"Ah! Pervert!"
"My bird butt is going to be exposed!"
Two more feathers fell.
Little Food Bucket's tiny body trembled in Chu Youning's hand, and he instantly behaved himself. "Beautiful lady, I was wrong. I apologize."
"Do that again, and I'll pluck you bare and throw you into a pot of oil!"
After delivering that vicious threat, Chu Youning picked up the painting Little Food Bucket had just dirtied.
She tilted the painting in the candlelight, making the bird's claw prints especially clear.
But clearer still were the winding lines that had appeared on it out of nowhere.
"These... look a little like writing?"
Recalling the jumble of television dramas she had watched, which seemed to feature all sorts of bizarre ways to reveal hidden writing, Chu Youning's eyes lit up.
"Sweetheart, come on... use your adorable little claws to step on these lotus leaves some more. If I'm satisfied, I'll give you whatever you want to eat every day from now on!"
"Really?"
A drop of drool instantly fell from Little Food Bucket's beak, despite the threat he had just received.
A textbook case of remembering the food but forgetting the beating.
"I swear on your life."
"Ooh, I want ash!"
Little Food Bucket hopped out of Chu Youning's hand.
Chu Youning called Qianyu over to fetch some ash left from burning firewood in the kitchen.
Before long, under Little Food Bucket's ministrations, the once-lush green lotus leaves had turned ashen gray.
She picked up the painting again and spoke to her System.
"System, scan the parts with writing for me and send them to my phone."
[Okay.]
The System, obediently working overtime today, nodded.
A few minutes later.
Chu Youning began enlarging the characters one by one to examine them.
They formed a densely packed collection