Zhuohua opened her eyes.

She’d been woken by hunger. A sweet, delicious scent teased her, making her mouth water like crazy until she had no choice but to drag herself sleepily up from the sofa.

Then her eyes flew wide open.

“Huh?!”

She was buried under all kinds of snacks. Packaged food was piled right against her, with all sorts of cakes and desserts stacked on top.

There was so much food it had formed a little mountain, pinning her underneath.

No wonder she’d felt so weighed down in the middle of her sleep. She’d thought Maomao was sitting on her.

Oh, right. Where was Maomao?

Zhuohua looked around and spotted the octopus cat sprawled on the floor, holding a strawberry mousse with one slender tentacle and nibbling at it bite by bite.

Beside Maomao were all kinds of pots, pans, rice, oil, salt, and other essentials—as well as a full set of high-end household goods.

Zhuohua was dumbfounded. She mechanically turned to look at the octopus cat.

“Maomao, did you bring all this back? Did you pay for it?”

The octopus cat paused, then pointed a little tentacle behind Zhuohua.

Zhuohua got up and looked. Behind the shabby sofa stood a whole mountain of bright green banknotes!

“Where did you get all this money?!” Zhuohua was stunned. “You didn’t take it from a bank, did you? That’s a crime!”

The octopus cat tilted its head, not understanding.

After all, Zhuohua had been on the verge of tears from hunger just yesterday. But now that she had food, she was getting angry instead.

What kind of logic was that?

Maomao’s ears drooped back, and it no longer felt like eating its strawberry mousse.

Zhuohua hesitated, then walked over and reached out to pet Maomao’s head.

Smack!

A little black tentacle lightly swatted Zhuohua’s hand. The kitty turned away, clearly unwilling to let her come closer.

Zhuohua couldn’t help feeling awkward.

Maomao looked just like a wife who’d worked hard to earn money, only for her useless stay-at-home husband to demand, “Where’d you get this money? Did that old Wang next door give it to you?!”

Thinking of it that way made Maomao seem even more pitiful.

Zhuohua rubbed her nose. “Kitty, did you bring all this back?”

The kitty ignored her, leaving Zhuohua with nothing but a fluffy back to look at.

“Did you run into any danger on the way back?”

Maomao’s ears twitched, but it still didn’t answer.

“I was worried about you. I was scared you’d run into something strange out there, or that someone else might see you.” Zhuohua sat down cross-legged on the floor.

“If anyone found out about you, we wouldn’t be able to stay together. Bad people would separate us.”

Maomao’s ears perked up. It turned to look at Zhuohua, its little golden eyes seeming to ask, “Really?”

“It’s true. There are lots of bad things in this world. The bad thing that broke in yesterday and tried to eat me was one of them. So were those people who yelled at me on the shopping street.”

“This world is so dangerous. I’m really scared of being separated from you.” Zhuohua kept going, then awkwardly added:

“Um… can you forgive me, Maomao?”

The kitty let out a meow and pounced onto Zhuohua, rubbing its head against her hand again and again.

“[Wife] Affection +1.”

A notification sounded, but Zhuohua only glanced at it before dismissing it from her mind. Instead, she gently stroked Maomao.

“Don’t do anything so dangerous again, okay?”

“Mrow~”

The kitty’s sweet, high-pitched voice was so soothing. After cuddling Maomao for a while, Zhuohua’s stomach started growling again.

But today, she’d get to eat all sorts of delicious things.

“Come to think of it, I don’t think I checked out all the system’s features.” Zhuohua belatedly recalled yesterday and realized she’d only looked at [Stats], [Shop], and [Wife].

She still hadn’t checked [Detection] or [Lottery].

Zhuohua cuddled her precious kitty on the sofa, casually opened a bag of chips, and summoned the system as she ate.

At a thought, the familiar, garish pink interface sprang into view.

Zhuohua tapped [Lottery] first. A huge, rainbow-colored wheel immediately appeared on the screen.

The wheel was divided into several sections: a gray one labeled “Better Luck Next Time,” a white one labeled “No Points,” a blue one marked “10+,” a red one marked “100+,” a purple one marked “1000+,” an orange one marked “5000+,” and a gold one marked “10000+.”

The gray and white sections each took up nearly half the wheel. All the other colors were crammed into the tiny bit of space left over—and blue alone occupied half of that.

Below the wheel, it said: “10 points per draw.”

Zhuohua tentatively tapped the wheel. The points in the upper-right corner immediately dropped by 10, and the remaining total changed to 1568.

The wheel spun rapidly, then stopped on “Better Luck Next Time,” just as expected.

Zhuohua fell silent, then exited the lottery screen.

Why can’t I ever keep my hands to myself?!

[Detection] was a simple radar display. The blue dot in the center was probably Zhuohua herself.

Below the radar, it said: “Spend 10 points to detect [Dark Creatures] within a radius of 1,000 meters.”

Got it. An ingredient detector.

Speaking of ingredients… wasn’t I carrying a bag, too?

Zhuohua fed the last chip to the kitty, then reached into her ample cleavage and fumbled around until she pulled out the storage bag.

The storage bag looked perfectly ordinary—just a plain black drawstring pouch. Though it had already picked up the young woman’s scent.

Maomao stretched its neck out and sniffed at it with its little nose, trying to lick it.

“Nope.” Zhuohua quickly covered Maomao’s head with her hand. “You can’t.”

She got off the sofa, rummaged through the pile of odds and ends Maomao had brought back until she found gloves and an apron, then headed for the kitchen.

In the cramped kitchen, she tipped the monster’s corpse out of the storage bag.

The monster’s gruesome corpse hit the floor. Its blood had already dried.

Zhuohua took a deep breath, did her best to ignore the stench rising from the corpse, and began hacking away at it.

But as you’d expect from an aberration, even its long-dead corpse was hard to cut. The kitchen knife was nearly blunted from all the chopping, and she still couldn’t break through the creature’s bones. Zhuohua, meanwhile, was left panting with exhaustion.

…Looks like I need to buy a cleaver.

Just as Zhuohua was fretting over it, the kitty strolled up to the corpse and extended a tentacle about as thick as a chopstick.

In an instant, a flash of black light—too quick for the eye to catch—flickered before Zhuohua.

A moment later, the 400–500-jin aberration had been neatly sliced into thin pieces of meat. Every bone and bit of rotten flesh had been removed, and piled up beside the skin that had been peeled off.

The organs and other filth turned into pus. The kitty only had to glance at it, and the pus obligingly flew down the drain on its own.

The huge ingredient had been trimmed down considerably, but even so, what remained contained enough calories to feed an adult man for nearly three months.

Zhuohua was dumbfounded. Then she was filled with security and excitement.

Kitty! You’re amazing!

Wifey! I love you so much!

“That was amazing, Maomao! You’re incredible! Just what I’d expect from you!”

Under Zhuohua’s starry-eyed gaze, the kitty proudly raised its tail, then pretended not to care and looked away, leaving Zhuohua with nothing but its haughty back.

Now that the ingredients were ready, it was time for me, the fearsome upright ape, to show off my skills!

Heh heh. Just you wait, kitty. In a little while, you’ll be clinging to me and meowing for more!