"Mrow! Mrow! Mrow!"
"Awoo!"
A few swats later, the wolf pup stared at Yimi in total bewilderment, then belatedly backed away to give her room.
In a wolf pack, only the alpha had first pick of the food.
Yimi didn't go straight for the dusty feast in the ruins. She looked down at her own paws first.
Back to normal. The roots that had spread from them moments ago felt like nothing but a hallucination — yet Yimi had a rough understanding of what had happened.
Neither the System nor the corpse's owner had explained any of it. She had simply drunk the spring water, and the knowledge came as naturally as a newborn understanding how to breathe. The blind girl had probably received it the same way.
Everything obtained at the spring had to be used up before sunset. But "used up" could not mean giving things away for free, or any exchange so unequal it was practically a gift.
"Mrow?"
Yimi didn't understand. She had already drained the spring dry.
It was only now that she grasped the source of that lingering discomfort — something like indigestion, but not entirely physical.
She looked at the still-steaming food in the ruins and gave it a careful lick.
"Mrow QAQ!"
"Ow ow ow ow ow—"
A string of distressed sounds.
Too hot. But cool it down a little and she could absolutely eat it — Famine's enhancements had already given her the constitution to handle cooked food.
What the spring provided was something precious to the person who had lost it. For an ordinary human visitor, what appeared might have been something more conventionally valuable.
In a climate where every exhaled breath turned to white mist, cooling the food to a temperature Yimi could tolerate didn't take long.
From hungry envy, to bewilderment, to outright existential crisis — under the wolf pup's increasingly horrified gaze, Yimi opened her small mouth (which couldn't even fit a lightbulb) and demolished a feast that ten people might struggle to finish. Not even the bones remained.
Delicious.
She thought back to the life she used to live and felt genuinely aggrieved on her past self's behalf.
After finishing, she tucked all four limbs beneath herself and settled down to rest and digest.
Still the same round ball of fur. Not an inch wider.
Holy Corpse collected: (7/10)
The ear pieces, like the eyeballs, only counted as 0.5 each — which still left three pieces remaining.
Yimi reached inward, sensing the Stand's spiritual energy. What had once been perfectly clear — like still water — now radiated a brilliant, glowing light on its own. And yet, even now, the cat still couldn't figure out what any of it was actually for.
"Awoo..." The wolf pup made another pitiful sound. It circled Yimi twice, found nothing left behind, and flopped down right beside her, staring fixedly at her face and wagging its tail with a hopeful, expectant look.
Wolf pup: Attempting to curry favor.
In Yimi's eyes: This filthy dog dares wave its tail at me — a declaration of war!
"Mrow-wow!"
Claws sheathed. She delivered a rapid-fire series of cat-slaps straight to its head.
"Awoo, awoo, awoo..."
The System, apparently unable to watch any longer, volunteered its presence: "Note for Host: For canines, tail wagging — beyond balance — typically expresses happiness and that they like you."
"Mrow?"
So that was it. Since Uncle Nuomi, who was older and well-acquainted with cat customs, never wagged his tail around her, Yimi had simply never known.
She began trying to recall other things dogs did differently from cats. A vague memory surfaced — Uncle Nuomi went out every single day, and always had to wear a collar...
...
"A cat that cultivated into an immortal? What nonsense are you talking about? This is America."
Race seed competitor Hert Panz looked at Ted Khan speechlessly — he had somehow ended up riding alongside her — her real identity as a church nun momentarily escaping her own mind.
Why is this guy so superstitious?
Then again...
She rubbed her chin and considered for a moment. "Besides the strange cat, did you see anything else? Something like... a 'corpse'?"
Ted Khan's face drained of color. "A corpse?! There's a corpse too?! I knew that cat wasn't going to let me off — does America sell paper talismans? I know you call them fortune-tellers here, right?!"
"Calm down. You were probably half-asleep. There's no such thing as a talking cat in this world. Even if there were, it would probably be—"
Something caught in her peripheral vision — jarring, wrong. She turned to look.
A small panda-patterned kitten, walking entirely upright on its hind legs.
One paw gripping a rope. The other end looped around the neck of a wolf pup nearly twice its size.
She was looking at a cat walking a wolf.
"..."
Ted Khan's face had gone sheet white. "That cat is still coming after me, for God's sake!"
His horse, more frightened of the cat than of its own rider, bolted before he could even raise his whip.
The cold had not broken. A second round of snowfall forced most riders to make camp — traveling over fragile ice and slippery ground only drained the horses, and there was nothing to be gained from pushing on.
Yimi dropped the attempt at walking upright and set off through the snow toward the next Holy Corpse, the wolf pup trotting at her side.
Not far. Without the snow resistance — or the wolf pup as dead weight — she could have covered the distance in under an afternoon. Even with her other senses sharpened, her reliance on smell hadn't changed. Especially in conditions where Yimi herself was not necessarily taller than the snowdrifts.
"Awoo!" — not from the wolf pup beside her, but a howl rising from a pack less than a hundred meters away.
"Awoo!" The pup answered and began circling Yimi in excited loops.
"Mrow?" She tilted her head.
The wolf pup took one step toward the sound, then gently closed its mouth around Yimi's front paw and tugged toward the pack, urging her to follow.
Yimi understood. She pulled her paw free, gave her tail two slow wags at the pup, then turned and dove headfirst into a snowdrift, pressing on toward the Holy Corpse's location. After a full meal, the snow didn't feel quite so cold anymore.
"Awoo! Awoo!" The pup came running after her, reaching for her paw again — and was swatted firmly away.
Tail wagging, sad and confused, it watched the little ball of fur accelerate into the distance.
All it could do was watch from where it stood, until the pack arrived and brought it home.
Yimi had her own home to return to. Almost there now.
The time was 5:13 PM. Yimi, who owned no watch and couldn't read one anyway, had no idea.
"What a cute little kitty! Can I pet you?" A small girl at the roadside came over holding out a sugar cube, making her best attempt at a head-pat request.
Yimi stared at the cube for a moment, determined it wasn't worth eating, and slipped between the girl's legs to decline.
She had spent the whole afternoon running to this small town. The next Holy Corpse was somewhere close.
Perhaps because the town's population was nearly as sparse as the village, this time the location came through with unusual clarity.
The exhaustion from plowing through snowdrifts for hours seemed to vanish all at once. Yimi broke into a sprint toward it.
And stopped.
"Mrow!"
Roots were growing from her paws — silently, without warning — because the sun was about to go down.
Why? She had eaten everything. Did integrating a Holy Corpse not count as "using it up?"