ARIOCC Chapter 25

Kittens

After coaxing Egg Yolk, it was past 8:30, which was the most lively time on Shiliu Street. Xian Chan Cat Cafe was at the end of the street, a short distance away from the noise, soaking in the right amount of human fireworks, neither too noisy nor too quiet.

Egg Yolk was lying in front of the window and looked at it for a while, still chewing the beef jerky. The plate Pei Shiyi brought was empty, the beef jerky was torn into small strips by Pei Shiyi and all went into Egg Yolk’s belly.

Egg Yolk swallowed the dried meat, smacked his lips and said, “Boss, we shouldn’t we expand the cat cafe? Now there are more customers, when will we open the second floor? We can go to the third floor to live, the third floor also has two rooms. Although the place is a little smaller, it’s enough for us to live in.”

There was still a whole week before the second episode of “Small World” on J Station. After the cat cafe appears in the second episode, it was bound to usher in an increase in passenger traffic. Although the current cat cafe was not crowded, there will be more people in the future, which will inevitably destroy the soothing atmosphere Pei Shiyi carefully created.

Pei Shiyi, “There aren’t enough cats, my little store manager.”
For one floor there were seven cats, but for two floors there had to be at least fifteen cats.

Egg Yolk calculated the possible loss of customers, suddenly heartache. “Then we still need to find ways to recruit new cats… The AMB, oh yeah boss, Isn’t Mr Bao from the AMB? Can you ask him to contact other cats? Coming to our cat cafe to work is pretty good. You can improve cultivation by just eating, sleeping and breathing. Copper Coin is living very well.”

Pei Shiyi thought: If the AMB could still find two more cats, Bao Jin wouldn’t be so reluctant to leave the cat cafe every day. He obviously had a little cutie at home, but he still played with other people’s cats.

Just like the nature of a dragon… Ahem, philandering.

Pei Shiyi did not speak, so Egg Yolk’s attention naturally skewed away.

Creatures like cats, who couldn’t be relied upon to go anywhere, would start to lose attention when they’re full and won’t even concentrate on playing. Egg yolk mentioned Bao Jin, and the conversation immediately snapped to Director Bao, who was pressing on somewhere.

“Speaking of which, did Mr Bao leave today after he delivered Sponge Cake? Is he’s not staying at the cat cafe anymore?”

Pei Shiyi did not move. “Is Egg yolk very fond of him?”

Egg Yolk licked his mouth. “Mr Bao is quite nice, he looks quite unapproachable, but actually has no temper, much better than Yun Chao.”

The big boss was the one with a bad temper. Apart from the kittens and pretty girls, she only had a good face for the boss, and if she meets someone who wants to touch her, she will get angry.

Pei Shiyi narrowed his eyes and his whole body started to feel unpleasant- Bao Jin was really a scourge, teasing his cats at the cat cafe every day, and obviously, said person was gone today, but his presence could still be felt.

“On top of that,” Egg Yolk was full of pity. “There’s no one to cook since Mr Bao gone, and the chef doesn’t make good food.”

Their cat cafe lost a great chef!

Oh, turns out this was the pity.

Pei Shiyi remained calm, and his fingers cheerfully tapped twice on the window sill.

“Is it true that Mr Bao won’t come anymore? Can we ask him for a recipe? He cooks chicken breasts so well.”

Pei Shiyi said, “He’ll be busy in the future, if you guys like that taste, I can go…”

His trailing voice died into a scream, and the commotion in the street accompanied by a roar made Pei Shiyi frown. Before he could see the situation clearly, a phone call came in.

And of course, it was Bao Jin.

Pei Shiyi answered the phone. “Bao Jin?”

“It’s me, are you at the cat cafe? There’s a loophole in the AMB’s net closing today, and two stray fish have been let loose, heading for Shiliu Street. The Bureau’s golden retriever has followed them over, can you keep an eye on them?”

Without waiting for Pei Shiyi’s answer, Bao Jin followed up with, “Sponge Cake said he wanted to stay overnight at the cat cafe tomorrow.”

Pei Shiyi had no intention of refusing and answered in one breath. “Okay.”

With his face pressed against the glass, Egg Yolk waited for Pei Shiyi to finish his call before exclaiming, “Boss! What a big dog!”

The street, which had been bustling with people, was now separated from the middle by a distance large enough for two people to pass side by side, and a very tall and burly man followed a grey-haired “dog” chasing a golden retriever and black-and-white cat through the street.

The street was full of people. Pei Shiyi couldn’t go straight down, so he took the stairs and went out through the gate. In the time it took him to get down a flight of stairs, the man with the dog and cat had run past the cat cafe and turned into the back alley.

​​Pei Shiyi was as bewildered as everyone else on the street, others had the heart to watch but not the guts to do so. After all, there were two dogs that had just passed, both of them of impressive size, and there was a big, burly man following the big dog, which looked dangerous.

Pei Shiyi wasn’t afraid of big people but was afraid of ordinary people. He did not care and locked the cat curry, holding Egg Yolk and turned into the back alley.

The back alley was actually a dead end. Originally there were a few nail and beauty shops, but the place turned out to be too remote and they all closed down and no new shops have moved here. There wasn’t even a ghosts shadow here, only a few cameras were still on.

Pei Shiyi heard the shrill barking of a dog before he could enter the alley. He frowned, glanced at the camera and still walked in quickly and patiently.

The burly man and the “grey dog” he saw earlier had their backs to Pei Shiyi, and the burly man was cursing in a strange language. When Pei Shiyi listened to a few sentences, the pronunciation was different from the Chinese language, so it was probably a foreign language.

Pei Shiyi’s gaze swept over the so-called “grey dog” Egg Yolk saw- its tail was stiff and drooping, it was clearly a wolf and its aura showed that it was clearly spiritually enlightened. It was obvious that these two were the stray fish that had slipped through the net of the AMB.

The golden retriever had the aura of a candle dragon on it, so light that it was barely perceptible, so it should be an AMB employee. He had previously thought that when Bao Jin said golden hair¹, he meant that the other party had dyed his hair blonde, but he had not expected it to be a golden retriever.

And this cultivation base…

Yun Chao could easily slap it away.

At that time, when Bao Jin said that the AMB was short of staff, Pei Shiyi did not believe him, but now that he had met the golden retriever, he had to believe him.

The golden retriever faced a wolf that was taller than itself, shivering and tightly guarding the cat. The cat was blocked with no fur exposed, but the blood dripping on the ground indicated that it had been wounded.

Pei Shiyi did not deliberately restrain his breath or footsteps when he entered the alleyway. Both the burly man and the wolf sensed his arrival and turned their heads.

As soon as he saw the burly man’s very different facial features, Pei Shiyi immediately remembered Zhu Heng who had run into the cat cafe in the middle of the night and his expression gradually began to look unfriendly.

The burly man shot him a glance, probably thinking that a skinny boy like Pei Shiyi couldn’t get in his way, and dropped a lame Chinese sentence, “Mind your own business.”

After saying that, he directly rushed over to the golden retriever, who protected the cat the entire time, tail tightly clamped in its hind legs, using its eyes to ask Pei Shiyi for help.

Pei Shiyi glanced at the camera and slowly rolled up his sleeves while saying slowly, “Sir, that’s my family’s golden retriever, it’s best if you let me take it away.”

The burly man turned around and sneered.

Pei Shiyi narrowed his eyes, “I was being polite, but remember that I’ve warned you.”

The grey wolf, on the other hand, was much more violent than the burly man, spreading his paws and charging directly at Pei Shiyi.

Egg Yolk was so frightened that he gasped, puffed his fur and stretched out his claws, but Pei Shiyi brought it back.

“Don’t move around.”

Pei Shiyi was slightly angry, and in a rare moment, he lowered his voice to a soft scolding.

Egg Yolk subconsciously shrank into his arms.

Pei Shiyi opened his body slightly to the side and raised his leg to kick the grey wolf in the waist, and after a sharp yelp, the grey wolf went up in the air and hit the wall hard.

Wolves had a bronze head, an iron tail and a tofu waist. The waist and abdomen were the most vulnerable places. Pei Shiyi saved a little strength and didn’t hit it hard, otherwise, the grey-haired beast would have been out of breath by now.

The burly man heard his companion’s screams and turned his head to see that Pei Shiyi had come up behind him. He cursed and swung his fist at him, but Pei Shiyi held his wrist and pulled it with a tug, then pressed the man’s shoulder and forced him to kneel on the ground.

The sound of his knee on the stone floor made Egg Yolk shudder, realising for the first time that his boss was a big shot who shook the world, and he winced- that slap from his boss just now reminded Egg Yolk of the fear of being dominated by Yun Chao.

The burly man growled, “Who are you?”

Impatient to listen to him, Pei Shiyi waved his hand to shut him up, walked over to the golden retriever and examined it for a moment, saying, “From the AMB?”

The golden retriever almost cried out. “Woof woof woooooo-”

Pei Shiyi squeezed his ears. “Slow down.”

The golden retriever hurriedly switched back to human words. “Yes boss, I’m from the AMB, you have to quickly save the cats! There’s something weird with that man’s hat, there are cats inside!”

The golden retriever limped to the strong man and ripped off the man’s hat, yet no matter how much he shook it, it was still a hat and nothing fell out.

Pei Shiyi avoided the golden retriever’s slobber marks and took the hat, examining it carefully.

The large cat that had been protected by the golden retriever slowly approached, and spoke in an extraordinarily soft female voice. “This is a witch’s hat, filled with cats they have carefully selected as the most likely to be a witch’s helper. I’m sorry though, I really don’t know how to unlock this.”

Golden retriever chattered, “Miss Penny is also a witch, it was thanks to Miss Penny that the AMB was able to catch them so quickly. I was originally responsible for picking up Miss Penny, but I was too stupid and revealed my whereabouts, causing them to find out that Miss Penny secretly communicated with me… And we also did not expect them to actually hide a bunch of carefully selected kittens, and the one that the Director intercepted was the boss.”

Golden retriever huffed and puffed as he spoke, his panting both was heartbreaking to hear and made people want to laugh.

Pei Shiyi couldn’t care less about coaxing him, he gently pushed Egg Yolk, signalling him to go over and comfort him, while he himself grabbed the burly man’s collar and directly picked him up and threw him into the dead centre of the surveillance cameras.

He played with the hat in his hand, smiled and said, “Do you want to tell me how to open it yourself, or should I ask you to tell me?” He remembered that he was on the last day of his observation period.

The man’s face turned red, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Hmm-” Pei Shiyi said, “Then I guess I have to ask you to tell me.”

Golden retriever, “We don’t allow lynching-”

The blazing pressure smeared all over his face. He was merely swept to the side by the revealed aura, and he found it hard to breathe, his fur almost scorched.

The burly man at the centre of the pressure could not breathe at all, it felt like his chest had a thousand pounds of pressure, his mind was buzzing and he was already lacking oxygen to the point of ringing in his ears.

Money and life were certainly more important.

The burly man, “I…I’ll talk.”

Pei Shiyi couldn’t really suffocate the man, and when he released his hands, the man went limp like mud in front of the wall.

The burly man huffed and puffed, shuddered and a string of nonsense came out. The grey bow on his hat snapped apart and the burly man said, “It… It’s done.”

Pei Shiyi hesitantly flipped over the hat and a litter of kittens fell out with a clatter.

Egg Yolk,”!!”

It’s cubs!

Unedited

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1. This is a pun in chinese because golden retriever in chinese literally translates to blonde hair, thus the confusion.

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Shallotnoodle

A lazy rat
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