System 55 refused to give up, and it tried once more.

"?"

Where was the poison? Where was the poison? Why couldn't it test it out?

Was the system malfunctioning?

System 55 tried again. Looking at the analysis report that was stuttering out on its small screen, it fell into deep thought.

There were indeed no lethal components, but there were coma-inducing ones, and the concentration was not low. It was enough to make the doctor sleep for a whole day and night.

——Rather than poison, this glass of wine was more like Sleeping Black Tea.

System 55's gaze was complicated as it looked at its host, who was sleeping soundly on the couch.

...The duke didn't kill its host, but he knocked him out instead. What kind of trick was this?

Separated by a wall, Imuel hurriedly issued an order.

In the order, regarding the traitor of the Black Robe Society, Bai Yu, the duke had already passed a death sentence. Bai Yu was to be forced to drink poisoned wine and his body dumped in the wilderness. The investigation warrant was also published, hoping that the various nobles and ministers would take it as a warning.

But on the other hand, he wrote a handwritten letter and had it delivered to a certain farm outside the city-state of Illyria.

Bai Yu refused to cooperate. As a spy for the Black Robe Society, he could no longer survive in Illyria. Imuel also could not bear to lock the other party in his mansion for the rest of his life. After thinking it over, he could only let him go.

He would dispatch his personal guards in the early morning to send Bai Yu out of Illyria to temporarily stay at the farm. After that, he could go wherever he pleased. With the other party's status and skills as a doctor, he could live very well in any city-state.

But like this... he would never see Bai Yu again.

Imuel looked up at the bright moonlight hanging mid-sky outside the window and slightly curled his fingers.

Tonight was the very last night.

Separated by a wall, Bai Yu had fallen into a deep sleep.

He was lifted up from the soft couch by the guards and laid flat on the bed.

The interrogator opened the door for Imuel and bowed, saying, "Grand Duke, the person is here."

Imuel nodded calmly and said, "You may leave."

The interrogator saluted and then immediately withdrew.

On the bed, the doctor lay quietly.

His hands were folded and placed across his abdomen. Above his tall nose bridge, his brows were relaxed, and his demeanor was quiet and peaceful.

The mattress sank slightly.

The duke sat down on the edge of the bed.

He did not turn on the lights. The moonlight outside the window was like a strip of white silk, filling the room with a clear radiance. The moon shone on Bai Yu's handsome face, softening his cold, sharp contours.

This was truly an exceedingly good-looking face, but...

Imuel thought, it was a pity he would never see it again.

From now on, Illyria's Bai Yu would be a completely unrecognizable, rotting corpse in the barren mountains and wild ridges, while the doctor would be exiled from the borders, never able to return.

He would not know Imuel's identity. Everything that had happened over these past few months was the duke's solitary dream.

Imuel lifted the quilt and, for the first time in human form, lay down flat next to the doctor.

The doctor's body temperature was still warm. His chest rose and fell rhythmically with his breathing, the soft, beautiful curves of his muscles arching slightly. Imuel hesitantly reached out and hugged him.

With the width of the doctor's chest, it was very suitable to be hugged. Nuzzling into his embrace felt as if all harm would be blocked, leaving nothing but pure safety.

He rubbed his face against the doctor's shoulder blade and thought, 'So useless.'

The grand duke of a nation, reduced to such a state.

But it was truly warm beside the doctor, suppressing the deep-seated pain in his bones from the Mutation Period. Bai Yu carried the bitter scent of a pharmacy—cold, inorganic, yet very clean. Warmed by his skin's temperature, the scent became pleasantly toasty. Imuel greedily took two breaths of it, then lowered his gaze to Bai Yu's lips.

He had wanted to kiss the doctor for a long time.

Bai Yu's lips were on the thinner side. When he wasn't smiling, he looked serious and aloof, but when he smiled, his lips curved perfectly, looking very kissable. Right now, he was sound asleep, his facial muscles relaxed, and his lips a pale pink, like the color of unripe berries.

When Bai Yu was awake, Imuel didn't dare, nor did he dare in his kitten form. But now, he extended a finger to the doctor's cheek and rubbed it unscrupulously, considering it revenge for these past few days. Then, he gently leaned down and stole a kiss on his lips.

Very light, very shallow.

Imuel had never kissed before, nor did he know how to. He didn't even know he should pry open the teeth and slip his tongue inside. This kiss was more like a messy nuzzling, like a kitten licking back and forth to express intimacy.

Afterward, he slipped out of his clothes, transformed into a platinum kitten, and lay on the doctor's lower abdomen.

When the muscles were not tensed, they were soft. The kitten curled up into a ball and thought in his heart, 'This is the last time.'

The last time sleeping in Bai Yu's arms. After tomorrow, they would be strangers.

In every subsequent Mutation Period, there would no longer be anyone to hold him and rub his aching joints for him.

The kitten lay prone on the doctor, drifting into a shallow sleep.

At dawn, Imuel climbed off Bai Yu and transformed back into human form. Holding his clothes to cover his naked body, he slowly reached out his fingertips, tracing the doctor's aloof brows and eyes, and his beautiful jawline, as if trying to engrave this face into his mind.

The butler knocked on the door: "Duke, it's almost dawn."

According to the plan, they needed to pass through the city gates during the night to sneak Bai Yu out unnoticed. At this point, it was only a little over an hour until morning. Once the east was fully bright and the city gradually woke up, it would be difficult to carry out the operation.

Imuel started, slowly withdrawing his hand and buttoning up his clothes. Lowering his eyes, he said, "Come in."

He stood by the bed, concealing all traces.

The personal guards kept their eyes straight ahead as they placed Bai Yu on a stretcher, carried him away to put on a cart, and smuggled him out of the city mixed in a pile of forage. At the exact same moment, an unidentifiable, rotting male corpse appeared in the barren mountains of the western suburbs. The corpse had been dead for a long time and was covered in torture wounds. Meanwhile, the duke issued a public notice, declaring that the spy Bai Yu was dead.

When Bai Yu woke up, he felt like his whole body was falling apart.

Beneath his waist lay straw padding, with a few stalks poking right into his flesh, bouncing up and down along with the jolts of the cart. Bai Yu pressed a hand to his lower back, opened his eyes, and saw a boundless, azure sky.

According to the knowledge from geography books, Illyria's latitude was not low, and there were dense pastures around the edges of the city-state. He rolled over and sat up on the cart. Lush green grass stretched toward the horizon, and the clouds were a soft, cottony white with extremely high saturation, looking just like the Windows XP startup desktop.

And they were speeding along a small path, heading to an unknown destination.

Bai Yu couldn't help but laugh involuntarily.

He rubbed his lower back and thought to himself, 'Silly little kitten, is that all the guts you have?'

When that glass of wine was brought to him, he had thought he would wake up in a dungeon, where Imuel would strip him of his identity, lock him by his side, and threaten him to never go anywhere.

In the end, despite clearly being unable to bear parting with him, he still let him go?

...Sure enough, no matter how fierce a front he put up, the duke was still soft-hearted.

By his side, Bai Yu even found a bundle containing a change of clothes. The clothes were brand new, evidently prepared by the duke. Tied to his waist was a pouch. Bai Yu opened it to find seven or eight small gold bars, along with a handful of gold beans that would be easy to fence. None of these items bore the stamp of the Duke's Mansion; they were hard currency meant for easy circulation. Additionally, there was a silk-wrapped box containing a thick stack of spectacle lenses.

Enough for Bai Yu to use until the end of time.

Bai Yu wanted to laugh even more.

Imagining Imuel secretly packing those gold beans for him—grumbling angrily while also afraid he would be as blind as a bat and packing a bunch of spectacle lenses for him—the corners of his lips quirked up unconsciously.

...He really was quite cute.

System 55 had been lying to the side with a bitter face, counting clouds like a melancholy little mushroom. It finally noticed that Bai Yu was awake, so it floated over with a grimace, drawing out its voice, "Host—"

Bai Yu: "Speak properly."

System 55 sobbed, "Why didn't you die? This wasn't the script we were given, boohoohoo."

"..."

If it had a human form, it would have already been crying tears of sorrow.

Bai Yu sighed softly, "I'm sorry, System 55, but I'm afraid I also..."

He and System 55 were already familiar with each other, so he somewhat knew about the experiences of its previous hosts. It was an abused protagonist system, but System 55's previous two hosts had both ended up rolling into the same bed as the protagonist, being lovey-dovey and blissfully happy. As a result, System 55 could only hover on the brink of passing, becoming the absolute bottom-feeder among all the systems.

System 55: "QAQ"

It wiped away non-existent tears: "You're afraid of what..."

Bai Yu shook his head and pulled the crying little system into his arms, changing the subject, "What time is it right now, and where are we?"

System 55: "It's two in the afternoon. We are between Illyria and Bilis, and we will be arriving at a farm shortly."

Bai Yu called out loudly, "Driver, turn around."

The driver was one of the personal guards from the Duke's Mansion, currently steering the cart toward the farm. He hadn't expected the doctor to wake up so quickly. Hearing this, he was stunned: "What?"

A sharp hand chop came down, the cart braked abruptly, and the driver slammed onto the cart frame with a bang.

Bai Yu retracted his hand, laid the man among the forage, and stripped off his clothes and guard credentials. He then turned the cart around and pushed the speed to the maximum.

By the time he rushed back to Illyria now, it would probably be deep into the night.

Late night, the Grand Duke's Mansion.

Having finished reviewing the last document, Imuel rubbed his forehead.

The butler stood to the side attending him. With two male servants consecutively meeting with mishaps, the Grand Duke didn't even have a close servant to wait on him, so he could only drag his old bones up to fill in for the time being.

He took the reviewed documents away and put them in order, extinguished the reading lamp on the desk, and quietly asked, "Grand Duke, it will soon be your once-a-month memorial day. Will you still be heading to the countryside for a short stay?"

Every month, Grand Duke Imuel would travel far from home, taking no one with him, to stay at his mother's residence for a few days. This was an established practice in the Duke's Mansion.

Imuel bit his lower lip and nodded, "I will set out at dawn. Same as usual, you all need not follow."

The so-called memorial for his mother was merely a cover. Only Imuel himself knew that his Mutation Period was fast approaching.

During the Mutation Period, he would turn into a frail, powerless kitten, aching all over and unable to move. It was the Grand Duke's most vulnerable and most secretive time, an occasion that could absolutely not be known by anyone.

Not even the old butler could know this secret, or else his identity as the descendant of a slave would be exposed. Imuel did not want to think about the consequences of that.

The old butler bowed in acknowledgment and respectfully withdrew.

Imuel gave a slight nod, got up, and left the room. He deliberately ran into a few servants to create the false impression of leaving. Afterward, he returned to his room and firmly tucked the clothes he had been wearing into the bottom of the wardrobe.

The Grand Duke had many clothes. No one would notice if one extra piece was left behind un-worn.

Following that, he felt a familiar, swelling pain in his body. Then, his line of sight gradually lowered, his muscles trembled and twitched, and an uncontrollable transformation occurred...

He fell to the floor, having turned into a small kitten.

Unlike the arrogant manner in which he leaped and bounded all over Bai Yu's house, Imuel dared not let anyone discover him. Cautiously concealing his presence, he jumped onto the windowsill and, taking advantage of the deep night when everyone was asleep, made his way to the garden alone.

He skirted around the artificial lake where swans were raised and, amidst the lawn, found an opening just large enough for a kitten to pass through.

If Bai Yu were here, he would realize that this was the underground forbidden area he had visited before.

That was the place where Imuel lived during every Mutation Period.

He outwardly claimed that the duke had departed and could not be seen within the mansion, so the kitten could not appear over these few days either. Otherwise, if anyone observant made the comparison and noticed that only the cat or the duke appeared at any one time, they would spot the clues.

Nor could Imuel go out onto the streets. Illyria was not safe, and a stray kitten was merely a plaything that could be casually tortured and killed. With his current physique, wandering the streets was very dangerous.

Imuel was also unable to seek help from anyone. In order to keep his birth from being detected, absolutely no one knew the duke's true identity. Even his most trusted subordinates might turn around and stab him in the back upon learning the secret, leaving the duke to die without a burial place.

He had to find a safe and secretive place to weather these agonizing few days.

This place was the underground space of the Duke's Mansion—the pitch-black cage where he had grown up during his childhood.

It had long been abandoned and was a forbidden area, so no one would come here. The underground was deep enough and sufficiently soundproof. Even if he couldn't bear the torment of the Mutation Period and let out miserable cries, no one would hear him.

The place that carried the nightmares of his youth had now become his only sanctuary, requiring him to take the initiative to crawl into it at his most painful moment. How ironic it was.

His body was soft and powerless, his footsteps unsteady. Imuel felt dizzy and couldn't find the stairs with his paws; he practically tumbled and rolled all the way down, crashing onto the ground.

...It hurt so much.

The kitten's ears flattened back into airplane ears, but this time, there was no one to help him rub them.

Imuel struggled to prop himself up on all fours and crawled to the center of the basement. Then, he wrapped his tail around himself and lay motionless.

On the first day of the Mutation Period, he had no energy to move anyway.

Pain surged in like a tide from all directions, endless and ceaseless. Cold sweat seeped out, wetting his platinum fur into distinct strands that stuck clammily to his body.

...So cold.

The basement was built beneath the lake. It saw no sunlight year-round and was dark and damp. The ground beneath him was freezing and radiated moisture, and the air was filled with the smell of rotting moss. Staying here for too long, the kitten would probably contract ringworm.

But Imuel had no other choice.

The pain caused him to gasp for breath in heavy gulps. Although his large tail was draped over him, it couldn't trap the shallow warmth of his body. Imuel felt himself gradually losing body heat.

Imuel was very familiar with this process. He had gone through every previous Mutation Period exactly like this. Illyria's winters were long and frigid, making it exceptionally tough to endure whenever this time arrived.

The kitten's lake-blue eyes were tinged with moisture. He blinked hard, but failed to stop the moisture from spreading; it even showed a tendency to pool up.

...So uncomfortable.

Even though previous Mutation Periods had all been like this, this time was extraordinarily different.

He had already spent two Mutation Periods safe and sound at the doctor's place.

The doctor's house was very warm, his beddings were very warm, his fingertips were very warm, and his chest and belly were also very warm. He would carefully protect the little fluffball in his arms, massage his swollen, aching muscles to help relieve the pain, and make him delicious paste so he wouldn't have to go hungry.

The doctor's windowsill got sunlight and had no damp moisture. The space around the doctor had a clean, fresh scent without any moldy smell. Everything around the doctor was ten thousand times better than the present.

Imuel shut his eyes tightly, his body convulsing in piercing agony. He was full of grievance, and eventually tasted a hint of tears at the corners of his lips.

The moisture still pooled up and tumbled down.

The kitten stubbornly kept his eyes closed, wanting to stem the urge to cry, but that grievance, springing from nowhere, firmly entrenched itself in his heart. He had no choice but to reach out a paw and fiercely wipe it across his face.

Although he had survived so many springs and autumns like this before, for a kitten who had been pampered and cared for, it was truly hard to tolerate the basement anymore.

Imuel missed Bai Yu.

But what use was missing him?

The doctor was a member of the Black Robe Society. The doctor wanted to kill him. If the doctor knew that the kitten was Imuel, he would have long since raised his butcher's knife. That pampering and kind treatment were merely stolen by him, and they would ultimately cease to exist.

As a slave's descendant, and as punishment for killing a few older brothers to seize his position, perhaps he deserved to be in this basement, savoring suffering over and over again.

...Besides, he had already sent the doctor out of the city.

Calculating the time, Bai Yu should have already settled down at the farm. At the latest, in a few days, he would head to another city.

They would never see each other again.

Imuel would never again find someone willing to hold him during the Mutation Period, coax him, and make paste for him.

The more Imuel thought about it, the more wronged he felt; the more he thought, the more aggrieved he became. He roughly rubbed a paw across his cheeks, but couldn't wipe away the wetness on his pad. In the end, that grievance intensified, transforming into soundless sobs.

But suddenly, he heard a sigh.

At some unknown point, the iron plate covering the basement had been opened. Immediately after, Imuel felt his body lighten—

——He was gently picked up and placed into an embrace.

Imuel looked up blankly. What entered his sight was Bai Yu's handsome face. The doctor's movements were gentle as he lightly rubbed his ears,

"Whose little kitten is this, staying here crying all alone, and crying so pitifully at that."