Yue'an was startled by the commotion Marshal Xiu had created.

The young man's face was exquisite, bordering on ethereal, as if kissed by the divine. Every feature exuded a translucent vitality. His hair was a pristine snow-white, framing his beautiful face to near transparency.

He possessed a pair of light, stunningly azure eyes, round and slightly upturned at the corners. His eyelashes, as pure white as his hair, were long and thick, trembling slightly with each movement of his eyes.

He looked like a newborn cub, timid yet curious, peering out at the world.

Yue'an tilted his head up to look at Xiu Jun. Upon catching sight of the white bangs hanging over his forehead, a look of realization dawned on his face. In an instant, the snow-white of his eyebrows, eyelashes, and the hair atop his head transformed to black. The ethereal vitality in his expression was now tinged with a hint of adorable mischief.

It was a sight that could make one hold their breath, anticipating a smile from this beautiful creature.

The gorgeous young man awkwardly sat up on the plush carpet, his movements inadvertently revealing glimpses of his fair, bare young body hidden beneath the sofa cover.

Marshal Xiu's fork suddenly crumpled into a ball of scrap metal in his hand.

At this point, we need to emphasize something.

Marshal Xiu was a man.

A normal man.

A normal man in his prime.

Faced with such otherworldly beauty, having no reaction would definitely indicate some hidden ailment!

Marshal Xiu had no such ailment; he was simply accustomed to channeling all his energy into training and the battlefield.

But right now, there was no training ground, no battlefield.

Xiu Jun discreetly adjusted his sitting position.

Yue'an was completely oblivious to Marshal Xiu's reaction. He was looking down, unaccustomed to his new form, opening his paw... no, his five fingers. Then, even more clumsily, he tried to control these five fingers, slowly gripping the cover to wrap himself tighter.

Sitting on the carpet, he raised his head again to look at the Marshal seated in the chair. He opened his mouth, about to meow, but was horrified to find he couldn't produce the sound!

A cat's vocal system is vastly different from a human's.

Yue'an, who had spent less than seventy-two hours in human form in total, looked utterly bewildered. He had no idea how to speak in human form.

After all, the last time he had transformed into a human was over a hundred years ago. He had merely looked in a mirror then, before joining a few other nine-tailed cats who had also transformed into humans to try and buy catnip in a human city. That adventure had ended in a collective disaster, with them nearly being picked up as corpses.

Since then, he had never transformed into human form again.

Yue'an was confused.

Yue'an was at a loss.

Yue'an didn't know what to do.

He looked at Xiu Jun, whose expression, along with his gaze, had turned completely blank. Yue'an felt a bit anxious.

Wasn't it you who wanted to see the human form?

Now why aren't you showing any reaction at all?!

Yue'an wrapped the cover tighter around himself, using one hand to support himself on the ground as he tried to stand upright on two legs like he would in his original form.

The little cat, whose shapeshifting skills were woefully inadequate, couldn't adapt to the length of human limbs. Before he could steady himself, he toppled to the side!

Marshal Xiu reflexively stood up, reaching out to catch the young man around the waist, preventing him from face-planting on the spot.

Accompanied by a cringe-worthy crash, Yue'an was saved from a face-first fall by Marshal Xiu, but his knee collided with the corner of the dining table. Not only did he shatter the table corner, but he also curled up into a ball of pain, clutching the cover around him.

Marshal Xiu, his arm around Yue'an's firm, slender waist, looked at the bundle in his arms. The young man was sniffling, appearing quite pitiful. A thousand thoughts raced through Xiu Jun's mind, but before he could sort them out, the firm, slender waist against his arm transformed back into the familiar ball of fur he knew so well, faster than he could blink.

Xiu Jun: "..."

What?

Wait?

What just happened?

Where did the person go?

The naked one.

Wrapped in the cover.

The really good-looking one.

About this big.

How did it turn back into a cat?

Yue'an rubbed his hind leg that had been hit with his little paw, burrowing through the cover to find an exit, feeling very sorry for himself.

Marshal Xiu's mind was still full of philosophical questions like "Who am I? Where am I? What just happened? Did I raise a cat that turned into a human or a human that turned into a cat?"

Yue'an poked his head out from the cover, ears perked up, his beautiful blue eyes wide and seemingly a bit watery. He mewed pitifully at Marshal Xiu, "Meow, meow," as if he had been abused.

Marshal Xiu lowered his gaze, looking at his cat for a long moment. He tossed aside the remains of the fork he had been clutching, picked up his cat, and placed him on the edge of the hole in the dining table, intending to have a serious talk with his feline companion.

But his cat was in no mood for a serious talk.

Yue'an, his leg still hurting and feeling neglected, turned his back on Xiu Jun. He didn't even bother to swish his tail, instead tucking it under his body and burying his face in his fluffy tail, giving Xiu Jun a clear message of rejection.

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He was genuinely upset.

Marshal Xiu, who had never mastered the art of comforting cats, glanced at the pastries that had fallen onto the carpet.

"..." Perfect. The one thing that could have diverted Yue'an's attention was now gone.

The Marshal thought for a moment, then reached out to stroke Yue'an, who had curled into a ball.

Yue'an turned his head and swatted Xiu Jun's hand away with a paw. Huffing angrily, he jumped down from the dining table and retreated to the small cave in his cat tree, taking his remaining three vials of catnip serum with him.

Left abandoned, Marshal Xiu pondered in the dining room for quite a while, deciding to take matters into his own hands.

Not to cook, of course.

But to seriously reflect on what had just transpired.

In fact, Xiu Jun's first thought was that this must be Yue'an's ability to directly affect people's minds with illusions.

Previously, at the Research Department, Yue'an had sensed his bad mood and replaced the stark white corridor with a vibrant, flower-scented archway.

But this ability acted directly on the target's mind and had no effect on machine detection. When Yue'an was practicing his special talent, Marshal Xiu had always been nearby with various detection instruments, constantly recording.

Marshal Xiu opened the surveillance footage of his living room and rewound it by three minutes. He saw the fleeting image of the stunningly beautiful young man clearly appear on the screen, then quietly closed the footage.

It had been recorded by the surveillance system.

So it was real.

Xiu Jun remained silent. To be safe, he thoroughly deleted the footage containing the anomalous images, his expression seemingly unchanged.

He looked back at Yue'an's cat tree.

This shouldn't be possible, he thought.

How could a perfectly normal cat turn into a human?

But normal cats usually only have one tail.

Yue'an, however, had eight tails.

Perhaps the eight tails were a form of evolution, and the ability to take on human form was a type of mimicry. For instance, Yue'an's hair changing from white to black could also be a form of mimicry.

Marshal Xiu attempted to use science to explain why Yue'an could transform into a human.

Then he mentally berated himself.

Have you ever seen mimicry that allows a creature to transform into an entirely different species?

Judging by Yue'an's clumsy, awkward movements, this clearly wasn't mimicry. Mimicry was typically used for predator defense or hunting; no creature would mimic something that made it less capable.

Marshal Xiu didn't even consider the possibility of Yue'an being a spy from another country's special race.

First of all, which country would be foolish enough to send an ancient Earth creature as a spy? Moreover, had anyone ever seen a spy who, instead of operating covertly, livestreamed daily to eat gourmet food, was cloud-raised by fans, contorted into S and C shapes in front of hundreds of billions of StarNet viewers, and even played mahjong with a crowd?

If such a character could be a spy, the ruling party of that country should really use the heads of their intelligence agency as footballs.

While pondering the mystery of his cat, Xiu Jun accessed the database of the Information Security Department, heading straight for the Ancient Earth Intelligence Data section.

He then entered two keywords: eight tails, cat.

Meanwhile, Yue'an crouched in his cat tree, waiting in vain for Xiu Jun to come and comfort him.

Xiu Jun had changed.

He wasn't like this before.

Before, he would have come over to pat his head and rub his belly.

Completely forgetting that he had swatted away Xiu Jun's hand earlier, Yue'an thought dejectedly.

Clearly, the aesthetic standards of this era were completely different from those of Earth.

Xiu Jun, who was so ugly by Yue'an's standards, was the dream lover of millions of young people in this era.

His human form must be very, very ugly by this era's standards, otherwise why would Xiu Jun ignore him?

But Xiu Jun was the one who wanted to see his human form in the first place!

I didn't complain about his ugliness, how could he complain about mine!

Yue'an curled up into a miserable ball, not even touching his catnip. He huddled in a small corner of the cat tree's cave.

Small, pitiful, and helpless.

When Xiu Jun approached the cat tree and bent down to have a serious talk with Yue'an, what he saw was a pitiful ball of fur looking at him with beautiful azure eyes that seemed to shimmer with unshed tears.

Xiu Jun: ...

Xiu Jun: ???

What's going on here?

"Yue'an, come out," the Marshal said, extending his hand palm up at the cave entrance. "Let's talk?"

"Meow!" Yue'an wailed miserably.

This person must want to abandon me because my human form is too ugly!

I've misjudged you!

Yue'an retreated further into the cave, feeling utterly wronged.

Xiu Jun was startled by the pitiful cry. Sensing Yue'an's resistance, he stopped trying to coax him out and instead sat down on the floor.

"I found some information," Marshal Xiu said calmly. "You're... a yaoguai."

"You're a nine-tailed cat, and you used your ninth tail to save me before, right?" Xiu Jun asked.

Yue'an froze, his drooping ears suddenly perking up alertly.

In this cosmic age, such mythical terms had become increasingly rare. For people of this era, the myths and legends that had once troubled ancient Earth could now be explained by science.

To the people of this time, the mystical side had completely vanished. Concepts of deities from ancient Earth were now used as compliments or as part of classical romantic culture.

Like Xiu Jun being hailed as the God of War.

This title was purely a sign of respect and praise from the public, acknowledging his prowess as a military leader.

Heaven knows how Marshal Xiu managed to process the unscientific concept of yaoguai, but he was presenting a very calm and collected front.

"Your wish is... to become an immortal?" Xiu Jun said, somewhat unfamiliar with these terms.

Yue'an stared at Xiu Jun, his azure cat eyes unblinking, filled with wariness and caution.

On one hand, he felt Xiu Jun wouldn't be the type to forcibly detain a cat, but on the other hand, he remembered the old sage's warning that humans were all secretly wicked.

Xiu Jun understood why his cat would react this way. If all those mythical legends he had read were true, Yue'an's reaction was understandable.

Growing a tail every twenty years, able to grant any wish.

Even modern fairy tales wouldn't dare to be so fantastical.

"Is your wish to become an immortal?" Xiu Jun asked again.

After a long silence, Yue'an finally crawled out of the cat tree. He sat properly in front of Xiu Jun, looking very serious, and meowed once.

Xiu Jun felt a sense of responsibility towards Yue'an.

It was his appearance that had disrupted Yue'an's wish to become an immortal. It was he who had brought Yue'an into human society, who had proclaimed Yue'an's identity as an ancient Earth treasure—even if Yue'an had agreed to the latter two, their initial meeting clearly hadn't been Yue'an's choice.

"I will fulfill your wish."

He had gained a great advantage, and it was only right to repay it.

It was just a matter of granting Yue'an's wish after twenty years, letting him go to become an immortal. Compared to dying when he was in trouble before, he still had several twenty-year periods that he had gained through Yue'an.

"Now, let's talk about your transformation into a human."

The Marshal recalled that face of otherworldly beauty, thinking it was no wonder so many ancient Earth legends featured people falling for the beauty of yaoguai.

That level of beauty was simply unfair.

Xiu Jun gently squeezed Yue'an's little paw and said, "Try not to transform into a human too often."

Otherwise, it wouldn't just be a matter of being surrounded by onlookers when he went out. He'd definitely be kidnapped by people intoxicated by his beauty!

However, Yue'an didn't receive Xiu Jun's good intentions as intended.

His eyes widened, and he let out an angry yowl!

You really do think I'm ugly!!!

Bah! You're the ugly one!!

I didn't complain about how ugly you are!!

How dare you complain about me!!

I won't stand for this!!

Yue'an angrily slapped his paw on the cat tree beneath him, then leaped into Marshal Xiu's lap. Without warning, he transformed into his human form, planting himself firmly in the hollow of Xiu Jun's crossed legs, and stubbornly burrowed into his chest.

You think I'm ugly?

You think I'm ugly?

I'll make you endure my ugliness even more!

I dare you to hit me!!