The first case of the Mouse and Cat Detective Agency
[Dispute over dried fish funding]
At noon, smoke still drifted from the incense burner in the City God Temple. Xiaodou squatted on the altar, counting dried fish—startup funds for the Royal Cat's "Rat and Cat Detective Agency." The Royal Cat squatted nearby, licking its paw, its tail curled around a copy of "Jianghu Qi'an Lu" (The Strange Cases of Jianghu). Written on the cover in rat language was the phrase: "President: Xiaodou; Vice President: Royal Cat (Miscellaneous Person)."
"We agreed to split it 50-50, why did you take three more pieces?" The royal cat scratched Xiaodou's tail with its claws.
Xiaodou stuffed the dried fish into the subspace stomach and wrote on the tail: "I am the president! There are management fees!" Suddenly, there was a "click" sound in the stomach. It turned out that the Western fantasy elemental crystal (foreshadowing in Chapter 8) stolen last night was glowing, and the words "Dragon Bone Mountains" appeared on the crystal.
[First Request: Stolen Sword Tassel]
"Knock, knock, knock!" Someone banged on the temple door. The man was a scholar in a green robe, clutching a piece of rag in his hand. "Detective, my sword tassel was stolen! That... that was a token of love from my fiancée!"
Xiaodou jumped onto the scholar's shoulder and sniffed—the rags smelled of tentacle slime from the Cthulhu chapter (cross-volume contamination). The royal cat flipped open the "Jianghu Qi'an Lu" (The Cases of Jianghu), and a clue automatically appeared on the page: "Tentacle-like shadows are seen haunting the ruined temple west of the city."
【Cross-Scroll Trap in the Ruined Temple】
The two sneaked into the dilapidated temple, where a cyberpunk data network suddenly descended from the beams, its meshes entangled with the immortal ropes from the cultivation chapter. Xiaodou gnawed through the ropes, but this triggered a mechanism that caused milk tea foam from the campus chapter to spurt out from the cracks in the wall, smearing the Royal Cat's face.
"Ahem!" The Royal Cat shook its fur. It spotted a bronze box engraved with "001" (the hook from Chapter 8) on the altar. The moment the box opened, a medical record from the modern story flew out. It read: "Patient: White Abyss; Symptoms: Three Souls Split; Prescription: Sweet Energy of the Concept Rat."
The Tentacle Thief's True Identity
A dark figure leaped from the beam. It was Taishi Zhao's personal guard, its arms transformed into half-tentacles. He swung his tentacles at him. Xiaodou unleashed a nut-raining bomb from the martial arts chapter, but was entangled by the tentacles. The nut shell cracked, revealing the elemental spirits from the Western fantasy chapter. The spirits raised their glow sticks and sang, "Thieves, rotten claws~"
The guard screamed and fled. From the fallen sword tassel hung a jade pendant engraved with the Chinese character "林" (the same design as the Royal Cat's collar). The Royal Cat picked up the jade pendant, and the collar suddenly heated up, projecting the shadow of Guardian 001: "002, find the 'Sweet Energy Source' and protect it."
[Hidden benefits of the detective agency]
The scholar thanked him profusely and gave Xiaodou a bag of sunflower seeds from the ancient Chinese novel "House Fighting" (specially for the diary with the "Appearing Tail"). While Xiaodou was writing in the seeds, she unexpectedly discovered the logo of the Mouse and Cat Detective Agency on the back of the medical records in the bronze box—a cat holding a dried fish and a mouse gnawing on a nut.
"So..." The mechanical patterns on the Royal Cat's ears glowed, "Number 001 already knew we would cooperate."
Xiaodou suddenly jumped onto the Royal Cat's back, its tail wrapped around the elemental crystal. "Squeak! (Go to the Dragon Bone Mountains! Find Lin Shen!)"
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