"Command your power — do not become the disaster itself." This was the Saint's warning, left behind once more.
"..."
"I do apologize, guest — you dropped a few other things just now, didn't you?"
In the midst of the standoff, the black-haired girl had somehow composed herself entirely, as if nothing had happened. She settled calmly to her knees and performed a bow — a gesture Yimi had never once seen anyone from her home use.
Three items materialized beside her: canned softshell turtle, turtle soup, and the live turtle Yimi had slapped into the ground at the very beginning.
Yimi took a step back, ears pinned flat like airplane wings. "None of these are mine!"
The girl appeared not to hear. "How honest of you, guest. In that case, I'll give you all three."
Only then did Yimi understand what the spring's rule actually was.
"You've gathered quite a few things here. I imagine after what just happened, you won't want to leave anything behind here. But my parents taught me to be honest — so I must remind you. Everything you received at this spring must be used up before sunset. Do you understand? Everything. Before sunset."
Yimi hadn't fully followed, and didn't understand what this human intended to do next. But cats are petty creatures — she wasn't about to forget what had just happened just because the girl had suddenly changed her tune.
"'Famine!'"
The girl's expression shifted. "Wait — what are you doing?"
Yimi opened her small mouth and bit directly into the ancient tree's dry bark. Despite being a small animal, her bite force punched clean through.
"Stop!"
Hiss —
The wolf pup that had been lying at the base of the tree must have sensed something. It yelped and bolted.
In almost the same instant, the ancient tree — already withered — seemed to shed every last drop of moisture at once. The bark split open. The weight became too much. Without any outside force, the trunk buckled and collapsed on itself.
Even so, new shoots pushed up from the roots, tangling and twisting as they reached again toward the light — only to be crushed flat by Yimi and the girl crashing down on top of them.
Staring at the new growth, Yimi pieced it together.
The guardian spirit protecting the remains — functioning like a Stand to guard the body — had nothing to do with the girl or the tree. The true form was the spring itself, the source of that irresistible scent.
"Mrow!"
The indignant cat trotted over and settled at the water's edge. Under the girl's stunned gaze, Yimi began to lap.
Cats and dogs can only drink this way — no quick, human gulps. But in the girl's eyes — if she could truly see anything — the water level dropped noticeably with every passing second.
And at this moment, the girl felt the spring's excitement surge again.
What was it excited about?
Sweet. Delicious. More intoxicating than catnip — addictive, impossible to stop. As the water level sank, Yimi had to lean further and further in, until finally she jumped into the pool itself and lapped until not a single drop remained on her barbed tongue.
The whole process had taken less than half a minute. More impossibly, Yimi's size hadn't changed at all.
"Congratulations, Host! Achievement Unlocked: [Tom Cat]. Reward: [Skill Book: Basic Cooking]."
For the first time, Yimi felt truly full — though it came with a peculiar discomfort, distinct from the ache of overeating.
She turned to find dozens of dazed figures standing around the black-haired girl. Had Yimi looked up earlier, she might have recognized them as the faces once embedded in the bark.
"Awoo!" The timid wolf pup scrambled behind Yimi at the sight of so many people.
Yimi flattened her ears and let out a slow, rumbling growl.
"Stop, please — stop," the girl said quickly. "We're victims too!"
"...Awoo?"
"Xiuge!" A figure — likely one of the girl's parents — stepped in front of her, eyes scanning the ground for anything that might serve as a weapon.
They treated Yimi as the threat, not the wolf beside her. They had seen everything.
"Please, let me explain."
From the very beginning, this girl had treated Yimi as someone capable of understanding her.
"We were tested by the spring just as you were. The difference is — we answered honestly." She gripped her walking staff with both hands, voice tight with barely concealed fear. "Anyone who lies gets their organs torn out by vines as punishment. That is certain. It has nothing to do with us."
But in a world where these old fables had long since spread far and wide, even those with ulterior motives had learned to answer honestly — which was why she had been genuinely surprised when Yimi lied.
"As I reminded you earlier: if you answered honestly, you were required to use up everything you received here before sunset. Anyone who failed became fruit on the great tree — and your replacement would have set me free..."
The spring's guardian. Or rather — an uncontrolled puppet?
That was her situation. Though even if Yimi had taken her place, it wouldn't have made Yimi the next guardian — there were still so many others waiting in line. Yimi would simply have been added to the back of the queue.
No one knew who the spring had claimed first. No one knew how it had accumulated so many souls over the centuries. The rules of the ancient tree had existed since a saint's remains were buried here a thousand years ago.
One thing was certain: all of it was driven by human greed.
The guardian's own desperate longing for freedom had led her to conceal the sunset rule. But more often, it was the visitors themselves — seeing such a miraculous spring, wanting to throw everything they owned into it to be transformed — who ended up unable to spend it all before dark, and were thus absorbed.
Yet the spring held one merciful condition: if even a single person successfully "spent" everything they had received — including the remains — before sundown, every soul trapped in the great tree would be freed.
In a thousand years, no one had managed it. Until now, accomplished in the most blunt, rough, and thoroughly graceless manner imaginable...
Yimi glanced at the freed souls. They were all backing away — slowly, step by step. She remembered the System's earlier prompt: finish things off, prevent future complications.
Her claws extended.
"Command your power — do not become the disaster itself." The phantom of the corpse's owner materialized once more, as if it had read her thoughts.
"...Mrow."
Yimi turned away and began pawing through the ruins for the Holy Corpse. She had no more interest in any of these people.
"Awoo!"
The wolf pup wagged its tail and followed — mainly eyeing the feast that had appeared alongside the remains.
Yimi had no interest in any of that either. Before she was a year old, she had once stolen a piece of braised pork her mother had dropped — but the freshly cooked meat was still scalding hot, and she'd spent the next few minutes sprinting around the room yowling with her tongue hanging out, until Grandma finally caught her and rubbed her head until she settled down.
But as the wolf pup opened its jaws toward the feast, roots of a tree grew from Yimi's claws out of nowhere.
While the cat was busy integrating the Holy Corpse, the villagers didn't waste a single moment. They fled without a backward glance, terrified that a change of heart might bring the cat hunting for them later. Who could predict what a wild animal might decide?
"Xiuge — can you still... see?"
The reason her parent was guiding her by the arm was that Xiuge was completely blind. She had relied on the spring's granted perception — and her intimate knowledge of the terrain — to move freely. Now that the spring was gone, she had reverted to an ordinary blind person.
"Hm? I'm fine, Mom."
"That cat doesn't seem to be following us..." Someone glanced back.
"The cat..."
Xiuge paused.
Through the spring's perception, what she had 'seen' was not a cat.
And...
She turned toward where the spring had been swallowed whole. While the hollow of the tree was still intact, she had caught something on the wind — a sound that might have been human: ghostlike, ethereal, yet distinct enough to have planted the first seed of fear in her.
Not a single syllable in isolation. A complete phrase, spoken in a deep and resonant voice —
"You come."