Chapter Text
During this time he was given many names.
He was both loved and hated. He was surrounded by thousands of people, but he was a stranger among his kin. He was alone.
When the Crown Prince of Xianle asked for punishment for himself, the Emperor of Heaven was a little more creative than anyone would have thought. He turned him into a cat, white with black paws and dark orange eyes. A simple cat with shackles under its dirty fur, with a short strip of cloth around its neck that many children liked to tie into a bow. (Ruoye didn't mind; he loved children just as much as Xie Lian himself).
He had many families, many loved ones. But he also had many enemies in the midst of the hard life of a stray animal, where all the predators wanted to eat him. But he was a cat, fast and agile, small and nimble. And he had claws, and Xie Lian was proud of his claws — with them he could catch his dinner on a good day and kill an evil demon on a bad day.
Xie Lian was sure that being a cat had changed him. It had been so long since he had spoken to anyone but Ruoye: humans seemed mostly alien, and other cats, even when he had learned feline, thought him strange. Apparently that was his fate, no matter who he was or where he went.
Not to mention female cats who say things more indecent than any women in brothels. (If he knocked up a cat, would it count as a violation of his way of self-improvement? This and other delights of cat life made him consider many questions from unexpected angles.)
He has seen dead villages and thriving cities, he has seen and felt more than a man could.
So one day, between the borders of the sands and the swamps, he found his cousin, Qi Rong. Honestly, Xie Lian didn't think he was still in the world 'alive' (because in the cat world, everyone is alive until you go on), and surprisingly, his cousin was weak to cats — he gave him bones and scraps from his table.
Xie Lian has been a cat for more than five centuries, and he has learned not to look at where these bones come from. Cats are scavengers. But that didn't stop him from trying to scratch Qi Rong's eyes out as he lay there.
His cousin was fun company for the nine years he spent with him, but Xie Lian knows when it is time for him to leave.
He goes on, following the ghosts, hiding between strangers' feet and the shadows of the night. The City of Ghosts is beautiful and bright and filled with so many smells that his little stomach rumbles. Being a cat, he knows who he should avoid and who he shouldn't.
And the men in the red house, full of noise, the ones he should have avoided. They were strong, much stronger than Qi Rong if he had to talk. But the man in black smelled like fish, and there was plenty of food on their table...
Xie Lian had learned how to make pleading eyes back in his first decade. This skill saved him from starvation more often than he was willing to admit. He couldn't be considered a good cat if he didn't know how to do it; something on par with his skills of tracking mice and moles in the rice field when various owners praised him.
The man in black tells the man in red that he hates cats, but puts a cleaned fish pulp in front of him. Xie Lian eats, not listening to the rest, as a deep bowl of water is placed in front of him. Dangerous ghosts talk about something while he surveys the rest of the world, dignifying the place with his attention. It looks like a gambling house, if he's being honest. Not the worst place he's ever been.
He has a hand on his head, and, oh, he hasn't been stroked yet in this century, against his will he purrs. The man in black has eyes like all cats, but the brightest yellow ones he has ever seen; he still says he hates cats to his companion, but puts him on his lap. Not the nicest knees in Xie Lian's life, bony and narrow, but his tangled fur is brushed where he couldn't reach, so, he lets this ghost hold him.
The man in red radiates mockery and displeasure with his whole appearance as Xie Lian stares into the ghost's single eye. Xie Lian does what any cat would do: look like the most smug creature in the room. His feline instincts tell him so.
The man in red's eyebrow twitches, as if he realizes that Xie Lian has turned up his nose.
They are thrown out of town when Xie Lian decides to sharpen his claws on the beautiful curtains a little later. Xie Lian looks at the man in black, who looks like his feline relatives who tolerated him. He still repeats that he does not get along with cats, taking him in his arms and looking into his eyes.
Xie Lian purrs, and is brought a new home.
He can't remember his new owner's name, but he should note that this was his best owner ever: he was fed three times a day with cleaned fish, caviar, and water on separate bowls; he was bathed and played with; he was read books and talked to as if he were a real conversationalist; and he knocked down so many vases with impunity that it was ridiculous. And he was given his own room. His owner put many shelves all along the corridors so that Xie Lian could jump on them.
The best owner in all of history.
Unfortunately, he had to leave, just like all the others, he stayed with this ghost for a long beautiful thirty winters. But cats don't live that long, and Xie Lian knew it. And surely his well-read, cat-hating owner knew it as well, he just didn't notice.
Xie Lian did not want to disappoint him that he was not a real cat.
Escaping the lonely island was difficult, but he simply let the current carry and sink him until he found himself on another sandy beach. There were hungry soldiers who decided to eat him, so Xie Lian killed them first — while he licked his paws clean of other people's blood, other soldiers, sillier than the previous ones, offered him, the cat, to join the army.
Xie Lian snorted, twitching his mustache, but, yawning, agreed. He doesn't know why, but people started building him temples. And they gave him the rank of general.
Are all the people in the deserts so crazy, or is it just his platoon?
He met a girl, abandoned and huddled under someone else's feet, who could understand him. If he could cry, he would cry. The girl had no name, Xie Lian wondered, it had been so long since he had communicated with anyone, and names... he had too many names.
He named her Ban Yue, like the kingdom they are in, and since he named her, she is now his child until she learns to hunt for herself.
Next to his kitty is someone else's wrong, older but rude and stupid. Xie Lian makes sure that Ban Yue passes on his opinion to this boy. The boy has a name, but like all names before him, it comes and goes — Xie Lian only remembers his scent.
Names are the lot of humans.
His kitten grows into a strong cat who is revered, and for some reason they bring him gold instead of fish. Stupid people. They all seem to get stupider as the centuries go by.
(Or is Xie Lian becoming more of a cat than he wants to admit? This is nonsense. He's beautiful, like all cats.)
Kingdoms collapse even without his involvement, and though everyone came for his kitty — she's a brave woman, she accepted it. (The other boy was shattered, and Xie Lian left him a scar above his eye. That silly, silly boy ruined his kitten.)
Despite Banyue's remoteness, people worshipped him for some reason. More and more and more. People began to say that if a white cat came to your village, he would take away all misfortunes.
(Not that Xie Lian can deny it, it's just that misfortunes cling to him and follow him until he finds a way to deal with them.)
Xie Lian must be eight hundred years old, curled up on a haystack on a pleasant spring day, basking in the sun. He sleeps and has a pleasant dream about the people who have been kind to him in his feline life. About hands that stroked him instead of hurting him when he felt it.
Xie Lian opens his eyes, blinking and stretching, finding himself in an unfamiliar environment. There are many people around, strong people, but a different kind of force than he is used to seeing — they were blindingly bright, not dark, like ghosts. And as he came to his senses, not blinking but squinting, someone's loud scream came through:
"How and why did the cat ascended?!"
And Xie Lian looks at this man with all his feline condemnation. He might not have shouted something so obvious. Xie Lian realizes that Heaven, from the cat's point of view, is inferior to his being on the warm grass.
(A little later there is more shouting, especially among the spiritual connection system. But Xie Lian smells the familiar scent of fish as the man in black speaks loudly, imperiously, and communicating an obvious fact to himself:
"That's my cat", says the Earth Master as the white ball of fur comes to life at the sight of him.
Pei Xiu speaks simultaneously to another god:
"You again!"
Lin Wen only sighs when she sees the cat's name on her list. She doesn't get paid enough. She is not paid at all.
"Greetings, Your Highness", she utters, feeling a headache as silence forms, and His Highness Xie Lian lounges in Ming Yi's arms, paying no attention to anyone.
His Highness once ascended for the third time, having lived for centuries as a cat; it changed many things about him).