In the bustling city of Saki,
a fat gray cat was moving very flexibly among the bustling crowd.
The thoughts in his mind were extremely chaotic, and the old cat had no idea what emotion he was in.
He just instinctively ran forward, wanting to leave here, reach the reassuring boy as soon as possible, and deliver the information entrusted by Hinata Xingcai to him.
“But am I really going to run away like this? After I go home, will Ryosuke and the others accuse me of abandoning my companions?”
“No… I am focusing on the mission, I am just following orders!”
“Excuse, this is an excuse! You are avoiding the battle!”
“What a joke, I am an old cat who took a step forward from the gate of the underworld and then retreated, what am I afraid of…”
The conversation that seemed to be talking to himself seemed to ask and answer questions in his mind.
After rushing out of the city gate and coming to the wilderness, the old cat’s heart slowly calmed down after there were no complicated human voices around.
Does he think he is afraid of death?
Of course he is afraid, but not that afraid.
He is mainly confused, his heart is very confused, and his thoughts are even more confused.
Although the red-haired warrior was very strong, even his well-trained and experienced companions were directly controlled at the first sight, and they did not even show any extra movements, nor did they have time to pass on any effective information.
But… Old Cat is actually not afraid.
No matter how strong the opponent is, he is not afraid,
but it is not because he is too arrogant and too confident in his own strength, but because he is not afraid of death.
“Isn’t the fear and pain of death already a common thing for me?”
Slowly, the running limbs of the old cat began to slow down.
His feet sank deeply into the snow, and the cold touch made him feel like he was back to being a lonely cat.
It was also this feeling that made his thoughts clearer and clearer.
It seems that he made a wrong decision under the influence of the panic of the first mission.
Such an idea suddenly arose in the old cat’s mind.
Some people will feel fear after approaching death once, and will cherish life more,
but if they approach death again and again, they will only become numb and no longer value life so much, and the old cat is just the latter.
In the past, he had stepped through the gates of hell, but was pulled back by a devil fruit, so his current life was completely earned.
Then, during Ryosuke’s brutal training, he didn’t know how many times he felt like he had died.
Every time he was exhausted, even the pain was almost replaced by fatigue, and he felt that his soul was about to float out of his body, he would be resurrected again.
So the pain felt at the time of death, the old cat had already deeply understood.
And for him who had no goals in life, there was no so-called fear of leaving the world at all.
There was only one cat like him in this world, no relatives, maybe friends, but only a few, that is, Ryosuke’s family and Hinata Xingcai who had just parted ways. I just don’t know if they regarded me as a friend.
So death for me was just a momentary pain, closing my eyes, and then sleeping soundly, there was nothing worth lingering on.
“Then should I go back now?”
The old cat didn’t continue to move forward.
He was very hesitant and always had difficulty making a decision, just like when he left just now.
Even after he realized that his fear of death was not that great, he was still very panicked.
The old cat was panicking because he didn’t know how to make a decision and what answer to choose.
In the first mission, according to what Hinata Xingcai taught him along the way,
From a rational point of view, as the only survivor in the team, he should be responsible for passing on the situation here and reporting it to the corresponding person. This is his responsibility and obligation.
But from an emotional point of view, the old cat is not someone who will easily abandon his teammates. At least when he hunted with other wild cats before, he never abandoned the wounded.
“But if we go back now, it should be too late, right?”
Looking back at the gate of Saki Castle in the distance, the old cat was caught in a dilemma between the mission and emotions.
When they first saw the gate, they were two people.
At that time, he squatted on the shoulder of Teacher Xingcai and went in with her.
But now he is the only one left.
“Alone…”
The old cat’s thoughts stopped, and he turned back to the city without further hesitation.
In fact, there are still things he cares about in this world.
The old cat didn’t want to have no one around to accompany him and remember him when his life came to an end.
For him, that might be the real death.
He had experienced this kind of death once before, in that cold cat house.
He didn’t want to experience it again. This might be the thing that the old cat feared most besides Ryosuke’s training.
The whistling wind whistled in his ears.
The old cat ran very fast, and it was getting faster and faster.
When he left, because of the panic and hesitation in his heart, he didn’t know what to do with only one person in the team, so his speed was not fast.
But when he went back, his goal was very clear, so his speed was not slow.
Although he entered the city alone,
just like when he ran out just now, because he was a cat, the warriors guarding the city did not stop him.
When the noisy voices returned to his ears, when Lao Mao returned to the city and returned to the vicinity of East Street, he slowly stopped and became extremely cautious.
On the street,
everything was the same as before he left, without any changes.
The flow of people coming and going was the same as more than ten minutes ago, as if during the time he was away, the crowd was not frightened at all, and there was no fighting.
Since Teacher Xingcai said that she would go to see the situation, it would certainly not be false.
There are two possibilities for this situation now. One is that she is hiding very well and has not been discovered by the other party.
The other is that she is like other companions, and she can’t even make a lot of noise, and is directly captured by the other party.
Perhaps… the latter possibility is higher.
With an increasingly heavy heart, Lao Mao slowly walked towards the direction of East Street.
In addition to the people from the noble families in the city, there are also ordinary people living in the city on East Street, so the liveliness of this street is more than the original street, but it also makes Lao Mao infinitely more vigilant.
Because even though the flow of people was larger than before, the stability and tranquility of this street remained the same, without any change.
Controlling his companions without alarming the crowd made Lao Mao’s body completely tense so that he could enter the strongest state at any time to face the enemy.
The middle of the street…
Recalling what Teacher Xingcai had told him just now, the range where other people lost contact, Lao Mao continued to walk forward, deftly avoiding the trampling of pairs of soles.
“Well, in winter, you should still eat hot pot in a warm room.”
“Stupid, instead of staying alone at home, you should go out more in winter and use the energy of the crowd to dispel the cold, so that you won’t feel cold.”
“Absurdity, what popularity, yours are all illusory theories.”
Chaotic and complex voices were transmitted to Lao Mao’s ears from all directions.
Although this made people unconsciously feel irritated, he still tried to extract some useful information from other sources.
But they were almost at the end of the street…
The old cat jumped up from the ground and stood on someone else’s house along the wall.
In the conversations of the pedestrians around him, no useful information was revealed. Even though he was about to follow the flow of people out of the street, there was still no situation worth noting.
Have they been taken away?
Calming down, the old cat looked down from the top of the house and observed every corner of the street.
But he never saw the figure of the red-haired warrior, let alone the traces of his companions, and even the traces of the battle could not be found.
Wait!
But at this moment, the old cat suddenly stopped moving his eyes.
A long distance away from him, there was a small tea stall set up with a cloth tent at the corner of the street.
On the tea stall, teapots of all sizes were placed on electric boilers for continuous heating, and hot steam rose from the teapots of all sizes.
From time to time, passers-by would ask to buy a few cups of warm tea. They would drink while walking with paper cups, or sit down to rest at the few tables in the tea stall.
But what made the old cat stop his gaze was certainly not this ordinary tea stall, but the guests in the tea stall.
At this time, on two of the only three tables in the tea stall, there were several people lying crookedly, as if they were sleeping on the tables.
In the middle of winter,
it was strange for people to sleep on the tea stall like this.
Although they were all wearing black coats, they were still quite noticeable.
But because one of them was still awake wearing a black coat like them, no passers-by came forward to care about their situation.
Although the people lying on the tea stall were wrapped tightly in black coats, the old cat still keenly caught some familiar details and saw that they were his companions.
But the more accurate information was because he saw the man in black who was still awake, the red-haired warrior he had seen before.
However, his current outfit was different from before, because he bought a black hat on the roadside to cover the eye-catching red hair, so the old cat did not notice him when he came here just now.
After all, the old cat is not good at perception techniques, and can even be said to have no understanding of them.
“So… what should I do now? Think about it with your smart brain, you are the smartest cat in the cat family.”
The old cat stared at the tea stall intently, thinking hard about what to do to change the status quo.
At this time, the red-haired warrior was teasing a puppy, which was a pet dog bought temporarily by the companion who disguised himself as a dog walker.
The old cat was able to recognize the identity of the warrior in such a complicated flow of people just now, partly because of the puppy.
Wait… puppy?
The old cat was startled and turned away suddenly.
But he relied on the fact that he was a cat and his focused observation still attracted the attention of the red-haired warrior.
At the moment when he just turned away, the red-haired warrior had already glanced at him.
Coincidentally, their eyes crossed.
“Escape… But if you run away, won’t it be too obvious?”
Suddenly, the old cat’s body froze.
Instinct told him,
He didn’t even let go of a puppy. Even if he looked like a kitten, he might be exposed and want to escape.
But the human nature after taking it told him that the more he was at this time, the more he couldn’t panic.
However, under the influence of these two emotions, he seemed at a loss.
“Oh my, what a fat cat.”
Before the old cat’s body could make further decisions, a kind voice suddenly sounded in his ears.
Old cat:?
He froze all over, turned his head blankly and looked at the source of the voice.
I don’t know when, the red-haired warrior who was leisurely drinking tea in the tea stall a second ago, in the next second, had actually climbed up to the top of the house and came to his side.
“Kitty, you look familiar.”
The red-haired warrior was looking at him with a smile, “Is your master the noble lady with heavy makeup?”
As he said this, he raised his palm and was about to grab him.
“Danger!”
Being alert,
with almost no hesitation, the old cat’s body suddenly changed, turning into a tall and mighty humanoid posture, and punched the red-haired man.
After entering this anthropomorphic but divine state, the hesitation and hesitation in his heart suddenly seemed to be cleared,
and all that was left was a strong desire to fight.
“Oh?”
The red-haired man saw the change in the old cat and was a little surprised.
And he also clearly felt the mighty momentum of this punch.
But he didn’t have the slightest idea of dodging, but also threw a punch.
On the face of his fist, the bronze skin color was completely covered by the dark aura, emitting a dazzling luster in the sun, just like metal iron.
Bang!
A huge roar suddenly sounded on East Street.
Below, the bustling crowd seemed to be frightened by a thunder, and all stopped their movements instinctively,
and then, they all looked up at the place where the sound came from.
Under the warm sun,
a huge cat-faced monster flew backwards,
and opposite it, a red-haired man in a black coat looked at his fist thoughtfully.
Squeak–
The old cat, who was blown away by a huge force, clearly heard the sound of his hand bones breaking,
and then, his back slammed into a high wall, smashing the wall into pieces.
The red-haired warrior’s fist was like an egg under his thick fist like a casserole, but he was defeated with such a punch!
Impossible!
The old cat thought he would lose, but he didn’t expect that he would lose so quickly.
Perhaps after the transformation, the divinity of the god of battle in the fruit was affecting his emotions. The old cat was not afraid at all at this moment, but felt ashamed and unwilling to lose so easily.
The blood rushed to his head,
and his feet stomped on the ground fiercely. The old cat’s huge body once again rushed towards the red-haired man like a hill.
The red-haired man, who was still thinking, frowned when he saw that the cat-man had the courage to rush over.
The next moment, a majestic rebuke came from his mouth, “Stop!”
An invisible breath spread out in all directions with the red-haired man as the center.
However, this breath was only aimed at the old cat, and other passers-by around were not affected at all.
Instantly, the old cat, who was still charging forward, felt a blow on his head, and his head was a little dizzy, but it was only a little dizzy, which did not affect him from continuing to move forward!
