Before Zheng Qing fell out of that Soul-Returning Poplar, he had always felt that his Magic Ban Festival had been well spent.
He had taken part in the school's required spring outing, listened in on a whispered conversation between two witches, and witnessed a great battle between mice and the five venomous creatures.
As for how he had ended up above Colma and the Rat Immortal's heads, that story began with the quiet yet fierce battle between the mice and the bugs.
At the time, as a third party on the battlefield, the black cat had crouched on a branch and watched the entire battle—he saw three mice pin down a toad and beat it so savagely that its eyes burst out; he also saw a golden scorpion sever a mouse's paw with its enormous pincers, making the mouse squeal in pain; and he saw mice, maddened by battle, abandon their tools and tear into the bugs with sharp teeth and claws, sending fluids flying everywhere.
In short, after a long and arduous struggle, the mouse army won a resounding victory. The dead bugs were stripped of their shells and venom, then buried on the spot. The surviving captives were sorted by kind, placed under guard, and marched deeper into the Silent Forest.
As a cat, and a deeply curious one at that, Zheng Qing naturally could not simply watch the mice march off in force with their captive bugs. So he quietly followed the procession.
As the saying went, mice had their paths, and bugs had theirs. When mice and bugs traveled together, their different routes forced them to compromise. Thus, the mice did not simply draw a black hole on the ground and leave with the bugs, which gave the black cat a chance to follow them.
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