Gu Yue Takes Human Form, Tilts Her Head Cutely: "If You Eat the Instant Noodles, You Can't Eat Me!"

"My life is so miserable."

Gu Yue let out a grief-stricken whimper, jumped down from the stove, and waddled toward the door on four short little legs.

After taking two steps, she stopped and glanced back at Lin Yan, who was sleeping like the dead on the bed.

Then she raised a claw and silently bared her teeth in his direction.

Then she encountered her first problem.

The door was shut.

Gu Yue looked up at the wooden door, which towered several times her height above her.

She raised a foreclaw and pushed at the door—without the slightest movement, it was as if it had been welded shut.

Then she rammed it with her head, lashed it with her tail, and threw her entire body against it. It still did not budge.

"..."

Gu Yue fell silent for three seconds before turning to look at the window.

The window was shut too, but there was a gap in its frame.

It had probably fallen into disrepair over the years. The hinges had loosened, leaving a nail-width gap where the side of the frame against the wall had warped upward.

Gu Yue climbed onto the windowsill and squeezed her flattened body into the gap.

The fat on her belly was pinched painfully.

Grimacing, she forced herself through, her scales scraping against the aluminum window frame with a teeth-grating screech.

Halfway through, she got stuck.

Her belly was wedged at the narrowest point, leaving her unable to move forward or back.

Gu Yue looked down at her squashed belly fat, and her eyes instantly filled with tears.

The lofty Silver Dragon King, ruler of all soul beasts, half of the Dragon God, the dragon that devoured worlds.

And now, her belly was stuck in a broken window.

You beast.

Just you wait.

She took a deep breath, sucked in her belly, kicked hard with her hind legs, and popped free from the gap with a "pop."

When she landed, all four legs went in different directions, and she nearly lost her footing. Her butt hit the ground with a dull thud.

Moonlight spilled over the empty street.

Gu Yue lay in the shadows across the street, observing for a long time.

There was a small convenience store downstairs. Its rolling shutter was pulled halfway down, and the interior was dark and silent.

The owner had probably already gone home to sleep.

At this hour, there was not even a ghost in the street.

She took a deep breath and dashed across the road on her tiny legs.

She slipped through the gap beneath the rolling shutter.

There was not much on the shelves, mostly quick foods like biscuits, instant noodles, and sausages.

Gu Yue hopped onto a shelf and clawed down several packets of braised beef-flavored instant noodles.

She also grabbed two sausages while she was at it.

She made a bit too much noise.

A packet of instant noodles slid off the shelf and hit the floor with a crisp sound.

"Who's there?!"

A middle-aged man's voice came from the back room, followed by the lights switching on.

Gu Yue's scales flared in fright. She grabbed the instant noodles in her mouth and ran back.

She plunged headfirst into the shadows beneath the shelf, her belly pressed against the cold tile floor as her four claws frantically scraped at the ground at a rate of ten steps per second.

The shop owner rubbed his eyes as he walked out of the back room.

All he saw was a silver-white, round, unidentified creature with instant noodles in its mouth darting out from beneath the shelf and slipping under the rolling shutter in a flash.

The thing ran incredibly fast. Under the moonlight, he could only see a streak of silver, with two sausages trailing behind its tail.

"Holy shit! What a huge rat!"

The shop owner woke up completely and grabbed a broom before chasing outside.

The moonlit street was completely empty. There was no trace of that silver rat anywhere.

"Was I... half-asleep?"

The shop owner rubbed his eyes, yawned, leaned the broom against the wall, and staggered back inside to sleep.

By then, Gu Yue had already raced all the way back to the foot of Lin Yan's building with her loot in her mouth.

She set the instant noodles and sausages on the stairs and panted heavily.

The fat on her belly trembled with every breath, her tongue hanging out like a corgi that had just run three miles.

"I... I, the lofty Silver Dragon King... have actually fallen so low as to steal instant noodles..."

Back home, Gu Yue tossed the instant noodles onto the stove and encountered her second problem.

How was she supposed to prepare them?

She was in dragon form now. Her four claws were nimble, but they could only reach so far.

Standing on her hind legs, she stretched her foreclaws toward the cabinet. Her fingertips were still an entire body-length away from the electric kettle's handle.

Gu Yue glared at the instant noodles, and the instant noodles glared back at her.

One dragon and one packet of noodles faced off beneath the dim yellow light for a full thirty seconds.

"...Fine."

Gu Yue took a deep breath and summoned the remnants of elemental power within her.

Silver light lit up across her scales, spreading outward in ring after ring and tracing a simple transformation spell in the air.

She did not like taking human form.

Transforming consumed a great deal of energy, and her cultivation had fallen too severely by now.

The world-devouring power from last night had long vanished along with the collapse of that ultra-ancient spacetime.

After returning to reality, less than one ten-thousandth of her strength remained.

The human form she could create was only the size of a three- or four-year-old child, round and chubby, like a silver-haired glutinous rice dumpling.

But she had no choice.

The instant noodles were more important.

Silver light flashed, and the chubby silver-white little dragon on the stove disappeared.

In her place stood a little girl barely over a meter tall.

Her long silver-white hair hung limply to her waist.

Her cheeks were chubby, and her delicate features made her look like a porcelain doll.

She wore a small silver-white dress formed from her scales. Its hem reached just above her knees, revealing a pair of lotus-root-like little calves.

Barefoot on the cold stovetop, she rose onto her tiptoes to reach for the electric kettle in the cabinet.

Her fingertips were just a little short.

She bit her lip, dragged over a soy sauce bottle from the side, stepped on it, and finally managed to reach it.

Hugging the electric kettle, she climbed down unsteadily, filled it with water, plugged it in, and pressed the switch.

The kettle began to hum, and its red light came on.

Gu Yue squatted on the stove with her cheeks resting in her hands, watching tiny bubbles slowly rise in the kettle.

Ten minutes later, a steaming bowl of braised beef noodles was ready.

Gu Yue examined her handiwork and nodded in satisfaction.

Carefully carrying the bowl, she climbed down from the stove. Her bare little feet stepped on the cold floor as she made her way toward the bed, one deliberate step at a time.

Lin Yan was awakened by the smell of instant noodles.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a pair of violet eyes.

A silver-haired little girl was lying beside the bed, her chin propped in her hands as she looked at him eagerly.

Her cheeks were plump, her skin was so fair it seemed to glow, and her long silver-white hair spread across the bedsheets like some kind of precious silk.

"...Who?"

Lin Yan's brain was still booting up.

He blinked, his gaze shifting away from that porcelain-doll face before finally landing on the bowl of instant noodles on the table.

Gu Yue pushed the noodles toward him.

Steam rose from the bowl, red oil floating atop the broth, with several chunks of dehydrated beef and chopped scallions scattered within.

She tilted her head, wearing an innocent, well-behaved expression that had clearly been carefully rehearsed.

"If... if you eat the instant noodles, you can't eat me anymore."

The little cutie's voice was soft and sweet, like cotton candy acting spoiled, but the words she spoke made Lin Yan frown.