“Doctor, please save my son!”
“Someone help! A person has fainted over here!”
“My mother has high blood pressure and heart disease! Save her first!”
The hospital was in complete chaos. Shouts and sobbing blended together, creating such a racket that everyone felt increasingly panicked.
The doctors and nurses were overwhelmed with work, yet family members repeatedly stopped them to demand why they were not saving their mother, father, or wife first.
Inside Ward 506, the patients who had already completed their admission procedures lay in their beds with sallow expressions, looking as though they had just endured some terrible ordeal.
Quiet sobbing sounded from one side of the room.
Liu Mingyuan’s face was streaked with tears, and indescribable sorrow filled her eyes.
After finishing overtime that evening, she had returned home to find a chair overturned on the floor and her son lying unconscious in a corner.
She had immediately driven him to the hospital in a panic.
After examining him, the doctor said that the scratches and bites across his body were minor. With ten days to half a month of rest, they would heal completely.
Unfortunately, the bone in his lower leg had been displaced. Combined with the delay in receiving treatment, it would most likely leave lasting damage.
The doctor had phrased it tactfully, but Liu Mingyuan understood.
Her son would probably become lame. For the rest of his life, he would walk with a limp.
He was only six years old!
What was he supposed to do in the future?
The more Liu Mingyuan thought about it, the more devastated she became. Her tears would not stop falling.
At that moment, Xiaoyan slowly awakened.
The instant he saw his mother, fear and resentment appeared on his face. He immediately began complaining.
“Mum, it was that tabby cat! It scratched up my face! Hurry and help me punish it!”
He did not yet know that his lower leg would never fully recover. His mind was entirely occupied with revenge.
However, he said nothing about the things he had done to the cat, as though the animal had simply disobeyed him and suddenly gone mad.
“Xiaoyan…”
Liu Mingyuan had a stomach full of things she wanted to say, yet she did not know how to begin.
A young man of around twenty-five or twenty-six was lying in the neighbouring bed.
Unable to continue listening, he coldly snorted.
“You’re still thinking about punishing the cat? Do you feel you haven’t been injured badly enough?”
Xiaoyan protested, “If someone bullies you, you’re supposed to hit them back.”
“You didn’t do anything, yet a perfectly normal cat suddenly scratched you?” The young man did not believe him.
“My family also has a cat. The moment something happened to me, it rushed over to help.”
“Animals possess intelligence and emotions. If you treated it badly, why would it repay cruelty with kindness?”
Xiaoyan immediately fell silent.
The things he had done to the cat could hardly be considered kind. Now, he felt extremely guilty.
The moment Liu Mingyuan saw her son’s reaction, she knew that he had tormented the cat again.
She immediately became both furious and anxious.
“Why do you never listen? How many times have I told you that cats are living creatures too? You need to treat them gently!”
Xiaoyan turned his face aside and muttered, “I didn’t really do anything… It was the one that refused to play with me.”
“A little tyrant like you has no idea how to control your strength. Of course the cat becomes frightened whenever it sees you,” the young man added mercilessly.
Liu Mingyuan was overwhelmed with regret.
She thought that everything would have been fine if she had never bought her son a cat as a companion.
Without the tabby, none of this would have happened.
Then she thought that perhaps she should have beaten her son the first time he mistreated the cat.
However, she had always felt sorry for him because he grew up in a single-parent household and rarely had anyone to accompany him, so she had never been willing to discipline him harshly.
Now look what had happened.
During his so-called playtime, he had fallen from a chair and would be unable to walk normally for the rest of his life.
While Liu Mingyuan’s thoughts were in turmoil, the young man in the next bed could not help frowning.
The circumstances that had brought him to the hospital were also rather bizarre.
The previous week, he had purchased a magpie as a pet.
To prevent the cat he already owned from harassing the bird, he had deliberately kept the two animals apart.
Unfortunately, his memory was not very good.
When the bird remained out of sight for too long, he would forget that he had recently acquired another pet. As a result, he fed it irregularly, and the magpie constantly alternated between hunger and a full stomach.
That morning, he had been preparing to feed the bird when, for some unknown reason, it flew out of its cage.
The magpie then began viciously pecking him, apparently seeking revenge.
The young man had been chased throughout the entire house, and several bloody wounds had been pecked into his arms.
Later, he had failed to watch where he was going, slipped on the floor, and remained unable to stand for a long time.
Just as he thought he was about to die, his family’s cat charged out ferociously.
It stood in front of him and bravely confronted the magpie.
The cat was merely an ordinary Chinese domestic cat, not an expensive pedigree breed.
He had rescued it from a pile of rubbish two years earlier. Usually, the cat ate whatever he ate, and he had never put much effort into caring for it.
Yet at the critical moment, the cat had still rushed over to save him!
The young man’s nose stung with emotion, and he was about to tell the cat to retreat.
Unexpectedly, after the two animals confronted each other for a while, the magpie voluntarily backed down. It flapped its wings and flew out through the window.
The domestic cat then strolled over to him with an expression filled with helplessness.
It seemed to be saying:
*Poop-scooper, you really never let this cat stop worrying about you.*
The young man had been speechless.
Because he had injured his tailbone during the fall, he had no choice but to remain in hospital and recover.
His domestic cat had temporarily been entrusted to a friend.
When he heard the little boy talking about punishing a cat earlier, he had immediately spoken up in the animal’s defence.
As for his blunt tone potentially damaging the harmony of the ward…
The young man thought, *We merely happened to be placed in the same hospital room. It’s not as though we’ll ever see each other again.*
The room fell silent, and no one spoke for a long time.
Without warning, the ward door opened, and another patient was brought inside.
The young man casually glanced over and saw that the newcomer’s right cheek was bright red, as though they had been slapped.
He secretly clicked his tongue.
Had this person suffered domestic abuse, or had they gotten into a vicious fight?
The battle must have been extremely intense!
The patient remained unconscious and showed no signs of waking.
A relative sat beside the bed with a devastated expression, repeatedly muttering, “She was only making sweet-and-sour fish. How did it end up like this?”
She had been injured that badly merely from killing a fish?
The young man froze, then familiarly struck up a conversation with the patient’s relative.
“Hey, brother. Tell us exactly what happened.”
The man beside the neighbouring bed was currently experiencing the complete collapse of his worldview. His eyes were empty and unfocused.
“You probably won’t believe me if I tell you… Even though I witnessed it personally, I’m still confused and wondering whether my eyes deceived me.”
“What exactly happened?” the young man pressed.
“When my mother was killing the fish, it leapt out of the water and slapped her with its tail. Then she collapsed…”
The man’s expression was exceptionally stiff.
“I was helping beside her, so I saw everything. After slapping her, the fish jumped back into the water, while my mother fell unconscious on the kitchen floor.”
“The doctor said her injuries are somewhat serious, and she may have a mild concussion.”
The young man fell silent.
Liu Mingyuan also fell silent.
Xiaoyan curled his lips.
“You’re such a liar.”
The man looked equally despairing.
“See? Even when I tell the truth, no one believes me.”
Liu Mingyuan had already begun considering whether she should call the police.
A son beating his own mother so badly that she ended up in hospital was unacceptable, both morally and logically.
The young man, however, believed him after remaining stunned for a moment.
He muttered, “This is rather sinister! I was chased by a bird and accidentally fell, which is why I ended up in hospital.”
“Why are animals so powerful nowadays?”
The other man froze.
“You also encountered something strange?”
“Of course!”
The young man recounted his experience.
“Sinister! This is far too sinister!”
The man shivered, becoming increasingly overwhelmed.
After listening for a while, a thought suddenly surfaced in Liu Mingyuan’s mind.
Her son had caused the tabby cat’s tail to break and covered it in injuries.
Now, he had become lame and was covered in injuries himself.
Could everything that had happened be retribution?
Once the thought arose, she could no longer dismiss it.
Liu Mingyuan painfully closed her eyes.
She only hated that she had been too busy with work and too negligent in disciplining her son, ultimately allowing him to make such a terrible mistake.
**
At the same time, other people were also muttering, “Things have been rather strange lately.”
“What happened?” Gao Xuan asked.
Annie was playing with her tablet and did not raise her head.
“I personally witnessed something bizarre, and other people on the pet forum have had similar experiences. Isn’t that strange enough?”
“What happened to the others?” Gao Xuan asked curiously.
“Someone said the calf at their home has become a spirit. When they woke up in the morning, they discovered that the calf had voluntarily put its farming harness on itself before happily running off to plough the fields.”
When Annie had first encountered the post on the forum, she had been deeply horrified.
Although she had barely recovered now, her expression remained strange.
“I’ve heard of Golden Retrievers taking themselves out for walks, but I’ve never seen a calf voluntarily run off to plough a field.”
“It’s almost as though all the animals collectively became spirits overnight.”
Gao Xuan thought inwardly that this was precisely what was happening.
Ordinary people were busy working or studying, so they might not feel the changes as strongly.
However, they ran a pet hospital and specialised in working with animals. They could clearly sense that something was wrong.
“In any case, be careful whenever you go outside. Have your cats and dogs escort you,” Gao Xuan reminded her.
“Even if you didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t dare wander around the streets by myself!”
Annie ruffled her hair irritably.
“Do you think I should raise a few more dogs?”
“What? The two you already have aren’t enough?”
Annie replied righteously, “They’re more than enough to protect me alone, but I also have my mother and father!”
“There are three people in my family. Each person should bring one dog, and we need another one to guard the house. We’ll need at least four dogs!”
“What about the cat?” Gao Xuan asked curiously.
“That one is the master of the house. Someone else has to protect it.”
Annie sighed gloomily.
Gao Xuan stopped working and said seriously, “Keeping four dogs is possible, but there will be a few minor problems.”
“For example, if you’ve only just adopted them and no one is familiar with one another, are you certain the dogs will protect you?”
“Then there’s the problem of feeding three people, four dogs, and one cat.”
“Also, the breed of dog matters greatly. If they’re huskies… you understand.”
With every additional sentence Gao Xuan spoke, Annie’s expression darkened further.
By the end, her face was as black as the bottom of a pot, and panic had begun rising in her heart.
At that moment, the page on her tablet automatically refreshed.
The entire contents of the post disappeared, and the page displayed a 404 error.
Clearly, the post she had been reading had been deleted.
At the same time, a new announcement was pinned to the top of the forum.
Its general meaning was that forum users were forbidden from casually fabricating stories and deliberately causing public panic.
“Fabricating stories? Ha!”
Annie angrily threw the tablet onto the sofa.
“Who would be creative enough to fabricate something this ridiculous?”
Gao Xuan remained silent.
When the truth was known only by a minority, everyone else would look at them as though they were lunatics.
That was why she had never told anyone other than Gu Xinghang too much.
She had only made an exception for Annie because they had a good relationship.
“No!”
After thinking for a long time, Annie still felt uneasy.
As she packed her shoulder bag, she instructed, “I’m going out to purchase more supplies. I’m leaving the shop to you.”
“Understood. Go and take care of it,” Gao Xuan replied.
Annie hurried away, terrified that if she arrived too late, everything would already have been bought.
Gao Xuan sat closely beside Cola and murmured, “The world is about to fall into chaos.”
Cola rested his chin on his owner’s thigh and lazily yawned.
He seemed to think that the sunlight was pleasant and the weather was perfect for an afternoon nap.
—
**Author’s Note:**
“Unconventional” does not mean the story will have a bad ending…
Keep reading and you’ll understand. The overall style will remain light-hearted and enjoyable.
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