Raising a Little Cat God

Super A-level looks-obsessed cat god bottom × loyal mixed-race chaebol pretty-boy top

[Blurb saved by Bailing on 250708, 20K/300K]

[For the early access version of Chapter One, scroll all the way to the bottom]

Pick up where the first two books left off. Old-school urban supernatural style.

The whole thing is nonsense, so please don't nitpick the logic.

One-on-one, first love. The top is sexually pure, and the bottom is, well, also pure (!). Mainly bottom's POV, with a bit of bottom-pampering.

A cool-faced, cute, tsundere, slightly muscular bottom! The cover shows the bottom in his nonhuman form.

People say that spirits aren't allowed to take form after the founding of the country. Jiang Zhuo was born in a daze back in the Song dynasty, mastered the strengths of countless schools, and could punch a fierce tiger on South Mountain and kick a flood dragon in the North Sea. Now a cat god with a government position in the Special Affairs Department of the National Superpower Risk Control Administration, his ideal is to live off the public payroll and sleep all day.

But cats are good, and people are bad. In this era of sparse spiritual energy, where cultivation is harder than losing weight, a group of people have set their sights on superpowered individuals! Worse still, during the Special Affairs Department's in-depth investigation, a key member was killed.

Jiang Zhuo was furious! Just because this kitty hasn't shown his claws, you think I'm Hello Kitty? To infiltrate the enemy's ranks, he starved himself for two whole months, until his face grew thin and even two of his proudly displayed eight-pack abs had disappeared. Then, looking "weak, pitiful, and helpless," he hunched his six-foot-two frame and moved into a haunted house famous throughout the area.

He wanted to see which blind fool dared to mess with Grandpa Cat!

I deliberately went for an academic style, so the writing is less literary than my other works. Please bear with me.

The cat god has lived a thousand years and had a hundred or so friends with benefits. He used to always be the top! (Content warning: this isn't a both-are-pure story, but it is their first love! After all, you were born before I was... Please only read if you're okay with that.)

The top is one-eighth Russian, a handsome miner, and a younger guy who whines and dotes on his husband like crazy. This guy is seriously split-personality and has the energy of a human-sized teddy bear.

Both of them are constantly hiding behind secret identities. The bottom's identity gets exposed first. Looking forward to the day the top's secret identity is revealed!

I usually write serious fiction, so this is a rare attempt at a fun, indulgent story. Please don't read it looking for logic.

I'm not writing an outline or chapter plan for this book, to cure my mind-mapping obsession.

I'll keep writing all three books in rotation, so you'll never have to worry about running out of things to read!

[Chapter One]

"No way, I'm not going to 667, Lane 8888, Zhenning Road!"

"Sir, I've been trying to flag down a car since this afternoon. I've stopped more than thirty," the young man said. He pushed up the glasses sliding down his nose and patted the suitcase beside him, big enough to fit a person. He looked rather pitiful. "It's almost dark. I'll pay extra, no meter. Can you take me?"

"You're not from around here, are you?" Liu Jin snorted.

"No, I'm doing my graduate studies at Jing University." The young man hurried to explain. "A few friends invited me to explore. I heard there's a pretty famous haunted house here."

"Explore! Explore! I just don't understand why young people these days treat their lives like they don't matter!" Liu Jin spat out his words. "That place isn't just haunted. Counting that idiot influencer who went live there the month before last, nine people have ended up in the ground! Are you in such a hurry to join them and make it an even ten?"

"Sir, the others have already arrived. I'm the only one stuck halfway there with no ride..." The young man was unfazed, lowering both his head and his voice.

Liu Jin's eyes shifted. In this remote place, fares usually earned him just enough for a pack of cheap cigarettes. It was rare for such a fat sheep to walk right into his lap. He'd tried to talk him out of it. Worst case, he could call the police. There was no need to turn down money, right?

Once he'd made up his mind, Liu Jin cleared his throat and stopped arguing. "Six hundred!"

"Sure. Could you open the trunk?"

"I'll put it in for you. Get in, and don't get in my way."

The taxi crawled to a stop at the entrance to the road. Liu Jin climbed out with a grim face, picked up the suspiciously heavy suitcase, shoved it into the trunk, and slammed it shut. He swore, got into the driver's seat, started the car, and finally set off at a leisurely pace. Only then did he glance in the rearview mirror, habitually sizing up the passenger he'd just fleeced.

As the young man had said, dusk had already settled in. But his skin was strikingly pale, the sort of fair complexion rarely seen in a small town, and Liu Jin couldn't help taking another look. The young man wore a white T-shirt printed with a black cat, and an old digital watch on his wrist. His sleek black hair and huge black-framed glasses hid his whole face, leaving only a small, pointed chin visible. He looked like a complete bookworm.

Liu Jin regretted his price. Spoiled college students were the easiest to swindle. He'd definitely asked for too little. Still, he could make up for it by cultivating a repeat customer. He plastered on a smile. "How many days are you staying here?"

"A week. My friends will drive me back." The young man raised his phone. Its screen was full of colors, showing some sort of match-three game. Before Liu Jin could get a good look, the young man crossed one leg over the other and buried himself in the game again.

That was his way of telling the driver to stop talking.

Liu Jin's face turned cold, and he stomped on the gas.

The young man let out an "Awooo!"

The rest of the ride passed in silence.

The wheels rolled on, and the road grew narrower and narrower. Liu Jin took the shortest route, winding through one turn after another, until the buildings became faint and low. In less than an hour, the shabby veins beneath the town's surface had been laid bare.

After passing a cemetery, the little car finally lurched its way into the mountains. The locals of Chengxin District preferred to call them hills rather than mountains. Here, all that remained of the city was its outline. From a distance, it looked like a mirage on the horizon. On the other side of the hills lay a sea piled high with garbage.

Zhenning Road. They'd arrived.

Jiang Zhuo was long-legged, his hands and feet braced against the car's ceiling and the front seat. His head bobbed with every bump in the road. He'd been dead to the world for half an hour.

The car reeked of cheap tobacco, sour sweat, and old leather upholstery, nowhere near as comfortable as the official car assigned to him by the bureau. On top of that, he hadn't eaten for far too many days. It was a miracle Jiang Zhuo had held on this long.

"Hey! Wake up! How many friends are coming?" Liu Jin deliberately raised his voice. "Don't sleep! We're here!" He glanced out at the eerily lush scenery, and goose bumps crawled up his neck.

"Oh." Jiang Zhuo jolted awake, took off his glasses, rubbed his face hard, then put them back on.

The dying light slanted into the car and landed in his eyes. In that fleeting glimpse, they glittered like glass. Unfortunately, Liu Jin was busy checking the six hundred yuan he'd just received on his phone. He didn't notice the faint glimmer at all.

"There, I'll drop you at number 658." Liu Jin shifted gears and pointed to a narrower, darker road beside them. "Turn in there, then go straight east for a few hundred meters. The first building with red walls is the 667 you're looking for." He urged his passenger to get out, eager to end a ride that made his spine crawl.

"Thanks, sir." Jiang Zhuo got out and grunted as he dragged the enormous suitcase from the trunk.

"Don't forget to leave me a five-star review!"

Rattle, rattle, clunk! Clunk! The wheels sang wildly across the concrete, carrying their owner away until he gradually disappeared into the night.

It hadn't rained for days. The late-summer sea breeze was so humid it made one's skin crawl. Liu Jin shook his head, ready to turn around and leave, when a desperate need to pee hit him. He looked around. There was nothing but wilderness, with irritating insects chirping everywhere. He cursed his bad luck, whistled a tune that sounded far less confident than he intended, and stumbled toward a clump of bushes.

After relieving himself on the bushes, Liu Jin felt much better. He stopped whistling, zipped up, and glanced back toward Villa 667. The land was higher over there, and from this angle he could just make out the side of the detached villa.

But that single glance made every hair on his body stand on end!

The red-walled villa looked like blood ink splashed across the night, thickly wrapped in mist. Its windows were hundreds of times blacker and more lifeless than the star-speckled summer night around them!

Liu Jin fled in blind panic, his heart racing as fast as the wheels of his car.

What friends? No one had arrived at all!

The insects' chirping stretched the sound of the suitcase wheels scraping against the ground into an endless rasp. Jiang Zhuo pressed his lips together and dragged the case through the night.

Two months earlier, Wen Xiuya, an agent sent to investigate the haunted house on Zhenning Road, had suddenly lost contact with the organization. After an unrelenting search, half a month later they finally found a corpse floating in Port Bay, fifty miles from here.

When one of his subordinates was killed, Jiang Zhuo went to the scene himself. This was already the twenty-seventh recorded case of a superpowered person being murdered in the space of just six months.

The previous cases were extremely difficult to investigate because the crime scenes were widely scattered and the bodies had been found years apart. Ironically, Wen Xiuya's case had become the only lead they had at present.

The data showed that the higher a person's superpower level, the greater their concentration of gu. All twenty-seven victims had been drained of large amounts of blood, and almost no gu could be detected in what remained.

This was a hunt targeting superpowered individuals.

No one in the bureau knew Jiang Zhuo's true background.

Time seemed to have stopped for him. He'd been there from the very first day the National Superpower Risk Control Administration opened its doors. Later, when its core division, the Special Affairs Department, was established, the higher-ups had named him its director outright.

The mysterious Director Jiang had an especially peculiar work style.

He clocked in right on time every day and loved ordering milk tea for everyone in the department. His favorite was mint milk tea from Claw Buddy. After finishing his own, he would lean back in his grand chair without a care in the world. In all 365 days of the year, no one had ever seen him lift a finger, let alone do any actual work.

Gradually, some young recruits from powerful families began to grumble that he was a nepo hire. The veterans only smiled meaningfully when they heard this.

Fortunately, Jiang Zhuo had been blessed with looks. He appeared to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with sharp brows, thin lips, and a refined, dignified bearing. His eyes were like snow and frost on distant mountains. With his pale, handsome face, he had the deceptively capable look of an elite, as long as he wasn't asleep.

The bureau wasn't about to waste such a valuable asset. They polished his photo until it gleamed and hung it in the most prominent place on the Wall of Honor, where it served as a mascot to guard the premises. They even put his picture on the counter of the fake reception desk in the lobby.

Now, for this case, Jiang the Lucky Cat Mascot was going all out.

Theme: The righteous path through this world is full of hardship.