Cat 335: Extra: The Embrace of that Year

Chapter 335 Extra: The Embrace of That Year

Though they were entering an instance that had already ceased operations, it still retained enough energy to be dangerous. Unawakened NPCs were still fulfilling their duty of attacking players, so there was no room for complacency.

Fortunately, there were not many high-difficulty instances left—only one had been found so far.

They split into teams upon entering the instance, each group led by someone to search for players. If persuasion would work, they tried to convince the players to help look for the key NPC; if not, they simply knocked them out, then did their best to find the NPC holding the concentrated energy of the instance. Once awakened, the NPC’s consciousness would collapse the instance.

Yan Jiyun, after entering, perched comfortably on Qi Feng’s shoulder, not needing to walk at all.

To their surprise, the weakened system was still visible. It no longer displayed any data—the figures had frozen at the moment they destroyed the game, and there appeared odd lines of garbled code, unfamiliar symbols unlike anything they’d encountered before. Yan Jiyun and Qi Feng recorded them, intending to bring them back to the research institute for study—as a reference in their research on extradimensional beings. The best video game console.

Although the system was no longer functional, the energy here remained, and the pet-master system he’d previously inserted via a bug was still intact.

Qi Feng saw everything Yan Jiyun was seeing.

The difference was, his own pet bar was still hanging up above.

If only they weren’t in non-corporeal bodies, he would have liked to snap a photo and take the system interface home—as a plaque for the wall.

Pet Name: Caramel
Pet Species: Cat
Pet Age Stage: Adult
Pet Game Status: In Instance
Pet Intimacy: 100/100
Pet Location: Unlocked, viewable
Pet Instance Info: High-level Instance: City of Rebirth
Pet Info had stopped updating when they entered the new zombie instance.

Yan Jiyun could also see Qi Feng’s personal information.

Master Name: Qi Feng
Species: Human
Age: 28
Status: Online
Intimacy: 100/100
Location: Unlocked, viewable
Instance Info: High-level Instance: City of Rebirth

Qi Feng knew this system was his own creation and recalled how their 100-point intimacy level had unlocked a new feature.

Yan Jiyun mused, “Su Qiuming doesn’t know about our pet-master system. I wonder if he’d be furious if he ever found out.”

Qi Feng, remembering their last plan, thought back. At first, he’d disagreed with being separated from Yan Jiyun, but Yan Jiyun insisted: you have to sacrifice a pawn to trap a wolf.

Su Qiuming would certainly have stopped the two of them from meeting up.

They had never used backdoor access to the entire game system, and Qi Feng was extremely troubled by their separation. Of course, he had tasks of his own, returning to Central City to open a path leading to the backend of the game.

Yan Jiyun had only told Qi Feng at the very end about the feature that would unlock after their intimacy reached one hundred. The unlocking process was set up this way specifically out of fear of betrayal.

Half-believing, Qi Feng had returned to Central City, rallying all the players who would listen to him and waiting for Yan Jiyun’s call.

The reason Yan Jiyun had been left so weak afterward was because using the summoning feature drained his own consciousness.

With Yan Jiyun bringing this up, Qi Feng seized the opportunity to settle accounts with him over nearly exhausting himself.

“You knew using that feature to summon us would be dangerous, so why do it anyway?”

“I knew I wouldn’t die.” Yan Jiyun jumped into his arms, hugging Qi Feng’s neck tightly. It would have been a death wish to talk about this in human form—discussing it as a cat gave him a free pass, since Qi Feng was always softest to cats. “I knew what I was doing. See—don’t I look just fine now?”

“Don’t ever gamble with your life again,” Qi Feng said seriously. “I mean it.”

“I know. I promise that was the last time.” With that, Yan Jiyun licked Qi Feng’s chin, then, very stiffly changing the subject, said, “With Liang-jie and the others finding the protagonist, why don’t we see if the streaming room can be restored?”

Qi Feng could only sigh internally. The matter was in the past; there was no point pursuing whether Yan Jiyun valued his own life. All he cared about now was his safety.

Never mind—he’d keep a close eye in the future. Two would always be stronger than one.

Qi Feng opened his own streaming room tab, but nothing happened. “Can you connect to yours?”

Knowing he’d dodged reprimand for now, Yan Jiyun focused on inspecting the system backend, pressing a few times in the streaming room’s backstage, but nothing responded.

He pressed again and thought he heard a couple of faint crackles.

As players, they could minimize or expand the chat overlay. Now, he opened up the previously folded bullet-screen.

At first, it was pitch black, all previous bullet comments gone.

Suddenly, a white wave streaked across the chat.

Yan Jiyun twitched his tail, brushing it over the back of Qi Feng’s hand. “I think I got a response.”

Previously, some extradimensional beings had intercepted sensitive information from the stream, leaving them clueless as to where these viewers came from. The only certainty was that the viewers were also fully extradimensional, separated from them by billions of light-years.

Qi Feng said, “These viewers look like ordinary beings among the extradimensional races.”

Yan Jiyun replied, “After aliens turned Earth into a game, they just watched our suffering for entertainment; that’s twisted, no matter how you look at it.” The best video game console.

Qi Feng said, “Is it possible they never realized we were real people?”

Yan Jiyun mused, “That’s possible. It could also be that they knew exactly what this game was, and enjoyed looking down on us Earthlings—or others—from a higher civilization.”

“I agree,” Qi Feng said. “They’re certainly not as ignorant as they pretend.”

Crackle, crackle, crackle, crackle, crackle, crackle, crackle.

Suddenly, a comment popped up in Yan Jiyun’s chat: “There’s some movement on my side.”

Qi Feng said, “I still don’t have any response. Want to try talking to them?”

Yan Jiyun gave a snort. “They take pleasure in our pain—why should I talk to them?”

Qi Feng rubbed the fur on his neck. “Then maybe curse them out.”

Yan Jiyun’s eyes lit up. “Good idea.”

He leaped onto Qi Feng’s neck and, facing the chat window, cussed, “Idiotic viewers.”

At that moment, the so-called personal streaming room suddenly lit up.

Once a viewer follows a streamer, they get notified as soon as the streamer goes live, instantly opening the stream room.

So, when the viewers rushed in, all they saw was a snowy, blurry feed and heard the voice of the familiar kitten.

Just as they opened their mouths to cheer for the kitten, they heard their beloved cat cussing fluently—listening closely, they realized he was swearing at them.

“Ahhh, it’s the kitten—Kitten and his master are back! Is the game coming back again?”

“Didn’t the game shut down? How can the stream still go live? What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“In the two months without a kitten stream, I couldn’t find anything to replace it.”

“Damn, the kitten is cursing us out.”

“He is! He just called us idiots—he’s still as sassy as ever.”

Feeling much better after the outburst, Yan Jiyun took advantage of the spotty connection to compose a message for the chat: “Whether the viewers here are human or ghost, I hope your planets never experience what we did—being forced into a disgusting life-and-death game. If your world has living creatures like ours, respect life and respect all conscious, living civilizations. Don’t look down on us Earthlings just because our civilization lags behind—for in time, we’ll reach heights you can’t imagine. And if, by then, I’m still able to fight, I’ll take the battle to your own turf and make you cry for your parents. You’d better hope we don’t find you too soon.”

Personal Streaming Room

“Kitten is savage—was that a declaration of war on behalf of his planet?”

“Huh? Wasn’t he just a player? Aren’t players supposed to enter the game voluntarily?”

“Girls, you finally get the point—could this have been done by people from a higher civilization, looking to destroy others? Wouldn’t that mean they could attack our world too?”

“Shit, this is big. I have to post this online right now and get everyone alert.”

“Dammit, who the hell did this? If something happens to the kitten, I’ll never be okay.”

“So, this game really does kill people for real, not just fake deaths like we thought?”

“The more I think about it, the scarier it is. If Kitten’s accusations are true, will our world be targeted too?”

“God, I’ve got goosebumps.”

“Thank you for warning us, Kitten.”

“Kitten is the best.”

“Thank you, Kitten. I’ll go tip off the national security center right now.”

A single spark can start a prairie fire.

Even a fleeting conversation could have a greater ripple effect than expected.

Yan Jiyun watched as the chat comments stopped scrolling. The crackling came again; the signal cut off. He couldn’t help but murmur to Qi Feng, “Honestly, all I did was curse them out, but they came running to thank me.”

Qi Feng said, “Maybe what you called cursing actually made a difference. Most of the time, what the people know is only what those in power allow them to know.”

Yan Jiyun agreed, “You’re right. Wasn’t really expecting to wake anyone up. As long as I got to curse, I’m happy.”

Qi Feng thought he’d cursed well and couldn’t help grinning—his cat’s happiness was always what mattered most.

Then the two of them dove back into the task of liberating the instance’s protagonist.

With so much experience, and as the energy sustaining the instance quickly faded, they resolved it before long.

For several months straight, Yan Jiyun and Qi Feng worked tirelessly to liberate NPCs across the remaining instances, and their streaming rooms never lit up again.

As for events in the extradimensional realms, they had no channels for news and no idea what was happening. But Earth itself unexpectedly fell silent, and the research center never again intercepted any worrying transmissions from beyond.

As the holidays drew near, the remaining small instances no longer needed them to intervene personally.

Director Zhang, in an unusual move, gave Yan Jiyun a long break, telling him he could finally do as he pleased.

Yan Jiyun understood—Director Zhang was finally letting go, no longer keeping him in the research center.

He roared home in Qi Feng’s sports car, unable to wait another minute to tell Qi Feng the good news.

As the car pulled into the parking spot, Yan Jiyun stepped out to see that gentle, steady snow was falling from the sky.

He stood before the car, looking up at the snow-filled sky, remembering the day he had become Qi Feng’s cat.

In the living room, Qi Feng saw him return, opened the door, and called out, “It’s snowing—aren’t you coming in? Aren’t you cold?”

That day, a warm hand scooped him up into an embrace. At that moment, he felt warmth flood through him, and he realized he could spend a lifetime in this man’s arms. It was just so warm.

With a bright smile, Yan Jiyun suddenly dashed toward Qi Feng and threw himself into his embrace.

“Not cold at all.”