"Are you really not going to consider my terms?"
The tabby cat yanked at the iron chain, making it rattle loudly. Its sharp claws gleamed coldly in the sunlight.
"Meow!!!!!"
All right, judging by the looks of it, there was nothing left to discuss.
And so, Jiang You was no longer bored in the days that followed.
She moved house, putting everything that could be moved into her spatial storage before relocating to the top floor.
After all, the top-floor terrace was more suitable for her training.
She also repaired the security door.
While tidying up, she found a hard drive. After plugging it into her tablet, she discovered a number of videos that made her feel extremely uncomfortable.
Most of them showed cats or dogs being abused.
Each animal in the videos had its own separate folder.
She found the folder about the tabby cat. Its name was Number 353.
There were two videos in the folder. The first showed them playing in the countryside when they found this tabby cat chained up by a villager. According to the villager, the cat had several dogs' lives on its paws, so it couldn't be left unchained.
They took a liking to this wild, untamable tabby cat, so they bought it back to domesticate it and then torture it to death.
The second video showed the cat's daily life after arriving at their home.
Jiang You watched the other videos and discovered that the couple specifically sought out cats and dogs that were wild and untamable, with a strong wariness toward humans. They would bring them home, tame them with good food and drink, and then begin torturing them to death after the animals completely trusted them.
The entire process was recorded on video. They would even customize the content according to their clients' requests.
Frowning, Jiang You threw away all the furniture and personal belongings in the house. After a thorough cleaning, she replaced them with a new bed and sofa from her storage.
As for the stinking refrigerator...
She looked down and saw that no one was around, then unceremoniously threw the refrigerator off the top floor.
She didn't even want to put the thing into her storage. It was too disgusting.
The group of zombies that had just eaten the food delivery that had fallen from the sky were wandering around aimlessly.
When they heard the commotion, they assumed another food delivery had arrived and scrambled toward where the object had landed.
"Roar, roar, roar!"
One zombie after another rushed impatiently to the food-drop site.
But there was no food on the ground. A refrigerator lay shattered into pieces, its rotten contents reeking.
The stench instantly attracted all the flies nearby.
The zombies stared at the refrigerator on the ground in confusion.
Huh? It wasn't food delivery!
Before they could leave, another pile of things fell from the sky.
The zombies raised their heads excitedly, waiting for something to eat. Instead, a huge shadow came crashing down.
A bed, cabinets, pillows and blankets, a wardrobe, a sofa, a coffee table, tables, zombie corpses, pots and pans...
After a series of deafening crashes, dust billowed across the ground.
More than a dozen zombies that hadn't had time to run were crushed to pieces.
The other zombies let out furious growls. Realizing there was no food delivery, they swayed away and continued wandering elsewhere.
Jiang You spent an entire day cleaning up the top-floor apartment.
Now the apartment had a brand-new soft sofa, a large bed, and a white wool carpet. She had also disposed of all the cat cages on the terrace.
She pulled up the withered plants by the roots and replanted some strawberries and cherry tomatoes.
After completing her training plan for the day,
and cleaning the apartment as well, she looked up to find that it was already night.
Jiang You dug a barbecue grill out of her storage and sat on the terrace, grilling barbecue beneath the evening breeze.
Although it was nighttime, the temperature wasn't any cooler than during the day.
The outdoor thermometer showed forty-six degrees Celsius.
As for the tabby cat, Jiang You held its head down, unfastened the iron chain restraining it, and then let it go.
She liked this stubborn little thing.
But since it didn't want to follow her, Jiang You didn't force it.
The instant the chain came free and Jiang You released it, the tabby cat let out a high-pitched meow, leaped into the air, and disappeared into the darkness.
Jiang You arranged skewers of lamb, squid, grilled gluten, eggplant, pork belly, and fresh grapes on the table.
She grilled and ate at the same time.
On such a sweltering night, sweating profusely while grilling meat and then taking a sip of an ice-cold drink was simply too comfortable.
Jiang You grilled a dried squid and was about to tear it into strips and dip them in mustard and soy sauce.
But then she suddenly remembered that she hadn't brought any mustard. She took a tube of mustard from her storage, squeezed it into a dish with some soy sauce, and stirred them together.
When this kind of dried squid was roasted over charcoal, it remained dry, fragrant, and chewy after cooking. Torn into strips and dipped in soy sauce mixed with mustard, it became more fragrant the longer one chewed.
She had just finished mixing the soy sauce and mustard in the dish when she turned around to tear up the dried squid.
But the moment she turned her head, she found that her dried squid had disappeared!
Jiang You looked beneath the table and confirmed that the dried squid hadn't fallen onto the ground.
"Where's my squid?"
She narrowed her eyes and spotted a gray cat hair at the edge of the table.
She had wiped the table before using it. There was no way a cat hair could still have been there.
Jiang You thought of that vicious cat.
She planted her hands on her hips and shouted, "You stinky cat, you actually stole my squid! I told you that if you followed me, you'd get ten cat treats and three cans a day. You refused, and now you keep stealing my food!"
"Meow!"
A shrill cry rang out from one side of the terrace.
A small black shadow was tossed through the air in an arc and landed at Jiang You's feet.
"Thump!"
It was a rat with its neck bitten through, about the size of a palm and weighing roughly half a kilogram.
Was the cat trying to trade a rat for her dried squid?
Jiang You laughed. "You think one rat can buy one of my dried squid? Keep dreaming!"
The moment she finished speaking,
another black shadow was flung high into the air from somewhere and fell at Jiang You's feet.
It was another rat that had been bitten to death.
She hadn't guessed wrong. This cat really could understand what she said.
Jiang You laughed. She had already let the little thing go, yet it had actually come back on its own?
It had probably been drawn over by the smell of the food.
But with so many ingredients here, it hadn't taken any of them. It had only taken that dried squid.
Jiang You tried taking out a few small yellow croakers, grilling them, and placing them on a dish on the table.
Then she shouted, "Oh no, why does my stomach hurt?"
She ran back into the house. When she came out again, the three small yellow croakers were gone.
In their place, several more rats had appeared on the ground.
Jiang You looked at the pair of rats, the corners of her mouth twitching.
There was no way she was eating that stuff!
Jiang You kept testing things while eating.
After several days of testing, she had almost confirmed the cat's preferences.
It liked all kinds of cooked fish but didn't like raw fish. It liked fish that had been cooked—crucian carp, yellow croaker, mandarin fish, squid, and all the rest.
But once, Jiang You happened to place several strawberries and cherry tomatoes grown in her storage beside some grilled crucian carp. When she came back out, she found that the crucian carp was untouched.
Yet a handful of cherry tomatoes and several strawberries had all disappeared.
Seven or eight dead rats had been neatly arranged beneath the table.
Jiang You frowned and muttered, "This cat even eats fruit?"
She placed some ordinary strawberries that she had stocked in her storage on the table. This time, the cat didn't touch them.
It seemed to especially like fruit grown in her storage.
The cat moved far too quickly. Jiang You tried several more times to catch it, but failed every time.
After discovering this, she deliberately placed several storage-grown strawberries and cherry tomatoes on the terrace at every meal.
The tabby cat took the fruit away every time, leaving several rats behind.
Apparently, in its eyes, this was an equal trade rather than charity.
It used its own food to exchange for Jiang You's food.
Hmm... This was one proud, stubborn cat!
But after eating delicious fruit for several days in a row, the tabby cat discovered that the human had suddenly stopped trading with it.
Was she dissatisfied with the amount?
This human was actually raising the price after the deal!
Cunning humans. Sure enough, they had no integrity!
Before you continue