Chapter 120 Settling Down

It didn't take Hao Ren and the others long to get home, and "G滚" came looking for them, following the noise.

No one knew how this little, foot-long black cat managed to be so well-informed, but as soon as Hao Ren sat down in the living room, he heard a series of thumps from the window facing the street. He looked up and saw "G滚" vigorously slapping the window frame with its tail. At that moment, Izhaks was sitting awkwardly on the sofa, studying the Earthling television remote. He looked up at the kitten, a look of surprise on his face, "Is that your cat?"

Hao Ren got up to open the window for "G滚", answering without turning his head, "Yeah, its name is 'G滚'. Don't ask how it got that name, that's just what it's called."

Despite having been running wild outside unattended for several days, "G滚" looked even fatter than it had been before. No one knew how this magical creature managed to thrive in the dangerous southern suburbs, where cats and dogs roamed freely. It lightly jumped onto Hao Ren's shoulder, its plump body snuggling against the back of his neck, and then noticed the stranger in the living room. A very human-like look of surprise appeared on its feline face.

It wasn't that it hadn't seen new residents in the house before; it was that it had never seen an upright walking creature that was seven feet tall – everyone had seen dogs, but if you saw a foxhound the size of a Xiali car, your expression would definitely be the same as "G滚’s".

Izhaks seemed to recall something, a hint of nostalgia on his face: "Pets, huh? I used to have a cat too."

Hao Ren choked on his saliva, "You had a cat?!"

His mind immediately conjured up a cruel image of a fifteen-foot-tall flame demon cradling a kitten. The cat was well-done…

Izhaks smiled, "There are no cats in the Abyss, but I called it a cat. The thing was a demon hound, and when it lay down, it was two heads taller than you. But it died later. It could have come here with me, but it didn't want to."

Hao Ren chuckled dryly, thinking to himself that he really named his dog "Cat"...

At this time, Lily had already packed up her things with nimble hands and ran out from the side like a lively little rabbit. She saw the black cat squatting on Hao Ren's shoulder at a glance, immediately stopped in her tracks, and greeted "G滚" respectfully. Then, she enthusiastically introduced it to Izhaks: "Hey, big guy, let me introduce you, this is 'G滚', the second-in-command here. I'm number three, you're number four, the TV in the living room is number five, the bats are number six..."

Lily was talking nonsense, obviously, the fact that she had finally returned to her little nest from eight time zones away made this canine creature exceptionally excited. She started running around and frolicking like a puppy that had just returned home, so much so that she even dared to joke with Izhaks (she was originally quite afraid of the great demon). Unfortunately, Izhaks didn't understand a word after listening for a long time. He turned to look at Hao Ren: "What's she saying?"

"Ignore her, she's just being silly," Hao Ren chuckled dryly, "I still have to find Raven 12345 tomorrow and have her solve your language problem. By the way, are you hungry? Want to eat something first?"

Izhaks shook his head: "No need, just tell me where the room is, I'll go to sleep first. When I wake up, I'll think about what I can help you with here."

Izhaks once said that he basically slept through the better part of the two weeks since he came to Earth. Now he was going to sleep again, and Hao Ren, an older youth who had been severely poisoned by novels, suddenly thought he understood the key: "Oh, oh, I understand. You must have consumed a lot of spiritual power traveling from another world to this one, and now you have to rely on sleep to restore yourself to your peak state, right?"

Izhaks gave Hao Ren a strange look: "Why do you always think so much? I'm just jet-lagged..."

Hao Ren: "...Come with me, there's a spare room upstairs."

Izhaks agreed and was about to follow Hao Ren upstairs when Vivian suddenly ran out of the kitchen when she heard the voice: "Landlord, are you arranging a room for the big guy? I happen to have something I want to discuss with you."

Hao Ren looked at Vivian curiously and noticed that there was some hesitation on her face: "What's wrong?"

"Let's give my room to the big guy," Vivian seemed to feel that she was causing some trouble by suddenly making this request, but she still said it, "I want to move to the basement."

Hao Ren opened his mouth, immediately misunderstanding, and comforted Vivian with a concerned expression: "Did Lily squeeze you for rent again? Don't pay attention to her, I don't care, why should you care? We can't just kick you out to the basement because you don't pay rent..."

Vivian quickly waved her hand: "That's not what I meant, I really want to live in the basement—"

As the vampire girl spoke, she pointed to the bright sun outside: "I'm listless during the day and need to find a cool place to rest. Although high-level bloodkin aren't afraid of the sun, it's best to keep a distance from it. I know you're kind to let me live in the sunny room, but if I keep living like this, my endocrine system will not only be imbalanced, but I'm afraid it will be completely burned away!"

At first, Hao Ren thought that this was a reason Vivian had made up, but since she had brought up the racial characteristics of the bloodkin, and seeing the serious expression on her face, he knew that Vivian really thought so, so he didn't say anything more. However, there was one thing he was embarrassed about: "The basement is indeed quite large, and it was rented out before, so there's electricity and water, but there's a lot of mess piled up in it, and it might be difficult to clean up."

"It's okay, I'm quick at work!" Vivian showed a very proud look, "I'm best at finding a place to sleep for myself in all kinds of environments. I'm quite skilled!"

Seeing the vampire girl's eager look, Hao Ren felt a pang of heartache for her: what kind of life did this unlucky girl live before...

Vivian ran up and down the stairs nimbly to pack her things, and Hao Ren also helped diligently behind her. Before long, the problem of switching rooms was solved. Izhaks had no luggage at all. The great demon took care of everything with magic. His things seemed to be able to be conjured from some other dimension, so all he needed was a spare room. Vivian's living requirements were even simpler: shaded from the sun was enough, and she didn't even require it to be dry and ventilated (vampires come with their own air conditioning), so it was naturally easier to arrange.

This large house had a large basement to match its size, which had also been rented out before. During the two years when Hao Ren's "business was booming", he even had the whim to renovate the basement, dividing it equally into two rooms. One was used as a warehouse, and the other was arranged like a small suite, with floor tiles, wallpaper, furniture, and electrical appliances all complete. It could be said that other than the fact that it had no windows, it was no different from the rooms upstairs – it was even more spacious. The basement had not been lived in for the past two years, and the "outer room" that was originally used as a rental house had more or less accumulated some杂物 (záwù, sundries), but fortunately, it was easy to clean up. Before long, all the杂物 (záwù, sundries) had been collected by Hao Ren and were ready to be thrown into the small warehouse next door.

Vivian moved her luggage to her new room and saw Hao Ren squatting on the ground messing with a wooden box. She curiously came over: "Landlord, are these things going to be sent to the warehouse next door later?"

"Yeah, I'll move them over later. To be honest, they're not useful anymore, but it's a shame to throw them away – they're all things from my childhood," Hao Ren looked at the things in the wooden box, and a look of reminiscence could not help but appear on his face, "Look at these, they were all pretty new back then. I even fought with the neighbor's kids for these things, and now look how broken they are."

Vivian scratched her hair: "In my eyes, these are all pretty new."

Hao Ren's bit of emotion immediately suffocated in his trachea: he shouldn't have discussed life memories with an old monster who carried six pounds of antiques as a talisman. It was too easy to hurt his self-esteem.

Vivian also saw that Hao Ren's expression was a little awkward for a moment, and immediately changed the subject, pointing to the things in the box and asking Hao Ren to introduce them to her.

"This is the lunch box I used in junior high school, this is my game console when I was a kid. Game consoles used cartridges like this back then. I often took off the outer shell and just plugged the circuit board inside into the machine. It felt so high-end. This is the winter homework of the person who sat next to me... Damn, why is this thing with me? Oh, and there's half a yuan here. I picked it up back then and hoped every day that I could pick up the other half..." Hao Ren introduced them one by one as if he were listing his family treasures, with occasional surprises in between. Vivian listened with great interest next to him. The two guys, who had at least several hundred generations of generation gaps, studied a pile of junk like this until Hao Ren finally found a rhombus-shaped piece of iron from the innermost part of the box, and Vivian's eyes suddenly changed.

"I don't know where this came from," Hao Ren didn't notice the change in Vivian's expression at all. He just played with the palm-sized piece of iron back and forth in his hand, "It seems to be a handicraft from somewhere. No one recognizes these crooked symbols on it..."