You are a cat demon

Spring has finally arrived in every corner of Shennongjia, from the foot of the mountain to the summit, where lush greenery abounds. A ray of morning light spills across the endless mountains and fields, gilding the flowers, grasses, and trees with a golden edge. The azure sky is cloudless, and the gentle breeze carries the fragrance of a hundred flowers.

The cat demon cubs have reached the age where they should leave the nest.

This is the age when cat demons are most curious. At this time, every flower and leaf is something that interests you. Even a small grasshopper can keep you entertained for a whole day, provided you don't play with it to death.

Your brothers and sisters surrounded a little lark whose wings had not yet fully grown.

The lark's nest was built in the grass on the ground. There were no other nests around. Perhaps this little lark accidentally wandered into your territory while practicing flying. What a free toy!

Everyone was having a great time, and you were watching with a tingling heart. After all, you're just a three-month-old kitten demon. Playing is in your nature; you don't need to stare at the sky at a 45-degree angle every day. Besides, you don't even know why you do it. No one is ostracizing you; even the fifth cat, whom you previously ignored, is now surrounding the little lark and meowing at you in an inviting way. You realize how silly you've been.

So you stretched, as if to warm up. Then you pounced on the group and joined in.

This is also the most vulnerable time for cat demons. Any small enemy can easily kill you. Not to mention great demons, jackals, tigers, and leopards, let alone the natural enemy of all creatures—humans. Even if a crow flies by, that ugly black thing will drool and want to peck at your glass-like eyes.

Your mother would stand not far away, keeping watch for you. If she saw you running too far away, she would call out to remind you.

The eldest brother had the little lark in his mouth, and you and the fifth brother pounced to snatch it away. The eldest brother wasn't happy about it, and turned and ran away with the little lark in his mouth, making you both shout in dissatisfaction. "We agreed to play together, how can you hog the toy?" So you chased after him.

As you chased after him, the eldest disappeared into a thicket of bushes with small white flowers, and you, stepping on its shadow, wanted to plunge in as well.

In an instant, you felt a cool sensation on the tip of your nose, as if a black "lightning" had swept past your head. Before you could see what it was, you heard Lao Wu's scream from behind you.

When you look back, you realize that the black "lightning" is actually a cobra about two meters long, which is biting the fifth brother's front leg and wriggling its body, trying to wrap the fifth brother up.

Perhaps the cobra was lurking in the bushes from the beginning, and maybe its initial target wasn't you, but you disturbed it. Fate plays cruel jokes; you and the eldest brother escaped unscathed, while poor fifth brother became the victim.

Cobras are highly venomous snakes. Even adult cat demons, while not necessarily at a disadvantage in a head-on confrontation, would never easily provoke one unless they were desperate. Little cat demons like you should stay as far away as possible. At that time, it was the first time you had ever seen a cobra, and you were all dumbfounded, watching helplessly as your fifth brother, who was now entangled and foaming at the mouth, was left bewildered.

The scene was completely silent, except for the little lark in the boss's mouth that kept crying out in despair.

The mother let out a heart-wrenching roar and charged forward like an arrow, biting the cobra's vital spot and jerking it violently, as if trying to shatter every bone in its body. The cobra, not to be outdone, coiled around the mother's neck, attempting to strangle her, but how could it possibly be a match for a mother who had lost her young?

In less than fifteen minutes, the cobra's head was bitten to pieces and dismembered.

Afterwards, the mother went to the fifth child, who had already stopped breathing, and gently licked its gradually cooling body, just as it usually did when it woke you up from your sleep.

It was so quiet that only the sound of the evening breeze could be heard.

The mother licked for a while, probably thinking her child was too tired to get up, so she gently hummed a few times in its ear, like singing a lullaby. Finally, she gave her sleeping child a tender look and called for you to go back to your nest with it.

The little cat demons, unlike their usual mischievous selves, silently followed their mother home.

A white flower fell from the bush.