The shadow knifed through the waist-high weeds; Ouyang tore after it like a hound chasing a crescent moon.

“Hey, you little punk, stop right there!” Rage flared first, then he ripped the meter-high grass aside, every breath billowing like a bellows.

White Cat knew this mess was its fault; guilt stung, and it sprang after the shadow like a white streak under spilled moonlight.

All along, White Cat had felt eyes on its back; suspicion pricked like thorns, but it brushed it off. Who tails a cat, under a sky cold as ink?

The dark shape ahead confirmed it; that chill in the fur wasn’t a whim, it was a hook in the water, tugging true.

“Mraow~ The Cat Lord is mad!” fury puffed its fur like winter dandelions. “You dare tail me? If I don’t go wild and claw you bald, I’m no cat!”

Indignation burned like a brazier; a dignified White Cat, being stalked—unbearable.

Suddenly the shadow stumbled and ate dirt, tripped by some snake of root in the dark. That hiccup in the night, and Ouyang closed like a wave onto shore.

Under moonlight like silver frost, the man was all black on black—so black he melted into the night like soot into smoke.

“I…” Ouyang squinted; the guy’s skin drank the moon, a perfect mask in this ink-washed field. His face was just void, edges swallowed whole. “Tch, you think that’ll keep me from knowing you?”

He snapped his fingers; a pearl of light bloomed on his right index finger like a firefly caught in glass. In its glow, the face surfaced from shadow.

Tall, a head like a cut statue, one-eighty at least; bright eyes gleamed against ebony skin, a jarring moon-sun mismatch beneath the night.

“Xiao Hei?!” The name hit like a thrown stone. “Damn it, I knew it was you traitors!”

Cervantes—Ouyang’s classmate from Starry College—had earned that nickname back then; the memory rose like steam from a kettle.

Cervantes saw the recognition and let the dust fall from his clothes like ash. He stopped running and spoke calm as still water. “Class rep Ouyang, long time no see.”

“It has been, yeah.” Ouyang snuffed the light orb, like pinching a wick before a storm. Another ten units of divine power, gone; only ten left in his well.

“Ouyang, how about it? Join us.” His voice carried a sermon’s heat, like coals under silk. “Bring new order to this universe. Build an era that’s ours.”

With the light doused, Ouyang couldn’t see his face, but he could taste the fanatic glow like pepper on the tongue.

“New order? Cut it out.” Frustration flashed, then words hit like hail. “Xiao Hei, tell me why you joined them in the first place.”

“Why?” Cervantes gestured, hands slicing the night like oars. “The folks from the Other Shore will leave sooner or later. Order will drain away like a tide. So I applied to join. I’m management now. Join early, get valued. The people who applied with me? Many made it into the core.”

What the hell? Ouyang’s thoughts tangled like fishing lines in a squall.

“So you didn’t join the traitors out of spite for the Other Shore?” He chewed it a long moment, then dropped the line like a net.

“Yeah.” Cervantes nodded, honest as wet earth. “Once the Other Shore gods leave, it’s our era. Better to be a founder in spring than a nobody in winter.”

That’s your reason? Ouyang almost blurted a curse that would crack thunder, but he inhaled cold wind and let it cool his head.

He stepped in close and patted Cervantes’s shoulder, weighty as a hand on a temple bell. “Xiao Hei, tell me this. In that organization, how many joined for the same reason as you?”

“How many? Not sure. Plenty.” He scratched his cheek like a farmer counting seedlings. “We all wanted backing after the Other Shore departed, so we went to the pilot site in teams for interviews. Lots got hired.”

“Teams. Interviews. Hired.” The words fell like dumplings into boiling water. Even White Cat’s mind did a somersault; a grim topic kept turning slapstick under this pale moon.

After a beat, Cervantes asked, “Oh right, Ouyang, how should I write my report?”

“Report?”

“Yeah. The boss told me to tail that cat and file a report.”

“Got it.” Ouyang’s eyes lit like a lantern catching wind. “Xiao Hei, don’t sweat it. Your class rep will teach you.”

He leaned in, voice spinning thread like a weaver. “Here’s how you write it… like this, and this…”

“Man, Ouyang, no wonder you were class rep. You’re the best.” Gratitude warmed like a hearth as Cervantes listened.

“Ha, small matter. We’re old classmates. Make sure you write it this way.” Satisfaction hummed in Ouyang’s chest like a plucked string.

They looked downright cheerful under the moon—reunion honeying the air. Cervantes had a rope for his report at last; Ouyang got to stuff it with exactly what he wanted.

“Xiao Hei, how about I write it for you?”

“Ah, class rep, that’s… embarrassing.”

“It’s fine. Bring paper and pen.” Pride rose like a banner. “The top student will craft you a perfect report.”

White Cat stood on a boulder under milk-white moonlight and watched the two clowns play at wisdom. This was truly bizarre, thunder hitting clear sky; it swore it was struck dumb.

“Xiao Hei, look here.” Ouyang’s pen skated like a dragonfly on water. “After your tailing, you discovered spring had arrived, the mating season was stirring the underbrush. That cat, unwilling to be a salted fish any longer, was itching to leave our mighty FFF Brotherhood. So it began a series of schemes, planning to force itself on a she-cat, to use that as its ticket to defect…”

Fur exploded along White Cat’s spine like a bristling brush; its mewl sharpened to a knife. But Ouyang and Cervantes were deep in the story’s river and didn’t glance back.

Even if they heard, the current wouldn’t change course by a finger’s width.

“Class rep, that White Cat dares try to defect in front of me?” Cervantes slammed a fist on stone; the hit rang like a drum. “Death penalty. Burn at the stake!”

White Cat wobbled, startled, and slipped off the rock like a dumpling out of chopsticks.

Ouyang patted Cervantes’s shoulder again, mellowing him like rain on embers. “So, once you discovered this, as a diehard of the FFF Brotherhood, you immediately stopped the White Cat’s wicked plan…”

“Mraow~” White Cat sprawled on the rock, sleep pulling at it like a tide. Yet the two still savored the saga born from a simple “tailing report.”

No telling how long the pen scratched like crickets in summer.

“In the end, you sent that White Cat—who wanted to flip from salted fish to stud—to the stake, and saved countless she-cats.” Ouyang finally lifted the pen, dry as a reed. Cervantes flipped through the sprawling report—tens of thousands of words or a fever dream of them—and his gratitude shone like dew.

Under moonlight’s wash, Ouyang watched Cervantes’s back recede like a boat into mist, and his thoughts blew apart in the cold wind once more.

“Heh. If Xiao Hei’s boss reads this, he’ll cough up three liters of blood.” A gust tugged the trash bag stuck to Ouyang’s head and sent it flapping into the night like a startled bat. Only then did he remember: he’d fled a garbage truck; the stink clung like swamp mud, and plastic bags still dotted him like barnacles.

Ouyang chuckled foolishly, and White Cat let out a silly meow, laughter rising like bubbles.

“You really think he’ll submit that nonsense?” White Cat couldn’t see where Ouyang found that confidence; the report screamed made up, and Cervantes’s boss wouldn’t spare him if he dared.

Ouyang snorted and clasped his hands behind his back, striking a lonely-master pose under a sky like a scroll. Ignore the garbage and the reek, and the pose almost worked.

“Ignorant. Xiao Hei will do it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a member of the First Cult.” A grin curled slow as smoke. “With a golden chance to screw his boss, you think he’ll pass?”

White Cat: “%*￥&(&*￥…”

It tilted its head up at a forty-five-degree angle, the night a bowl of ink above. Words failed. For a First Cult member, anything was possible.

Gurgle—

Gurgle—

Their stomachs sang in duet, like frogs by a midnight pond. Ouyang’s had been empty a long time; with divine power, hunger used to be a mute ghost. In this world, with his well dry, it started banging on the door.

White Cat’s belly chimed in, hollow as a drum.

“White Cat, we need a human city,” Ouyang said, resolve like a flint spark. “Or we starve.”

So man and cat turned toward the glow on the horizon, a lighthouse smeared across the night. Common sense said it plain: at midnight, only a city burns that bright.

The far-off light stood like a beacon, and it drew them forward along the dark ribbon of asphalt.

As they followed the black road, a car came humming like a beetle.

“Perfect.”

The moment it roared past, they pounced and latched onto the back like burrs. “Stupid cat, don’t yank my clothes…”

“Meow~”

“Get off my head. You’re squatting on my skull? You want a beating?”

“Meow~ meow~”

“Bastard, not on my face…”

“Meow—ah—wooo—”

Weird sounds fluttered from the rear like bats, but the engine’s growl drowned them like surf over pebbles. Inside, passengers slept heavy as stones; only the driver was awake, and at this godless hour, he wouldn’t stop for a whisper of ghosts.