104: Chapter 104 On How to Deal with Enemies

Stepping out of the portal, Zhang Mu stood in the middle of the small hut and looked around.

As expected, Domit was still nowhere to be seen, and Leah was asleep. So, he dispelled the illusion sitting on the wooden chair by the wall and leisurely drifted toward the bedside.

"Mr. Zhang Mu?" Seemingly hearing his footsteps, Leah's cat ears twitched under the thin quilt, and she slowly opened her eyes.

"Aren't you going to sleep a bit longer?"

"Leah has had enough sleep." She lifted the quilt, rubbing her eyes as she got out of bed. "Mm, is it already dark?"

"Did Leah sleep for a whole day?"

Zhang Mu smiled. He took her hand, pushed open the door, and sat on a stone stool in the yard. Together, they tilted their heads back and gazed at the bright moon in the night sky.

"Leah, I can't stay in one place peacefully. In the future, I will travel around, do dangerous things, and live an unstable life."

"So, if you don't like such a life, I..."

"Mr. Zhang Mu." Leah, who was sitting on the stone stool, suddenly stood up. "Is—is it really because Leah eats too much? Are you going to abandon Leah?"

As she spoke, her small hands hurriedly reached into her pocket and pulled out the gold coins Zhang Mu had given her during the day, holding them out with both palms together.

"Leah doesn't need gold coins. Even eating wild fruit is fine. Leah can go into the mountains to pick wild fruit herself!"

"I told you, even if you ate non-stop every day, you wouldn't eat me out of house and home."

Zhang Mu pinched the gold coins and stuffed them back into her shorts pocket. He comfortingly stroked her cat ears, which were pressed tight against her head due to nervousness. "I'm just stating the facts."

"If you don't hate it, or if you aren't afraid of a life without a fixed home, I promise that no one can take you away from me."

Zhang Mu had given this decision careful consideration.

Undeniably, he really wanted to keep a golden-haired Cat Girl by his side to satisfy his urge to pet her every day.

But a casual remark during the phone call with Ye Ming made him realize that Leah wasn't a figurine; she was a demi-human with her own independent thoughts and will.

Therefore, he would inform her of everything they would face in the future without reservation and let her decide for herself.

This was respect.

If she hated running all over the continent, Zhang Mu would send her to a country where demi-humans gathered.

Staring at his face for a moment, Leah probably determined that these words weren't an excuse to drive her away, and her cat ears, which had been flat against her head, slowly perked up.

Approaching Zhang Mu, she climbed onto his lap and sat firmly. "Leah is fine with any kind of life, as long as she is with Mr. Zhang Mu."

"Then, for the days to come, please take care of me."

It was unfortunate for the Little Cat Girl to end up in the Kingdom of Lake, which extremely rejected demi-humans, but at the same time, she was very lucky to have met her foster parents and Zhang Mu.

Worried she might fall, Zhang Mu wrapped his left arm around her shoulders. His free hand stroked her silky, smooth golden hair as he changed the subject.

"Are you still missing your parents?"

"Leah misses them." She buried her head in Zhang Mu's chest. "Father and Mother always took good care of Leah. Even though they were ostracized by the uncle and aunt next door for it,"

"They never blamed Leah."

"Yeah." Zhang Mu thought of his own parents, who had left him at the entrance of an orphanage and whom he hadn't seen once since birth. His tone was somewhat sentimental. "People cannot be generalized."

"Your parents were very kind. They shouldn't have died in the mouth of a Thunder Wolf."

Hearing this, Leah's body in his arms trembled slightly, as if she were sobbing.

The reason he brought up her tragically deceased parents in such a mood-dampening way was that Zhang Mu had long noticed the sadness and pain she suppressed in her heart.

Perhaps because she wasn't familiar enough with him, she timidly hid this sorrow, not daring to confide in him for fear of causing annoyance.

Intentionally piercing her pretense that nothing was wrong to let her cry it out would make her feel better.

Saying nothing, Zhang Mu quietly waited for her emotions to calm down.

After a long while, the Little Cat Girl's sobbing slowly stopped.

Seeing this, Zhang Mu said, "Rest assured, I will personally inflict this hatred upon the perpetrator before long."

"But..." Leah raised her head and looked at Zhang Mu's face. "Revenge only deepens hatred; it can never eliminate or solve it."

Raising an eyebrow, he asked with a smile, "Did your parents teach you that?"

"Yes. Leah told Mother that when Leah grows up, she wants to give the humans who bullied her a good beating. Mother scolded me very angrily,"

"And then she told me those words."

"Is that so..." Zhang Mu grinned. "Then today, I will teach you another principle."

"An enemy should be ground to dust and scattered to the winds, leaving not even a trace."

"If you feel that you've gone too far relative to the severity of the conflict and feel a bit guilty, it's fine. Just go to his grave every year afterward and apologize to the tombstone."

Leah's expression was a bit dazed, unsure if she didn't understand or was shocked by this violent theory.

Patting her head, Zhang Mu explained with a smile, "You can regret being excessive, reflect on whether you were cruel, or even feel uneasy about the other party's miserable death."

"But the premise for all of that is that you are alive and the enemy is dead."

This rather extreme style of conduct was something Zhang Mu had pondered and summarized over his twenty-plus years of life experience.

Whether it was correct or not, he still wasn't sure, but Zhang Mu was certain that doing so would allow him to live comfortably.

Wasn't that enough?

Compared to lying in a coffin and having an enemy praise his indomitable courage, respect his unwavering will, and spread his epic deeds, Zhang Mu felt it was better for the roles to be reversed.

He swore that he would hype up an enemy who had become a corpse as a Legendary figure.

Looking down, he saw Leah's face was full of daze. Knowing she couldn't fully understand his meaning for the time being, he didn't say more.

"The days we spend together will be long. I will teach you slowly."

Leah understood this sentence. A smile appeared on her small face, and she nodded heavily. "Mm!"

Afterward, they didn't continue chatting, quietly enjoying the moonlight that was as hazy as gauze until late at night when Domit pushed open the courtyard door.

Zhang Mu was somewhat surprised that he actually returned tonight; he thought he wouldn't see him until the morning after tomorrow.

Domit explained that he had originally intended to do as Zhang Mu said, but the villagers were all ordinary people, and their bodies could hardly support the high intensity of forging non-stop for a day and a night. He had no choice but to let everyone go home and rest first.

After saying that, the three didn't chat and went inside to rest together.

Because there was only one bed, the three of them certainly couldn't fit. Domit directly laid out a wooden board on the floor and lay down. Zhang Mu first put Leah on the bed and then followed suit.

The night passed in silence.

At the first light of the next day, Domit got up and went out.

Zhang Mu was worried that Leah staying cooped up in the house would affect her mood, so he planned to take her for a stroll in the village.

Perhaps because she had slept too long during the day yesterday, Leah had tossed and turned until dawn before falling asleep last night. She was currently sleeping soundly.

Seeing this, Zhang Mu didn't wake her.

Thinking to himself that he would have to flip her biological clock after they set off, he created an illusion and summoned the portal to return to reality.

Standing in the living room, he pulled out his phone. Song Lan had already sent the address of the auction.

With nothing else to do, he might as well go and see.

Pocketing his phone, he changed his clothes, went straight out of the residential area to hail a taxi, and rushed toward the assembly hall.