You are a cat demon

Several months have passed in the blink of an eye, and your right hind leg still shows no signs of improvement. Although there's no worsening of the condition, it's really frustrating. Sometimes, even the slightest strain will make you groan in pain. You genuinely feel that it would be better if it just got better quickly or completely failed, so you wouldn't have to worry about it all the time.

You've suffered so much.

You used to walk briskly on four legs, but now you have to support your body on three legs. It's not something you're used to, and you're even having trouble walking.

Not to mention, your hunting ability has declined significantly. Large herbivores are a different story; before, you could easily catch birds in trees and fish in rivers, but now you can't even get into the water, and at best you can only stand on the bank and attack the fish that surface and blow bubbles. Your jumping ability has also been greatly reduced; sometimes you lie in ambush for a long time and still can't catch a single bird, only able to watch helplessly from below.

It's the season when food is plentiful, and carnivorous monsters have no shortage of food and drink. But while other cat monsters can choose their food like at a buffet, you're struggling to even get the most basic sustenance. Although cat monsters are very resistant to hunger, your situation is special. You're in the age of rapid growth and development, and you need to eat a lot of food every day to nourish your body. When you're really hungry, you can only turn your attention to small rodents like mice.

In the traditional view, it's natural for cats to catch mice, but the rules weren't set by cat demons. Mice are just in your food chain, not indispensable. If you could catch tender, nutritious prey like sika deer or argali under normal conditions, you wouldn't care about the meager bits of mouse meat that wouldn't even fill a tooth gap. However, that being said, baby mice are especially delicious, fragrant and tender, and you used to enjoy digging up and eating newly hatched baby mice.

With your current skill level, you can only choose the easiest-to-obtain food, like mice...

You can't take it anymore.

You've never been so humiliated in your life.

It was a bright and sunny morning. You went out to forage and passed by several sika deer. Not one of them ran away. Those that wanted to graze grazed, and those that wanted to drink water drank. Even the fawns that were still nursing weren't afraid of you. Two of the bolder sika deer even walked up to you with their heads held high and snorted loudly, as if spitting in your face. If this had happened before, they would have wished they had more legs and would have scrambled away the moment your shadow appeared.

The stark contrast between the past and present leaves you disoriented, suddenly feeling like a slave betraying their master and blowing up your granary. You're furious, but all you've got is a leg injury, not a death sentence!

You either have to endure the humiliation or make the person who humiliated you pay the price. You have no other choice, and being proud and arrogant, you naturally chose the latter.

You let out a roar, pretending to pounce on one of the sika deer and gouge out its eyes. The sika deer indeed looked terrified and took several steps back. You took the opportunity to duck between them and pounce on the clueless fawn who didn't know what was happening.

You know that killing an adult deer in your current state is too difficult. Just in case, you should target the weakest one. You'd have a better chance of success if you went after a fawn.

Just when you thought you were about to succeed, before your front paws could even touch the fawn, you suddenly felt yourself fly upside down. After a brief moment of dizziness, you found yourself lying sprawled on the ground, pain spreading throughout your body like ants crawling all over you.

At this moment, the fawn's mother gave you a disdainful look, let out two insulting whimpers, and then led the fawn away. The other sika deer also snorted as they passed by you…

You're luckier than that one-eyed cat demon, but in reality, you're probably just more patient.

You have the strength to get up, but you don't want to get up yet, so you lie sprawled on the ground, questioning your existence. At this moment, the thought of "closing your eyes and kicking your legs, and just passing away" pops into your head, but this thought only lasts for a second or two before you shake your head and get rid of it.

The world is a beautiful place, why are you doing this?

There must be a reason why the leg injury hasn't healed.

Lately, you've been struggling to find enough food to survive, barely getting any rest, which has hindered the healing of your injuries. Plus, the hot weather means more parasites; you were infected before, had a high fever, and spent three days and three nights in a cave. We thought you were going to see your great-grandmother then, but you miraculously recovered. It could also be psychological; the more you want it to get better, the less it seems to heal; the more you want it to give you a death sentence, the more it seems to give you a reprieve. Or perhaps there are other possibilities…

You try hard to recall the events of that day—though you really don't want to remember the painful memory of how that tragedy began, the bloody scene playing on repeat in your mind.

The diagonal corners were swept by a strong wind and a strong killing intent, along with the bright purple flowers on the ground...

Purple flowers?

You jolted awake and sat up abruptly, which aggravated your wound and caused your whole body to tremble violently.

That day you returned to that oak forest. To be honest, you really didn't want to go back to this place that left you with such painful memories, not in your entire life. But you had to figure it out, and give your injured leg some closure.

The purple flowers are still blooming everywhere...