Always Ending Up as an Animal Cub

Yu Tong didn’t expect that the dog-man would be so alert. After just biting the phone, Yun Mingchen immediately started suspecting he could understand human speech.

The system sighed, "It seems the villain has realized you’re not an ordinary kitten."
Yu Tong rubbed Yun Mingchen’s ear, "Be more confident, take the ‘seems’ out."
"Why aren’t you nervous at all?"

"He’s wary of cat demons, but I’m not a demon, I’m just a little kitten who can understand human speech."
While chatting with the system, Yu Tong was suddenly grabbed by the back of his neck.
Yun Mingchen sat up, pulling him in front of him.

Their eyes met, and Yu Tong sweetly meowed at him.
Yun Mingchen furrowed his brows, his expression unusually serious.
He removed his bratty persona and his demeanor became exactly like when he ordered the demons earlier.

Under Yu Tong’s watch, Yun Mingchen formed a seal with one hand, and tiny golden sparks appeared at his fingertips.
Muttering a spell, he lightly tapped the kitten’s head, and the golden light instantly entered Yu Tong’s body.
Yu Tong could distinctly feel something sweep through his body.

When the spell finished, Yun Mingchen’s furrowed brows finally relaxed.
He gently stroked Yu Tong’s little head, and the wariness in his eyes gradually disappeared.
The system, feeling anxious, said, "He was just checking what your soul looks like. Thankfully, I was quick and gave your soul a kitten’s skin."

"This cultivation world is really dangerous. They can casually check the host’s soul. Your human identity almost got exposed. Ugh, who would want to come to this place anymore."
Yu Tong wasn’t really nervous. After hearing the system, he just thought the villain was really clever.
Yun Mingchen suspected there was a human soul inside the kitten’s body. He feared that the cat he picked up had been possessed by some cultivator.

Yu Tong quickly flipped through the original text and scanned the various cultivation world settings.
A few minutes later, looking at the villain who had returned to his bed, Yu Tong couldn’t help but clap for him in his heart.
"Such caution, Big Eight, the villain really has potential. If I were a soul-snatcher, upon seeing Yun Mingchen’s search history, I would definitely hide my spiritual energy to avoid being detected as a cat demon."
"If I were really a cat demon, I would have revealed a flaw when I saw the search screen. Yun Mingchen’s move can eliminate two unstable factors right away. No wonder he can fight the male lead for so long. He’s really smart."

The system grumbled, "And what about me? You don’t compliment me."
Yu Tong: ...
"Complimenting you, complimenting you, your speed is really fast."

"Hehe!"
After calming the system down, Yu Tong looked up at the corner of the room.
The expression and demeanor of Yun Mingchen when he tested him just now had nothing to do with the "useless young master" persona.

Wasn’t he afraid of breaking his character? Or was the bedroom’s surveillance destroyed again?
Just as Yu Tong was thinking this, his peripheral vision caught a flash of red outside the window.
He tilted his head thoughtfully.

That red shadow felt oddly familiar. He felt like he had seen it somewhere recently.
Not long after the red shadow appeared, Yu Tong heard a scream from the dormitory building.
The scream was very close, coming from their floor.

Yu Tong turned to look at Yun Mingchen.
The man seemed to have not heard the scream. He remained lying on the bed, fiddling with his phone.
His eyes were lowered, appearing calm.

But a strong sense of pleasure was transmitted to Yu Tong through the ‘Telepathic Connection’ prop.
He moved his ears in slight surprise.
Did the villain feel excited by the scream?

Yu Tong’s understanding of Yun Mingchen hadn’t increased with their interactions. Two days had passed, and he felt like he understood him even less.

The warm and refined young master was Yun Mingchen’s mask for dealing with the outside world. The bratty persona was for his parents and the person watching behind the cameras, Mr. Wen.
At 2 AM, Yun Mingchen coldly ordered the demons to kill someone. At first glance, he seemed cold and indifferent, like his true nature.

But privately, he would secretly search online to see if kittens liked him. He also firmly rejected the idea of marrying Miss Wen because he was gay.
He was a very contradictory person.
Luckily, the props didn’t lie. With the help of the ‘Telepathic Connection,’ Yu Tong could vaguely see through the layers of masks Yun Mingchen wore and glimpse his true nature hidden underneath.

Yun Mingchen was calm and composed, capable and patient.
And at his core, he was still fairly upright.
He loved his family deeply and prioritized the family’s interests. He doted on his sister, though he didn’t openly show it.

When facing multiple monitors, Yun Mingchen could handle the situation with ease, making sure everyone believed the young master of the Yun family was fragile, irritable, and a waste of potential.
At the beginning of the video call with his parents, he was indeed suppressing his frustration while wearing his bratty persona.
But when they mentioned the forced marriage and surrogacy, Yun Mingchen finally snapped, and his character fully unraveled.

Yu Tong thought carefully and realized that their conversation had actually revealed a lot of information.
Yun Mingchen had been sick as a child and spent most of his time in the medicine jar. The Yun family drained their resources to ensure he grew up safely. Later, they provided him with precious resources to help him cultivate.
It looked like they were doing this for his good, but this love was too heavy a burden.

His parents had given all their resources to him. Since childhood, he hadn’t belonged to himself; he had become the Yun family’s property.
He cultivated to bring glory to the family. Marrying and having children were to form alliances and continue the family bloodline.
What troubled Yu Tong the most was that the villain’s sensitivity didn’t seem entirely fake.

Yun Mingchen’s inner resolve had been strong, but when Yun mother started talking about how much they had done for him, his mindset immediately collapsed.
At that point, he was only a step away from agreeing to the marriage.
When the phone rang, Yun Mingchen started to feel anxious. When his parents spoke, he felt restless. After talking with them for a long time, he would lose the ability to think independently because of the overwhelming pressure.

Yu Tong thought more and more that the villain had been PUA’d by his parents.
No wonder his situation at the academy was so difficult, and why he never sought help from his parents.
He must be afraid of them.

Yu Tong was also afraid of parents.
His parents didn’t PUA him, but they liked to beat the family dogs. Killing one and replacing it with another, big dogs or small ones.
Even now, he still often dreams of the screams of those dogs.

He remembered the dog that had almost been killed. It was a small black dog with sparse fur, and it liked to howl in the night.
After the soul check, Yun Mingchen hadn’t bothered with the kitten anymore.
To strengthen their relationship, Yu Tong, like an expert masseuse, spent half an hour kneading his arms with milk paws.

He shamelessly rubbed his face against Yun Mingchen’s, hoping to leave a deep impression on the villain before he slept.
Once the mask was removed, Yun Mingchen didn’t scold him for being dirty or gently stroke his head.
He spent the entire time staring at his phone expressionlessly, as if completely ignoring the little cat.

But through the ‘Telepathic Connection’ prop, Yu Tong could clearly feel that the villain was actually quite happy—he was being charmed.
Heh, a man who’s all talk but not honest.
At 2 AM, after watching sci-fi movie explanations for a while, Yun Mingchen finally put down his phone and went to sleep.

Yu Tong still didn’t understand why a sword cultivator would like watching sci-fi films.
Once he fell into a deep sleep, Yu Tong immediately used the "Dream Lover" prop.
As of now, the villain’s character deviation value still hadn’t changed. This meant he was still likely to marry Miss Wen, just as in the original plot.

Yu Tong worried he might not be thinking clearly and prepared to continue educating him in the dream.
He pressed the confirmation button and waited for a while, but nothing changed in the surroundings.
Yu Tong thought he had used the prop incorrectly, so he started frantically pressing the button.

The system, watching, muttered, "It’s no use, you can’t enter his dream, because you’re not in it."
Yu Tong: ...

As expected, the relationship isn’t strong enough for anything to work.

Yu Tong stayed by the prop, but the villain didn’t dream of the kitten all night.
As the sky began to brighten, the system opened the backend and saw the villain’s deviation value was still 0.
Remembering the bet Yu Tong had mentioned earlier, the system rubbed its hands together, ready to take him up on it.

Just as it opened its mouth, Yu Tong, still pressing the confirmation button, suddenly felt everything around him shift.
The once dim student dormitory vanished, replaced by a clean and neat classroom, filled with students attending class.
Sunlight streamed through the windows but brought no warmth.

The young cultivators, wrapped in fine threads like marionettes, sat with vacant expressions in their seats.
At the podium stood a female teacher, also with empty eyes.
Her neck and limbs were tied with thin threads, the other end of which stretched through the ceiling, and it wasn’t clear who was holding it.

The system, bound to Yu Tong’s soul, also entered the villain’s dream.
Curiously, it peeked outside, "So this is the villain’s dream? Very unique, is he a fan of puppet shows?"
Yu Tong didn’t know why there was a kitten in the classroom-related dream.

He tried to look around but realized he couldn’t move.
The system chuckled, "Little Yu, stop struggling. In Yun Mingchen’s dream, you’re the cartoon cat on the bulletin board on the right side of the class."
Yu Tong: ...

Yu Tong was struggling to move, but he realized that he was stuck as the cartoon cat on the bulletin board. His body was confined within the paper cut-out, unable to move freely.
In this dream, everything felt exaggerated compared to reality. The details were warped, and everything was far more surreal.
Yun Mingchen was also tied by thin threads, just like everyone else. He sat still, watching everything around him with a look of exhaustion, as though he was done with it all. It seemed like this dream reflected his inner turmoil.

The bell for class rang, and the door opened. Wen Yingying, the second Miss Wen, walked in, also suspended by the thin threads. Her face was flushed with tears, and she started talking to Yun Mingchen about their arranged marriage.
From his position on the bulletin board, Yu Tong could hear everything. He struggled a bit but managed to listen to their conversation.
He hesitated for a moment and then asked the system, "Big Eight, don’t you think Wen Yingying’s voice sounds odd? She doesn’t sound like a young woman in her twenties."

The system leaned in to listen, "Yeah, it does sound more like a middle-aged woman. The way she talks to Yun Mingchen also feels like an elder talking to a younger person."
Yu Tong’s head finally managed to break free from the bulletin board, thanks to his persistent efforts. The bulletin board was made from pushpins and paper cut-outs, so with enough force, he had torn through the paper and created some space.
If it had been a chalkboard behind him, he wouldn’t have been able to break free at all.

Struggling for a while, Yu Tong suddenly noticed something unusual. "Where are the villain’s parents in this dream?"
The system, losing interest in the dream, yawned. "It’s a classroom, and they’re not students. What would they be doing here?"
Before it finished speaking, two figures suddenly appeared in the dream.

Yu Tong immediately recognized them—they were Yun Mingchen's parents, the ones he had met the night before.
However, unlike the other dream figures, they weren’t bound by the thin threads.
Yu Tong looked over # Nоvеlight # at the system.

The system felt a pang of embarrassment and withdrew into its space without saying anything.
Compared to reality, the dream world seemed even more exaggerated.
Yun Mingchen’s parents stood on either side of him, whispering in his ears, performing a real-life version of a hypnotic, dual-voice surround sound.

"Your mom and I have given you everything. To repay us, you should marry Wen Yingying."
"If you don’t marry Miss Wen, we’ll marry your sister off to a man she doesn’t even know. We’ll have her marry into the Su family!"
Wen Yingying, who was completely bound by the fine threads, wore a shy smile on her face.

Yun Mingchen stared at the scene blankly, feeling exhausted.
During the day, he had to play various roles, and now, at night, he had to dream about the same issues he faced in reality.
His parents called him every two days to urge him to marry Miss Wen. Wen Yingying almost always sent him messages saying she liked someone else and didn’t want him to agree to the marriage.

Yun Mingchen was stuck in the middle and didn’t know what to do.
The sound of his parents’ voices grew louder and louder, becoming the only thing he could hear.
As they continued to list all the sacrifices the Yun family had made for him, Yun Mingchen suddenly heard a faint cat meow.

In the next second, a torn, paper cut-out of a cartoon cat jumped out from the bulletin board not far away.
Yun Mingchen slightly turned his body, looking past his father to see what was going on.
The scene suddenly shifted, and Yu Tong, aiming to pounce on Yun Old Master, collided directly with Yun Mingchen’s face before he had time to dodge.

Yu Tong: ???
Yun Mingchen: ???