Thirty minutes was neither too long nor too short. In a constantly changing instance, a lot could happen in that time.
Originally, Li Muyang’s HP staying at 40% was already a very encouraging result. If he could last another half hour, the dungeon would end.
Faced with the fierce neighborhood security guards, the players pulled out all their tricks to deal with them. Even the bald man and his group, who usually didn’t get along with the trio, chose to cooperate this time.
This round, both sides took a step back. “You send one person to chase Li Muyang, and the rest of us will stay behind to hold off the security.”
Naturally, Yang Xue didn’t stand on ceremony. She and the hoodie-wearing youth quickly broke away from the fight with the guards and chased after Li Muyang and his parents. But they still couldn’t catch up — they were blocked at the elevator because two guards came after them from behind.
The hoodie-wearing youth said to Yang Xue, “Yang Xue, you take the stairs. I’ll hold off the guards!”
Without another word, Yang Xue darted into the stairwell.
While the other players were fighting tooth and nail for Li Muyang, Yan Jiyun was busy trying to calm himself down, thinking about how he could break the current deadlock.
Mr. and Mrs. Li shared the same goal — to force Li Muyang back home. While Yan Jiyun was the one being restrained. The boy and the cat were both in the same predicament.
The elevator ride from the first to the sixth floor took only a few seconds, but Yan Jiyun could feel cold sweat covering his whole body.
If Mrs. Li really intended to open the gas and commit suicide, he wouldn’t be spared either. He would die with them!
Never before had Yan Jiyun felt so close to death. Death was beckoning him, curling its finger toward him.
Mrs. Li picked up the groceries left at the door and went inside. She said to Li Muyang, “Go in and do your homework.”
Li Muyang looked at the black cat in his father’s hands. “Dad, can Sesame keep me company while I do my homework?”
Mr. Li had already shed the gentle demeanor he used with strangers. Coldly, he replied, “No. You can play with the cat after you finish your homework.”
Before the words even faded, Mr. Li stuffed Yan Jiyun into the pet carrier they had used the night before.
Mrs. Li pushed Li Muyang into his room. “After your homework, practice the piano.”
As usual, Mr. Li set down his briefcase, took off his restrictive suit, grabbed a bottle of Coke, and slumped onto the sofa to watch a ball game.
Yan Jiyun noticed Mrs. Li locked Li Muyang in the room before she turned and went into the kitchen.
The smell of natural gas drifted through the house, growing stronger by the moment.
Mr. Li cared more about his game than about a black cat. Yan Jiyun reached a paw through the carrier door latch, calmly pushing it open bit by bit. Animal paws weren’t as nimble as human fingers, but he extended his claws from their pads and nudged the latch toward the other side.
With a click, the latch came free. On the TV, a basketball game was playing.
Mr. Li shouted, “Nice shot!”
Yan Jiyun assessed his position. He was between the dining room and living room. To the left was the dining area, to the right the living room, and behind him the hallway to the bedrooms. If Mr. Li’s gaze drifted downward, he would be spotted.
Mr. Li wasn’t like Mrs. Li. She was quick to anger, wearing every emotion on her face, but his personality was darker, colder. Whatever he thought stayed hidden deep inside.
There were 25 minutes left until the instance ended.
The later it got, the less he could relax. Yan Jiyun stayed on high alert. He had to take Li Muyang and leave.
The gas smell was getting thicker. He scanned the room, finding every window was locked shut. Mrs. Li was humming a song in the kitchen, washing rice for cooking.
He crept along the wall into the kitchen.
The smell of food waste was still strong. The kitchen was big enough, and Mrs. Li had her back to him as she prepared ingredients, not noticing when he leapt onto the corner oven.
Yan Jiyun glanced at the gas stove — both the left and right burners were off. It didn’t seem like she had turned them on deliberately. Could the connecting pipe be worn out and leaking?
Too strange.
Mrs. Li hadn’t started cooking yet. She was using an induction cooker to boil something. But when she began stir-frying later, she would definitely use an open flame.
The seconds ticked by. Yan Jiyun had no way to check the pipes like a human could, so he gave up on trying to shut off the gas. He jumped down from the oven and decided to find Li Muyang. He had to get him out of here.
Yan Jiyun’s eyes swept over the dining table. There was a novel lying there, a mystery thriller. He hopped up to look at the cover and blurb. The story was about a police officer who discovered a gas explosion at Mrs. Wang’s house next door. The victim was Mrs. Wang’s husband, and the officer began investigating the truth behind the accident.
Yan Jiyun’s focus wasn’t on the novel itself, but on the gas explosion.
Was this book something Mrs. Li had bought?
Still puzzled, he ran toward Li Muyang’s room. The door was open with just a crack. Yan Jiyun stood up on his hind legs, pushed the door open with his forelegs, and slipped inside.
Li Muyang lit up when he saw him. Quietly closing the door, he whispered, “Sesame, you’re amazing. You can open the cage by yourself.”
He had left the door ajar just to secretly check on the cat. To guard against his mom barging in, he went back to his seat at the desk.
Yan Jiyun saw the open homework notebook. He wanted to signal Li Muyang to leave the room, so he jumped onto the desk, pushed his books and homework onto the floor, then hopped down and looked back at him. After a day together, he felt Li Muyang should understand what he meant.
But Li Muyang just calmly picked up the fallen books and homework, saying without the slightest ripple, “Sesame, you can’t knock over my homework. I have to finish it. If I don’t, Mom will scold me.”
‘You know she’ll hit and scold you, but haven’t you realized she’s already lost her mind?’
Yan Jiyun felt frustrated, but that was only his own thought. Li Muyang was just a child, after all. With his life experience, he couldn’t think that far ahead.
Li Muyang wasn’t angry at the cat for knocking things down, which only left Yan at a loss for words.
[System: 15 minutes until the instance ends.]
The game system really knew psychology. Now that the end is near, it began announcing the remaining time every ten minutes, just to make all the players anxious.
Yan Jiyun was also relieved he had never relied on the others. From the time he had come upstairs until now, 15 minutes had passed, and no one had knocked on the door. It seemed the neighborhood security guards were indeed strong enough to keep the other players occupied.
The gas stove was now like a time bomb. As soon as Mrs. Li turned on the fire, it would ignite, and there was no telling when she might do it.
Distract Mrs. Li? But if Mr. Li also stepped in to catch him, it would be a real problem. It might even speed up their deaths.
The more time passed, the more Yan Jiyun could feel his own nervousness growing. All four of his paws were sweating.
He didn’t know whether he should just keep waiting here to die or jump out of the window.
He leapt onto Li Muyang’s desk again, but this time he didn’t immediately push away Li Muyang’s workbook. Instead, he pawed at his books.
While pawing around, he spotted a tablet on the desk. His paw pressed against the screen.
The tablet was fully charged and had no password. With one press, it unlocked. Yan Jiyun didn’t know whether it was exclusively Li Muyang’s or if the whole family used it, but when the screen lit up, it showed a purchase record — the very same novel from earlier.
Li Muyang rescued the tablet from under Yan Jiyun’s paws, exited the order page, and the screen revealed an English class teaching video. Clearly, this was Li Muyang’s personal tablet.
He used to be very smart before he got sick, and it was only afterward that his grades began to drop. Who had bought that book?
Yan Jiyun couldn’t demand an answer in “cat language,” but he had figured it out.
He looked down at Li Muyang’s open workbook, and there was not a single word written. The Chinese textbook lay open to a page with a drawing of a family of three, happily visiting the zoo together.
Li Muyang’s fingers toyed with the corner of the page. He lay across the desk, looking at Yan Jiyun eye to eye.
“Sesame, let me tell you a secret.”
Yan Jiyun’s bright green eyes looked back at him. Dr. Chi had secrets, and now Li Muyang had secrets too. The characters in this instance were clearly not simple.
As the instance’s protagonist, Li Muyang had to be unusual. Otherwise, why would the player be assigned to protect him and not his mother or father?
Yan Jiyun: “…” He lay on the desk, pretending not to understand what Li Muyang was saying.
Yan Jiyun’s beautiful cat eyes only made Li Muyang more willing to speak his mind. “I used to get really good grades. Every time I scored 100, my mom would demand I get 100 again next time. She signed me up for all kinds of classes, like math olympiad, piano, violin, painting… I felt so tired. Other kids’ grades would sometimes drop, but their parents wouldn’t scold them. If they did badly once and improved next time, they’d get rewards… trips to amusement parks or McDonald’s.”
“I wanted to be like them. But my mom said McDonald’s was junk food. I wanted rewards, but she said toys would corrupt the mind and make people lazy. I wanted to play with the neighbor kids, but she said it was a waste of time. When I was sick and in the hospital, the girl in the next bed had her mom always bring her delicious food and toys. But when my mom visited me, she only brought this tablet and a pile of study videos.”
“After I went back to school, my grades fell. My mom changed too. She became scary… like a bad person. She wasn’t the gentle mom she used to be. She was like a demon.”
“She said Dad had a new family outside, that they weren’t my real family anymore. I don’t think either of them are really my parents now.”
“Sesame, they’ve become demons. To them, I don’t matter anymore. Mom only cares about grades and what others think. Dad only cares about his son from outside. Tell me… what should I do?”
Yan Jiyun understood, Li Muyang was uncertain about his parents’ way of living. He was deeply confused.
[System: 5 minutes until the instance ends.]
From Li Muyang’s words and behavior, Yan Jiyun pieced together the truth.
Li Muyang had only wanted to escape his mechanical, joyless life. Who could have guessed that what came after would be even crueler? Adult desires never stop. Li Muyang could have gotten better, but his mother’s methods were wrong — she cared too much about grades, suffocating him with pressure and withholding care. At home and at school, he endured violence. He was very lonely and helpless. Yan Jiyun couldn’t help but symphatize with the boy.
Once again, he pushed Li Muyang’s workbook off the desk. Then, he gently bit Li Muyang’s wrist and, after letting go, walked to the door, waiting for him to open it.
It wasn’t the child’s fault that the family was unhappy, they are only passive recipients. He didn’t want Li Muyang to be dragged into the abyss by his parents. He wanted to pull him back to shore.
After the third time his workbook was pushed off the desk, Li Muyang finally opened the bedroom door. Yan Jiyun rushed to the front door, stood up, and used his front paws to claw at it hard!
Li Muyang followed him out and, going along with him, opened the door.
Mr. Li looked over, holding a lighter as he prepared to light a cigarette.
“Yangyang, where are you going?”
Yan Jiyun’s eyes widened. He was actually going to use the lighter? Was he trying to die?!
He pushed at the door with all his strength. Li Muyang found his door-pushing antics adorable, and all those unpleasant memories from earlier came to an abrupt halt.
He thought, ‘In this world, there was still such a cute creature. Sesame is very cute.’
To keep the black cat from being spotted, he used the door to block himself and Sesame. He looked back at his father, saw him about to light the cigarette, and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Dad, don’t use the lighter!”
But Mr. Li seemed not to hear. There was a click — Mr. Li’s thumb had pressed the lighter’s wheel.
Boom!!!
The explosion drowned out everything.
[Livestream Channel]
“Ahhhh! No! My kitty!”
“Ohhh… the instance finally ended. Li Muyang still died in the end.”
“Wuwuwu, poor cat streamer, couldn’t even finish a single instance!”
“Is the cat just gone like that? Will there be another cat streamer in the future? Dog streamers are okay too.”
“Where’s my kitty? Don’t tell me it really died in the blast! I just became a fan! How could such an adorable kitty streamer die?!”
“Gone… gone… another lovely streamer is gone.”
