After breaking the Array, Gu Ming gazed at the rift before him. Instead of recklessly entering with his physical body, he released his Divine Sense and sent a wisp of Sword Qi through the opening to investigate what lay inside.
As the tendrils of his Divine Sense extended into the rift, the image in his Perception flickered, revealing a stone forest.
The stone forest wasn’t large, and the sky was a gloomy, dark color. Through the thin, low-hanging clouds, Gu Ming could easily see the black void beyond.
This was an extrely unstable fragnt of a world. The fact that the stray Little Black Cat was living here was quite peculiar.
Gu Ming had initially assud the system took notice of this stray Little Black Cat simply because the creature was lucky.
But now, it seed its ability to slip into a spatial rift unknown to others was a sign of its own special nature.
He cautiously navigated his Divine Sense through the unstable Space. Before long, he spotted a dilapidated wooden cabin standing in the middle of the stone forest.
At the cabin’s entrance were several faint paw prints that matched those of the Little Black Cat.
Following behind Gu Ming’s Divine Sense, the Divine Senses of Yuan Ge and Lu You also entered, allowing them to see the scene clearly.
"What is this?" Gu Ming asked.
Yuan Ge followed Gu Ming’s gaze. In front of the small wooden cabin stood a wooden plaque engraved with a pattern resembling a school emblem, one that was extrely similar to that of the local Cyan Wood Beastmaster Academy.
Yuan Ge recognized it. It was the old school emblem, slightly different from the current version.
Soone unfamiliar with the academy’s history might have been confused by the similar emblem, but Yuan Ge knew this was the old version from several years back.
The three directed their Divine Senses through an opening in the dilapidated cabin. Inside, they saw the Little Black Cat curled up on a pile of straw, resting with its eyes closed, completely unaware of their intrusion.
It was understandable. The cat was only One-star Level, and given its clumsy behavior while foraging, detecting a probe from a Divine Sense would be a tall order.
Gu Ming’s Divine Sense swept through the room, taking in the signs of a human Beastmaster’s life.
There was a diary on a desk, several empty bottles beside it, used containers for Pet Beast food, an old-style, standard-issue university instructor’s robe on a clothes rack, and a great many old books on a bookshelf.
For instance, there were titles like Light Refraction Concealnt Array Technique and Dark Side Shield Array Technique. Looking at the covers, Gu Ming could vaguely recognize about a dozen well-known books.
The other few dozen, however, were unfamiliar to him.
Judging by their curled pages, they had to be ancient. They might have even been published forty or fifty years ago.
The research value of such old books was actually quite low. As the Beast Taming Realm’s field of study developed and evolved, much of the old knowledge had been rendered obsolete.
As Gu Ming looked at the bookshelf, the system’s notification panel in his vision began to scroll with updates.
You have entered the old janitor’s secret hideout.
You have discovered a dilapidated Array device and a crumbling Space.
Logically, with the low intensity of this Space, it should have collapsed over thirty years ago.
Yet, it miraculously persists, as if a divine will, awaiting its master’s return, is forcefully maintaining its existence.
Inside the cabin, they found a diary lying open. It contained the old janitor’s entries about raising stray animals:
"October 25th. Discovered a new Little Black Cat today. It can draw starlight at night and hide in shadows during the day. Unfortunately, its body is too weak. It suffers from light weakness disease, and its Light Spiritual Root is in a state of reverse decay..."
"March 5th. The third round of dicinal treatnt is over, but the Little Black Cat hasn’t improved. The heavens gave it Light and Dark Dual Spiritual Roots, only to strangle its future. Perhaps if I find a good ho for it, they can cure its Light Spiritual Root... but my ti is running out..."
The diary entries stopped on March 5th, with nothing written after.
The diary revealed that it wasn’t just this Little Black Cat. Most of the other stray animals also suffered from rare and complex diseases, and the majority had already passed away.
These conditions couldn’t be cured with ordinary treatnt. They required extrely expensive Spirit dicines and advanced therapies to eliminate the source of the illness and salvage their Talent.
However, the cost of such treatnt was high enough to simply purchase a Pet Beast of comparable Talent from any Pet Beast Store.
That was why the old janitor had never been able to find good hos for them with people willing to shoulder that financial burden.
The handwriting on the last few pages was ssy, filled with a palpable sense of exhaustion and helplessness.
Reading between the lines, they could infer that even before he passed away from his illness, the old janitor had still been worrying about finding hos for these stray Pet Beasts.
If it were rely a matter of keeping them alive, ordinary at would have sufficed. However, their bodies would have slowly degenerated into those of common animals, a fate he couldn’t bear to see.
The little ones that were never adopted had likely all left this Space and were now living in the outside world.
Only this Little Black Cat had chosen to remain in the spatial rift discovered by the old janitor, guarding the dilapidated wooden cabin, becoming its final guardian.
As Gu Ming read the fragnted entries in the diary, he suddenly understood why the Little Black Cat was so wary of humans.
It had likely witnessed the old janitor’s desperate and helpless efforts to save its kin. It had probably seen its companions abandoned because of the expense. That must be why it was so indifferent to the idea of "adoption"—so much so that it would turn and leave the mont the word was ntioned.
As for how it managed to survive in this unstable spatial rift all this ti, it was because the place was familiar territory.
This place was its den, after all. Getting ho was naturally much easier for it than it had been for Gu Ming to break in.
Using the information from the diary, Yuan Ge took out his phone and started searching old student forums for posts about stray animals.
Before long, Yuan Ge found posts from alumni sharing their mories and anecdotes about the old janitor.
Just a few months prior, many students had even started a morial thread for him when he passed away.
Yuan Ge stared at the posts, montarily lost in thought.
It seed this spatial rift was a place the old janitor had discovered many years ago and secretly concealed with a Light and Dark Array, turning it into his own private little world.
Perhaps because his illness beca severe, he never had the chance to take care of things before he died. That was why this unstable fragnt of Space was left behind, never passed on to anyone else.
And the Little Black Cat, lying there on its bed of straw, looked just like a sentinel waiting for the master of the house to return.
The Little Black Cat, however, did not know that the person it was waiting for had already died and would never return.
Gu Ming’s Divine Sense settled on the small, curled-up form of the Little Black Cat. He suddenly felt that this emaciated little creature carried sothing far heavier than the label "Chaos Creature."
It was a vigil forgotten by ti, a devotion to soone who could never co back.
The yellowed Array Manuals on the bookshelf, the empty food bowl in the corner, the diary’s repeated ntions of "Just wait a little longer, a good ho will turn up"—they had all beco relics in this broken Space, silent testants to the past.
Lu You’s Divine Sense also scanned the diary’s contents. She remained silent for a while.
She had thought it was just an ordinary stray cat, never imagining such a history lay behind it.
The last few pages of the diary ntioned that the old janitor had tried everything he could think of to improve the cat’s constitution with common, local Spirit dicines, but he had passed away before he could finish.
Lu You’s Divine Sense gently brushed against Gu Ming’s within the Space. She said nothing, but the gesture conveyed a silent, mutual understanding.
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