Chapter 145: “Stray Cat”
One day earlier.
Xiong Tai, who had been repeatedly turned away at Panliu Mountain, firmly believed that the gifts he had brought were too low-class—Ma Dapao, now rich and successful, simply didn’t think they were worth accepting.
He had been about to give up and just go home when a group of kids from the local survivor camp told him that Panliu Mountain’s trash dumps often contained valuable discarded items. They invited him to scavenge with them.
As a rare spatial ability user, Xiong Tai felt no shame in it at all. Without hesitation, he grabbed a tattered bag and followed the kids out to scavenge.
On the way, a familiar child asked him, “Brother Tai, is someone else living in your place? I saw a pair of leather shoes inside—definitely not yours. You’re always too lazy to wear anything but flip-flops.”
Xiong Tai snorted. “Why do you care? Anyway, he’s some rich big shot. Those shoes were a gift from him, but I don’t care to wear them.”
In reality, they simply didn’t fit him.
That “big shot” was someone Xiong Tai had stumbled upon one night while drunk—a man with a broken leg, barely clinging to life.
Xiong Tai had initially wanted to leave him there, but after seeing his fancy clothes and the gold watch on his wrist, he was tempted to just rob him and walk away.
But the man had said, “Save me, and I’ll give you something even better.”
Then he took off his own watch and shoved it into Xiong Tai’s hands.
Xiong Tai saw how extravagant the man was and figured he wasn’t lying, so he carried him back.
That night, the so-called big shot revealed his identity—some high-ranking research fellow. He was on his way to Changjing to deliver an important report on zombie research when his team encountered a zombie horde, leaving him as the only survivor.
Xiong Tai, who wasn’t very educated, listened in confusion before impatiently saying,
“Just tell me—what’s in it for me for saving you?”
The man handed him an evolution zombie crystal core.
Xiong Tai frowned in disdain. “Can you give me money instead? Or something I can cash in right away, like a watch, glasses, or a communicator? What’s this thing even good for?”
“It can make you stronger. You’re an ability user—don’t you want to get stronger?”
Xiong Tai was speechless. “You think I’m easy to fool just because I’m uneducated? I don’t care about getting stronger—I just want my booze.”
The researcher had never encountered such a laid-back ability user before. He was momentarily stunned, then finally said,
“…I don’t have anything else; I lost everything on the way. You can ask around—someone knowledgeable will buy the crystal core. And if no one does, once my companions find me, I’ll buy it back from you.”
Only then did Xiong Tai let it go.
The next day, he sold the flashy gold mechanical watch and exchanged it for three bottles of white wine.
Originally, he planned to bring the liquor to that female boss at Panliu Mountain, but Ma Dapao still turned up his nose, saying their boss lacked nothing.
Tsk, such high standards.
So, Xiong Tai drank all three bottles himself at home, having a grand time for a few days.
When a kid overheard this, he was astonished at first, then assumed Xiong Tai was bragging and lying, so he mocked him,
“A big shot? You can’t even feed yourself. What, a big shot came to your house to beg for food?”
Xiong Tai glared at him. “Stay out of grown-up matters.”
The kid wasn’t afraid of him at all and ran off laughing.
At the foot of Panliu Mountain, Xiong Tai and a group of kids bypassed the bustling queue and headed to the back of the mountain where trash was dumped.
Many emaciated vagrant survivors were already scavenging around the trash bins. When they saw Xiong Tai and the kids coming to pick through the garbage, some of them looked hostile.
Xiong Tai ignored them and dove straight into the pile.
Honestly, Panliu Mountain’s garbage was pretty high-quality. There were even fresh vegetables—though most were leftovers or rotting leaves—but he didn’t care. He didn’t even bother washing them before shoving them into his mouth. Clean or not, as long as it filled his stomach, that was good enough.
The leftovers he couldn’t finish, he packed up to take home—maybe he could even trade them for some liquor.
He also found empty shampoo bottles and drink bottles.
A kid beside him looked on enviously. “The people at Panliu Mountain live so well. Even their shampoo bottles look nice. If you wash and cut them open, you can use them as bowls. And these drink bottles…”
The kid licked his chapped lips as he stared at the advertisement printed on the bottle. “I know a guy who said these bottles used to hold sweet water—tastes good and quenches thirst.”
Xiong Tai didn’t care much about sweet or tasty things. As long as he had booze and wouldn’t starve, he was fine.
If he could get a job at Panliu Mountain, he could achieve his dream immediately—a free place to live, a salary, and money for booze… It would be perfect.
But that female boss was hard to please—she looked down on any gift.
Ma Dapao was a snob, too. Got rich and didn’t even lend him a hand.
Grumbling in his heart, Xiong Tai kept rummaging through the trash. When he got tired, he sprawled on the pile and took a nap, then woke up and kept searching.
As the sun was about to set and he was getting ready to leave, he suddenly spotted a black cat on a rock in the distance.
But in the blink of an eye, it was gone. He rubbed his eyes and searched around, finally spotting it again on a dirt slope.
It was digging a hole—to pee.
A sleek black cat with glossy fur and big, round eyes that were unbearably cute.
Xiong Tai’s eyes widened. “That’s a cat, right? Does anyone own it?”
The kid shook his head. “No idea. I always see it sleeping on the trash bins, then running around after it wakes up. No one seems to take care of it, so it’s probably a stray.”
An idea popped into Xiong Tai’s head. Don’t women like these little things?
He had heard that rich ladies in Changjing kept cats and dogs as pets.
If he gifted this to someone, it’d definitely be a respectable present!
Noticing the gleam in Xiong Tai’s eyes as he tried to approach the cat, the kid quickly warned,
“It’s really fierce. Someone tried to catch it and cook it once, but it scratched their face up so bad they were blind in one eye for a month—almost lost the eye entirely.”
That fierce? Must be a wild cat. Who would dare keep it?
Xiong Tai stopped in his tracks, surprised. “This little thing is that aggressive?”
The kid was in a hurry to get home. “I’m not lying! Don’t be fooled by how cute it looks. It’s super wary—if anyone gets close, it runs. Anyway, I gotta go. My grandma hasn’t eaten all day, and I found half a piece of dry bread, so I need to bring it to her.”
When everyone else had left and night had completely fallen, Xiong Tai tried several times to approach, but the cat ran off each time.
Getting impatient, Xiong Tai used his spatial ability to weave a “cage” in the air, baiting it with half a sausage—painful as it was to part with.
Damn it, he wouldn’t even eat this himself, but he was going all out just to trap this little beast.
But the black cat didn’t even glance at it. Instead, it climbed onto a dead tree, looking down at him as if he were a clown.
Xiong Tai was stunned. A cat that didn’t eat sausage? He couldn’t believe it. So he tried offering a biscuit, vegetable leaves, and even his last half-bottle of water.
No reaction at all!
It was as if it had seen these things too many times before—or simply looked down on them!
Xiong Tai’s ability had a limited range, and if the cat was too far, he couldn’t use his “cage” properly. Frustrated, he started climbing the tree by hand.
Just as he reached the top and was about to throw his “cage,” the black cat gave him a quick glance and leaped down, darting away to an even farther dead tree.
Xiong Tai suddenly felt like he was being toyed with. His face turned red with anger, and he started cursing, swearing that he would definitely catch the little beast.
But just as he ran to the next tree, he tripped and fell flat on his face.
The crystal core in his pocket rolled out.
