Novice Village Adventure: Panda Mouse's Cute Attack
When Xiaodou regained consciousness, he first felt the soft touch under his claws.
She opened her eyes dazedly, and was met with a pair of watery almond-shaped eyes. A village girl in a coarse cloth shirt was lying on the ground, her hands supporting her cheeks, her nose almost touching her panda paws. "Oh, oh, oh, the pads of your paws are plum blossom-shaped! They're so pink and tender, like glutinous rice dumplings!"
"Gudong." Xiaodou realized he was chewing a piece of osmanthus cake bigger than his face, crumbs covering his mouth with white hair. In the distance, a bamboo basket dropped to the ground. The old village chief came running over, trembling on his cane. The mutton-fat jade pendant on his waist shone with each step. "A spirit pet has appeared! Use honey to trap it—"
Cute point attack!
Xiaodou tilted her head, staring at the swaying jade pendant, her round ears twitching. She stumbled to her feet, her paw pads making a crunching sound on the bluestone, like a rolling ball of glutinous rice cakes. The old village chief was about to hand over the bowl of honey when the ball of black and white fur suddenly leaped into the air, grabbed his jade pendant, and began to gnaw at it.
“Crack—”
The sound of jade shattering startled the sparrows in the tree. Beneath Xiaodou's paws lay three broken pieces of jade, with half a line of tadpole script visible in the middle, gleaming faintly blue in the sunlight.
"Ding—hidden mission [Search for Jade Pendant Fragments] triggered! Fragment resonance reaction: Abandoned granary in the southeast."
The system prompt sound scared Xiaodou so much that her tail exploded into a dandelion, but the villagers all took out their handkerchiefs to wipe their nosebleeds - when her hair exploded, her ears would stand up into a triangle, like a fluffy marshmallow emitting steam.
"Don't worry," a low, hoarse male voice sounded overhead, with a metallic, cold texture, "Let's clear out these wild dogs first."
Xiaodou looked up and saw a silver-haired young man leaning against a tree trunk with a sword in one hand. The green battle pattern on his left cheek extended to the corner of his eye, and half of a bared-toothed dog was stepped on the sole of his boot - it was Bai Shenyuan's Ling Yuan personality.
"Come on, let's replenish our cuteness first."
Soft fingertips suddenly pinched the back of her neck, and Xiaodou watched helplessly as a piece of honey candy was stuffed into her mouth. She looked up and saw Bai Yan'er's smiling face, the silver bell hanging from her right ear swaying slightly with her movements: "Our Xiaodou is the cutest when she chews on the candy~"
"...Tactical analysis shows that the wild dogs' weakness is in their throats." Lin Shen adjusted his glasses, his fingertips drawing a stream of data in the air. "But if we use foxfire to crisp their canine teeth—"
"Enough!" Ling Yuan frowned and kicked away another stray dog that charged at him. His sword gleamed coldly in the setting sun. "Can we discuss pet feeding after we finish defeating the monsters?"
Real-time update of the Novice Village bulletin board:
#When the panda rat chews the jade pendant, it makes a grinding sound#
#The tips of the ears will turn red when the personality of the Three Souls Abyss is switched#
#Warning! All healing professions please note that the Panda Rat's plush cloak may cause healing skills to be accidentally triggered! #
As dusk settled over the village, Xiaodou finally finished her last bite of her "experience bread." Licking the honey from her paw, she suddenly spotted a mechanical cat sauntering out of the mist at the village entrance—a shiny gear-shaped tail, a silver bell engraved with ancient runes, and a yellowed invitation clutched in its paw.
"Dear explorer~" The mechanical cat tilted its head, and a glimmer of light flashed in its gear eyes. "The wheat in the ghost granary is waiting for the right person~"
Just as Xiaodou was about to move closer, he was suddenly grabbed by the scruff of his neck. The war marks on Ling Yuan's personality had faded. Lin Shen pushed up his glasses, his voice slightly strained. "That's... the grain stamp pattern from the 1960s."
As the mechanical cat turned, moonlight shone through the gaps between its gears, revealing a fragment of a food coupon. Xiaodou followed it half a step, unaware that Bai Shenyuan's three souls simultaneously pressed against his heart—a place where a dusty memory lay: of hunger, of yellowed food coupons, and of a girl weeping in the shadows of a granary.
"Wait," Bai Yan's personality suddenly chuckled, and his fingertips stroked the bell of the mechanical cat. "This bell sounds... like a cat someone raised in a past life."
The fog thickened, and the dark shadow of the granary opened its mouth wide in the twilight, as if to swallow all the secrets. The broken jade under Xiaodou's claws suddenly felt hot, and the tadpole characters spelled out three words: Xiaofangzang.
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