Chapter 171: Chapter 171: Unlucky Stalker Chapter 171: Chapter 171: Unlucky Stalker Ermao’s phone was knocked into a bucket of water by his “daughter” with a swipe of her paw.

At that time, Ermao was in a bad mood. After coming back, he didn’t know what to do and, on a whim, decided to fetch a bucket of water to wipe the table. He had spilled beer on it the day before, and there were dried splatters from takeout grease still visible. Watching his “daughter” sniffing around on the table, Ermao rolled up his sleeves, brought over the bucket, and started to wipe the table with the rag he had torn up yesterday while exercising his grip strength.

His phone was on the nightstand, and as he was wiping the computer desk, Wang Bin called. The ringing startled Heimi, who was squatting beside him, and she went over and slapped it, coincidentally hitting the answer button.

People who have cats know that they habitually can’t keep their paws to themselves.

So, after the first swipe, there would be a second. Heimi’s second paw swat sent the phone flying directly into the water, and even more coincidentally, Ermao had placed the bucket beside the nightstand—the first spot he had started to clean.

Therefore, all Wang Bin heard after Ermao’s shout was a “plop” of the phone dropping into the water, and then, silence.

With a dejected face, Ermao retrieved the phone from the bucket, looked at its dark screen, tried to turn it on, but it wouldn’t respond. He took out the battery and blasted it with a hairdryer, to no avail. The phone was a goner.

Helplessly looking at Heimi, who was squatting on the table with an innocent look, Ermao rubbed his forehead and suddenly understood the complex emotions of other cat owners. However, he didn’t feel like going out today. He’d buy a new phone tomorrow—it wasn’t urgent since he could use messaging apps to contact most people he needed to. He just didn’t know who had been calling just now.

Wang Bin tried calling several more times, but was unable to get through. He was certain that the shout he’d heard was from his twin brother, and after hearing what Ermao had shouted, Wang Bin was desperate to find out what was going on with the “daughter.” Just today, his mother had been nagging about when Ermao would find a girlfriend, settle down, get married, have children, and stay quietly at home. And now this “bombshell” had dropped.

Wang Bin didn’t like to go into situations unprepared. If Ermao had really stirred up some trouble, he needed to prepare in advance to avoid a family uproar. Of course, first, he had to find Ermao, but Wang Bin himself didn’t have much time to stay in Chuhua City.

After calling Zhao Le and learning a bit more, Wang Bin recalled the black cat he had seen at the party hosted by his uncle, but he had no clear memory of it. He could definitely find Ermao by deploying some professionals or taking a tougher approach, but those methods were off the table—they would backfire for sure, as similar incidents had happened in the past. Ask the cat’s owner? He heard that the family lived in the Chuhua University staff courtyard where there was hardly anyone during the day, except for children. Zhao Le didn’t recommend bothering them.

After a long silence, Wang Bin called a friend who was staying in Chuhua City. Anyway, that buddy had been bored out of his mind recently, so Wang Bin thought it might be good to give him something to do. If that didn’t yield results, Wang Bin planned to make time to personally visit the cat’s owner in Chuhua City the following weekend.

As Mr. Fang had said, many people who knew Ermao would never guess that he lived in the university’s staff courtyard. So, Wang Bin ruled out the possibility that Ermao was living in that area.

Over at Zheng Tan’s side, after spending half a day lying around the exhibition area like an idiot, Zheng Tan went home with the three members of the Jiao family. Jiao Ma had taken the kids to an event that afternoon, so they just waited for it to end before leaving with Zheng Tan in tow. Of course, all of this was done covertly, with no one realizing that BC, who had been stubbornly occupying the highest spot on the cat perch, was leaving with Jiao Ma and the kids.

As for settling wages, Xiao Guo would naturally transfer it to the card—that had been agreed upon with Mr. Jiao, so Zheng Tan wasn’t worried.

After the event, Zheng Tan didn’t have much to do and wandered around both inside and outside the campus. However, his mood soon soured. He realized someone was surveilling him. The feeling was unpleasant.

Fortunately, this person doing the surveillance was a fool.

When Zheng Tan was first followed and surveilled, the person had been quite attentive to hide their presence, clearly valuing the cat a lot. However, this time, the stalker wasn’t even trying to hide, brazenly letting Zheng Tan know: Hey, I’m watching you!

For the third time, Zheng Tan looked towards the young man dressed in a casual suit and wearing sunglasses with hands in his pockets, trying to act cool, and reflected on the recent events. Could it be that he was being targeted because of the Green Wings Association activity?

No, that was unlikely. Zheng Tan dismissed this guess. Not to undervalue himself, but from the activity and the expo, it was clear that as a cat, he didn’t carry much weight at the moment. Besides the few people like Mr. Fang and Old Liu, Zhao Le, whom Zheng Tan knew, most of the other attendees with some status were there not so much for the wine as for other purposes, such as Ye Hao and some media and politicians.

The person surveilling him was dressed in expensive clothing, not seeming like someone in need of money. Moreover, it didn’t make sense that anyone would recognize that BC was the same stray cat that hung around Chuhua University. With so many black cats looking similar, why focus on him specifically?

He stretched, jumped down from the tree, and walked down a path.

If the man with the sunglasses wanted to follow, he could. Just don’t regret it later!

The sunglassed man had just made a bored phone call, probably to his girlfriend.

“…I’m not at the company right now, just out stretching my legs… Yeah, that’s right, it’s spring, the season of birdsong and fragrant flowers… Okay, I won’t talk to you anymore, I’ve got stuff to do, come on babe, mwah…”

Seeing that Zheng Tan was leaving, the man in sunglasses hurriedly hung up and followed. Although he agreed to do a favor for a friend, it was really boring. On the plus side, in the university campus, he could see many attractive and graceful female students. An unexpected romantic encounter would be even better. Unfortunately, that black cat had perched on a tree for an hour, so he had to kill time on the phone.

Zheng Tan was now quite familiar with Chuhua University, having been to both the crowded and the secluded areas.

Just like the man in sunglasses had said, it really was a season of birdsong and fragrant flowers.

However, in some places, birdsong didn’t equate to the smell of flowers.

Zheng Tan walked leisurely, as if he was simply enjoying the afternoon stroll. The bespectacled man continued to follow him. But then, he smelled something strange.

On this pathway, there was nobody else besides Zheng Tan and the person following him. The students who had classes were in class, and those who didn’t were studying or reading and would not choose this “Angel Road.”

The man in sunglasses had been leisurely taking in the surrounding greenery, admiring that Chuhua University truly deserved its reputation as a century-old prestigious institution.

He was halfway through his admiration when he heard a soft plop on his shoulder.

The man turned his head to look at his shoulder, and his face immediately turned pale.

With a splat of white and grey mush hitting it, it was now impossible to rub off.

Zheng Tan increased his pace to leave this section of the road; he usually didn’t walk this way because it had more birds, and this road was also known as one of Chuhua University’s “Angel (Poop) Road.”

He had just heard the man behind him, wearing sunglasses, start cursing, which undoubtedly meant he had been hit too. Therefore, Zheng Tan didn’t plan to linger; those unprincipled birds wouldn’t hold back just because there were people underneath.

In fact, not everyone who walks this way gets “lucky.”; it’s just a matter of probability. And today, the man with sunglasses wasn’t just “winning” once. His sleeve had been hit by a splat that contained a bit of red; who knew what those birds had eaten.

In short, the man with sunglasses kept cursing out of frustration, and while Zheng Tan was snickering, he picked up on some issues from the man’s words, including mentions of Wang Bin and Ermao. What made things clear for Zheng Tan was a phone call made by the man after he left that section of the road.

“Wang Bin, I’m telling you, to help you, I really went through a lot of trouble…”, the man with sunglasses grumbled as he walked, his jacket already taken off, bunched up, and held in his hand. He stopped upon seeing the Black Cat jump onto a stone bench, and he found another stone bench to sit down on.

“Didn’t see Ermao? What about the cat?” Wang Bin asked after listening to a bunch of complaints from the other end.

“The cat is one meter away from me, right beside me, don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on it, I’ll definitely catch that little punk Ermao,” the man with sunglasses confidently declared.

“And, what’s it’s look like when it looks at you?” Wang Bin paused before speaking uncertainly, having heard quite a few things about this Black Cat from Zhao Le, knowing that it wasn’t quite like a normal cat.

“Its look? What else could it be… a cat’s look…”

The man with sunglasses glanced casually towards the stone bench, only to meet Zheng Tan’s eyes looking at him as if he were an idiot.

He choked on the second half of his sentence and, after a long pause, blurted out, “Damn it!”

“Beast, I’ve told you to be careful when stalking, not to make it too obvious,” Wang Bin sighed from the other end of the phone.

“Cough, it’s just a cat, for crying out loud… Anyway, this time it was a coincidence, I will keep following, who knows when Ermao might pop out,” the man with sunglasses hung up the call, took off his sunglasses, and then stared intently at the cat on the stone bench.

“Hey, are you messing with me on purpose?” the man with sunglasses asked.

Zheng Tan ignored him, squatting there and playing dumb. Although this person was a bit dim, he meant no harm.

After asking the cat, the man with sunglasses just chuckled at himself, thinking he must have been dazed by the bird poop, questioning a cat like that.

However, the man with sunglasses got an idea; he had heard a friend mention once how a dog would run to its owner upon hearing someone call its owner’s name. Could this trick work here? It should!

So, like reciting a scripture, the man with sunglasses started repeating the name “Ermao” to Zheng Tan.

Zheng Tan couldn’t help it anymore and jumped down from the stone bench to leave.

The man with sunglasses followed behind; as they passed a large trash can, he tossed the bundled-up coat into it.

Zheng Tan tugged his ear, thinking to himself: What a wasteful guy!

Actually, Zheng Tan had forgotten that back when he was human, his own way of doing things was quite similar to this guy’s.

The man with sunglasses was following close behind Zheng Tan, about to say something, when he suddenly caught a glimpse of a figure and immediately sped up to run in that direction. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so the man with sunglasses decided to leap over the lawn. There were metal railings around the lawn, and the man with sunglasses vaulted over them in a bound.

A single leap!

The man with sunglasses’s right foot landed squarely on a pile of poop left by Sahara during a parkour session that morning. He was completely oblivious to it.

Zheng Tan took a glance and saw that it was Ermao returning from outside, coincidentally encountered by the man with sunglasses. It has to be said, this was quite a coincidence.

By the time Zheng Tan jogged back to the East District courtyard, Ermao and the man with sunglasses would probably have already had a conversation.

Reaching the third floor, the door to Ermao’s room wasn’t closed properly, allowing Zheng Tan to hear the conversation inside.

“Did you really pick this place to stay to increase your culture? Mr. Ermao, who forgets to write the word ‘lucky’ in his essay ‘picking up a great bargain’?” That was the voice of the man with sunglasses.

“And who was it that wrote their own name ‘Qin Tao’ as ‘Qin Shou,’ got sent back by the teacher to rewrite a whole two pages of paper, then, looking completely aggrieved, threw the notebook out for the whole class to see as if to air his ‘grievances?’ The person who can’t spell his own name and doesn’t even notice the missing three water radicals has no right to criticize me!” Ermao retorted.

Zheng Tan: “…”

Were these two competing to see who was the bigger idiot?(To be continued. If you like this work, please visit Qidian (qidian.com) to cast your vote for recommendation tickets, monthly tickets, your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please visit m.qidian.com to read.)

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep