Due to her injuries not yet fully healed, Wuzhen spent more time in her cat form than human form each day, as this shape allowed her to recover faster. Strangely enough, Wuzhen had always been restless before, needing to find interesting amusements daily, or else she’d feel bored. But since growing closer to Mei Zhuyu, she seemed to have been influenced by her husband, becoming quite capable of enduring that kind of tranquility.
Gone were the horseback rides in the outskirts, the training ground competitions, the cuju and polo matches, and even visits to pleasure houses and brothels became less frequent. During these days of recuperation, Wuzhen spent most of her time as a cat accompanying her husband at work in the Ministry of Justice, napping in his arms during midday, and in human form at night, sleeping with her head on his lap while enjoying the cool breeze. She had become utterly lazy.
However, during the day, she didn’t always stay with Mei Zhuyu. Occasionally, when she’d had enough sleep, she would run out to make rounds at various government offices.
Ever since cat-petting became fashionable, the number of cats within the blue-tiled, red-walled compounds had suddenly increased. Unlike the stray cats, those with sleek fur and robust figures were generally brought by officials, and many officials had recently been secretly competing with their cats.
Wuzhen even ran to a group of bored officials to observe their cat beauty contest, which was truly a dreadful scene. The cats nearly fought each other, causing the cat-owning officials to almost come to blows as well.
Additionally, Wuzhen frequented the Censorate the most. The two cats belonging to Censor Liu at the Censorate were raised by his daughter, Liu Taizhen, and looked identical to Wuzhen’s cat form. Censor Liu couldn’t distinguish between Wuzhen’s cat form and those two cats, so Wuzhen often went there to impersonate one of them.
Censor Liu would glare at her when he saw her, but when she turned into a cat, she could jump onto Censor Liu’s head and show off. Wuzhen secretly delighted in this, coming to play whenever she could, often taking the opportunity to settle personal scores—such as suddenly jumping up and kicking him. Censor Liu would only smile lovingly, looking as gentle as a fake Censor Liu.
At these times, Wuzhen felt that her choice of the two cats for Little Snake years ago had been excellent. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of their identical appearances today.
However, considering that he was, after all, her good friend’s father, Wuzhen didn’t dare go too far, fearing that if Liu Taizhen found out, she might be beaten to death as a cat. So she only occasionally came to wander around, perching on his shoulder or head, suddenly delivering a not-too-light, not-too-heavy flying cat kick. Censor Liu wasn’t bothered by these harmless cat punches and even boasted to others about how affectionate his cat was each time.
As Wuzhen’s visits to the Censorate became more frequent, Mei Zhuyu would wait for her at the gate of the Censorate before getting off work if he hadn’t seen her return. The first time Censor Liu noticed something amiss was when he saw three identical cats appear simultaneously and was stunned. When he saw Mei Zhuyu scrutinizing the three cats for a long time before carefully picking up one of them, Censor Liu felt quite uneasy.
Censor Liu asked, “Is this your cat?”
Mei Zhuyu was still carefully examining the cat in his arms, feeling that it should be correct, so he nodded and said, “Yes.”
Censor Liu suspiciously glanced at the innocent and docile tabby cat in Mei Zhuyu’s arms, suddenly developing a strong suspicion that he had been taken advantage of recently, but this suspicion also came out of nowhere.
On the way back home with the cat in his arms, Mei Zhuyu kept talking, but the cat in his arms didn’t make a sound, as if it couldn’t understand what he was saying. Mei Zhuyu’s eyesight had greatly improved these days, much better than before. He could accurately choose his wife nine out of ten times, but even when he chose correctly, Wuzhen would deliberately tease him, pretending to be a real cat. Once, Mei Zhuyu took her home, and she hadn’t changed back by midnight. Thinking he had indeed made a mistake, he almost carried her out in the middle of the night to search the Liu family residence, which made Wuzhen laugh for half the night.
Having been tricked by his wife several times, Mei Zhuyu didn’t dare to jump to conclusions this time. He held up the cat and stared into its round eyes for a long, long time. Finally, Wuzhen couldn’t help it anymore. She put a paw on his forehead and said with a grin, “You chose correctly today too!”
Only then did Mei Zhuyu breathe a sigh of relief.
Daoist Frost had left Chang’an a few days ago. With Wuzhen around, the young Daoist Frost finally managed to avoid being worn out by his still-vigorous junior uncle. Before he left, Wuzhen overheard him muttering to himself about telling his senior and junior brothers, master, and uncles about his junior uncle’s marriage, with a tone that seemed to say, “Fellow Daoists, let’s die together to not betray this great friendship.”
Wuzhen thought to herself, could it be that the Daoists from Changxi Temple would gather in Chang’an City sometime soon?
As midsummer approached, in previous years, Wuzhen would have been searching for cool places to escape the heat. This year, however, she could bear it, staying comfortably in Mei Zhuyu’s residence. Without realizing it, she was spending almost every day there, rarely returning to Duke Yü’s mansion.
When Mei Si, Cui Jiu, and others wanted to find her to go out and play, they couldn’t find her at Duke Yü’s mansion several times and gradually got used to coming here to look for her. However, as Wuzhen was recovering from her injuries and almost always went to work with Mei Zhuyu, Cui Jiu and the others rarely managed to catch her. As a result, when they finally met her once, the group of young men and women were extremely resentful, their tone making Wuzhen feel like an unfaithful lover.
On this day, Wuzhen finally went out to play with Cui Jiu and the others, not going to work with Mei Zhuyu. Mei Zhuyu only felt empty in his arms, very uncomfortable. He paused his writing dozens of times throughout the morning, looking out at the parasol tree outside the window several times, but never saw Wuzhen’s cat shadow. By noon, two demon servants carrying food boxes came to deliver his meal. They were two rat demons who, smelling Wuzhen’s lingering scent, trembled as they delivered the food and quickly ran away.
Although the meal was still sumptuous, Mei Zhuyu felt it was tasteless. He held his bowl for a moment before sighing lightly and putting it down.
On this day, Wuzhen didn’t appear at all and didn’t come back in the evening either. Mei Zhuyu waited for her to have dinner, waiting until the drum signaling the closing of the city gates sounded and the sky had completely darkened but still didn’t see her. He had no choice but to eat a simple meal by himself. Wuzhen had said earlier that she wouldn’t be coming back today, but he still waited until this time.
The lamp burned quietly, making soft crackling sounds. A cool breeze blew into the room, the windows wide open, and the mosquito-repelling sachet hanging on the window frame swayed slightly.
With just one person missing, the room seemed incredibly empty and quiet.
When Wuzhen was around, even if they weren’t being intimate, they would still sleep quite late, because Wuzhen was a night owl, which caused Mei Zhuyu’s rest time to be pushed back as well.
Compared to usual days, it was still early, but with Wuzhen not around, Mei Zhuyu sat alone enjoying the breeze for a while, read a scroll, then washed up and went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, Mei Zhuyu suddenly woke up. He keenly heard a noise from the window, silently sat up, and the next moment, a figure jumped in from outside the window. This was certainly no petty thief, but Wuzhen climbing through the window.
She was holding a small jar as she jumped into the room, landing lightly without making a sound. Seeing Mei Zhuyu sit up from the bed at a glance, she chuckled softly, no longer deliberately lowering her voice, and rubbed her nose saying, “Did I wake you up?”
Mei Zhuyu got up to light the lamp, his voice flat but with a hint of concern, “Didn’t you say you weren’t coming back tonight? Why did you suddenly come back?”
Wuzhen made an “oh” sound and casually replied, “I originally wasn’t planning to come back. I played with Cui Jiu and the others all day and was planning to sleep at Huozhu’s place at night, but I couldn’t sleep. Then I caught some interesting things and wanted to bring them back to show you, so I came back.”
Mei Zhuyu watched her bow her head to untie the string on the jar, his gaze unconsciously becoming soft and joyful.
Wuzhen put the untied string in her mouth, biting it as she continued to lift the red paper covering the jar. Looking up, she met Mei Zhuyu’s quiet and gentle gaze. She was stunned for a moment, suddenly spat out the string in her mouth with a “pah” sound, hugged the jar walked two steps to Mei Zhuyu’s front, pulled his collar to bring him down, and kissed him on the cheek.
Somehow, her heart moved, and she promised, “From now on if there’s nothing important, I’ll come home to sleep at night.”
Mei Zhuyu had never expected her to say such a thing. Seeing her eyes bright in the lamplight, with sparkling light dancing in them, he couldn’t help but reach out to hug her, and after a long while, he opened his mouth and said, “Are you tired? Rest.”
“Wait, let me show you something first,” Wuzhen said, pulling him with one hand to the study separated by a screen.
The study had a white wall. When the doors and windows were wide open, the shadows of the trees in the courtyard outside would be cast on the white wall. On sunny days, the ripples of the small pond outside would also dance on the white wall. At this moment, Wuzhen pulled Mei Zhuyu to face the white wall, kicked the small bamboo mat on the couch onto the floor, and then pushed Mei Zhuyu to sit on the bamboo mat.
Mei Zhuyu sat on the bamboo mat as she wished, watching her. Wuzhen mysteriously uncovered the layer of paper covering the jar in her hand, then pinched out a slippery, semi-transparent sheet from inside the jar.
“Look,” she said, flinging the trembling ‘sheet’ onto the white wall. The ‘sheet’ stuck to the wall with a “pa” sound, and finally slowly melted into the wall. After a moment, there was not a trace left on the wall surface. At the same time, a small shadow suddenly appeared on the wall. It was the shadow of a butterfly, flying back and forth on the white wall, its movements graceful and beautiful. It looked as if there was a butterfly outside the window, its shadow cast by moonlight onto this wall.
Wuzhen pinched out another sheet similar to the previous one from the jar and threw it onto the wall again. This time, the shadow that appeared on the wall was that of a bird. The bird was lively and vivid, and although it was just a shadow, it made one feel as if they could hear its chirping.
Seeing this, Mei Zhuyu had already guessed what it was. As Wuzhen continued to pull out those semi-transparent sheets from the jar, she explained to Mei Zhuyu, “These are a kind of harmless spirit called shadow bugs. They have all kinds of forms and can turn into various shadows – human shadows, animal shadows, and even shadows of flowers, grass, and trees. These things are hard to find, very difficult to catch.”
Because they only appear at night, can transform into various shadows, blend into the surrounding environment, and have no unusual aura, they are very hard to find.
Wuzhen was quite proud of finding this jar full of them, and casually threw out two more sheets. This time, one turned into a clump of bamboo, forming a bamboo shadow in one corner of the white wall, while the other became the shadow of a peony flower, falling on the other side. So now the bird from earlier landed on the bamboo shadow, and the butterfly landed on the flower.
Mei Zhuyu saw Wuzhen still enthusiastically digging into the jar and throwing things onto the wall, watching as various shadows gradually appeared on that white wall, making it look increasingly lively. He suddenly felt that his wife was very much like a little girl catching fireflies in the middle of the night.
Just then, Wuzhen, having completed her masterpiece, clapped her hands, turned the empty jar in her hand, and said proudly, “Look, how is it? Isn’t it fun~” It was the tone of someone coaxing a child, unaware that her behavior was more like that of a child.