Despite his utter weakness, Bai Zhou still extended a paw to take a life, yet a bead of Fang Xiaoxia's blood welled up beneath his claw.
He had merely swatted a mosquito.
A feline's senses were far sharper than a human's. For an Extraordinary, that heightened perception was a beneficial experience, but the persistent, whining buzz of a mosquito was downright irritating.
Casually swatting the insect out of midair prompted another round of wild squealing from Fang Xiaoxia, who flailed her arms and showered Bai Zhou with endless praise.
Afterward, Bai Zhou sat on the bed, silently watching her one-woman show.
It was just like someone hosting a friend for the first time, completely at a loss for how to interact, resorting to hauling out everything they owned to show it off.
To welcome Bai Zhou, Fang Xiaoxia had turned her room into a total disaster.
One moment, she was enthusiastically introducing him to her Gibson Custom guitar; the next, she was dragging out a mountain of manga from a storage box to show him volume by volume.
One moment, she pointed at a plump fortune cat on a page, warning him that he couldn't grow as fat as Nyanko-sensei; the next, she scrutinized Bai Zhou with a sigh, asking when he would be able to transform.
Then she declared that she firmly believed in superpowers and the occult—otherwise, a world reduced entirely to money and corporate drudgery would simply be doomed.
Just as Bai Zhou's interest was piqued, thinking she might actually know something, Fang Xiaoxia, under his deadpan stare, mysteriously produced a box of tarot cards she claimed were imbued with spirituality.
Now, this was something Bai Zhou actually knew.
When Crow had introduced occult knowledge, she had mentioned tarot cards with considerable disdain, dismissing them as "the occult knowledge of the mundane world."
While alchemists and astrologers were pouring out their life's blood to realize lofty, solitary dreams, the "wielders" of tarot had already become confidants of the common folk, performing divination on the realities and misfortunes of everyday life and mingling seamlessly with ordinary people. It was suspected to be one of the most widely circulated forms of "occult knowledge" in modern society.
However, true tarot had in all likelihood been lost to time. What circulated in the mundane world without being suppressed by the occult sphere was ardently believed by ordinary people to possess extraordinary power, but in the eyes of true Extraordinaries, that was far from the case.
If one wished to witness genuine "tarot," they would have to travel to Egypt or the holy lands of the Cross, where there might still be a chance of finding a powerful occultist who possessed the original texts.
The earliest tarot had been born in the former, while a profound transformation had been wrought by the latter.
—Of course, Bai Zhou later discovered that Extraordinaries did occasionally use tarot as an auxiliary tool.
Crow's appraisal had appeared detached and objective on the surface, but in truth, it had carried a fair amount of personal prejudice.
She belonged squarely to the Astrology School.
Crow had researched astrology deeply and was thoroughly obsessed with it. When facing Bai Zhou, she had displayed her profound mastery of the stars on more than one occasion.
And the feud between the Astrology School and tarot divination went back a long time.
Among the seventy-eight cards of the tarot deck, cards zero through twenty-one were known as the Major Arcana, or character cards, yet card eighteen, The Moon, depicted only two dogs barking at the moon.
Those two dogs were "people," symbolizing astrologers lost in delusion and futility.
To occultists, who valued their pride above all else, such a jab could hardly be called an ordinary grudge; it was an irreconcilable blood feud.
From this, it was clear that tarot was by no means as contemptible as Crow made it out to be. It was simply that at the lowest level, its spread was exceedingly widespread, while its true lineage occupied the opposite extreme.
It was like roadside fortune-tellers who all claimed to understand the *I Ching* and divine the secrets of heaven; charlatans were rampant, while true masters were exceedingly rare.
Yet anyone who had glanced at a book could spout a few lines, acting as though they truly understood.
—And yet, throughout history, which Extraordinary who genuinely mastered the *I Ching* hadn't possessed earth-shattering power?
They had either established heavenly laws or severed dragon veins, each more formidable and terrifying than the last.
Bai Zhou had never encountered an Extraordinary who truly carried on the lineage of tarot, and he had always harbored a quiet curiosity about this occult lore.
Even so, he had never imagined his first encounter with tarot would be Fang Xiaoxia mysteriously presenting a shiny boxed deck she had saved up for as a kid and bought from the bookstore outside her school.
—Complete with an unpeeled price tag of eighty Federal Coins.
A black cat, tarot cards, and the window thrown open to let in moonlight despite the air conditioner running—Fang Xiaoxia was probably already imagining herself as a witch, wrapping the summer quilt around her shoulders like a wizard's robe, giggling foolishly in sheer delight.
"I ask of you, are you my familiar?"
The girl asked, brandishing a plastic clothes hanger.
"..." Bai Zhou tilted his head and looked out the window, too lazy to indulge her antics.
Still, in a certain sense, Fang Xiaoxia really did fit Bai Zhou's impression of a witch.
—Not an old hag, of course, but a clumsy witch's apprentice.
She would squeal with delight over a coin discovered in the corner of a chair, and despite it clearly being money she had dropped herself, she insisted it was the rent paid by the resident Mr. Spider.
She also brought out a pile of grotesque, idol-like figurines and arranged them beside Bai Zhou—saying they could keep him company, that they were all friends now, and that they shouldn't fight.
One of them, a fully armored giant wielding a halberd, inexplicably gave Bai Zhou a flash of deja vu toward the swollen giant in the deeper layers of the Void Realm.
He had no idea why.
And so, the eccentric witch was forever full of fantasies and curiosity about the world, yet no one was willing to listen to her wild, unconstrained thoughts... until she had a cat.
She poured out all the daring, embarrassing dreams of her youth to the black cat, while Mr. Black Cat sat upright across from her with a blank expression, looking as though he were listening yet also not.
He merely kept staring at the tabletop behind Fang Xiaoxia, which was crammed with all sorts of glittering knickknacks.
—In the end, she was a warm, bright, adorable girl with a bit of cleverness.
Just paired with a touch of silliness.
If one were to list her flaws and quirks, there was a whole mountain of them, or else she wouldn't have ended up in her current state. Yet precisely because of this, she had nurtured herself into a green foxtail grass clinging to a barren cliff.
She could always cheer herself up; give her a ray of sunlight, and she would flourish anew.
For some reason, though they were entirely different, Bai Zhou had the inexplicable illusion of seeing another version of himself in Fang Xiaoxia.
After carrying on for quite a while, seeing that the aloof black cat remained unmoved, Fang Xiaoxia didn't feel the least bit awkward.
Thoroughly content, she simply grinned and scratched her head.
The night deepened.
Fang Xiaoxia prepared for bed.
Yet this woman with no sense of boundaries actually wanted to share the bed with Bai Zhou.
In the end, under Bai Zhou's fierce resistance and a protracted tug-of-war, he got his wish and slept on the floor.
This left Fang Xiaoxia regretful, yet even more delighted:
"Baby! You're such a clean baby with great boundaries!"
With that, she pumped her fist:
"Once your injuries heal, I'm definitely going to cuddle you tight and pin you down on the bed so you can't get away!"
Fang Xiaoxia drifted into fantasy.
She dreamed of petting the cat a hundred times a day once he healed, of eating and sleeping together with him.
She wanted the cat to knead dough in her arms; that feeling would surely melt her heart.
Her only dilemma was whether she should bring the cat to school to show those who looked down on her—to prove she already had the best cat in the whole world and no longer needed useless friends!
Still, she had heard that cats easily got stressed when seeing too many strangers, so maybe not...
—No, you won't get that chance!
Bai Zhou rolled over, turning his back to Fang Xiaoxia as if asleep.
"Well then, goodnight, Kitty."
With a click, the light went off. Resting her chin on her arm, the girl leaned over the edge of the bed, her bright eyes peering down into the darkness at the small figure on the floor, her gaze brimming with uncontrollable fondness:
"Tomorrow, I'll ask my sister to help brainstorm a name for you!"
Incidentally, Fang Xiaoxia had smuggled Bai Zhou into the house in secret.
Bai Zhou was an unregistered resident, tucked into her embrace and sneaked into the bedroom.
Her family was entirely unaware for now.
—A while later, as Fang Xiaoxia's breathing grew steady and rhythmic, a pair of emerald eyes opened in the dim bedroom.
The black cat rose, noiselessly crept past the foot of the bed, and bounded lightly up to the windowsill.
Outside, the moon shone bright and the stars were sparse.
The air conditioner had been turned off, and the evening breeze drifted in.
It was slightly cool, yet retained the lingering warmth of late summer.
Bai Zhou knew it was time for him to go.
He turned and cast a glance into the room.
On the Hello Kitty bedsheet, the girl in the Paul Frank nightdress was fast asleep, her lips mumbling something indistinctly.
Yet a faint smile curved at the corners of her mouth, as though she were dreaming of a future with her cat.
For a girl who acted so boisterous and carefree, she curled up into a remarkably small ball when sleeping.
Her back pressed against the wall, her hands curled in front of her face, the loose nightdress draped open, and her fair left leg was curled tightly, carefully resting over her right calf.
Bai Zhou froze for a moment.
That sleeping posture was a sign of a deep lack of security.
Because Bai Zhou used to sleep like that, too—though that felt like a lifetime ago.
Ever since he met Crow, he had barely slept at all. In the quiet bedroom with its pleasant scent, accompanied by her soft breathing and faint lip-smacking, an indescribable sensation welled up in Bai Zhou's heart once more.
Just like that drenched, bedraggled figure in the rain from before, Fang Xiaoxia gave Bai Zhou the impression of neither an annoying mosquito nor a lively witch at this moment...
—She was a lonely little puppy, constantly terrified of being abandoned.
A sudden pang of reluctance surfaced in Bai Zhou's chest.
Yet he still had to leave.
He was far too dangerous; merely passing through the scavengers' camp had nearly wiped them all out.
It was only now that he truly understood what Crow had felt when she delivered her warning: *"Do not get involved with me."*
Whoever invented the separation between the Inner and Outer Worlds was surely a saint—the chasm between Extraordinaries and ordinary people was simply insurmountable.
—Yet he had been the only one who could see Crow.
And at that time, Bai Zhou had no other choice.
Now, however, Fang Xiaoxia was merely an ordinary girl.
He had no right to drag her into this.
Besides, it was here, with Fang Xiaoxia, that he had just found a new path forward.
He had to press on.
He had to be grateful for meeting Fang Xiaoxia; Bai Zhou believed he might have finally found what he had been searching for all along.
With that thought, the black cat on the windowsill turned his head, the pure moonlight from the horizon illuminating the silhouette of his back.
On the desk against the wall, lined with glittering knickknacks, sat the object Bai Zhou had been watching for a long time:
A graduation photo.
Back then, wearing a school uniform, Fang Xiaoxia stood near the edge with her head hanging and bangs down as usual, completely unremarkable. Her features were still quite tender; it had clearly been taken several years ago.
Yet she was not the focus of Bai Zhou's attention.
Beside Xiao Xia, another girl pressed close to her side, standing there with a radiant smile.
In the darkness of the bedroom, emerald vertical pupils firmly committed the girl's face and the style of the school uniform to memory.
The scarlet radiance floating upon it was reflected in his slit pupils.
It was the last word hovering above the girl's head in the photograph:
*[Spiders, red spiders, that person's hands are crawling with red spiders!]*
*[—They're all dead, only I am left—]*
*[I must escape this devil's den!]*
In the depths of the darkness, his green slit pupils narrowed dangerously.
—Several years ago, red spiders, a devil's den?
It was no coincidence.
If Bai Zhou remembered correctly—
The mysterious figures trading with Adjutant Han all bore red spider tattoos on their bodies.
Could it be...
*Have I finally found you?*
Chapter 61