Cat 284: In Love with a Female NPC

Chapter 284: In Love with a Female NPC?

The rules for the fortieth stage were distinctly unappealing.

Yan Jiyun disliked this kind of setup intensely. Was Qi Feng saving someone, or simply following a scripted storyline?

Leaning forward, he scrutinized the screen.

Out of the hundred players and fifty teams, he couldn’t recall ever seeing the woman Qi Feng was currently holding hands with. Every other contestant, including Qi Feng, sported clothing marred by rips and creases, every brush with the ground leaving its mark. Yet the woman at Qi Feng’s side, though her expression was tense with fear, wore garments that were spotless and smooth—stray ribbons fluttered as she ran.

He knew well the sort of man Qi Feng was: he didn’t like making physical contact with others. Perhaps because the cat raised at his side was so familiar, but outside of that, Yan Jiyun had seldom seen him initiate touch with anyone else. He respected women—take Sister Liang in their team, for example: when she wished to pursue the solo mode, he supported her decision. So to suddenly see Qi Feng holding hands with a stranger was hard for Yan Jiyun to believe.

This wasn’t the Qi Feng he knew.

He was the first to enter this room; if another player obtained a tool, would they enter the same room as well?

How was this stage meant to be played? He still had no concrete idea.

Yan Jiyun realized that, ever since he’d entered the championship round, he had simply been following the game’s rhythm. As players, they were powerless to resist the game’s structure.

He hated this feeling of being led by the nose, but in the short term, he had no idea how to break through the chains of the game.

For now, he would have to find out what was happening before making any move. Perhaps Qi Feng was progressing through a storyline mission?

Qi Feng’s face was a blur on the screen, lost in motion as he ran, seen only in profile.

Rubbing his palms together, Yan Jiyun propped his hands beneath his chin, frowning with a mixture of frustration and confusion.

Suddenly, he stood and ran his hands along the white wall, finally approaching the screen that flickered with blue light.

He pressed his palm to the blue glow on the screen, expecting it to be merely a background effect, something like the LED screens used in shooting TV shows at home, cold and solid. Instead, his hand felt nothing but air: the screen was a mere projection, nothing tangible behind it.

The screen had no real boundaries; a human hand passed through as if into thin air.

In all his previous dungeon instances, everything—walls, screens, NPCs—had been utterly real; death for the player was as real as anything in life.

So why should it be different here?

Once again, they were being led by the game itself, never stopping to attempt to rebel or break it.

Not even the professionals in the guild had thought to try such things; mere curiosity had long been snuffed out by the urgency of “survival.”

The image of Qi Feng holding a woman’s hand was just a projection of another part of the game; Yan Jiyun passed straight through the illusion, entering the hidden space behind the screen.

What he didn’t know was that, just as his body fully slipped inside the unseen wall, another player who had just won their tool was thrown into the room by the game.

This player found two screens and two armchairs; one display showed Qi Feng’s progress, the other that of the player’s teammate.

“Huh? Wasn’t Yan Jiyun supposed to be in here too? Where is he? There shouldn’t be no one here.”

“System beauty? Say something—what am I supposed to do next?”

“So lively outside, but inside this place there’s no sound at all. Aren’t there supposed to be instructions?”

The player fumbled along the walls: all white, no windows, no doors. It was the kind of solitary space that could drive someone mad simply by being left alone in it.

Yan Jiyun, driven by curiosity, barreled straight through the invisible wall. At first, he hadn’t intended to, but the faint shimmer of blue seemed to guide him onward.

This stage was, at its core, nothing particularly special.

His heart beat faster.

The system shouldn’t be making mistakes; yet here he was, a player, somewhere he should not be.

Before him stretched a narrow path sprinkled with starlight: true darkness interwoven with glimmers, as if desperate to create a romantic atmosphere, though the effect, lacking human touch, became downright uncanny.

Ahead, the blue shimmer receded, as if beckoning him on.

Yan Jiyun felt like he was exploring a secret room, having discovered a hidden passage behind the screen—one waiting for him to uncover some buried truth.

He could hear nothing from outside, and that in itself felt strange. Why was no one else here?

He’d hoped to step right onto Qi Feng’s battlefield and help him out, but he’d clearly gotten ahead of himself. Since the game had already let him earn a tool for his partner, there was no reason to allow him to bypass the system now.

But then, where was this place?

Yan Jiyun tried to open his system, only to find that both the system and the livestream were gone, as if he’d reverted to his real-world self.

No trial card countdown, no inventory—everything had vanished in a heartbeat. What was going on?

He tried to pat his chest, only to realize he had already reverted to his cat form upon entering; without the system, there was no more trial card, either. So the central question remained: where was he?

On the surface, everything seemed senseless, and yet, on closer thought, there was a pattern.

Since entering the game, he’d encountered everything first; then, the game began to exhibit bugs; next came dungeon after dungeon, each seemingly tailored for him. Judging by this, perhaps even entering this secret space was not a coincidence.

If he could enter by passing through the screen’s invisible barrier, so could other players, surely?

Yet his surroundings blocked out all sound from the outside; there was no chance of hearing anyone else.

The crux remained: where was he?

For the first time, Yan Jiyun didn’t realize he’d become a cat again. The transformation was so strange—was it a lapse in awareness, or had the space itself suppressed his perception?

Four-legged, he coursed down the starlit path, chasing the blue glow. When he caught up, he saw it was nothing but a blue flame, drifting in the air. If this were a typical dungeon, he would’ve been terrified. But here, there was no fear—as if, deep down, he already understood the blue flame’s meaning.

Yan Jiyun mused, “Where are you taking me?”

Wait a second—had he actually voiced his thoughts?

He could speak in cat form again?

The last time this had happened was after he’d cleared Teacher Qu’s instance; Qi Feng and the others had crossed the Rainbow Bridge before him, leaving Yan Jiyun behind with Teacher Qu, who bluntly told him he could speak in cat form.

Every attempt since, in newer dungeons, had failed. Why now, in this space, could he do it again?

Back to the fundamental questions.

How had he entered the game through Qi Feng’s badge? Why was his case unique? Why did only he have the master-pet system? Why could only he endlessly use his cat form to build favor with NPCs?

His presence had caused a bug in the game. If his calculations were correct, the last championship had bugged out because of him, even if he didn’t know precisely how. Previous tournaments had never gone buggy in such a way.

Afterward, every dungeon he’d previously played was taken down and replaced with brand new instances.

Seen as a whole, the chain of events revealed a pattern: Yan Jiyun inherently forced the game to create bugs. In short, he was a glitch in the system.

But what was it about gaining favor with NPCs?

Why had it been impossible before for NPCs’ favorability to rise? Surely not every NPC was inherently obsessed with cats.

Was it possible the real bug was in the NPCs, not in the cat?

The vital questions that remained: how had the game originated, what was its story, and how had the NPCs come to be?

The blue fire paused. Yan Jiyun took a deep breath and stopped as well, uncertain what awaited him.

Suddenly, a light sprang up before him. A screen materialized in his path.

The focus of the footage was again Qi Feng—this time, without the woman at his side. Instead, armed with a gun, he battled a horde of inhuman monsters that looked distinctly like zombies.

Yan Jiyun recalled mention of Qi Feng stumbling into a zombie dungeon in the livestream chat—he and his then-close friend Su Qiuming had fallen out, arguing over whether to save an NPC.

Could the NPC Qi Feng had saved back then have been a woman?

He’d heard two other versions from He Yuanle:

One account said Qi Feng was wounded and thrown from the vehicle by Su Qiuming, left to fend for himself. Another claimed Qi Feng, infected during the zombie stage, was abandoned, while a third told that Su Qiuming shoved him into the path of a zombie, Qi Feng was bitten, and ultimately fought on alone, finding the serum and escaping the dungeon alive.

Three different narratives—Yan Jiyun chose to believe the viewers. The audience, after all, had witnessed Qi Feng play in real time. Their recollection of falling-outs between friends was likely sharper than the players themselves, and sometimes even more detailed. To viewers, watching players was like star-chasing or following a TV series, some even scrutinizing every scene with a magnifying glass. It was from their comments during the Christmas dungeon that he’d pieced all this together.

Back then, he’d made a note to get the truth from Qi Feng if he got a chance, but events had unfolded too quickly for him to sort out the tangle between Qi Feng and Su Qiuming.

Coming face to face with the zombie instance again was unsettling, but his focus quickly shifted to the Qi Feng on the screen.

Onscreen was Qi Feng from three years ago; less seasoned than now, with a rawness and drive toward the dungeons.

For the first time, Yan Jiyun saw a player’s journey from the third person. Even though he knew Qi Feng would ultimately escape alive, he couldn’t bring himself to relax, instead pacing a couple of times in front of the screen.

Who had brought him here?

Was he still within a challenge? He’d expected to see answers regarding himself, but still, all he found was material about Qi Feng’s dungeons.

The Qi Feng in the footage was the same Qi Feng he knew today.

A shrill scream tore him from his thoughts; on the screen, Qi Feng battered a zombie’s skull with a length of rebar, bursting its brains, blood and white matter splattering his clothes.

Qi Feng paid the mess no heed, dashing into a wine and tobacco shop, hauling down the battered metal shutter as far as it would go—barely halfway. Within, he slammed shut a glass door that still had a hole in a corner, breathing hard.

He’d taken out plenty of zombies already. Drawn by the scent of human flesh, these creatures pursued at a trot. Qi Feng had nowhere left to run.

Yan Jiyun couldn’t tell at what point this scene unfolded within the dungeon.

Who could have accessed and recorded Qi Feng’s run through a dungeon? Probably only the game developer had the authority to retrieve such footage.

Now, Yan Jiyun was as lost for an exit as the Qi Feng on screen.

Still, Qi Feng found something worthwhile in the tobacco shop. Weary, he walked behind the counter and discovered a woman crouched beneath it, clutching a tool—a hammer, from the shape—and gasping in terror, her chest rising and falling in panic.

Qi Feng dared not approach, merely standing in a corner to rest; only when they were certain neither was a zombie did conversation begin.

Once they’d exchanged identities, the woman crawled from the darkness beneath the counter.

Now Yan Jiyun allowed himself to lie down. To his surprise, the floor was neither cold nor hard, but kept at room temperature. Lying flat, he stretched out his razor-sharp claws, ensuring their sharpness—if the woman threatened Qi Feng, he’d leap to tear out her throat.

As the woman stepped into view, Yan Jiyun saw her face clearly.

He frowned more deeply—wasn’t this the same woman he’d just seen outside the screen?

Why was she here?

Onscreen, the woman began recounting her background.

She said she was searching for her brother from whom she’d been separated.

Qi Feng said he was looking for his teammates as well; their interests aligned, and once rested, they could travel together.

With his chin resting on his paws, Yan Jiyun watched.

So this was the very NPC that had driven a wedge between Qi Feng and Su Qiuming. Had Qi Feng fallen for a female NPC in the game?

Yan Jiyun dug three deep furrows into the floor with his claws, his mood unmistakably sour.

Scoundrel!