Chapter 4
Don’t ask why his sister had hamster food in her car. If you asked, she would claim her best friend bought it and left it there.
It was definitely not because she had some supernatural premonition, and it certainly wasn’t because she secretly wanted to raise another little hamster behind her brother’s back.
Tianwei placed the little hamster onto the passenger seat and leaned over to buckle him in, only to realize he was far too tiny; the seatbelt was wider than his entire body.
Holding the paw-print cookie she had just given him between his two pink front paws, the little hamster stared blankly at the oversized seatbelt, his face completely expressionless.
“Well, that’s definitely not safe,” Tianwei muttered.
She picked up the hamster by the scruff of his neck and gently set him into the cup holder of the center console.
The little hamster instinctively dropped his cookie. Resting his front paws on the plastic rim of the cup holder, he stared blankly at his sister, then stared blankly ahead through the windshield. He was clearly bewildered by his current predicament.
“Squeak, squeak?” Could you let me out?
“The passenger seat is too big. If I hit the brakes, you’ll go tumbling and hurt yourself.” Tianwei didn’t actually speak hamster, but she could easily guess his meaning.
Starting the engine, she reached over to stroke his soft fur from head to tail. “Be a good boy and sit tight. Your sister is taking you home.”
“Squeak, squeak!” Hooray!
The little hamster waved his tiny paws in excitement. “We have to go back today; I need to pack my things.”
Packing was important, of course, but he had an even more pressing matter to take care of tonight. Thinking about what awaited him back at the apartment, his dark, round eyes narrowed into slits. He discreetly licked his sharp little claws. Tonight, he was going to tear that wretched thing to shreds.
“All right. Once you’re packed up, my dad will be home tomorrow,” Tianwei said thoughtfully. “You can tell him everything you told me then.”
Her rational mind still found the situation absurd, but emotionally, she believed her brother—especially since Yu Xiaoyuan had just transformed into a live hamster right in front of her. As for what steps to take next, they could decide together after her father returned.
Then she paused, glancing sideways. “little hamster… you said you have memories of the future. After we got separated in the apocalypse, did we ever find each other again?”
She knew her younger brother far too well. He was gentle, naive, and far too easy to bully. In a brutal apocalyptic world, without her or their uncle watching over him, how could he possibly have survived such a sudden nightmare?
When no answer came, Tianwei looked down.
The little hamster had curled himself into a tight ball, turning his back toward her. He looked so small, fluffy, and terribly aggrieved. Even so, he hadn’t forgotten to quietly nibble on that paw-print cookie.
A sharp pang struck Tianwei’s heart. She understood the unspoken answer. Her belief in his story jumped from sixty percent to ninety percent in an instant.
“Once your uncle gets back, the three of us will plan everything out and prepare for the apocalypse together!” she said firmly.
“Mm!” The little hamster perked up immediately, his eyes shining with renewed light as he pumped his tiny fists. “I believe in you, Sister!”
The moment they arrived at the apartment, the little hamster hopped to the floor and scurried inside.
The living room was in utter disarray from the earlier fight, but he didn’t spare the mess a single glance. Instead, he bolted straight into the bedroom, diving onto his smartphone and rubbing his face against it with affection.
The main reason he had bought so few snacks at the hospital convenience store was that he had forgotten to bring his phone. The poor little hamster had been completely broke, unable to hoard more instant noodles or classic potato chips!
But now, he was a little hamster with a phone!
The milk-tea-colored furball rubbed his paws together in glee. Kicking off with his hind legs, he leaped onto the screen and landed with a soft plop. His tiny paws tapped away with rapid clicks, eagerly launching a food delivery app.
Tianwei, who had watched the little creature leap from her hands and scamper away in a blur of bounces and slides, hadn’t even kicked off her shoes yet. Following him into the bedroom, she found him sitting squarely on the phone screen.
Bending down to scoop up a blanket from the floor, she offered some gentle advice. “little hamster, no matter how large your storage space is, it must have limits. Even with one pouch on the left and another on the right, shouldn’t we make a proper plan for how to survive seven waves of natural disasters?”
The little hamster blinked, tilting his head. That actually makes a lot of sense.
A stray tuft of fur on top of his head sprang upright. “I’ll listen to you, Sister.” The little tuft bobbed up and down in agreement.
Amused, Tianwei leaned down to touch the funny little tuft, but the moment her hand approached, the cowlick snapped right back down!
Tianwei blinked, rubbing her eyes. Had she just imagined that?
Meanwhile, the hamster’s dark eyes drifted toward the coffee table sitting in front of the safe.
Lying alone on the glass was a blank white jade plaque, looking oddly conspicuous beneath the open, emptied safe. On the pure white surface was a dark red bloodstain—left behind when the original owner cracked his head and his blood dripped onto the pendant. When the little hamster first arrived in this body, he had casually yanked it off and tossed it onto the table.
That blank plaque was the Kuntian Jade, an extraordinary spatial artifact. It possessed rich soil capable of growing spirit crops, accelerated plant growth, a magical spirit spring, and vast storage dimensions.
However, the artifact spirit dwelling inside was rotten to the core.
The little hamster shifted his gaze away innocently. “Then I’ll just order some basic groceries from the supermarket for now.” Once his sister left, he would settle the score with this disloyal piece of jade.
“All right,” Tianwei agreed softly. She could empathize; if she had suddenly inherited horrific memories of an impending apocalypse, she would feel terribly insecure and desperate to hoard supplies too.
“I can’t promise much else,” she added, leaning over the bed to gently poke his soft white belly, “but I can promise that if the world ends, our family will stay together this time. No matter what horrors come, we face them as one.”
The little hamster wrapped both front paws around her finger, rubbing his cheek against her skin. “The little hamster believes in Sister!”
Yet the moment his sister walked out the front door, the milk-tea-colored hamster dropped onto the coffee table with a solid thwack.
Clutching a buttery paw-print cookie in his paws, he crunched away—munch, crunch, munch—while staring down at the blank jade plaque with a cold, menacing gleam in his dark, beady eyes.
“Squeak~” Heh.
“Squeak, squeak, squeak.”
The little hamster truly, deeply despised traitors.
Across his fluffy little face spread an expression that was thirty percent sneer, thirty percent icy contempt, and forty percent pure arrogance. It was a genuine miracle that so much attitude could fit onto such a tiny snout.
Still unsatisfied, he leaped up and brought his front paw slamming down onto the jade plaque, stomping on it furiously with his pink feet.
Stomp, stomp, stomp!
“Hmph! The little hamster is going to deliver divine justice today!”
The jade pendant rattled violently against the glass coffee table, producing a sharp clatter.
Unable to endure the humiliation any longer, the blank plaque shuddered. A faint glow erupted, and a small boy who appeared to be five or six years old materialized in the air.
This was Kun Tianya, the guardian spirit of the Kuntian Jade. He functioned much like a personal butler, tasked with assisting the jade’s master.
At this moment, the boy’s face was filled with shock, though he couldn’t hide the deep disdain in his eyes as he looked down at the fluffy creature before him.
Pointing a pale, chubby finger at the plump hamster, he shouted, “Audacious monster! How dare you show your face before this immortal child? State your name at once!”
“Pfft.”
It was time for battle! The little hamster hurriedly shoved the rest of his cookie into his mouth.
Instantly, his left cheek puffed out like a bloated balloon.
The hamster froze. Oops. He had forgotten to store it in his spatial dimension! He quickly patted his fluffy cheek, using his paws to work the treat all the way into his cheek pouch.
Unlike ordinary mortals, the little hamster had been born with two immense dimensional pockets of his own; he didn’t need to treat this jade pendant like an irreplaceable treasure.
Puffing up with righteous fury, the hamster stood on his hind legs and squeaked fiercely, “I hold an official post in the Monster Bureau! I’m not a shameless traitor like you! Tell me—if I hadn’t smoked you out today, were you planning to stay hidden forever? Never showing your face?”
Having his intentions exposed, Kun Tianya flushed with anger and embarrassment. “So what if I was? You mortals are completely unworthy of an ancient divine relic like me! Heavenly treasures choose their own masters. Neither you nor that useless human before you deserve to possess a supreme treasure!”
Without another word, the little hamster opened his mouth wide and pulled out a full-sized desktop keyboard.
Hoisting the massive black keyboard onto his tiny shoulder, he tapped a control key with his pink claw—clack, clack, clack.
“Do you know what this means?” The milk-tea hamster lifted his chin with supreme arrogance. “Hmph!”
Kun Tianya stared blankly. He had only just awakened and knew nothing of modern technology. Furthermore, the chubby hamster had so much neck fluff that it was impossible to tell whether he actually had a chin to lift.
“What on earth is that strange contraption?”
“See this little arrow pointing down? It means you are beneath me! You are scum!”
With a fierce roar, the little hamster swung the keyboard into the air and began mercilessly bashing the bratty spirit.
Smack! Whack! Thwack!
“Scum! Absolute trash!
“Twenty-three generations of the original owner’s ancestors sacrificed their lives to protect and save the true master of the Kuntian Jade! When that immortal recovered, he slaughtered their enemies to avenge them. He foresaw that his saviors’ descendants would face a devastating calamity, so he left you behind to protect the Yu family and repay that life debt!
“And what did you do?”
The hamster grew angrier with every word. Squeaking with furious indignation, he pounded the blank plaque repeatedly with the keyboard.
“Ungrateful leech!
“Arrogant hypocrite!
“You betrayed the sacred wills of two successive masters!
“How dare you call yourself an immortal child? You’re nothing more than a glorified warehouse doorman! Did you honestly think that just because you lived inside the Kuntian Jade for a few centuries, it actually belonged to you?!”
“Ptooey!”
Fuming, the hamster tossed the keyboard aside, grabbed the pendant’s silk cord with both front paws, and began swinging it like a miniature lasso!
“A-tah! A-tah!”
He whipped the plaque back and forth, slamming it left and right against the coffee table before breaking into a wild, triumphant dance! He spun in a complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle and let go with a snap!
Crack!
The jade plaque slammed hard against the wall, ricocheted off the baseboard, and landed squarely in the trash can with a dull thump.
“Hmph~”
The little hamster smoothed his ruffled whiskers with his paws, smugly tossing his head. “Trash belongs in the trash can.”
Kun Tianya, whose consciousness had barely awakened, had retreated back into the jade out of instinct. Being disgraced so thoroughly by a lowly hamster was unbearable. He shot out of the trash can, trembling from head to toe with rage. “You insolent beast! You dare slander this divine spirit?!”
“Divine spirit, my foot! You’re just a magical artifact that gained basic sentience,” the hamster sneered with utter contempt. “At the end of the day, you and I come from the same magical roots. You’re no better than any regular monster. The original owner treated you like a younger brother, but I won’t be so generous.”
The little hamster wanted to pull off a cool, dramatic leap to chase down the spirit and deliver another beating. Trotting to the edge of the coffee table, he peeked over the rim, then nervously licked his nose.
Whoa… that’s way too high.
He backed up several steps, took a running start across the glass, and kicked off with all his might!
A fierce tiger pounces! The little hamster takes flight!
Soaring gracefully through the air, he narrowed his eyes in pure bliss, stretching his front paws forward like Superman while his rounded ears fluttered in the breeze.
Unfortunately, his landing coordinates were slightly off.
His back foot clipped the air conditioner remote sitting on the sofa cushion. With a pitiful squeak, he went tumbling head over heels across the cushions, rolling from one end of the sofa to the other until his round head collided with the wooden armrest.
Thud.
Today, the clever little hamster successfully used his skull as a brake pad.
Shaking his dizzy head, he slid down the fabric to the floor. He licked his lips, consoling himself that he was simply still adjusting to his new body.
He scurried over to the trash can, scrambled up the plastic rim, and clamped his teeth onto the jade’s silk cord, yanking it straight down.
“Squeak, squeak!”
Today, this little hamster was going to execute divine justice!
Without a second thought, he opened wide and clamped his sharp incisors onto the jade pendant with a fierce, hungry crunch!
