a thousand remained, scattered across the human world, with only a few hundred able to gather together.

She was the one who had caused this situation, she was the sinner of the demon tribe.

As the gloomy sky flashed with two streaks of purple lightning, followed by rumbling thunder, the Demon Emperor looked up for a long moment before suddenly letting out a few bitter laughs.

“Do you also think I am guilty? Good. That way, I won’t have to suffer and blame myself every day. Come, strike me dead! The demon tribe has long since scattered, what use is there for an emperor like me?”

When the Demon Queen was young, she never believed in any talk of heavenly principles. All she knew was that every time her cultivation reached a new realm, she would be struck by lightning a few times. She wasn’t afraid anyway, after being struck, she would dust herself off and carry on with whatever she was doing.

Now, having lived to this age, she finally understood why her masters had held such reverence for the heavenly way.

All things follow their own laws, and the heavenly way emphasizes cause and effect.

What kind of cause you sow, what kind of fruit you reap.

Tear stains still glistened on her face.

This time, the Demon Queen had no intention of using defensive demon arts to withstand the heavenly tribulation, as she had in the past.

She truly wished to die just like this.

After those bolts of lightning struck, the Demon Queen vanished, and from then on, the only being left in the world was a little kitten named Youyou.

“Huh? Who am I? Ah… I think I was punished by someone and have to do a hundred good deeds in the mortal realm? But what counts as a good deed? What bad thing did I even do? Can’t remember, oh well! I must be thousands of years old, right? What did I do to end up so unlucky? Hahahahaha!”

As she performed good deeds, Youyou’s cultivation gradually increased. She eventually attained enlightenment and became an immortal, even giving herself what she thought was a “cool and carefree” Taoist name.

All she knew was that after accumulating a hundred good deeds, she could regain her human form. As for why, she couldn’t remember anything.

Why bother overthinking? Living happily was enough.

After completing ninety-nine good deeds, Youyou curled up on a stage, the kind humans loved to watch, and slept through the night. When she woke, she stretched comfortably.

Over the centuries, the good deeds she performed ranged from easy to difficult, and many inexplicable items had ended up in her paws only to be given away. She felt both anticipation and annoyance about how challenging this hundredth task might be.

After licking her paws clean, she set off to find something to eat.

“Hmm? Which stall is making grilled fish that smells so delicious?”

By now, the attention of netizens had completely shifted away from Mount Wuqi and was focused on the fabricated performances by the C97 Adventure Squad.

The chess piece thrown out by the cultivation world had been rendered useless. Only now did Hua Yufeng realize that the demon race’s influence in the human realm was far from negligible.

They actually had experts capable of dismantling the entire scheme effortlessly in just a single day.

Late at night, Hua Yufeng, Luo Xiu, and Zhou Chengbei gathered in a teahouse in Jiangcheng.

Zhou Chengbei now appeared to be an old man in his fifties. Unlike ordinary humans, cultivators could maintain their youth, but it required spiritual energy. Zhou Chengbei didn’t care much about appearances and had no desire to expend spiritual energy on maintaining his looks.

Hua Yufeng and Luo Xiu, however, were different. As women, they would ensure their faces remained beautiful even if their spiritual energy waned.

“Grandmaster Hua, Sect Leader Jia’s plan isn’t working well,” Zhou Chengbei remarked.

“Do you have a better idea?” Hua Yufeng retorted.

Zhou Chengbei, who had been pacing anxiously, bristled at her words. His beard twitched as he sighed helplessly and sat back down, taking a sip of tea.

Luo Xiu, who had been quietly observing, finally spoke up: “You both must know that the demon sovereign has a period of weakness, right?”

Zhou Chengbei’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Yes! How could I have forgotten that?”

Luo Xiu sighed helplessly, “I told you long ago not to be impatient. Now look what’s happened, we’ve alerted the demon clan. If they go to Wuqi Mountain to help that fiend succeed, what chance do we have left?”

“The demon clan? Hah, they’re nothing but a joke.”

“What do you mean?” Zhou Chengbei, being human, didn’t know much about the demon clan, though he was aware that most disciples of the Chiyu Immortal Manor were demons. Back in the day, they had gone to great lengths to earn a place in the cultivation world.

Hua Yufeng shot Zhou Chengbei a sidelong glance and snorted coldly, “That was thousands of years ago. You probably weren’t even born then, why bother knowing about it?”

Zhou Chengbei rolled his eyes, while Luo Xiu picked up a cup of tea and took a few sips.

She turned to look out the window, silently counting the days in her heart.

“It’s almost time.”

Though it would take just three more days to fully refine the Cloud Mystery Immortal Lord, after all this time, they must be nearing that chaotic tipping point.

Thinking of the cat from her childhood that had helped her family regain their footing, Luo Xiu felt a wave of tenderness.

Believe me, Rourou, I’m not trying to harm you.

I just… want you to stay by my side forever.

When Fu Rou woke up, her head felt less dizzy than before.

Lately, she often felt her mind wasn’t working properly. Whenever she tried to think things through, she just couldn’t settle down.

Today’s breakfast was venison, dipped in egg yolk, richly fragrant and absolutely delicious.

After eating her fill, Fu Rou hopped onto the roof to bask in the sun. Gazing at the path leading down the mountain, she pondered whether and when to make a run for it.

Even though the food here was great, the toys were fun, and she could sleep up to sixteen hours a day, she still felt mentally exhausted.

Being a little cat beside Shi Yao came with far too many burdens.

She didn’t know why she could read minds, nor why she kept having those strange dreams. She didn’t even want to recall or sort through the plot details she already knew.

Fu Rou just wanted to escape.

She was just an ordinary cat café owner, what did all these past lives, reincarnations, and tangled plots have to do with her? Since they didn’t, wouldn’t it be perfectly reasonable to slip away before the cultivators arrived?

But Shi Yao would never let her go.

Given her obsessive, jealous nature, if Fu Rou got caught, it would surely lead to a classic villainous descent, complete with imprisonment and dark play. The thought alone was terrifying.

“Meow…”

Who could possibly understand a little cat’s troubles?

Today, the kitty remains deeply melancholic.