"Curator, is she the newly captured wild human?"
"She'll definitely fetch a good price!"
The language was crude and unfamiliar, but strangely, Yuxing understood it. She forced herself to open her heavy eyes.
A gleaming golden cage came into view.
Red roses wound around the perimeter of the cage, trapping her inside, where she sat upon a soft white plush blanket.
She could see things, and her hands and feet could move.
Good.
Her situation wasn't too bad.
Yuxing's gaze paused as she looked around.
The two people standing before her looked human, but each possessed animal traits to varying degrees.
For instance: snow-white cat ears and a fiery red fox tail.
What was going on?
Had her eyes gone bad?
Suddenly, a wave of unfamiliar memories surged into Yuxing's mind, making her realize that after her death, she had transmigrated to an interstellar beast world.
She had been captured by human-pet traffickers and locked in captivity.
Yuxing lowered her gaze.
A three-layered skirt billowed out like flower petals, the milky-white fabric refracting iridescent pearl tones under the lights, shimmering alongside the diamonds embedded within the material.
She shifted slightly.
A lock of curly hair hanging behind her shoulder mischievously bounced around to the front.
After the apocalypse arrived, Yuxing had cut off her inconvenient long hair. Looking at her hair now, a trace of nostalgia flashed across her almond-shaped eyes.
The curator's tone held a hint of condescension: "Don't try to run away. Out there, you wild humans never get enough to eat and freeze in the cold, but with me, you'll never have to worry about a thing."
Yuxing's eyes lit up.
Such a good deal existed?
Yuxing had struggled for years in the apocalypse.
Accustomed to hardship, she lacked any real drive. After hesitating for two seconds, she readily accepted the alien's feeding.
What kind of feeding was this, though?
Tasteless and bland.
Yuxing swallowed the nutrient fluid with difficulty and introduced herself: "My name is Yuxing."
With that said,
Yuxing nodded in satisfaction inwardly. Her alien speech was really quite good, quite adaptable.
At the same time,
she continued to observe her surroundings.
She noticed the interior decoration leaned toward a Western medieval style.
The cat-eared girl couldn't hide her excitement: "She spoke!"
In the past,
it wasn't as if wild humans hadn't been captured before.
Forget about speaking; the moment anyone came even slightly close, humans would either faint from fright or scream.
The human before them was different.
Exquisite facial features, superior looks—a beauty that instantly caught the eye.
Not only was she willing to accept their food, but she even dared to communicate. The cat-eared girl had never seen such a strange human female before.
Yuxing blinked: "You guys..."
Before Yuxing could finish,
the cat-eared girl covered her face and shrieked.
"Ahhh—is this what a human voice sounds like? So sweet! So soft! So nice to hear!"
Yuxing: "..."
Just replying to whatever comes to mind, huh?
Unlike the excited cat-eared girl, the curator's pupils constricted into tiny vertical slits. He adjusted the monocle perched on the bridge of his nose.
At that moment,
he felt as though wealth and glory were sprinting toward him.
Narrowing his fox-like eyes, he spoke slowly: "Calm down. Human females are generally timid; don't scare her."
Yuxing pointed at herself with a finger: "Yuxing. Thank you."
The cat-eared girl calmed down: "Alright, human."
Yuxing thought: *So this is where I rank.*
The curator suddenly began adjusting his well-tailored suit and hurried out the door, as if he had some urgent business to attend to.
Yuxing shifted her gaze back to the cat-eared girl.
The cat-eared girl had a head of snow-white, shoulder-length short hair, bright brown eyes beneath white brows, and two dimples that appeared faintly when she smiled.
Soon,
she learned from the cat-eared girl why she had been captured.
In the interstellar era, humans could soothe the rippling psychic power of other races and were often hailed as delicate, comforting pets.
Fearing she might frighten the human, the cat-eared girl spoke in a soft, gentle whisper.
"Carbon-based life forms are treasures. Across all star systems, only humans can soothe the rampaging psychic power of us beastmen."
"You humans are all fragile and have no way to survive on your own in the harsh environment ravaged by the Zerg."
"We are symbiotes. Why do you humans resist our shelter?"
Yuxing spoke up for her compatriots: "To put it nicely, it's captivity; to put it bluntly, it's enslavement."
Precisely because of this, the original body had died of grief after being captured, giving her the opportunity to transmigrate here.
The cat-eared girl understood in a flash.
"No wonder the suicide rate among human pets is so high. No wonder you humans would rather wander than throw yourselves into our arms."
"Then you're acting so well-behaved just to lower our guard and look for a chance to escape?"
Before Yuxing could speak,
the cat-eared girl pointed at Yuxing's wrist: "Don't run. The shock bracelet the curator put on you has a million volts inside."
Yuxing instantly discarded any thoughts of running and yielded in a second: "I'm certainly not going to run. Let's get one thing straight: I'm not afraid of death, I just simply dislike wandering."
At that moment, Yuxing didn't yet know that her protestations of innocence had already exposed her to quite a few people.
*
Meanwhile, at the royal palace.
The curator looked extremely cautious as he held his optical computer high above his head: "Your Majesty, the newly captured human female is truly different from the previous ones."
Standing on the steps a few paces away from the curator was a man.
He had a pair of deep blue eyes.
The pupils were larger than the whites, and his gaze was filled with the eerie intensity of dancing with evil spirits.
His brow bone was sharp, his expression cold, and his well-articulated fingers toyed with a dagger, radiating a strong aura of keeping strangers at a distance.
The backs of both his hands were covered in black patterns.
Tattoo-like markings sprawled across his skin, creeping upward until they vanished beneath his ornate cuffs.
He slowly sat down, leaning against the back of the throne, his upper eyelids slightly drooping in a look of nonchalant listening.
The sound in the surveillance feed abruptly cut off.
Ornado finally lifted his drooping eyelids, deep and dark pools of danger and violence brewing within his gaze.
After a long moment,
the curator still hadn't received any response. He timidly raised his head, but where in the room was there any sign of the King?
Just as he thought his dreams of sudden wealth were dashed, the robotic butler on duty outside the human-pet pavilion sent him a message: The King has arrived at the human-pet pavilion.
By then,
Yuxing had just coaxed out the news that she was approaching adulthood.
*I have a bad feeling about this.jpg*
Yuxing humbly sought clarification: "Reaching adulthood means...?"
The cat-eared girl enlightened Yuxing: "Every human pet is forcibly bound to an owner upon reaching adulthood."
Yuxing froze: "How forced?"
The cat-eared girl thought about it: "Highest bidder wins. But you don't need to worry; Article 1 of the Interstellar Human-Pet Protection Act stipulates that abusing humans is prohibited. You're so pretty; whoever adopts you will take meticulous care of you."
Yuxing: "..."
Old Yu's heart is bitter, but Old Yu won't say it.
The cat-eared girl glanced down at her watch: "Oh my, it's time for me to get off work. I'll come see you first thing tomorrow morning."
Yuxing waved goodbye to the working cat-girl with a look of utter despair.
The memories left behind by the original body told her that aliens were notoriously prone to yanderes and madmen, with hobbies like collecting human specimens and bones.
Entrusting one's life and limb to a strange alien seemed unreliable no matter how she looked at it. If she was unfortunate enough to draw a freak who loved domestication, it would be a capital-M misery.
She couldn't gamble.
She decided to turn from passive to active and pick a good alien for herself. However, having just arrived, she didn't know anyone.
Right at that moment,
unhurried footsteps drew closer from afar.