Strange Knowledge Gained

Ke Meng's neck felt a little stiff, and he slowly turned to look to his left.

On the floor sat the black cat basin he had seen in his dream, with a strange, fat white cat inside.

Its eyes were wide and round, its fur snowy white, and its two ears stood straight up. It meowed without opening its mouth.

The sound was strange. It appeared directly in his mind, buzzing and echoing.

There was no mistake. This was the cat he had seen in his dream. The fanatical believers had placed it in the basin with their own hands, then sent it to Ke Meng through a sacrificial ritual.

The cat had no idea what had happened. Its gaze was blank, as though the evil god had scared it senseless.

Once the initial shock passed, Ke Meng realized that what he had just dreamed had actually happened.

So what was he supposed to do now?

Ke Meng was a little dazed.

He was slightly worried that the cat might suddenly lash out and kill someone.

Fortunately, it looked rather dim-witted. Its expression was vacant, and it showed no signs of aggression.

It sat in the cat basin with its body fairly upright, its two chubby paws resting on either side of its plump waist as it stared blankly at Ke Meng.

Ke Meng studied the cat carefully, his expression turning odd.

This cat looked a lot like the mur cat in online memes.

Among those memes, the goofy captions that had stuck with him were:

"Strange knowledge gained!"

"Thinking has stopped!"

"Mind transcended!"

Ke Meng wasn't sure whether he was imagining things, but as he stared at this strange cat, some strange knowledge he had never known before really did come to mind.

For instance, how to care for this strange cat, and the story behind it.

This was the treasure of Cat-Faced People Village, called Strange Knowledge Cat. It could grant certain creatures strange knowledge.

Anyone who met the cat's wide-eyed gaze for fifteen seconds would gain strange knowledge in their mind.

But before they could gain that knowledge, there had to be something strange nearby. Otherwise, their brain would not acquire strange knowledge out of thin air.

In addition, this cat had already stopped thinking, and its body remained completely motionless.

It also had a rare ability called mind transcendence, but the chances of that happening were extremely, extremely low.

Throughout the history of Cat-Faced People Village, only its first village chief had achieved mind transcendence. Afterward, that chief left the little village, claiming to be heading to the Great Wilderness to gain experience. He never returned, and no one knew where he had died.

That was the strange cat's backstory.

All this background knowledge had appeared without warning. This was Strange Knowledge Cat's main ability: granting people strange knowledge.

Ke Meng looked at the foolish-looking, big-faced cat, his mind in turmoil.

Dreaming that he had become a Great Old One was one thing, but the real issue was that the offerings from his fanatical believers had crossed over into reality!

This is way too surreal!

Ke Meng got out of bed. Keeping his distance for the moment, he moved behind the big-faced cat to observe it.

The big-faced cat remained as still as a mountain.

After some thought, Ke Meng stepped outside and gently pulled the door shut, leaving only a narrow gap through which he secretly watched the big-faced cat.

It still wore that strange expression, unchanging, as though it had frozen on its face.

The longer he looked at this cat, the more uncanny it seemed.

Should I keep it?

But if he didn't, leaving it outside could easily cause trouble. After all, its expression seemed fixed, and it never blinked. Its eyes stayed open the whole time.

Speaking of blinking, Ke Meng went back into the bedroom to test it, filming the strange cat with his camera.

He picked up a sheet of paper, rolled it into a tube, and gently touched the big-faced cat's head. It made no attempt to dodge, continuing to stare at him with its wide eyes.

"Meow." The cat's cry sounded in his mind again.

It neither swatted at him nor rubbed against him. It simply sat there quietly, its eyes wide open, looking rather creepy.

A little later, Ke Meng transferred the five-minute recording to his computer and examined it frame by frame.

Sure enough, the cat's eyes had stayed open the entire time. It had never closed them, and its expression had remained fixed as well.

Although Ke Meng was a little afraid of a creature that had crossed over from another world, he wasn't that much of a coward. This was an offering from his believers.

Besides, this cat was incredibly unusual. It could grant people strange knowledge out of nowhere. He could search the whole world and never find another cat like it.

He walked over to the big-faced cat and tapped its head again with the rolled-up paper.

"Meow."

The cat's cry sounded in his mind again, but the big-faced cat had not opened its mouth.

The big-faced cat stared at him, its expression unchanged.

Ke Meng mused that if he placed a lucky cat beside it, the two would make a perfectly matched pair of blank-staring companions.

"Come to think of it, which game are you from?" Ke Meng murmured, lightly tapping the big-faced cat's head with the paper tube.

The kitty said nothing. It stared at him and meowed inside his head.

Ke Meng looked at the big-faced cat and recalled what had happened earlier.

That dream had been incredibly realistic. Even now, he still remembered that boring city in the deep sea.

He had stood motionless in the center of the enormous underwater city, watching those crazed sea creatures fight one another for several hours.

There had been no light in the deep sea, but darkness had no effect on his boss eyes. He could still observe things underwater without any light.

Those hours had been nightmarishly boring.

He sat back down at his computer and searched for keywords such as Cthulhu and mur cat.

After searching all over the place, he found no game that matched the combination of mur cat and Cthulhu, whether on mobile, PC, or console.

He made a tactical lean backward, reclining in his computer chair, and gave up thinking.

The big-faced cat in the basin stared at the wall. It had stopped thinking from the moment it was born.

After letting his mind go blank for a while, Ke Meng remembered the video he had edited last night.

He had been so tired last night that he had fallen asleep as soon as he lay down, without uploading it.

Ke Meng logged into his Bilibili account's creator dashboard and uploaded the video file from his computer.

It was an unboxing and review video for the camera that had arrived yesterday.

He usually had little to do. Aside from collecting rent and the like, he spent his time browsing Bilibili, reading novels, and so on.

His old camera had broken, so he had bought a new one. It had made convenient material for an unboxing review.

He clicked publish and waited for approval.

Ke Meng stretched and turned to look at the big-faced cat. The fellow was still staring at the wall.

A thought occurred to him: did this fellow really never move?

To test whether the big-faced cat was only playing dumb, he turned its basin to face the computer desk.

Then he aimed the camera at the cat's face and downloaded webcam surveillance software onto his computer, using the camera to monitor the big-faced cat in real time.

Once he had finished, Ke Meng heard a strange noise coming from downstairs.

Pfft, pfft.

The sound was a little odd.

He walked to the window, leaned against the sill, and craned his head out to look downstairs.