Cativation - Chapter 18

With his speed, he can climb up the stair in a flash but he doesn’t want to. Surrounded by mother nature, he felt his mind is really calm and he can’t help but to lower his step to savor the moment.

This time he goes directly in the meditation hall, no conceit, no scheme, just going in like that. His arrival alarmed a cat monk and he immediately told those around him.

“You still have the nerve to come? You should take what happened to Laptop as warning and get out of here before we changed our mind.” Said a cat monk aggressively, he appeared to be the one in charge of this meditation hall.

“I want to talk to Bottle.” Said Bluetail calmly.

“He is not here.”

“This is important.” Insisted Bluetail, without any change in his expression.

“Oh? You are unexpectedly calm and civilized today. We will get someone to notify our head monk to see if he has time for you. Wait here and don’t try anything funny.” The cat monk in charge is surprised of Bluetail composure and agreed. He then instructed someone to go invite Bottle over.

They are living in a civilized society and not some barbaric land after all, no need to be rude especially when Bluetail is behaving properly.

Around ten minutes later, Bottle arrived with a few other cat monks, they seem to not pleased to see Bluetail at all.

“Why do you come here again? You know that you are not welcome here.” Said Bottle without any expression on his face as usual.

“I come for an explanation. We only cursed your people for a bit, was there a need to be so heavy handed with Laptop?” Asked Bluetail.

“He deserved it, and you too. You should feel lucky that we, honorable cat monks, follower of Buddha, don’t hold grudge for long and didn’t beat you up at first sight.” Answered Bottle.

“Deserved it? Haha you are funny.” Bluetail actually laughed.

“What substantial consequences had our cursed bring to your bunch? Someone of you may feel anger, humiliated and indignant but it was just words. It’s not like me and Laptop had killed your family or something. We are not in ancient eras where face is a matter of life and dead anymore.” Bluetail took a few steps forward why talking, slowly but firmly.

“BUT” Bluetail stopped when his nose almost touched Bottle’s nose. The cat monks feed the threat and they started to close in to form a circle with Bluetail in the middle while hissing menacingly, their ears are pointed to Bluetail direction.

“Your bunch of hypocrite actually beat him up until his cultivation stage dropped. This is already his eighth life and you all know what is this mean. His future is destroyed! Just for a feel harmless curse, how righteous and forgiven your cat monks are!” Said Bluetail sarcastically.

All the cat monks are startled and they started to whisper between them in low voices. Cultivation drop is quite rare so some need explanation while other discussed. Despite the commotion, it appeared that they didn’t put too much concern on Laptop but more on the cultivation drop itself. It’s understandable as most cats only care about themselves, not to mention Laptop is a complete stranger to them.

“So that’s why he teleported back to his physical body, not because he figured it out but because of his cultivation drop.” A cat monk said his thought out loud.

A flash of understanding crossed everyone mind. They all thought that Laptop teleported back to his physical body himself.

“SILENCE!” Bottle glared at his members.

“We were clouded by our rage at that moment and we couldn’t hold our hand in time. We are extremely sorry for what happened.” Apologized Bottle, his expression changed for the first time. His face showed some sincerity and guilt. Unlike those cat monks, Laptop was his close friend and they shared a lot of memory together.

“Don’t sorry me, say it to Laptop.”

“I will. We will try to compensate him as best as we can.”

Bluetail is at a loss for words. Isn’t this too easy? He thought that they will put up some resistances or just ignore it. Who would have thought that they are so reasonable? It is so boring when the villain is reasonable!

For the matter of compensation, it’s not right for Bluetail to ask about it as it’s Laptop who suffered and Bluetail got off unscratched. He couldn’t ask Bottle to hold people responsible neither as Bottle doesn’t know exactly who participated in the beating because it was too chaotic, and Bluetail teleported out before the beating begin thus he couldn’t see anyone either.

While Bluetail is still thinking what to do next, Bottle told his members to go back to meditation. He then looked at Bluetail and asked:

“Are you curious what are we doing in this temple?”

“Isn’t it for meditation?” The answer is obvious in Bluetail’s mind. But then he thought of something: Is there a need to form this big of a group, almost cult-like if they just want to meditate? The cat monks can just come to the temple and meditate. They don’t need companion but calmness and serenity, at least they would just form small groups of a few friends but not this big.

“It’s not that simple. Follow me and I will explain.” Bottle shook his head and lead bluetail out of the meditation hall.

They went back to the statue fields. This is where Laptop and Bluetail was ambushed and the location of Laptop’s tragedy. There are so many stone statues Bluetail couldn’t count them all, and most of them are the same, moldy and ancient. There are some newer statues but those probably are added in to replaced broken one.

“Wait here.” Said Bottle as he jumped on top of a statue.

Bluetail opened his eyes wide open in disbelief, he actually used his front paw to rub his eyes to see if he was seeing things. The statue Bottle jumped on trembled and sank into the ground, leaving only its head visible. Unlike Bastet’s pocket world where everything exists in another dimension and under Bastet rules. This is a stone statue, a real physical object!

It is common knowledge that soul forms can’t interact with physical object, but today this knowledge has been turned over. Moreover, even if that a soul can interact with physical objects, a cat soul has no weight as it theoretically isn’t exist, so how can a weightless thing actually push down a stone statue that is four times bigger than a normal cat?

Bottle jumped on over thirty statues in a particular order before he goes back to Bluetail. All of those trembled for a minute before sank completely into the ground. A stone stair case leading to the underground appeared.