Little Alpaca – Chapter 30

Volume 1: Little Alpaca

She Seemed a Bit Unable to Leave You Yan.

Do I really have to keep hanging this small scented sachet, which is uniquely ugly on both the front and back, around my neck?

Yi Qiu lowered her small head, gazing at the scented sachet on her neck and contemplating for a long while.

            

She remembered that in the novel, the alpaca, should have been wearing a small bell around its neck, the same one she was wearing when she first came to this world.

Just a few days before leaving the Demon Realm, the great villain suddenly took it away, saying the thing was noisy and annoying to listen to.

If she hadn’t turned into an alpaca, Yi Qiu was a young woman running toward thirty​¹; she wouldn’t have cared so much about a small bell.

            

After all, wearing that thing, it would jingle with every movement, which was indeed annoying. When You Yan took it away, she was secretly happy for quite a while.

But if she had to hang something around her neck, she would rather choose the little jingling bell than this scented sachet that, no matter how you looked at it, could not be brought onto the stage​².

However…

            

She was just a spirit pet. Even if she wore this scented sachet all the time, others who saw it would only laugh at the master who made it for her, not at her.

In the end, the one who would truly lose face​³ was You Yan. What did a little alpaca like her have to care about?

Thinking this, a smile couldn’t help but appear on the corners of Yi Qiu’s mouth.

            

She couldn’t wait to see the scene of others laughing at You Yan because of this.

Seeing the smile on the little alpaca’s mouth grow more and more obvious, You Yan also raised the corners of her lips for a moment. “It seems you like it very much.”

As she spoke, she gently kneaded the little alpaca’s soft neck with both hands before getting up and sitting back down at the table.

            

【You Yan Favorability +50】

Yi Qiu suddenly came back to her senses and couldn’t help but tilt her neck, staring at You Yan from the side for a long while.

She saw a smile in You Yan’s eyes as her slender, long index finger, carrying faint, inconspicuous wisps of spiritual light, gently handled the incomprehensible tea set on the table.

            

This was truly a Tea Sage​⁴ practicing the art of tea; the fragrance of tea filled the room.

Unlike a common person​⁵ like her, who only knew how to put tea leaves and boiling water into a cup to steep them together.

In any case, You Yan’s mood should be quite good right now. At least, she had just gained some favorability points.

            

Summer afternoons always make one sleepy.

Lying by the window with nothing to do, Yi Qiu suddenly opened her mouth and let out a big yawn. Her vision was instantly covered by a thin layer of misty water.

You Yan glanced at her, but it was only a single glance.

            

She pouted, turned her head to the side, and pulled up her own attributes to take a look.

【Current Attributes】
Intelligence: 180
Strength: 95
Spiritual Root: 200
Agility: 85
Health: 100
Stamina: 100
You Yan Favorability: 650

Six-fifty, six-fifty.

            

It was eight hundred the day before yesterday.

Before, it was stuck at two-fifty, and now it’s stuck at six-fifty. This favorability score was like a roller coaster. Every time she watched it go up bit by bit, it would suddenly plummet, as if she was having a great time in a game and the system forced a save rollback​⁶.

Actually, it would be better if it really was a game rollback. If she could just start over once, she would know what choices to make to avoid having her favorability deducted. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a game; she couldn’t load a save and start over.

            

The amount of favorability deducted was more each time. At first, it was fifty points, then a hundred, and now it had started to be two hundred.

She was afraid that all the mistakes she had made in the past had been written down by You Yan in the little grudge notebook​⁷ she kept in her heart.

Yi Qiu understood that this repeated accumulation was no small matter. If she wasn’t more careful, something major would happen in the future.

            

Women always understand other women.

You had to know, a woman’s rage meter​⁸ is often filled up drop by drop. Once it reaches a certain critical point, all matters of stale sesame seeds and rotten grain​⁹ could be dragged out from some inconspicuous corner to be used as a sharp weapon to whip a corpse​¹⁰.

Right now, she only hoped that after this favorability score broke a thousand, she could truly become a human, instead of having to watch this value increase and decrease, repeatedly jumping sideways​¹¹ between her human and beast forms.

            

That scene… just thinking about it felt too demonic and brutal​¹²…

Thinking of this, Yi Qiu couldn’t help but let out a soft sigh.

Unfortunately, the guest room was too small, and that light sigh immediately attracted You Yan’s gaze.

            

Yi Qiu instantly straightened her posture, accepting her master’s scrutiny with an obedient and upright expression.

You Yan looked the little alpaca huddled by the window up and down, left and right, and back and forth for a good while, before finally asking lightly, “What are you sighing about?”

Yi Qiu opened her mouth, but she wanted to speak, yet stopped.

            

What should I say? Should I pretend I’m hungry, or should I get all worked up about that stupid favorability score with an aggrieved look on my face?

From the perspective of what would be a reasonable cause for sighing, the latter should be more convincing.

You Yan slowly furrowed her brows.

            

Seeing this, Yi Qiu couldn’t help but grow nervous, afraid of losing favorability again. She quickly shrank her neck and said in a low voice, “I, I just feel… that yesterday, that matter from yesterday, it seems to have made Master dislike me.”

You Yan was stunned upon hearing this. It took her a long moment to come back to her senses. She averted her gaze and replied softly, “It’s in the past…”

Yi Qiu had thought You Yan wouldn’t be so easy to fool, but unexpectedly, after she casually brought up her distress over yesterday’s events, You Yan really didn’t question her about the slight abnormality she had just displayed.

            

She should have felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted, yet for some reason, an emotion that she couldn’t quite describe or explain arose in her heart.

It’s clearly this one who ghosts see and worry over​¹³ who keeps everything in her heart and refuses to say anything, doesn’t explain even when she’s misunderstood, and only knows how to sulk and lower my favorability!

And she says it’s in the past! Two hundred points were deducted yesterday, and fifty were added today. What about the remaining one hundred and fifty?

            

It’s not in the past at all, okay! At most, she’s only forgiven me for a quarter of it!

The little alpaca let out a low whimper and rested her chin on her outstretched front legs, a look of grievance on her face.

She raised her eyes to stare at You Yan for several seconds, then couldn’t help but mumble in a low voice, “But I don’t think so. You must still be angry with me in your heart.”

            

Hearing this, You Yan let out a sneer from her nose and turned back to reply, “What’s wrong with being angry at you?”

Yi Qiu: “I…”

You Yan: “Shouldn’t I be?”

            

Yi Qiu: “…”

Yes, yes, yes, yes!

She should be, she absolutely should be!

            

Yi Qiu huffed irritably, shuffled her bottom around, and turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees, looking as if she were punishing herself by facing the wall to reflect on her misdeeds​¹⁴.

You Yan stared at the back of the little alpaca’s head for a good while and couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

【You Yan Favorability +50】

            

Eh?

Yi Qiu couldn’t help but tilt her head while facing the wall.

You Yan: “I didn’t come to get you last night. How did you sleep?”

            

Yi Qiu: “Very peacefully!”

You Yan: “Oh?”

Yi Qiu: “…”

            

An “oh” is just an “oh.” Why did she have to say that single short word with a rising, meaningful intonation? What is she trying to stir up?

Yi Qiu took a deep breath and said honestly, “I dreamed, I dreamed that you didn’t want me anymore… You were standing very far away, looking at me. I went to chase you, but you turned and walked away. You were clearly just walking, but I ran with all my might, I ran for my life, yet I couldn’t catch up no matter what.”

Yi Qiu didn’t realize just how aggrieved her tone was as she said this, so aggrieved that it sounded as if she were about to cry.

            

It was this dream that made her suddenly realize something very frightening.

And that was, she seemed to be a bit unable to leave You Yan.

This inability to leave wasn’t the kind where she couldn’t live without her.

            

Rather, it was the kind of inability to leave where she simply didn’t want to leave, where she just wanted to be by You Yan’s side every day.

Not long ago, she was still thinking that as soon as she could become human and live on her own, she would hurry up and leave You Yan.

But now, she felt that if she really had to leave, she would be very, very, very reluctant to.

            

“Seeing as you didn’t dare say half a word to me yesterday, I thought…” You Yan paused for a moment at this point, then continued as if nothing was amiss, “…that you couldn’t wait to get far away from me.”

Yi Qiu couldn’t see her expression, but she could hear a hint of self-mockery in her words.

“I didn’t!” she defended herself in a small voice.

            

“Mm, I believe you,” You Yan said with a smile. “When you opened your eyes and your first reaction was to hug me, I knew then that you, this little silly sheep, can’t leave me.”

Can’t leave…

Yes, she couldn’t leave.

            

Yi Qiu: “Then will you still abandon me in the future?”

You Yan: “Depends on your performance.”

Yi Qiu: “You… What kind of master is like you…”

            

You Yan: “There just is…”

As she spoke, You Yan stood up and walked to the door.

Hearing the movement, Yi Qiu quickly turned around. As if afraid of being abandoned again, she stood up and looked at You Yan eagerly. “Where are you going!”

            

Hearing this, You Yan turned back with a smile. “It’s already the Hour of Wei​¹⁵. I’m going to order some food for you, you little greedy ghost​¹⁶.”

Yi Qiu blinked her eyes in embarrassment, then lay back down again, watching as You Yan walked out of the room.

Thinking about it carefully, before You Yan left yesterday, she didn’t say a single word to me. More than anger, it should have been disappointment, right?

            

The little pet that she personally fed and doted on every day, that she brought along and protected wherever she went, turned out to be one that couldn’t be tamed​¹⁷. Who wouldn’t be disappointed?

The novel had once mentioned that You Yan was only about five hundred years old when she fell into demonhood. For an immortal, a yao​¹⁸, or a mo​¹⁹, this was the age of adulthood, equivalent to a sixteen-year-old in ancient human terms—definitely still a child.

The Demon Realm was inherently a place where the weak are meat and the strong eat​²⁰. Most killing was for survival, and after killing too many, one would gradually become numb until it became second nature.

            

And this child had stayed in the Demon Realm for over two thousand five hundred years, climbing bit by bit from the most inconspicuous, dark corner of the realm to the supreme position that belonged only to the Demon Lord. The slaughter she had experienced was bound to be more, not less, than that of other members of the demon race.

Ultimately, a villain with this kind of character design was not someone who could be bound by the principles of good and evil of the Celestial and Human Realms.

Whether it was killing people in a teahouse or demonizing a mortal body, these things were all like a home-cooked meal​²¹ to You Yan. As long as it was beneficial to her, there was nothing she wouldn’t do.

            

Just as she had said on the road, choosing that person whose string of evil deeds is full​²² was merely a matter of convenience. If there were no other choice, she would also sacrifice an innocent person without hesitation to gain trust.

Yi Qiu couldn’t help but think, an event does not exceed three times​²³.

Next time, when… when You Yan turns to strike at Luo Mingyuan’s adoptive parents, I shouldn’t show that kind of terrified expression again.

            

It wasn’t that I wouldn’t dare, but that I suddenly realized I was completely unworthy of holding onto the kindness belonging to a mortal in my heart to blame the female demon lord who had walked out from a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood​²⁴.

Besides that, there was another point: I was feeling more and more that the You Yan before my eyes was not the same as the one in the novel.

In the novel, the great villain didn’t need the slightest reason to do all sorts of bad things. She was bad to the extreme, following her heart and whims, and didn’t care at all about anyone’s opinion.

            

But in my opinion, You Yan wasn’t that kind of person. You Yan cared about what others thought, at least…

At least she cared about the opinion of a little pet like me.

She cared about whether she was understood, whether she was acknowledged, whether she was needed, and felt happy or unhappy because of it.

            

So, would a You Yan like this really not hesitate to expend great trouble, forcing a person to lose everything, fall into the demonic path, and ultimately end up in a situation where father and son kill each other, just because it was 「interesting」?

Could it be possible that there was some irreconcilable grudge between the villain and the protagonist in the past?

If that’s really the case, I’m afraid this mission won’t be easy to complete.

            

I hope I’m just overthinking things.

“System, System?”

【I’m here.】

            

“Can I ask you some questions?”

【If the Host has anything they do not understand, you may ask at any time. I will say everything I know and say it without reservation.】

That’s right, this was the sentence she had heard on the first day she transmigrated here.

            

“Back when You Yan was still at Kunlun Mountain, did she develop some kind of grudge with the Three-Legged Golden Crow?”

【Apologies, no related information can be retrieved.】

No related information can be retrieved. So does that mean there is, or there isn’t?

            

Forget it, I’ll ask a different question.

“Are the failures of the Golden Crow’s tribulations in its previous nine lives related to You Yan?”

【Apologies, no related information can be retrieved.】

            

Hiss——

So what the hell does this useless system even know?

“Then, then how did You Yan fall into demonhood? You can at least tell me that, right?”

            

【Side story plot. Host, please explore on your own.】

Damn it! What’s the use of you!

Yi Qiu couldn’t help but take a deep breath.

            

【Does the Host have any other questions?】

“Crawl​²⁵!”

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