High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 722: Chapter 70: The Skills of Being a Cat_1

Having dealt with the self-righteous forest cat, the black cat strolled back to its ’Stump Throne’ at a leisurely pace.

In front of the throne, it was piled with the offerings of a group of cats.

Staring at those miscellaneous items, the black cat extended its paw after a while, pushed to the left, and swiped to the right. Within no time, it threw away all the messy items to one side, leaving only a few large dead mice.

’Roar!’

The black cat raised its paw, pointed at the stack of dead mice in front of it, yelled again, and simultaneously looked around majestically. Then, it drew the pile of dead mice closer to itself and made a hugging gesture.

The group of foolish cats seemed to finally understand, meowing and rushing back towards the forest.

Watching the receding silhouettes of the cats, the black cat purred in satisfaction. Then, it walked back towards the other offerings it had just discarded, and began to poke around, pick and choose -- although most items were worthless to it, there might be a chance of a blind cat running into a dead rat.

For instance, the cute doll cat brought back a small tail scorpion as big as a palm. This scorpion, called ’Irregular Mountain’, was a rare hermaphroditic scorpion with a blackish-purple body. Its venom is very weak, and its courage matches its venom. When it encounters predators, it usually plays dead to survive. Unfortunately, it met a doll cat with even less courage, which trembled even at the sight of jumpy locusts. Coincidentally, the scorpion played dead, and the doll cat simply brought it back as an offering.

Although Zheng Qing was unclear about the complexity between the doll cat and the ’Irregular Mountain’ scorpion, he couldn’t deny his satisfaction with this offering -- second only to those mice -- because the scorpion not only served as an auxiliary ingredient for making ’Pulling Straight Powder’, ’Activating Dan’ and other potions but was also an excellent pet snack.

Recently, Zheng Qing has made time every week to bring Poseidon to the Su Family Mansion in Beta Town. Su Daxu inventively prepares various kinds of snacks to entertain the little fox. Among these was ’fried irregular mountain’. Zheng Qing had a deep impression because whenever he visited, Poseidon would always dig out the fried scorpions, which smelled delicious, from the pile of snacks and eat them clean. As a result, the young cost student occasionally worried if his little fox could be lured away by Su’s Big Fox due to these delicious snacks.

The black cat rummaged through that pile of offerings for quite a while. Apart from the nearly dead ’Irregular Mountain’ scorpion, it also found a bunch of fresh catnip, a tattered notebook with unrecognizable cover colour, and a beautiful amber cat’s eye stone.

God knows where these stray cats found these things.

Flipping through that book, Zheng Qing saw that it seemed to be a potions study notebook by some senior student from a long time ago. It must’ve been thrown away in a corner and then picked up by a stray cat. This made the young cost student slightly depressed for a few seconds. He initially thought he’d stumbled upon a grand wizard’s cultivation insights, the kind of thing that could help him get promoted to a grand wizard. Unfortunately, these potions study notes were incomplete, with much of the content damp and mouldy.

The notes were made with fine black ink. The handwriting was neat, and the layout looked exquisite. But its content was like Greek to Zheng Qing.

Even with two months worth of foundational potions studies that Zheng Qing had taken at university, he had trouble distinguishing between the Schisandra and the Cuscuta. Not to mention the obscure concepts in the senior potions study notes.

Despite fiddling with the notebook for a while, the black cat ultimately abandoned the idea of throwing it away.

After all, there was a guy in their dorm who was obsessed with books and loved these strange notes. Zheng Qing thought handing it to Doctor Xiao was a good choice.

As for the cat’s eye stone, it was only the size of a fingernail, completely translucent, with a beam of golden light piercing through the middle of the gem. Zheng Qing thought the colour of this gemstone matched the Bohemian dress he had gifted to Elena -- It would make a nice Christmas present. The young cost student thought cheerfully, pressing the gemstone underneath his paw.

As the end of the year approached, many students in the class had already started discussing Christmas, year-end vacations, and other seemingly distant, yet imminent matters.

Zheng Qing was no exception.

He had been pondering what sort of Christmas present to prepare for the Gypsy witch, how much to budget, and whether or not it was necessary to use a little bit from the ’public fund’ of the Absolution Hunting Team. However, with the appearance of this cat’s eye stone, all the troubles were resolved — the young scholarship student even wondered if he should transform into a cat a few more times.

Maybe if he plays the role of the Cat King for a few more days, he will have all the holiday gifts for the Absolution Hunting Team and his classmates collected.

While Zheng Qing was pondering this tempting idea, the cats that had gone out to hunt had begun to return, one by one.

With a clear target, these cats were very efficient. Most of them managed to bring back a mouse that met the requirements. Even if some didn’t quite meet the requirements - such as the timid Ragdoll cat, which followed someone and brought back a nest of just-born pinkish mice, whose hairs had not yet fully grown - the black cat expressed tolerance magnanimously.

Anyone who held a cat’s eye stone would be in a good mood.

One, two, three...

The black cat nodded its head, counting the number of cats in the forest, then squinted its eyes slowly.

It seemed like one member of the cat colony was missing.

Where was that Norwegian Forest Cat?

Had it run away because it had been beaten up twice?

Zheng Qing wondered this privately, but seeing that most of the cats had returned and that the piles of dead mice were growing large, he finally gave up the idea of waiting any longer.

The black cat stretched its paw beneath its belly, poked around, and touched out a well-folded paper crane. He had prepared this crane before he transformed into a cat, tucked under his belly and stuck tightly with double-sided tape, just in case it was needed.

After taking out the paper crane, the black cat immediately spat onto it – after repeated experiments, Zheng Qing had confirmed that this was the most effective way to activate the talisman after becoming a cat.

The paper crane, covered in cat saliva, staggeringly stood up, fluttered its wings, and then took to the air before the two wings could be glued together by the sticky saliva.

Flapping, flapping!

The sound of the paper crane flapping its wings soon drew the attention of the other cats. Some of the more active ones were even rubbing their claws together, eager to knock the paper crane out of the sky.

However, under Zheng Qing’s ’majestic’ gaze, these cats eventually behaved and watched with bated breath as the crane flew further and further away, over the treetops, until it disappeared into the grey sky.

Before long, the sound of footsteps and low murmuring voices came from outside the forest.