Cat Talk and Rat Speech

"If only Fatty hadn't been called away by that Paper Crane."

The Black Cat sat behind Ding Dang Ear and watched the Clothed Rat deftly open a hole in the Catalpa Tree. He couldn't help sighing.

Xiao Xiao stood nearby and nodded in agreement.

Just as Lin Guo had called Zheng Qing and the others to the grove to mediate the "cat-fox dispute," a Paper Crane from the campus newspaper's editorial office had found Fatty Xin and summoned him to a meeting. As a result, Fatty had missed the very thing he'd been longing for.

For days, Fatty Xin had talked about finding another Clothed Rat for an exclusive interview. According to him, the interview would determine whether he could compete for this year's Golden Feather Pen. If he learned that Zheng Qing and Xiao Xiao had met a second Clothed Rat during today's mediation, there was no telling how bitterly he would regret missing it.

While the Black Cat and Dr. Xiao were sighing, Ding Dang Ear carved rings of strange patterns with his claws around the tree hollow he had just "punched" open. Then he dragged several dry branches over from a nearby thicket and leaned them against the trunk, loosely concealing the opening.

Unless someone passing the Catalpa Tree looked closely, they would never notice the dark hole in its trunk.

"Those are runes, right? They look a little different from the ones wizards use." The Black Cat moved closer to the hollow and touched the marks in the rough bark with the tip of his claw, unable to keep from commenting.

As a young wizard well versed in talismans, Zheng Qing knew the thousand-odd runes used by wizards by heart. Yet the symbols Ding Dang Ear had carved around the hollow left him completely baffled. Their