"..."
Xue Jing's expression was somewhat subtle.
Had Miao Miao never learned how normal cats meowed? How could it be so different?
What are you pretending to be?
Xue Jing slid his hands under Miao Miao's front legs and lifted it up to his eye level.
Miao Miao looked utterly innocent, just like any ordinary kitten.
"..."
"You can talk, right?"
Xue Jing was upfront and wanted to have a serious talk with Miao Miao about what it really was, why it could speak, what the platinum ring on its tail was about, how to find a similar one, and why a speaking divine cat ended up almost crushed in the stray cat world.
However, Miao Miao's face showed an 'I have no idea what you're talking about' expression of innocence, looking just like a normal cat.
"Meow~~"
"Stop pretending, I heard everything, just talk properly."
"Meow?"
"Just speak up, and you can have as many dried fish as you want."
"Meow~"
Miao Miao licked its paw, completely indifferent.
Xue Jing raised an eyebrow, "Still pretending?"
He placed Miao Miao on his lap, one hand pressing down on the back of its neck while the other reached towards the base of its tail.
This was one of the most nerve-dense areas on a cat's body, and most cats loved being petted there, arching their backs involuntarily from the pleasure.
Xue Jing's fingers skillfully scratched the area at the base of the tail, and the little black cat's eyes immediately bulged.
"Meow!!!"
It let out an almost agonizing cry, its buttocks involuntarily raised high, its limbs struggled, but Xue Jing firmly held down the neck, rendering it immobile, only able to continuously cry out.
After a while, Xue Jing stopped his actions, by which time Miao Miao had given up struggling, lying weakly on Xue Jing's thigh, panting with its tongue out, eyes rolling back, a look of complete defeat.
Yet, even subjected to such brutal treatment, it never said a word from start to finish, maintaining the appearance of just being an ordinary kitten.
This even made Xue Jing doubt himself somewhat.
Could it be that the Divine Absorption from the Skill Panel, had absorbed its ability to speak? Had it really become a regular kitten?
If it wasn't for the extremely tense 'meow' when it woke up, Xue Jing would have believed it.
But Xue Jing really had no way to deal with it.
As long as Miao Miao didn't plan on having a frank and open communication with him, and kept pretending, he surely couldn't really resort to torture to force it to speak.
Having just benefited from its help, Xue Jing's moral standards, however flexible, would not allow him to do such a thing.
Shaking his head, he finally spoke, "Alright then, let's leave it at that for now, are you hungry?"
Miao Miao responded with a listless "meow."
Xue Jing took it as a yes.
He placed Miao Miao on the couch and then stood up, went to the kitchen to get a large bowl, opened the supermarket bag at the table, took out the bag of cat food, tore it open from the opening, and poured it into the bowl.
Putting the bowl filled with cat food in front of Miao Miao, Xue Jing thought that as a cat that had suffered a lot in the stray cat world, it would start eating immediately.
Unexpectedly, Miao Miao just glanced at the cat food in front of it, then clicked its tongue and turned its head away without hesitation, not even giving it a second glance.
"Hmm?"
Seeing this, Xue Jing suddenly had a thought.
This reaction… didn't seem quite right.
It wasn't the response of a picky cat displeased with the taste of the food, but more like… the thing in front of it wasn't even considered food at all.
A lightbulb went off in Xue Jing's mind as he suddenly understood.
He might have misunderstood from the beginning.
He recalled the words the cat had spoken earlier.
"I never imagined... the world of a stray cat... could be so cruel."
This statement hinted at two possibilities.
The first possibility was that it was a domestic cat that had never been outside wandering, so it was unfamiliar with the world of stray cats.
It was also because of hearing this statement and thinking of this point, coupled with its vulnerability to the extent of being bullied by stray cats, that Xue Jing subconsciously felt it was essentially a cat that, for some unknown reason, had learned to speak human language.
But there was another possibility... It was unfamiliar with the world of stray cats and the reason it could speak human language was that it was not a cat at all, but some creature capable of speaking human language that had taken on the appearance of a cat.
The most likely possibility was... a human.
Xue Jing squinted his eyes, didn't say much else, turned around, and entered the kitchen to start preparing dinner for the day.
After he left the living room, Miao Miao, who was unaware that Xue Jing had deduced much information from a casual action of its own, immediately stood up from the sofa.
It jumped to the floor, tiptoed silently to the corner leading from the living room to the kitchen, sneakily poked out half of its cat head, and confirmed that Xue Jing was indeed cooking before finally breathing a sigh of relief.
'I never expected him to have heard me speaking earlier.'
Miao Miao felt troubled, its tail twisted, and its gaze shifted to the ring at the tip of its tail.
'GOD-1391·Cat Tail Ring... That jerk, after taking so much money, didn't even explain the specific effects of this Divine Relic; I can't transform back once I've transformed!'
Miao Miao's face, very human-like, displayed a gnashing of teeth expression.
After raging helplessly for a while, Miao Miao collected its thoughts and looked around the room.
'This is a good place to hide; the security company's people would never guess that I have turned into a cat and am hiding in an ordinary person's home.'
Recalling its own experience of being chased and bitten in the territory of stray cats, it shuddered.
'I'll just stay here until I get accustomed to this Divine Relic and can transform back, then I'll leave.'
Miao Miao calculated in its mind.
'However... to avoid involving this kind-hearted young man, let me just be an ordinary cat.'
It knew that kind-hearted people, who would take home a strange, talking cat, could easily get dragged into danger if they interacted and formed an emotional bond with it.
Therefore, it had to cut off this possibility from the beginning.
Without interaction, there would be no deep involvement; when the time came, it would just leave, disappearing without a trace, and they would never cross paths again.
'Although he has already heard me talk, no worries, it's all his imagination; I just need to make him think he's a cat-loving young man who loves cats so much he is hearing things!'
'As long as I don't admit it myself and stubbornly act like a normal cat, no one can expose me!'
Having made up its mind, Miao Miao nodded satisfactorily, its tail standing erect and swaying due to its buoyant mood.
Xue Jing busied himself in the kitchen for quite some time, making spicy stir-fried beef, bitter melon with scrambled eggs, and silky tomato meat soup—three simple home-cooked dishes.
[You have completed a dish, Cooking Experience +20]
[You have completed a dish, Cooking Experience +21]
[You have completed a dish, Cooking Experience +20]
[Cooking Level 2 (318/500)]
Xue Jing opened the fridge, took out yesterday's leftover rice, filled two bowls, heated them in the microwave, and then brought everything to the dining table.
He didn't speak, picked up one bowl of rice, and started eating.
Meanwhile, Miao Miao, which had been starving for two days and was planning to forcibly feed itself cat food, stared dumbfounded at the delicious-looking dishes on the table.
The aroma transformed into a tiny seductive hand, pinching its nose and drawing it involuntarily closer to the dining table, even knocking over the bowl filled with cat food without noticing.
By the time it snapped back to reality, it found itself sitting upright at the dining table, right in front of the other bowl of white rice that Xue Jing had served.
Turning its head awkwardly, it saw the good-looking young man shoveling rice into his mouth while looking at it with a smirking gaze.
As if to say, are you still pretending?