In Traveling Meow Meow, the direction the cat travels is determined by the decoration style of the villa. But Yu Qunqing hadn’t added any new decorations yet, so the system refused to let the Klein Bottle go until he did.

Yu Qunqing picked a sparrow plush from the shop, and also drew a piece of clothing from the daily claw-machine event. He clicked to equip them all.

The Klein Bottle let out a long meow. An arrow pointing south appeared above its head, and then it hopped away and vanished.

Yu Qunqing still felt a little melancholy. At that moment, the system quietly floated out, glowing silently to assert its presence.

When you’re happy, you play games. When you’re unhappy, you should play games even more!

Yu Qunqing opened the map of the Fourth Ring and tried to immerse himself in renovations. His current progress was unlocking the zoo entrance and the first animal pavilion. Without an on-site survey, he couldn’t subjectively know how large it really was. From the map alone, he estimated the first animal pavilion to be about the size of two repair shops, with a note saying it was suitable for keeping two to three medium-sized mammals. Because the weather was too cold, he herded a large flock of sheep inside. The sheep crowded together, relying on their thick wool and the venue’s temperature control system to keep warm.

Starting from the entrance, Yu Qunqing reselected the decorative style. First, he placed a massive artificial rockery to block the view of the auto repair shop in front. Then he left a winding path leading to the ticket booth, and beyond that was the real entrance. Two monkey statues held up a banner reading: “Fourth Ring Zoo Welcomes You.”

After entering, there was a circular plaza. Bamboo was planted in the center, with a ring of benches around it. Pebbles were laid out in a topological pattern, and several animal-shaped trash cans and signposts were added. Beside the plaza were an ice cream truck, a jianbing cart, a milk tea truck, and an aromatherapy production cart—any of them could be activated as long as there were staff. But since it was cold, he left them idle for now.

Next came the renovation of the first sheep pavilion. Yu Qunqing chose a smaller indoor area, leaving a larger outdoor space. He laid down grass, fenced it with wooden barriers, and built a visitor interaction platform. Feed was placed inside the pavilion. Because there were already residents inside, the pavilion was in an active state.

Behind the sheep pavilion, Yu Qunqing added another pavilion side by side, capable of housing two to three large mammals. He planted a giraffe sign at the entrance, marking it as future giraffe territory. Then he expanded the lawn and added some low trees and visitor interaction platforms, all made of dark brown wood. Outside the giraffe pavilion was a small river, frozen solid.

In the next sub-scene, Yu Qunqing unlocked the “Bird Viewing House” and let out another long sigh. Checking the system’s decoration plans, he found nothing but cages or glass enclosures. He poked the system and said, “This violates animal nature.”

System: “Hello. The player’s feedback has been summarized and submitted to the program. A response has been received: by spending money, you can obtain decoration packs with higher freedom. Would you like to proceed?”

Yu Qunqing naturally clicked yes. Right now, what he lacked the least was money for whaling.

So the bird viewing house became half semi-enclosed habitat and half open-air. As for whether the little birds would fly away—that wasn’t within Yu Qunqing’s considerations.

After spending a lot of money, playing games always brought a sense of emptiness, as if the game had suddenly lost its veil of mystery. Yu Qunqing was feeling exactly that. He directly recharged more than ten thousand diamonds and smoothly constructed the “Zoo” scene, finally collecting reptile halls, marine animal halls, fierce beast halls, small mammal halls, polar animal halls, and more. Now, no matter what kind of friends the Klein Bottle brought back, he wouldn’t have to worry—his little cat friends could move in with their bags packed.

Halfway through, thoroughly bored, Yu Qunqing switched to “Seasonal Event – The Lost Weir of Dogmouth.” It was an ultra-high-difficulty match-three game, sometimes featuring grids as large as 99×99, but clearing them with items felt especially satisfying.

In places Yu Qunqing couldn’t see, some trash disappeared from the riverbed of Crocodile River, and the rudimentary shape of a weir emerged on the empty ground.

Switching between the two scenes, he finally pushed the progress forward. The zoo revealed its complete form, covering roughly a hundred mu—about the size of a standard medium zoo. At the entrance stood an auto repair shop and a food court. Because there were no traces of human presence, both were powered down, standing in the Fourth Ring like ice sculptures. In the darkness, they were indistinguishable from ruins, but once the sun rose, anyone would realize that these buildings were encroaching upon the Fourth Ring.

During renovations, a whack-a-mole mini-game would occasionally pop up, used to drive away invading catastrophes. The small disaster stones left behind all ended up in the system’s stomach.

“Look! That big thing is spewing smoke again!”

Suddenly, an uproar broke out in the residential district. People in the apartment buildings pulled open their curtains and shouted, frozen fear returning to their hearts.

Yu Qunqing looked toward the Fourth Ring. In the night sky, the position of Eight-Legged Frostfall wasn’t very clear. Its vents spewed gray mist in four different directions. Fortunately, it was no longer blowing this way, but the temperature clearly dropped another three or four degrees. After releasing the four clouds of mist, Eight-Legged Frostfall sank further, its main body now at an altitude of a little over three thousand meters.

The residents didn’t study Eight-Legged Frostfall in such depth and had their own explanations: “I heard there’s a clone of a catastrophe community over there in the Fourth Ring. Is Eight-Legged Frostfall trying to eat it?”

“That community is huge. If Eight-Legged Frostfall eats it, it’ll evolve even more. When that happens, we won’t be able to escape at all.”

Out of a sense of belonging to their community, everyone immediately united against a common enemy. The safest method for now was to continue feeding disaster stones to the community. The second option was to go into the freezing Fourth Ring and feed disaster stones to the community’s clone. In short, adding popularity to those buildings was the right thing to do. Yu Qunqing didn’t yet know that the Fourth Ring Chamber of Commerce was already itching to brave the low temperatures and return to the Fourth Ring.

Yu Qunqing was just one final preparation away from cutting off one of Eight-Legged Frostfall’s legs. As for the remaining seven, they would definitely require going to the shelter to recruit people for battle. The combat power of their community was still too weak.

After the cold wave came poison gas of even higher concentration. Exposed skin stung painfully on contact. Yu Qunqing immediately thought that the vice-captain absolutely couldn’t transform into a black bird under such conditions.

The residents also realized the danger of the poison gas and began improving their equipment again. Soon, they came up with the idea of wearing simple goggles, and the research lab started working overtime to develop them. They also reinforced the roadblocks outside the community, laying fishing nets with thick layers of filtration devices, leaving only a few small holes to observe the outside. The area outside the community now looked as if a new Great Wall had appeared.

People rarely went into the gardens anymore, instead moving to underground parking garages, the sections of subway tunnels connected to them, and some leftover caverns in underground plazas. These places had all been reinforced and could be used safely. Unknowingly, the residents’ activity range had already exceeded the actual size of the community.

Yu Qunqing bought dinner at the trading center and returned home with some worry, thinking about how to persuade the vice-captain to use the egret form less.

As soon as he got home, he saw She Lulang wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, staring at the little blue parrot. This house, inside and out, had been decorated entirely by Yu Qunqing through the game. That sense of everything being under control gave him tremendous security. It was no longer the big house he’d bought back then to show off, but a true home in his heart.

Every time he came back and saw the vice-captain, that feeling grew stronger. He liked having She Lulang within reach. Perhaps it wasn’t just liking—it was needing.

But today, the vice-captain was clearly not in a normal state. The little blue parrot flew onto Yu Qunqing’s shoulder, and She Lulang’s gaze followed. A pair of vertical pupils was strikingly obvious.

Low temperatures and poison gas were environments She Lulang disliked. This meant his “egret” form ability was almost unusable. As a result, his body began shifting toward another form to maintain balance. She Lulang absolutely wouldn’t allow himself to have wolf ears, so after exhausting all options, he turned to the “snake” form instead. That was why he now let snake scales grow freely, turned on the heater, and wrapped himself in a thick quilt to maintain warmth. He chose to sit on the sofa instead of the bed because sitting on the bed would make him think of Yu Qunqing—each extra thought making his heart heavier.

Now Yu Qunqing was finally back…

Realizing that the vice-captain’s abilities were out of control, Yu Qunqing immediately checked the heater and turned it up a few degrees, asking, “Still cold?”

She Lulang paused, hugging the blanket tighter. “I’m not just cold,” he said.

Yu Qunqing nodded blankly. He knew that when the vice-captain switched to snake form, he would endure pain similar to “shedding skin”—not actually peeling off a layer, but his blood vessels and bones undergoing restructuring. Having a constant-temperature object nearby would make it easier.

Yu Qunqing felt the room growing warmer and said carefully, “If you need it…”

Thinking of how Yu Qunqing seemed to be keeping a whole flock of sheep in the Fourth Ring, She Lulang suddenly became alert. “I don’t need other animals.”

“Huh?” Yu Qunqing didn’t understand. “Then do I count as another animal?”

“If it’s you…” She Lulang thought that if saying it a hundred times wasn’t enough, he’d say it a thousand times. After all, in this world, they were uniquely irreplaceable. Nothing was qualified to take Yu Qunqing away from him. He said directly, “I need you. Always have.”

Yu Qunqing seemed to hear something else in those words and fell into speechless silence.

She Lulang looked up at him. Yu Qunqing’s awkwardness had nowhere to hide. The gloom She Lulang had felt these past days suddenly vanished. Clearly, he was the one losing control, the one in a weaker position, yet he wasn’t nervous at all. Instead, a bright warmth rose within him, and a faint smile appeared on his face. Deliberately using a rather unfamiliar form of address from long ago, She Lulang asked:

“Captain Yu, why are you blushing?”

“Am I?!!” Yu Qunqing panicked.