In the World of Fate it is forever high skies and bracing air, gentle wind and fine sun. At the very least, from the day Ye Tianxie entered the World of Fate until now, he had never seen weather of the overcast or rainy sort.

Shattered Star-Heart was practicing Sewing with the materials she had gotten from the auntie at the tailor’s shop. Su Feifei was out leveling with Zuo Pojun and Murong Qiushui, working to close the gap while Ye Tianxie was unable to level himself. Ye Tianxie made one more trip to the manor and collected a letter of introduction from the City Lord of the City of Stars, and only then did he really set out for the south.

Come to think of it, if he reached the City of Heaven’s Sun, he ought in theory to be the first player to reach any of the other main cities.

Ye Tianxie took out a Town Portal Scroll and vanished from the City of Stars. When he appeared again he was standing in a small town of clean air and plain, old-fashioned buildings… Guping Town, exactly where he had stayed when he was investigating what had become of the city guards.

Guping Town lay due south of the City of Stars, and while it could hardly be called an unavoidable stop on the road to the City of Heaven’s Sun, setting out from there cut nearly a fifth off the journey. That was why Ye Tianxie had seemed in no particular hurry. He had deliberately kept a few Town Portal Scrolls for this place at the time, and today they proved thoroughly useful.

Having defeated the juvenile-stage Undead Sovereign and “destroyed” the Skeleton Cavern last time, Ye Tianxie had earned a favorability of a full 70 points with every resident of Guping Town. His standing here had unquestionably reached hero grade, and his arrival stirred the whole of Guping Town in short order, drawing a considerable and very warm crowd of onlookers. Even the old village chief came running out full of excitement. Every townsman in the place, high and low, looked at him with eyes brimming with fervor.

Favorability is a formidable attribute, and also a very difficult one to raise; winning the goodwill of that many NPCs at one stroke is harder still, and takes nothing less than a feat that actually serves some enormous interest of theirs. Having secured 70 favorability with the whole population of Guping Town, Ye Tianxie stood to gain more from it, if he ever really put it to use, than from a Heaven-Severing item.

Under the enthusiasm of Guping Town’s residents Ye Tianxie had no choice but to stay a short while, and then at last he broke free, called out his Blood-Sweating Steed, and rode south in a trail of dust.

Ye Tianxie’s base movement speed currently stood at 108, and with the Blood-Sweating Steed’s 60 speed bonus that came to 168. That speed did not satisfy him. Using the Soul of the Evil Dragon to drop his health to 20%, Ye Tianxie triggered Frenzied Battle Intent, raised his movement speed to 218, and went south at full pelt.

Having taken the task on, Ye Tianxie had never entertained the idea of failing it — and to complete it, given the distance from the City of Stars to the City of Heaven’s Sun, he would have to travel day and night for the next several days, with even killing monsters for levels out of the question. That stretch of time was more than enough for the people behind him to catch up to his level. That part he did not mind, because he was confident that whenever he chose to, pulling far ahead of them again would be perfectly easy.

The first task the City Lord of the City of Stars had given him had brought a quest reward, and along with it the Rebel-Boned Evil Dragon class and Yaoyao the Mystic Spirit Snow Fox. The second had brought him the Seven-Colored Bracelet, a piece of special equipment of positively heaven-defying grade, and a land deed of incalculable value. So what about this one… would this City Lord of the City of Stars, who seemed to carry a whiff of dumb luck about him, be handing him another unlooked-for surprise? Thinking about that, Ye Tianxie found himself looking forward to it in all seriousness.

And the “surprise” came extraordinarily fast.

Following the route marked on his map, Ye Tianxie picked out the maps and side paths that had no monster spawns and went south along them. This was a comparatively remote region where human traces were rare, with only Guping Town for a settlement anywhere near, and even monsters seldom appeared. It had been less than half an hour since he left Guping Town, and he was on a winding, grass-choked footpath. Beyond it, at last, was a map thick with monsters — level 20 Big-Beak Birds.

And right at the end of that narrow track, Ye Tianxie stopped, and looked ahead of him with a very odd expression…

Because ahead of him, a strange living creature had blocked his road. Had it been a normal monster, Ye Tianxie would have ridden straight through it or cut it down head-on; but this creature, which looked like a monster and somehow did not, left him with no desire to attack at all.

A body under a meter tall. White fur, without a trace of another color in it, exactly like Yaoyao’s. A long, fine tail. A body, limbs and head in proportions that did not work at all… and if one absolutely had to say what kind of creature it was — it was a cat. A cat standing upright, drawn like a cartoon.

It had a cat’s long pointed ears and a cat’s dark green eyes, but a face far more endearing than an ordinary cat’s. Its head was very large, and against it the body and short limbs were catastrophically out of proportion; yet the two cat’s feet it stood on were absurdly broad, rather as though it were wearing a pair of snow-white cat’s-paw slippers several sizes too big. Its two forepaws were more peculiar still, likewise as though it had on a pair of grossly oversized cat’s-paw gloves — and from the tips of those “gloves” extended three pitch-black spikes glinting with a cold light… Those were certainly not an ordinary cat’s claws.

(Mm, the shape of it is so peculiar it isn’t easy to describe, so everybody had better just go and look at this cat’s original. The original is borrowed straight from Tailmon in Digimon — go and search it — exactly the same thing. For a great many years I’ve wanted to keep a pet cat like that. Yaa, does this count as having managed it?)

And at this moment that strange creature was standing there squarely, forepaws hanging down, tail up, head tilted slightly back, staring straight at Ye Tianxie. In those eyes he saw a look, and a movement of feeling, exactly like a human being’s.

Xiaobei: ????

One sweep of the Eye of the Evil Dragon, and Ye Tianxie had another shock.

Xiaobei… that was its name? So strange a name, and so human a one. What astonished him more was that his Eye of the Evil Dragon had returned not one further scrap of information about it… The only thing that could stop it working was a monster more than 20 levels above him. Which meant this extraordinarily peculiar animal…

“Eh? Ah… Xiao— Xiaobei!!” Ye Tianxie had just begun to move forward to test it when an exaggerated shriek from Guoguo came at his ear, and he stopped where he was. To shriek its name like that, astonished and completely out of control… had Guoguo actually seen it before?

“Guoguo, you’ve seen it before?” Ye Tianxie asked.

Guoguo did not answer straight away. She made sure several times over that there was nothing wrong with her eyes, and only then said to Ye Tianxie, in a very odd tone, and faintly, “Master, its name is Xiaobei. It must have come to find you… We’re going to have one more companion from now on.”

Ye Tianxie: “……?”

Meow~~~

Xiaobei opened its mouth, and what came out was indeed the language of a small cat. At the same time — and this nearly broke Ye Tianxie altogether — it smiled. At him, with its head tipped to one side and its great eyes narrowed. It produced a smiling face that only a human being should have. And then it sprang suddenly and was in front of Ye Tianxie in one bound, landing on the Blood-Sweating Steed’s head, very nearly treading on Yaoyao, who was lying there asleep.

“Ding… Xiaobei requests to become your pet and follow at your side. Accept?”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

If you were walking down the street and somebody suddenly pushed a thousand yuan into your hand, how would you feel? Overjoyed, beaming all over your face… or would you stand there blank for a long moment, at a complete loss? Because where something happens against the natural order, there is always a demon behind it — one of nature’s most basic laws.

The Pet Ranking could not open until there were ten pets in existence. Su Feifei’s Frost Snow Wolf; Ye Tianxie’s Mystic Spirit Snow Fox… which was to say that, setting those two aside, across the whole vast Huaxia battle region and its hundreds of millions of players, the number who currently possessed a pet — including the lowest grade of decorative pet — was still under eight. Which shows how precious pets were, and how hard they were to come by.

And now a strange little animal had suddenly come out of nowhere and thrown itself at him, for no reason whatsoever, asking to become his pet — and by the look of it, it had been waiting there for him. Faced with a request that arrived out of nothing at all, Ye Tianxie for a moment had no idea how to respond.

“Yaa! Master, say yes, say yes quickly! Xiaobei is very strong, as strong as little Yaoyao! Master, do as Guoguo says, or Xiaobei will be sad, quickly, master.”

While Ye Tianxie was studying this cat that had leapt in front of him, Guoguo had already started shouting in his ear, too impatient to wait. Her shouting made Ye Tianxie entirely certain of it — Guoguo had definitely seen it before, and knew it rather well.

A creature Guoguo knew well…

Guoguo had been brought to him by Xian’er. Could this peculiar cat have something to do with Xian’er as well?

“Accept!”

“Meow meow!”

In the instant the master-servant pet contract was struck, Xiaobei let out a run of delighted cries, then dove headlong into Ye Tianxie’s arms and rubbed its furry head against his chest, over and over…

Watching Xiaobei make so excessive a fuss of him, Ye Tianxie still felt distinctly muddled. Guoguo knew as well as he did how great Yaoyao’s origins were and how strong it was — and yet she had said that this cat, peculiar to look at and, beyond being outrageously adorable, apparently no threat at all, was as strong as Yaoyao. Was that really so?

Xiaobei: Immortal Spirit-grade pet. Level 0. Master: Xietian. Race unknown. Category unknown. Origins unknown. Provisionally judged to be a living creature from another world that has appeared suddenly on the Lost Continent.

An Immortal Spirit Beast!? Something shook violently inside Ye Tianxie. This creature that had asked at the roadside to become his pet was in fact an Immortal Spirit Beast — how very like a dream that was, a dream in which tens of millions suddenly fell out of the sky… And every field of its basic information was filled in with the same single word, unknown. Even the System could not make out what it truly was.

That last phrase — a living creature from another world — stopped Ye Tianxie’s breath for a moment.

(End of Chapter 211)