I have a friend...

Hearing Xiao Ya's voice outside the door, Mu You swept a hand over his face and removed the night watchman's skin.

He checked the mirror to confirm that his appearance and clothes had returned to normal, then went to open the door.

"Boss, all the hamsters have been reserved. Should we go get another... uh!"

Xiao Ya stood in the doorway, talking as the door opened. The instant she looked up and saw Mu You, she froze.

"Boss, how long has it been since you slept? Those dark circles are awful!" Xiao Ya gave him a strange look.

"Huh? Are they?"

Mu You touched his face. That's strange. I should have changed back already... Could traces like dark circles linger right after taking off a skin?

"Yes!"

Xiao Ya nodded emphatically. "You really are under too much pressure, aren't you, boss? Don't worry. Look, business is already picking up. We definitely won't go under!"

"Uh..."

Mu You didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so he changed the subject. "What were you saying just now? All the hamsters are sold?"

At the mention of this, excitement lit up Xiao Ya's face. "Yes, every hamster has been reserved! And four chinchillas, seven rabbits, three canaries, six carp..." She counted them off on her fingers.

"That many?"

Even Mu You was surprised by how quickly they were selling.

He hurried downstairs with Xiao Ya to take a look.

Sure enough, more than half the cages in the hamster section were already empty, and customers had attached labels with their names and phone numbers to all the remaining cages.

The popularity of these trained pets was simply beyond imagination!

"Boss, what should we do next? Should we order another batch of pets from the pet breeding center?" Xiao Ya asked.

"Well... not for now."

Mu You considered it, then shook his head.

Although training the pets required only a wave of his Magic Wand and no more than ten minutes altogether, he didn't want to appear too extraordinary. Training two or three a day would be enough. Any more, and people might easily notice something was off.

With so many pets reserved at once, he already had enough training work to keep him busy for quite a while.

Besides, the shop's popularity had exploded so quickly that word of mouth needed some time to catch up.

"Oh, all right."

Xiao Ya had only asked in passing. Seeing that Mu You wasn't interested, she dropped the subject and hurried over to the pet supplies section to help the customers.

Xiao Ya was currently the shop's only employee. That hadn't been much of an issue when foot traffic was low, but today's crowd had exposed their staffing shortage. She was doing the work of three or four people all by herself.

Should I hire some more help...?

Watching Xiao Ya bustle about, Mu You rubbed his chin in thought.

"If you need to order pets, you could try this Animal Shelter," a voice said beside him.

He turned and saw that it was Zhao Qian, the pretty veterinarian from earlier. She stood nearby, holding out a business card.

Mu You took the card and read it: "Era Pets Breeding Center. Director: Zhao XX."

"Era Pets? You know the director of this breeding center?"

Mu You looked at Zhao Qian in surprise.

Era Pets was a nationally renowned pet breeding center. Its pets were high-quality and inexpensive, earning it an excellent reputation in the pet industry. However, it was extremely selective about whom it supplied. Even many large pet shops couldn't find a way to buy from it.

Mu You had applied several times to become one of Era Pets' buyers, but had been rejected every time.

He hadn't expected Zhao Qian to casually produce the business card of Era Pets' director.

Come to think of it, the director's surname is Zhao too. Could it be...

"The breeding center belongs to my family."

Sure enough, Zhao Qian's answer confirmed Mu You's guess.

"I see..."

"Actually, I'm very curious. How exactly did you train the pets here?" Only after he accepted the card did Zhao Qian ask.

She had spent the entire morning in the shop and seen firsthand just how amazing the pets in the display area were. She had no doubt that even if they were taken straight to an international pet competition, they would be good enough to win prizes.

She wouldn't have found it strange if these pets belonged to a renowned master trainer. Yet here they were in this little pet shop, and there were quite a few of them...

"Sorry, that's a trade secret. I can't disclose it," Mu You replied immediately.

He had never earned a pet-training certificate himself, but his parents had. Both were fully qualified professional pet trainers, and they had trained plenty of pets over the years.

Mu You had decided from the start that whenever someone asked about his training methods, he would credit everything to his parents.

Sure enough, Zhao Qian felt too awkward to press him further. He had made it clear that this was a trade secret. Continuing to ask would be overstepping.

Having spent the entire morning there, Zhao Qian was now ready to leave.

Before she left, however, she suddenly turned back to Mu You and looked him up and down. "There's still something I don't understand. Are there really people in this world who have an innate affinity with animals?"

Although Mu You hadn't told her his training methods, she could more or less sense that training pets to this level had little to do with technique. The more important factor had to be "talent."

But she was a top veterinary medicine graduate, and her textbooks had always taught her that, in animals' eyes, there was no fundamental difference between one person and another. There were only differences in acquired behavior and scent; no individual was born with an affinity for a particular kind of animal. Everything that had happened today, however, seemed to contradict that long-held understanding.

"Nothing in this world is beyond explanation. If we can't explain it yet, it's only because we don't know enough," Mu You said with a smile.

He thought of the few spells he had learned. To someone who knew nothing about magic, it would surely seem wondrous, utterly beyond scientific explanation.

But after actually using magic, Mu You felt that it was an immensely complex and rigorous system, with its own complete chain of logic and underlying principles. Humans couldn't understand it only because that system ran counter to their existing scientific framework.

He believed that someday, as more and more people entered that world and learned more and more spells, even something as wondrous as magic would eventually be fully understood by humanity.

Zhao Qian was momentarily lost in thought. She stared at Mu You's face for a long while before saying in surprise, "You're so much like a friend of mine..."

"A friend?"

"Yes. She said those same words to me... Even your tone of voice was exactly the same!" Zhao Qian marveled.

Mu You's eyes lit up. "What does your friend do? Is she a veterinarian too?"

Zhao Qian immediately caught his meaning and rolled her eyes. "Don't get any ideas. My friend is an exceptional scholar with a doctorate in veterinary medicine. She went abroad four years ago..."

Zhao Qian didn't continue, but her meaning was clear enough. Would it really be appropriate for someone of that caliber to work at an obscure little pet shop?