Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

  The night was coming.

  Big Orange’s heart was burning with anger. It would explode if it did not vent its anger to the enemy. Although it seemed to be broad and fat, its movements were quite flexible. A cat rushed onto the main road of the central axis of the village first, followed by its subordinates: sleekly built stray cats.

  At that moment, a large portion of the villagers were at home eating, and there were not a lot of people on the road. No one would have thought that an army made up of stray cats would be sweeping through the village.

  Because of the acceleration of urbanization, like most villages in China, young people had gone to Binhai City or nearby coastal cities to work. Most of the villagers left behind were old, weak, and disabled, with few young and middle-aged people.

  The young and middle-aged people who were willing to stay did not stay because of filial piety or respect for the old and love for the young. They were just lazy and idle. They did not engage in labor or produce anything. They lived grand lives off of the old. They scraped a small pension from their parents, but they laughed mockingly at the villagers who worked thousands of miles away because they thought it was foolish to get rich by working. Why did they have to leave home to suffer hardship? They would ultimately suffer from opportunistic ways of making money!

  If one was near the mountains, they ate from the mountains; if one was near the sea, they ate from the sea. The village was very close to the dog market, and the carefree, young villagers wanted to do something with the dog market.

  The percentage of households that owned dogs in the village was very high––to the extent that practically every house owned a dog.

  The old, the young, the sick, and the disabled owned dogs for the sake of guarding their homes and protecting themselves, while the young and the middle-aged owned dogs for the sake of economic benefit.

  ( B oxnovel.c om ) Ordinary dogs were not worth money and were sold everywhere, so villagers preferred to keep fierce dogs. They could satisfy their vanity and fight them against each other for money, or they could sell their domestic, fierce dogs to customers from the city. There were many cases where customers were forced into buying and selling fierce dogs. When businesses came to inspect them, they simply lied and denied their involvement. Industry and Commerce couldn’t do anything about it.

  Therefore, in the nameless, small village, practically every house reared strong, fierce dogs and were proud of it.

  They did not only rear purebred, fierce dogs, but they also let different aggressive breeds mix due to curiosity, hoping that it would result in a stronger breed of dog.

  In the village, one could find dobermanns, rottweilers, cane corsos, pitbulls, Tibetan Mastiffs, German Shepherds, bulldogs, and other large-sized, fierce dogs from all over the world. On top of that, one could find the mixes of all of those breeds.

  Every time a dog gave birth to a litter of puppies, they took their puppies to the dog market and sold them. They thought it was a profitable business. In the countryside, raising dogs was not as exquisite as it was in the city, where they needed to prepare specialty dog food. Villagers fed their dogs whatever they ate––they just added a bit more rice to the pot when they cooked.

  ( B oxnovel.c om ) Of course, for those dogs, it was not good to eat rice all day long. They did not sell well if they were too thin. Villagers knew that. Sometimes, they had to find ways to supplement their dogs with some meat. It was impossible to buy pork, beef, and mutton in the market; it was too expensive. People could not even afford to eat it, let alone their dogs. How could they feed the dogs? They would be scolded by their neighbors behind their backs.

  The good thing was they could still find other types of meat.

  Sometimes when the Industry and Commerce tax authorities jointly enforced the law, some pets, such as cats, dogs, rabbits, squirrels, hedgehogs, and other small animals would run away from the dog market. Those small animals were free meat.

  Some villagers made money by gambling. In order to make their dogs more ferocious and bloodthirsty, they never fed their dogs cooked food, but live animals. They fed their captured animals to the dogs alive. They laughed and watched the dogs tear their prey to pieces.

  Some dogs were so ferocious that they couldn’t even be tied down by a metal chain that was as thick as a finger. They would sometimes break free and run outside. Villagers spent a lot of time with dogs and knew how to deal with them, but passersby were unlucky; they were often bitten, occasionally very badly.

  After a pedestrian was bitten, they would certainly not let it go, but the owner of the dog would not confess to it. In order to destory any evidence, the owner would often secretly put the dog down. Plus, the villagers often had each other’s backs, so that the bitten party could only confess to their bad luck.

  There were a lot of gifs and images spread on the Internet about fights between cats and dogs, and more often than not it was cats bullying dogs. The dogs in the videos, however, had very mild tempers, and were not fierce dogs that had been trained.

  The truth was that even golden retrievers, which were normally very gentle and loyal in front of humans, had the potential to become evil monsters when they faced other dogs and cats. They were nicknamed “the treasure of dogs,” and the number of golden retrievers that killed stray cats was not small. After all, golden retrievers were hounds, and they had a hunting instinct.

  If even a golden retriever could be like that, then fierce dogs that were born with a bloodthirsty nature were even worse. When stray cats encountered a fierce dog, if there was no wall or haystack nearby, it was often dangerous.

  No one owned cats in the villages; rich people in the city owned cats. They did not interfere with the predation of stray cats by fierce dogs, and they even encouraged them to supplement their meat.

  However, some sensitive villagers had recently noticed that the formerly silly stray cats seemed to have become more cunning and less vulnerable to predation. The fierce dogs in the village were hungry, and the stray dogs around the village were hungry––so much so that they even jumped into the villagers’ yards to prey on poultry.

  It was all right if they preyed on stray cats, but if they preyed on poultry, then the villagers could not stand it. That was their livelihood!

  At dinner time, the smell of food was everywhere in the village, and the hungry dogs and stray dogs barked loudly in hopes of attracting human attention.

  The troop of stray cats rushed into the village against the wind. Even dogs with the most sensitive senses of smell did not notice their arrival. Even if they smelled the cats’ scent, the fierce dogs did not care. They thought it was just dinner being delivered to their doorstep.

  Big Orange wriggled a few times, and used effort to climb to the top of the wall. It coldly stared at a rottweiler that was tied up in a villager’s yard.

  The rottweiler raised its head and met its eyes, then licked its lips with its tongue. Sticky saliva dripped out from the corner of its mouth. The orange tabby was fat enough; it would fill its stomach for an entire meal.

  It started to bark loudly, hoping that its owner would release it from its metal chain; however, the owner of the house was eating at that moment, and did not care.

  Following after the orange tabby, stray cats jumped onto the top of the wall one by one, their eyes were shining with different kinds of light. They were staring at the rottweiler from the high ground, and the situation felt very strange.

  Big Orange had received very accurate information and knew that the dog had at least crippled and killed three stray cats––it had even injured a child before.

  The rottweiler tilted its head, a bit confused. It had never seen stray cats gather in groups. But it didn’t matter; stray cats were just food to it.

  The stray cats began to gather until there was at least 20 to 30 of them. They did not make any noise or run; they just stared at it quietly.

  Big Orange’s claws were like knives. They ground into the wall, sending out an attack signal.