The Azure Cloud Sect had one unspoken rule:
Don't. Touch. The Cat.
No one wrote it on a scroll. No elder declared it from a mountaintop. It simply became known—the same way one knows not to stand too close to lightning, or insult someone's ancestors during a duel.
Because if you touched the cat… things exploded.
Still, rules never stopped Chen Bo, a senior outer disciple, from doing stupid things.
Chen Bo hated the cat.
From the moment that fluffy little tyrant arrived—dragged in by some naive junior disciple who thought they'd discovered a 'spiritual pet'—everything changed.
The elders stopped paying attention to sect matters.
Training halls turned into napping spots.
Their precious spirit herbs? Chewed on.
Their sacred scrolls? Clawed.
And now, the cat—that cat—was resting in the middle of the Training Arena, curled up on the warm stone tiles as if he owned the place.
Worse, he was glowing again.
"Are you going to move him?" asked another disciple nervously.
Chen Bo snorted. "It's a beast. I don't care what it is. If he wants to lie in the middle of the dueling platform during my sparring session, he's gonna learn the hard way."
"But the last guy—"
"Exploded, yes, I know!" Chen snapped. "That was a coincidence. Qi deviation or something. This furball's not a divine beast. Just fat."
Whiskers was dreaming of tuna clouds when the foot approached.
He twitched an ear.
The air changed.
The world tilted ever so slightly.
He cracked open one eye. Chen Bo loomed above him, spiritual energy crackling along his leg.
A kick.
A literal kick.
The moment Chen Bo's foot made contact with Whiskers' side, the world shattered.
It wasn't a roar, exactly.
It was more like a deep, offended grumble—a sound ancient enough to remind clouds of their own mortality.
Golden energy surged from Whiskers in all directions. Stone tiles cracked. Dust shot up like geysers. The training field was swallowed in a blinding white flash.
And Chen Bo?
Gone.
There wasn't even a scorch mark.
Whiskers blinked. Sat up. Licked his chest fur.
"Serves you right, peasant."
He stretched luxuriously as disciples scrambled from the arena edges, some screaming, some bowing, some praying.
Elder Mei arrived seconds later, her sleeves flaring as she landed in a gust of wind. Her eyes widened at the crater.
"What in the name of the Heavens—?!"
She spotted Whiskers, tail swishing.
"…Oh," she said quietly. "It was him."
An emergency sect meeting was called that evening.
Whiskers did not attend.
He was busy trying to open a jar of preserved salmon using qi-infused tail flicks.
Meanwhile, the elders debated: Was "Little Snow" truly a divine beast? A reincarnated spirit guardian? A heavenly omen?
Sect Master Wu, usually a calm and meditative man, simply stared at the claw marks on his meditation cushion and sighed.
"He's stronger than all of us combined."
"Then should we… offer him the position of protector spirit?"
"He peed in the ancestral cauldron yesterday."
"…Ah."
The next morning, things escalated.
A rogue Blood Claw Demon, sensing the massive qi Whiskers had released, broke through the western barrier. It tore through the outer forest and crashed into the sect courtyard, roaring.
Disciples fled. Elders rushed in.
But the first one to meet the beast… was Whiskers.
He was sitting on a stone bench, trying to nap in a sunbeam.
The demon screeched. Qi flared. It pounced.
Whiskers opened one eye.
Then, without standing up, he yawned.
The yawn was gentle. Soft. Sleepy.
And laced with divine resonance.
The Blood Claw Demon froze mid-air—eyes wide, body trembling—then dropped like a stone.
Dead.
A hush fell over the sect.
One of the disciples, pale and breathless, whispered: "He killed a Foundation Core demon… with a yawn."
"No," murmured Elder Mei. "He silence him"
Whiskers hopped down from the bench and casually dragged a spirit herb into the sun to use as a pillow. He curled up again, tail flicking.
The other spirit beasts in the mountains felt it.
The pulse of power.
The rise of a new monarch.
One who ruled from a sunbeam. One who punished offense with instinct and apathy.
One who, above all things, demanded only one offering:
Silence.
So he could finally nap.